• by Kelly Samardak , September 26, 2008

I must be getting old. I know I know, you could come back with how much older you are than me, but I'll bet you have no idea, I'm probably older than you. A few things are really good indicators of mindless youth seeping swiftly out the door like a bored roach. One would be the level of "Girls Gone Wild" that I used to portray in the company of, well, company uppity ups. But even back in the day I don't recall jumping up on stage, shaking what my mamma gave me, and publicly molesting the beauty queen of emo punkhop. Just sayin'.

What was it? Monday! It was Monday. I had already been to two Advertising Week events, the Stars of Madison Avenue luncheon and the Creative Media Awards, before heading back to Nokia (so that was, Nokia to Yale Club to Nokia again, sheesh) to see N*E*R*D and Big Boi (you may know him as the one who doesn't wear pants made out of stuffed animal heads) entertain the lathered up masses of ad sellers, buyers, planners, developers, owners, creative types, and a smattering of random sweaty weirdos. Wait, we could all just be sweaty weirdos. And to think, I almost didn't go.

The first person I ran into was Shawn Ames of Guerilla Marketing. He was also at the Mashup at The World Bar - and if you want to get really freaky, I saw him last night at the facebook wrap party (which would be the future, if I was pretending to write this on Monday). Ok, unwrap your brain and lets move on. Also in attendance was my favorite virgin mobile guy, Anthony Montenegro who was sitting up in the seats with Ryan O'Rourk, SonyBMG Digital and Mobile Account Executive and Laura Tiffin, who's in Graphic Design and designs handbags. Other than that, I can't really tell you who was who. It was dark, the open bar was being consumed like it was a contest and the prize was a lifetime supply of no good. Or allllll good.

What's so odd and warping about Advertising Week is that at noon you could be attending a luncheon honoring creative good doing and then at 9 PM Nokia transforms into a glowing concoction of latent frat boy hormones and open bar induced vapidity. I'm not saying that's not fun, but girls, can we talk for a minute? Good. See, you know how women have to fight still to get equal respect and pay in the workplace? You know we do. So then why, for the love of gack, do you get up on stage, in front of people who you may see in a meeting, who you may have to ask for a raise, who you may just want to be able to look in the eye, and waggle your wiggly bits like you're getting paid to do it?

Don't get me wrong, the energy was awesome when N*E*R*D pulled spastic fans on stage and everyone went nuts. But I knew it was going to be trouble when they practically drop kicked all the dudes off stage and only kept the women. I had flashbacks to Lord of the Flies, estrogen edition. Who would survive?

I'm sure it's easy to forget that this isn't just some random concert where it would be a major stroke of luck to run into anyone ever again, which is the way I can reason the grinding, the grabbing, and the "hey, let me use Pharrell as my own personal stripper pole" gyrations I saw up on stage. I covered my eyes once, mortified. I just couldn't imagine having a meeting with The Big Boss out by the elevators explaining an Advertising Week photo of me captioned with "... dry humping Pharrell". Don't believe me? Jeremy Greenfield got some good up close and smell the socks shots.

Regardless, there's no arguing that everyone had a ridiculously good time (myself included, from the side of the stage) and maybe that "pretend my clothes are my skin" dance got him to join someone's ad network! Good grackle I sound old.

Check out all the blurry stage action in the Flickr photos !

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