• by Jack Feuer , January 7, 2009

"I'm reading "The Art of War" on my iPhone," said the young digital creative to me over Thai linguini at California Pizza Kitchen. This was right before he told me about his plan to break up with his Israeli girlfriend so he can hit on her hot Portuguese roommate. (Good luck with that. She was probably in the army and could snap him like a cracker.)

He followed those two delightful pronouncements by explaining why every site on the Web, except his own, was designed by idiots.

Cue the Keystone Kops music, folks. Here we go again. I didn't even get to the end of the first day of the first work week of 2009 before I had to throw up.

And I really liked that Thai linguini.

So much for a happy new year. We've barely begun, and already we're up to our nipples in nuttiness throughout the media and marketing world.

OMD's Alan Cohen, doing the media version of the "creatives giving crazy quotes" routine, told Adweek: "We want to be like the CIA for our clients." I totally agree. I think water-boarding is a great way to deal with agency executives.

Denny's client Mark Chmiel told Ad Age: "The world's a little PO'd out there." Nice of him to notice. I'd like to buy the world a Grand Slam breakfast, too, but I don't have enough cash to eat out.

Everybody's favorite industry blog, Adrants, welcomed the first full quarter of the year by running an item on "penis cake advocates." I'm not touching that.

Naturally, every marketing conference in America this year will have the same theme: "Recession changes everything."

And Steve Jobs claimed a bizarre malady that is not cancer but has turned him into "The Nightmare Before Christmas." We're going to economic hell in a hand-me-down hand basket and all the business media can cover is a CEO's weight loss?

If the "Planet of the Apes" had ad agencies, media shops, marketing executives and journalists, they would all look and sound like this. In my head, I see a terrified, half-naked client being hosed down in a draftFCB conference room by a monkey in a suit screaming, "It's a madhouse! A madhouse!"

Still, as always, there were some glimmers of intelligence. Hyundai's current campaign, in which it offers any customer who loses their job within a year of buying a car the option of returning the vehicle without cost, is a sharp and smart response to a recession-wracked marketplace. (And you know the world's turned upside down when I compliment any Korean client, let alone this one.)

Similarly, I noted with some interest and not a little admiration that while every meat operation except for Wal-Mart got its head handed to it this Christmas, Amazon notched its best holiday sales ever. (And you know the lunatics are running the asylum when I write approvingly about anything digital.)

So it looks like we're in for another bolt down the rabbit hole. But you'll have to make your way through Wonderland without me.

I'm not going through this again, no way. I'm going to call in sick for the year, fire up the Roor and curl up with a good 3G mobile phone.