Bob Burford - Again

 One day I went to visit a client in South Bend, Indiana. I walked down the hallway to his studio and found when I arrived that he was on the phone. He saw me and motioned for me to come on in. As I stood in the middle of his studio I noticed a few books on a bookshelf. His bookends were stamped metal that made it possible to see most of the back cover of the end book.

The colors, the size, the design, everything about the book identified it as “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran. But something about it was off. I removed the book from the display and saw instantly what it was about the book that was “off.” Everything. It was a parody of “The Prophet” written by a group of lunatics who are in the business of doing such things. 

The book was “The Profit” by Kehlog Albran. The author’s bio was on the back cover: “The author, Kehlog Albran, was born and raised in the American Express Club in London.” I laughed my ass off. I don’t know why, but that whole thing just struck me as being really funny.

It was about an hour’s drive back to my office. On the drive back I thought of all of my friends who would get a kick out of that book. One of the saving graces of being engaged in the advertising / graphics industry is that all of the people you deal with have a great sense of humor, although somewhat warped as it may be. “The Profit” was a great fit for my clients.

So, by the time I reached the office, I had developed a need for two dozen books to be passed out to friends.

My call to the bookstore was answered by the owner himself, a tall, very prim and proper, way too serious, stick-up-his-ass man of about 60. Thin moustache. Severe looking black plastic and wire-framed glasses. A man completely devoid of a personality. 

“May I help you?” he asked. |

”Yes, sir. I’d like to order some books.”

“Some books?” he asked, with stress on the “some.”

“Yes, sir. I need 24 copies of ‘The Profit’ by Kehlog Albran.”

“You do mean Kahlil Gibran,” he said, his superior intellect dripping off of every syllable.

“No, sir. I do not. I mean Kehlog Albran, author of ‘The Profit,’ P-R-O-F-I-T.”

“Kahlil Gibran wrote ‘The Prophet,’ P-R-O-P-H-E-T” he said.

“Yes sir, I’m very much aware of that and if you order that, you’ll have to eat them because I sure as hell don’t want them. I want 24 copies of ‘The Profit’ spelled P-R-O-F-I-T by a guy named Kehlog K-E-H-L-O-G Albran A-L-B-R-A-N.”

“Sir,” he says, “I’m afraid you are simply confused. There is no such book.”

“Sir,” sez I, “I am NOT confused. Just about an hour ago I had that book in my hands. That’s exactly how I know that I want it. Because I held it, scanned it, read parts of it. Here’s an idea: How about looking in your catalog and see if you find it? Eh?”

“Please hold.” ... [click] ... 

[silence] ...

It was a large bookstore with two vintage semi-circular customer service counters, one about 12 to15 feet inside the front door and the other much deeper into the bowels of the store. This, of course, was light-years before the age of computers. The store’s catalog was about eight inches deep, designed such that individual pages could be removed and replaced with updated pages. That book was kept on the service counter nearest the front door. And that’s where the man was headed while he had me on “hold.”

The man eventually picked up the phone and asked me to wait while he checked the catalog – obviously a complete waste of time for this illiterate moron he had on “hold” on the phone. I could hear the guy breathing and I could hear him thumbing through the book’s pages. He stopped and started reading aloud the listings from the top of a page that, he assumed, would take him right past where “The Profit” would be listed. 

“Blah blah blah ... one-second pause ... blah blah blah ... one-second pause ... blah blah blah ... a much longer pause ... SONOFABITCH!!” It came out as a very loud whisper. This from a man who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. There it was. Right where it should be. 

[Silence]

“Am I to assume you found it?” I asked. 

“Yes sir, I see it listed here.” he said, hating every second of this.

“Just to make sure,” I said, “maybe you should read the title and author’s name to me.”

And so he did: “The Profit P-R-O-F-I-T by Kehlog K-E-H-L-O-G Albran A-L-B-R-A-N.”

Don’tcha just love it when things happen right?

He took my order for two dozen copies of the book. I had to wait a few days for the books to arrive. Then one day I got a call telling me that the books were in and I could pick them up at my convenience. When I went to pick up the books, I was somewhat surprised that he was taking care of it himself instead of assigning the task to one of the clerks. So I asked him if he had read the book. He said he had not. He lied, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, he watched me as I removed from the box the top copy of the book. It was quite obvious that it had been read. I stood the book up on the counter and it fanned its pages open, just as you would expect from a book that had been read. “Hmmm” said I as I put the book back in the box. And off I went.

I don’t recall what the books cost me, but I would guess that it wasn’t much more than two or three dollars. I just looked on eBay and found that a paperback copy of the book can be had for around $40.00. While at it, I also found this comment in a review of the book:

“‘The Profit’ gleefully jabs at Gibran's blind spot, showing no mercy. The humor is broad, the satire unrelenting and the illustrations a hoot. It is as inexcusably dumb as Gibran's writing is unreliably self-important.”

So I passed these books out to my friends and clients. That was years ago and they’re still using quotes from the book: “Yeah, well, you haven’t talked to my donkey.” That means nothing to you but if you heard that after reading the book, you’d be laughing your ass off. Because it’s funny. You would also have learned that, “Tuesday is the strangest day of the week.” To hear unhinged comments like that being inserted into a serious project planning meeting around the conference table makes it all worthwhile.

Life is good.