Check out the balls on this guy. It’s the worst media inquiry I’ve seen to date. Think about how illiterate you have to be to judge books not on their covers but on the idea of them having covers.

This isn’t so much a new media lesson as it is one of most shocking and disturbing things you eventually realize about the world:

Most people are absolutely incompetent.

Even at the very highest levels they are incompetent. Executives. Writers. Bloggers. CEOs. PR people. The ones you read about in the paper – you meet a good chunk of them and realize, “Holy Shit, the emperor has no clothes.” They don’t know how to use common sense. They have no empathy. They can’t plan. They’re uninformed. They do things like this and then throw up their hands and wonder why it doesn’t work.

This guy is the host of his own 4 hour radio show. Not on some tiny station either. That’s pretty fucking cool. He managed to work himself firmly into the middle of a highly competitive field, name a show after himself and hold on to it.

And yet, here he is sending unquestionably the worst media request I’ve seen in the last two years. It’s so bad that I thought I must have read it wrong. There’s no way someone would admit upfront that they hadn’t bothered to read a 200 page book and then follow it up with the narcissism it would take to think that their approval would still be appreciated. No. Way. But of course, here we are.

So, if you’re sitting their thinking that it’s too hard to crack into media or maybe you don’t have what it takes to do whatever you want to do, realize this: Chris McClain is not an anomaly. He’s better than average. Some would call him accomplished. That should be the most inspiring thing in the world.

Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War in Iraq – Paul Rutherford (decent but the author should be ashamed of himself. ignoring the wealth of data, he relied on a ‘community panel’ of people to discuss the marketing of the war. it would have been fine if they hadn’t been quoted like experts, all had the same education level, been asked leading questions or I don’t know, if they didn’t all LIVE IN CANADA.)

No Logo – Naomi Klein (klein has some big logic and belief problems but this book is great)

Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids – Donna Gaines (held up well. cool Iron Maiden references)

Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age – Paul Graham (more coming on this)

Ben has an awesome piece about American Apparel. On the same level as this one about Zappos.

Fail Dogs is one the a Top Ten Pet Trend of the year.

I want to live in this apartment.

And like I’ve been saying, there is a market for what you do online.

When you see stupid billboards. Like the one I saw yesterday that had pictures of some people’s faces (token black guy) and then said “Toyota.” It’s easy to dismiss that as bad marketing. You forget though that someone with a fancy title -” VP of West Coast Advertising” – wrote a 40 or 50,000 dollar check for your viewing pleasure. Some other artist rushed to work each day to put the finishing touches on his big campaign. And of course, there’s the pesky little problem of advertising not working.

What about those Hedge Fund managers that go through divorces, raise fucked up kids, work 90 hour weeks that they need coke to get through, all for the glorious pleasure of not beating an Index Fund. A life exchanged for the privilege of deceiving people that you have a skill that you objectively do not. A gambling addiction without the self-awareness.

Or think about all the sleepless nights executives at Microsoft and Yahoo have spent over the last three months. Traveling, phone calls, lunches, dinners, frantic memos and pages of reports. All of that and they know – empirically – it will be an enormous failure.

And at least they were in the arena, marred in dust and blood. Unlike the journalists, analysts, consultants, trend watchers, coaches, authors – whose skills lie in breathlessly reporting the same story with different words. Apparently forgetting how laughable the chatter looks a few years later.

All those people subjugated their lives to showing up every day to an office. That is, in most cases, in the place of doing something they want to do. They stressed. They put shit off. Bogged in office politics. Missed the little pleasures. Philosophy. Reading. Thinking. Improving. They deferred. Wondered why their not happy. Debt. Turned around and tried to impart their ‘wisdom’ on the next generation.

Maybe they think about this daily and go ahead and do it anyway. Or, they never stopped to consider it. Probably the latter. No matter how many times they use the words “war room,” “attrition,” “4th quarter” – it’s not going to change the fact that it’s all a big charade. A joke. A lie.

Is that what you want to work your whole life for? I don’t. It’s my worst fear.

Honesty Box: I feel like all the time I am right on this edge. I’m trying to put this stuff on the record now. Reverse pressure. So I’m always thinking “but it’ll look bad if I become the person I said I never wanted to be.” I think I need all the help I can get.