Shakira to sing Smugglers' Inn theme song.

by Lindsay Cheltenham-Pierce, society reporter, Anoka County Shopper

Smugglers’ Inn is in talks with international superstar, Shakira (no last name), to perform its company theme song during an upcoming charity event. The multi-venue concert, known as “Soupstock”, seeks to raise awareness for Prop 33, which would confer automatic guest worker status to any restaurant or hotel worker on the job more than six months and, secondarily, to compensate those businesses which have negatively impacted by stepped-up enforcement of laws that levy heavy fines on employers of undocumented immigrants.

“We’re delighted that Shakira will be the first artist to perform our theme song,” said a Smugglers’ Inn spokesman, who met with me in the office of the restaurant and occasional ad agency. “This woman is amazing, she sings, she dances, she acts—she’s the Sammy Davis, Jr. of South America.” Added one obviously excited young man in a hairnet who was chopping vegetables, ” Shakira es numero uno. ¡Mira! Puse su nombre en mi brazo!"

An agreement, under which participating restaurant and hotel owners will underwrite the concert in exchange for merchandising rights and a percentage of income from download revenues, was negotiated by Lagos Star Entertainment, LLC.

"The lemon wedge took your eye...then what?"

With hot weather, the vendors of ice cream and hot dogs do brisk trade. Not so, we dispensers of clam chowder. Thus, with our core business in the doldrums, Smugglers’ Inn was pleased to learn that our advertising sideline was about to receive yet another citation for bravery. Seems our campaign for Tours Abroad China had been selected to appear in the upcoming issue of Luerzer’s Archive, a glossy showcase of outstanding advertising and design from around the world. It’s Smug’s fourth appearance in the publication.

Since our light clam chowder had not been the traffic builder we’d hoped for, we wished to make the most of the Archive score. Our first thought was to patent “Four-peat”, but it turns out that someone already owns it. (Too bad, it would have looked stunning on a lobster bib.) We then contacted our two favorite interviewers, NPR’s Terri Gross and James Lipton of “Inside the Actors’ Studio”, to invite them to come to Blaine, Minnesota and ask us how we pulled off this feat while serving Mai Tai’s and Surf ‘n Turf to folks who turn their baseball caps backwards when they dine.

They declined. Or their assistants did. Or maybe it was computers. The important thing is, WE GOT A RESPONSE. Within a matter of days, two rejection letters had arrived for us, printed on letterhead on heavy stock. These letters, plus an 8x10 of James Lipton with hand on chin, seemingly caught in the act, as it were, of forming his next penetrating question, are holy relics that we can leave our heirs. We are grateful for them.

But we gotta eat.

If Lipton and Gross were out, who was next on the interlocutor A-list? Larry King? Retired. Oprah? Dream on. Piers Morgan? Who? David Frost? Dead…or was he?

“Daveed Frost? No dead--viva. Alive!”

Miguel, the night chef, had wandered into the office just in time to overhear us say, “David Frost”. Known around Smugs as a man of few words in English, Miguel was now jabbering like a monkey, claiming that David Frost was not only alive, but in his locker. Had an employee like our dishwasher, Old Jorge, made these statements, we may have laughed it off, but Miguel was known as a down-to-earth family man who did not use crystal meth. Seeing our confusion, Miguel ran out and returned a minute later, waving a publication printed on orange newsprint. No, it was not the Financial Times.

“El Mirador” was a Spanish language tabloid dedicated almost entirely to Latin soap stars, pets in clothes, appearances of the Holy Virgin and wrestling. Miguel opened it up and pointed to a picture of David Frost looking out through a window cut into a steely cylinder. I say, “looking out”, but Mr. Frosts eyes were shut and his face wore an expression of Buddha-like calm, this despite the icicles clinging to his eyebrows.

“Frio!” Miguel said by way of an explanation. He then rubbed his arms and made a “B-r-r-r-r!” sound to get the point across.

Like Walt Disney and Ted Williams before him, it seemed David Frost had taken the precaution of having himself cryogenically frozen in the event that medical science someday advances to the point where it can re-animate stiffs and cure whatever conditions caused their deaths in the first place. This isn’t news in itself; while officially alive, rumors that Sir David (or his head) was on ice had been circulating since 2009. What was newsworthy was that he was talking.

“He’s frozen, but he talks?”

“Si!”

Miguel explained, as best he could, that Frost is speaking through a medium—a woman who, while working as a housekeeper at the Sherry Netherland hotel, once cleaned Mr. Frost’s room. The article had a small picture of her.

“Nice crown.”

“Si! Queen Lllyana. Ella es muy famousa psychic amiga. From Jamaiica, mon.”

Miguel drew out “Ja-mai-ca” like someone from that island nation might, provided they were a little Spanish. Our silent cook was really coming out of his shell. It was unnerving.

“Well, it’s simple then,” I said. “We just contact her. She places her hands on the freezer door, makes a few spooky noises and “bingo!” we’re speaking with the man who made Nixon cry. Sounds pretty straightforward. Too bad we don’t have Queen Latifa’s phone number. Otherwise, I’d say it was a plan.”

“Queen Illyana!” Miguel corrected. He then flipped to the back of El Mirador where the same picture of the crowned medium appeared again, this time taking up a quarter of the orange page.

It was an ad for her psychic hotline. Not only was it the largest in El Mirador, it was the only one entirely in English; seems Queen Illyana no habla Espanol. The ad listed all her specialties. While I was personally intrigued by “Find lost money!” the Queen’s claims that she could “Speak to the dear deported! [sic]” probably meant that she could speak to the departed and this was what would need to happen if Smugglers’ Inn was ever to become Frost’s 7,003rd interview.

We called. Just because Miguel was watching.

“Welcome to Queen Illyana’s psychic hotline…” boomed an impossibly Caribbean voice.

“Queen Illyana, we have kind of a weird request…”

“…The Queen is busy helping others at the moment,” the recording continued. “Please stay on de line and your call will be answered.”

We waited. We waited and wondered if we were being billed $4.95 a minute for the privilege. After perhaps two minutes, a somewhat less-booming voice came on the line and we were talking to the world-renowned psychic, who did not appreciate being on speaker.

“You callin’ me from a hole in de ground somewhere? The Queen don’t get people outta wells. There’s 911 for dat.”

When Queen Illyana said it, it was funny. Miguel beamed; his psychic had won us over in a couple of sentences.

“We need to speak with David Frost,” I said. “Would you be able to contact him for us?”

“For what you got to talk to dat man for?”

I thought that, for a psychic, Queen Illyana asked a lot of questions. I explained to her that we wanted Mr. Frost to interview us. While she hadn’t heard of Archive magazine, she claimed to be vaguely familiar with Smugglers’ Inn. It’s the clam chowder. It is, as I’ve been telling you all along, world famous.

“Dis ting gonna take some time. It’s eight in the mornin’ dere. Stay by de phone; don’t be runnin’ to de bath-room.”

With that, Queen Illyana put us on hold. My immediate thought was that it was curious that there should be time in the spirit world. Then I realized The Queen must have been referring to the cryogenic storage facility where Mr. Frost’s corporeal body resides. I pictured someone tapping on the glass of his liquid nitrogen-cooled coffin and asking Sir if he was taking calls.

It seemed like we were on hold forever. Miguel eventually remembered the form he had entered the office to retrieve and left to finish doing inventory on the meat locker. I amused myself Googling David Frost on my iPhone. Everytime I’d hit an entry, I’d lose my lone bar. “AT&T; stay disconnected.”

After what seemed like an age, the speakerphone crackled to life and we were back with Queen Illyana.

“Well, it took a bit ‘o doin’, but The Queen has her ways. You dere? Someone let you outta dat well?”

“We’re here! You found David Frost? He’s there with you?”

“David Frost give me a message to give to you.”

This was not what we wanted to hear.

“Whoa, whoa! We were expecting to be interviewed by David Frost. Through, you, of course.”

“Mr. Frost producer say he gotta decline on account-a he got previous commitments and that he be busy workin’ on another autobiography. He wishes The Smuggler Inns every success in findin’ another ven-ue. I also got dis e-mail address, so you can request a picture of David Frost with former New York City Mayor Ed Koch. Sound like someone ordered two thousand 'a dem in 1979, and dey tryin’ to use ‘em up.”

“A free picture? Do you mean to tell us that David Frost is alive after all and that you were just stringing us along for almost forty minutes and we’re getting a free picture?

“No! I’m not sayin’ dat.”

“Well, OK then…”

“You gotta pay de shippin’ ‘n handlin’.”

The important to remember is, WE GOT A RESPONSE. And another campaign in Archive.

Smugglers' Inn in hot water again.

by James J. Grennel,

crime reporter,

Anoka County Shopper

Special Summer Safety edition

Early Wednesday morning, Blaine Police responded to a complaint of a boisterous, after-hours party at Smugglers’ Inn, a restaurant and bar adjacent to the Northtown Shopping Center complex. At approximately 2. a.m., patrolwoman Corrine Chessman arrived at the establishment and reported finding the front door propped open, in violation of a city ordinance specifying that all establishments serving liquor remain closed with their doors locked from 1:00 AM until 6 AM. Chessman entered and followed the sounds of loud voices and music to the kitchen area, whereupon she encountered “eight or nine” employees of the bar/restaurant. The employees were gathered around a man who was, according to Officer Chessman, ”doing back-flips one after another like one of those of wind-up toy dogs you used to be able to get at Spencer Gifts. Before they closed, I mean.” Because alcohol was present and it was not immediately clear that everyone was of legal age, patrolwoman Chessman started asking for I.D.’s. At this point, the individual who had been doing the back flips hurled a foul-smelling substance in Officer Chessman's face and fled. Chessman fears the substance was human waste. “I remember seeing that in “Lock-up:Raw” and thinking, “What kind of animal would throw his own feces?” This is clearly an individual who’s done hard time. I suspect he was afraid of being written up for a parole violation--he took off like a shot.” The officer drove herself to the emergency Ward of Coon Rapids General Hospital, where antibiotics and anti-viral drugs were administered.

Smugglers’ Inn has not been able to provide information as to the identity of the officer’s assailant, who is described as short, with a rangy build and bright red hair. The management maintains that the individual in question was not an employee, but just “some joker” who had been observed drinking alone in the bar. They offered no explanation as to why this person was in an area of the restaurant off-limits to customers or how he came to be dressed in the checked pants and white shirt of a kitchen worker. “Clearly, we are disappointed with the judgement our employees showed here,” explained a spokesman for the restaurant and sometimes ad agency. “They know the cops come whenever anyone farts.”

Smugglers’ Inn reported that they wished to send flowers to officer Chessman, who, at the time of this writing, was at home recovering after a bout of migraines. Chessman, a Gulf War veteran, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sumatra's got it going on.

Happiness has a name, and that name is Pongo! Pongo, Pongo, Pongo! I’m sorry, but I can’t stop saying, “Pongo!” Since coming to work for Smugglers' Inn, this amazing immigrant from Sumatra has transformed our prep/dishwashing area from a house of pain into a stage for the most charismatic performer in the world--Pongo!

Certainly, we regret the departure of Pongo’s predecessor, Old Jorge, who, in the weeks and months he was our dish man/prep cook, had become a member of our family. A shambling, alcoholic member of our family who could not be trusted around money, but a family member just the same. Old Jorge took over responsibility for washing dishes, stocking our salad bar and making sauces and desserts from his nephew, Just Jorge, after the latter made the unwise decision to run from the Spring Lake Park Police Department in a muffler-less Dodge Neon during the course of a routine traffic stop. Old Jorge showed up on our doorstep the following day, explaining that his nephew had leased him his dishwashing post while he was away. We didn’t tell old Jorge that you can’t sublet jobs like they were New York apartments; the fact was, we had some crusty pots and dishes piling up that none of us was about to clean. Anyway, how bad could a relative of our hardest-working employee to date be?

Plenty bad, as it turns out. A cardinal rule in restaurants is, you never fire the dishwasher, but it was clear from the get-go that this grinning, moon-walking yuckster would be unable to meet the high bar set by his nephew. One ugly puking incident that resulted in the loss of 12 gallons of valuable clam chowder made it clear that even minimum wage is too much to pay some help.

Enter WorkForceUSA.com and Pongo. Pongo, Pongo, Pongo! This website connects employers with new Americans who are hungry to establish themselves in this great land of opportunity. In essence, you pay $20 to post your opening on WorkForce and workers bid on it. The worker who pits in the lowest bid gets the job. It’s the invisible hand of the marketplace at work.

We admit, when Pongo (they don’t use last names in Pongo’s homeland), walked in, we were were apprehensive. It’s not that we are prejudiced (oh, no!). We just had never hired any Sumatrans before. Mexicans, Greeks, Pakistanis, Serbs, Hondurans, Ecuadorians, Trinidadians and Somalis, sure, but never someone from this tiny island nation. Pongo doesn’t exactly make a great first impression, it must be said. His hair, though always clean and neatly groomed, is the color of Orange Crush and seems to cover every inch of him but his face and palms. His red-brown eyes are exceedingly close together, almost giving the illusion that the sides of his face had sprouted handles. Pongo is many things, but George Clooney he is not.

Pongo bounced nervously in his chair throughout the screening of the mandatory sexual harassment DVD and threw his pencil when we did not have a W2 form in Sumatra-ese. I wasn’t holding out much hope when we put him in a uniform (XS pants, XXL shirt) and pointed him to what would be his work station. As soon as he saw the teetering pile of blackened pans and scorched chowder pots, he attacked; there’s no other word for it.

With his long arms flailing, Pongo performed his own brand of triage on the unclean utensils, loading the merely greasy onto racks and sending them through the Hobart while simultaneously filling a sink with water for soaking the most charred items. Before the dishes had come out the other side, Pongo had two big, steel fry pans gleaming, (much to the dismay of our cook, who maintained that his blackened utensils “were just getting good”.)

I didn’t need to hover; I had seen enough to know that Pongo was going to be better than Old Jorge and probably his nephew, too. I left to go write up our first social media marketing plan for our advertising sideline. When I checked back in two hours to tell Pongo he could take a break, all pots, pans, silverware and cutlery had been cleaned and put away. Trays of stemware and mousse glasses, set on trays and stacked with military precision, sparkled from a high shelf. Pongo himself was on a short safety ladder, scrubbing a corner by the dish sprayer. The area where the walls came together was so splattered with greasy dish water and carbon particles that it called forth images of a bloody crime scene.

“Pongo” I said, “you are AWESOME.”

At first, I didn’t think he heard me. Then, he stopped scrubbing and, without so much as turning around, executed a perfect back flip. The ladder never even shook.

I went straight to my office and fanned WorkForceUSA. Then I posted a job opening for a busboy to replace one Adolfo “Spanish” Nunez. When you can find an immigrant who’ll do backflips for $3.28 an hour, there’s no point in employing one who asks for more days, then calls in sick every time Real Madrid gets in a tournament. No, I’ve seen the face of the new Smugglers’ Inn work force. That face, rendered on the back of a child’s placemat by Cat, our resident art student and seating hostess extraordinaire, looks like this:

“Pongo No.1”, Catherine Murphy, 2011

“The Triumph of Spring”

Sandro Botticelli

Italian, 1486

“Spring”

Roger Thorgsvald

Minnesotan, 2011

There’s nothing like a weather joke. Especially if you’re it. Until Smugglers’ Inn Rimini becomes a reality, Smug’s zone of influence extends from the water tower in Blaine all the way to the cement Polar Bear at Polar Chev in N. St. Paul. (Stunning—and they say the Midwest doesn’t have great art.) We have, count ‘em, one location in Minneapolis and today, on this fifth day of spring, freezing rain has been followed by five inches of new snow, making driving to the store for a loaf of overpriced Artisan bread an act of bravery or faith, depending on whether you or a Somali cabbie does the steering.

“Yes, but the snow is so pretty!”

Fie upon you, ignorant stranger! Know you not that snow kills more people each year than sharks? Shoveling snow, especially this spring cement with its added weight of accumulated dog turds and sodden cigarette butts, is the leading cause of heart attacks among Lutheran males of a certain age. Look it up. “Snow is pretty?” Are the ambulances that cart the fallen to Minnesota’s 24 cardiac centers pretty? To you, maybe. Their flashing lights probably remind you of Christmas.

Clearly, there’s some cabin fever at work here. Before we start looking at each other and imagining steaming hams and turkey legs like in some Tex Avery cartoon, we ask your help in finding something for the staff at Smugglers’ Inn to do. And, hopefully, someplace else to do it.

To that end, we’ve published a list of businesses that, we’re convinced, need but a coy smile from us before they call, begging to employ the creative geniuses who thought of turning a theme restaurant into an advertising boutique. In Blaine. If you don’t see yourself on the list, fear not. New York and Chicago are temperate to us and even Canada can boast great bodies of water in liquid form. Dentsu Siberia? We may need to get back to you.

AAC Saatchi & Saatchi, Bermuda

Ogilvy & Mather Hawaii, Honolulu

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami

Droga5, Sydney

Grey Global, San Antonio

Prestige Marketing, Barbados

The Jupiter Drawing Room, Cape Town

Zimmerman and Partners, Fort Lauderdale

The Harris Agency, Honolulu

GSD&M, Austin

Strascina Strascina Garcia, Albuquerque

TBWA, Paris

The Richards Group, Dallas

Kessels Kramer, Amsterdam

Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney

3 Advertising, Albuquerque

Anson-Stoner, Orlando

DDB, Milano

Grey, Paris

Draft FCB, Cape Town

Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne

Lowe Australia

The Campaign Palace, Melbourne

JWT, Sydney

OgilvyOne Worldwide, San Antonio

Saatchi & Saatchi, Aukland

Droga5, Sydney

M&C Saatchi, Australia

The French Laundry, Yountville (we cook)

Ogilvy & Mather, Barbados

Leo Burnett, Bangkok

Lowe Bull, Cape Town

Red Cell, Darlinghurst

Publicis Lowe, Sydney

Tiempo BBDO, Barcelona

DCS Comunicacoes, Porto Alegre (no idea, but it sounds warm)

Smugglers’ Inn. As seen in THE TIMES.

Toby Barlow, CCO at Team Detroit, mentioned the two of us by name when he was interviewed by the New York Times about the 2011 Ford Explorer launch that was conducted on Facebook. No, he didn’t say, “Smugglers’ Inn rules!” and, to be honest, there were some other freelancers mentioned who had also worked on this project. Still, we think we left more than our share of shiny pennies in the Team Detroit fountain. Judge for yourself. While we’re thinking of it, Smugglers’ Inn likes Toby Barlow’s creepy-cool novel, “Sharp Teeth”, available everywhere in paperback. (There, Sir Toby, our bargain is CONCLUDED.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/business/media/20adnews.html?nl=business&emc=ata1

Abbey Road, meet Madison Avenue.

“JWT New York is the Coldplay of ad agencies. No other advertising agency or media concern can make that statement, at least not until 2014.” This is according to counsel for the WPP Group, the holding company that owns JWT New York and several hundred other agencies who was celebrating the impending deal with his staff at McSorley’s Tavern in Greenwich Village.

Advertising agencies have long sought to connect their client’s products with consumers through music, but now they’re paying to align their own names with popular artists.

“How do you put a price on the Beatles?” asks Malachi Galpers of EMI, owners of the Beatles recordings, before answering his own question. The price for the Beatles endorsement, Mr. Galpers informs us, is 184 million dollars. A trifle, when compared to the price reportedly thrown out by the second-most famous band in Rock and Roll when they were approached about lending their name to an ad agency. That word begins with a “B”. As in “billion”. Any Beatles deal, if one is completed, will not include rights to any of the group’s songs, but the purchasing agency would be entitled to unlimited use of a “stinger” of up to eight notes, although this could not be from “Norwegian Wood”. Mr. Galpers maintains that interest among agencies has been “serious”, but at that price, the list of potential buyers would probably be quite short.

What kicked off this sudden rush for rock’n roll cred appears to have been one article in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune that referred to local ad professionals Jarl Olsen and Carol Henderson as “The White Stripes of Advertising”. Their two-person business, Smugglers’ Inn, bested every other shop in town by getting two campaigns in the Communication Arts Advertising Annual, prompting the comparison to alt-rock’s beloved brother-sister act.

“We had decided against entering any award shows,” says Henderson, “but we decided to make an exception for CA. They are the class act of awards shows.

“It doesn’t hurt that their entry fees are a fraction of those asked by other shows. I mean, $1,500 to enter a spot in Cannes? Get me in that business.”

Smugglers’ Inn has no intention of making their association with the White Stripes—or any other band official.

“We were sort of mystified by the White Stripes comparison, to be honest,” confesses Henderson. “I mean, it was flattering and everything, but look at us. We’re not hipsters. We aren’t even skinny. Everyone in town hates us now.”

Surely, I asked, it was a boon to be compared to rock stars for free when your competitors are paying big money for those same associations. Shouldn’t this be a windfall for Smugglers’ Inn?”

“No client that would pick two people who shop at Target over an agency with a couple hundred million in billings and a three-story office full of skinny people (*weight seems to be a theme today-jgt) would be impressed with a paid celebrity endorsement. The only reason we’ve been able to have fun with the work is because our clients haven’t insisted their customers aren’t dumber than they were. We aren’t snobs; we don’t turn down lots of business or anything, but we can’t work for fools.”

Olsen explains:

“Smugglers’ Inn refuses to do business with anyone who couldn’t name three state capitols if they had a banana pointed at their head. It’s our law."

Good to know if you’re a client shopping for an alternative to a free-spending agency. To keep up with the latest from the White Stripes of Advertising, visit smugglersinn.blogspot.com.

Albany, Pierre, Sacramento.

--Jordan Gossich-Taber, Media Pulse