Mike

Ball

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May 19, 2008

Does Anybody Know A ‘Guy Hollerin’?

Many years ago, when I was a creative director in the advertising business, my team had the opportunity to create the theme for a new restaurant. We wanted it to be sports-oriented, but we were trying for something a little bit different from the standard hot-wings-and-a-pitcher-while-you-watch-the-big-game sports bar.

It was a Friday when I discovered that our client was about to buy a pre-fabricated family bar/restaurant package, apparently a fairly standard 1980’s BenniFriApplChiligans menu with a clever assortment of antique wagon wheels and pitchforks to hang on the wall. I had somehow managed to convince them to give me one week to show them a better concept.

I knew that it would take my artists, turbocharged as they were with Snickers bars and Mountain Dew, every bit of five days to create the artwork I would need for the client pitch. This meant that I had the weekend to come up with some sort of idea.

I had to let the restaurant problem roll around in the back of my mind though, because the really important item on that Saturday’s agenda was my seven-year-old son’s first experience with ice hockey. My wife had signed him up for the Spring Recreational Hockey League while I was out of town. This had come as something of a surprise to me, since:

a) it happened at the same time we were refinancing the house to put braces on his teeth, and;

b) to my knowledge the only time our son had ever been on ice skates was when he was about four and he spent an hour hanging onto a traffic cone in the middle of the rink in a “Toddlers On Ice” skating class.

I took the video camera along to the rink, so that I could record the historic first strides of my future Conn Smythe Trophy winner. I ran exactly 27 seconds of tape before I shut the camera off out of sheer mercy to the angst-ridden and self-conscious adult my son would someday become.

You see, that hour hanging onto the traffic cone had unaccountably failed to turn him into a masterful skater. So while all the other kids, who had obviously logged a bit more traffic cone time, rocketed up and down the ice, my son clutched his brand new hockey stick and hobbled around like a penguin on a pool table.

As I watched, I started adding up the damage; helmet $65, shoulder pads $40, gloves $65, pants $35, skates $85, elbow pads $15, shin guards $15, mouth guard $25, hockey bag $35, lime green hockey tape, lime green skate laces, and Detroit Red Wings water bottle $20 . . .

Afterward, sitting in the truck on the way home, my son was very quiet for a while. Then he broke the silence with, “Dad, it’s really embarrassing that I can’t keep up with any of those other kids . . . ” and I silently prepared to kiss a $400 investment in hockey gear goodbye.

“So,” he continued, “I’m going to really have to work hard to catch up. Will you take me skating this afternoon?”

And at that instant I knew what to do with that restaurant. We would make it a sports bar based on the exploits of a fictional World’s Greatest Athlete. But our hero would not be the greatest because he was bigger, stronger, more genetically gifted or more chemically altered than all the rest.

Our hero would be a small, unassuming guy who would be the greatest athlete in the world simply because it never occurred to him not to be.

The following Monday, my team and I created a character named Guy Hollerin (the illustrator came up with the name). Guy is a skinny blonde fellow who wears a red, white and blue sweat band and oversized aviator eyeglasses. For the menu and restaurant décor, we created a detailed legend around Guy’s exploits in every possible field of sport.

We got the account, and now, nearly 20 years later, Guy Hollerin’s is a fine sports restaurant and bar on the north side of Ann Arbor. But almost nobody has any idea that there is a real Guy Hollerin. He’s a little seven-year-old who once rode home next to me in his brand new hockey gear.

And figured out exactly what it takes to conquer the world.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.