“I was trying to find a creative role in which you could have both control of the words and their delivery. In comedy writing, I’d tear my hair out coming up with a good insight only to later see it botched or tossed away. With advertising, I was finally able to massage and shape ideas long enough so that their true worth was revealed,” Weiner says.

His breakthrough in advertising came when he wrote, directed, and appeared in his first major campaign for MTV. The oddball spots were an immediate popular success, garnering Weiner a teenage fan club and top honors at the One Show. The spots show Weiner at his deadpan, dancing-fool best—a sort of hipster-weirdo similiar to Napolean Dynamite, which begs the question: Which came first, Napoleon’s chicken egg-gathering job or Weiner’s droll chicken dance?

Eventually, Weiner joined the agency world full time, first and briefiy with Cliff Freeman and Partners, and now with Publicis/N.Y. His appearance inside Publicis’ big, pastel, eerily quiet offices seemed incongruous after our earlier encounter in the apartment with Mona. But his relationship with the agency affords him new opportunities to spread his wings and apply bigger, bolder ideas through collaborations with art director/creative partner Alan Vladusic (first from Bosnia, and lately of Germany). Boards Magazine named the duo “Best International Creative Team Under 30.”

Currently, Weiner is hard at work holding down his day job and directing a series of animated commercials that will break during this year’s MTV Video Music Awards and are the genesis of a forthcoming MTV show about puberty.

INTRO GUY CAMPAIGN FOR MTV: “This is a character I created with my friend Lena Beug,” Weiner says. “He's a really special boy with special talents. He has a zest and exuberance for music and a pure imagination. We wanted to get at the core of what MTV stood for. I don't know if we did that, but I can say I have a fan club of millions of teenagers.”

It is at this stage in his career, as a Big Agency Man, that I met Clay Weiner, man in motion, mold breaker. But where does he go from here? In a sense, this is a story without an ending. Even the middle chapters are incomplete. Will Weiner become one of New York’s leading advertising writers and creative directors? Will he focus solely on fashion design and marketing to propel the Rachel Comey brand? Be an award-winning comedy writer? A journalist? Filmmaker? Forty-year-old has-been?

If you ask Weiner, he has no sure answers to these questions. Who can blame him? His career trajectory looks more like Coney Island’s Cyclone and is probably just as fun. “Career? I haven’t stuck around long enough to have a career,” he says, without irony or regret. “Anyhow, the thought of having a career sounds inherently lifeless. My pop always encouraged me to find something that makes me happy, then find a way to make a living doing it. The only problem is I enjoy doing too many things.”

The supreme advantage: youth. The priceless treasure: limber bodies and agile minds. Why choose a career when you can have a life? Why put all your talents in one discipline when you have the potential to be excellent in many?

Adult decisions can be postponed until the time comes to grow up. But until then you can dance, you can act, you can paint, you can write, direct, design, live, love, and “walk” your devoted dog until they call you in from play.

Or not—if you’re really lucky or really good. Like Clay.