Winner of The Rebel Billionaire and LoveSac Owner Shawn Nelson was not available for comment this morning.

Instead, I’d call it “Director Meets Film. For the First Time.”

In the second release of “Directions,” director Cat Solen seems to have thrown together a bunch of home video footage centered around a Thanksgiving-type meal. She’s done two videos for Bright Eyes, so I’d expected some interesting work here. Instead, it was just…amature looking. Then again, I’m no expert in cinematographic experimentation. Seems like an easy edit job though. Take an object like a wine glass, and use that as “continuity” from one cut to the next. Then pick some weeds, and use them as prescribed in the wine glass cut.

Anyway, no big deal really, but “Soul Meets Body” has a lot more potential. The one redeeming element was the guy standing by one of those talking, moving deer heads while his son plays an accodian. That’s cool, but the rest was a little drab.

Keep an eye out for the video to “Summer Skin” coming Feb. 6-12. The only “direction” to go from here is up.

Here’s another poster I’m working on for the Y Marketing Associaiton. I still don’t feel like it’s hitting the sweet spot- open to any suggestions on how to improve it.

A new poll came out today. Read the joke of a story here.

Whatever. How about we change it to “57% of Americans Will Support Military Action in Iran Until They Realize That Some Soldiers Are Going to Get Killed, That it Won’t be Easy, And That We Won’t be Able to Accomplish What Needs to be Done in 2 Months.” That’s a much more accurate headline.

And when that realization sets in- they’ll change their stance, protest, refer to Bush as a terrorist, call him a criminal, and demand his impeachment.

Bob Gorrell is one of my favorite editorial cartoonists. I saw this one in The Daily Universe the other day. It’s referring to the whole wire-tapping fiasco, but I think illustrates the point pretty well:

Another reason I love this band: The first one has finally been released- Marching Bands of Manhattan by director Paul Brown is up on the site. Paul Brown has also directed music videos for Billy Corgan, Sevendust, etc., and the movie poster for White Balloon among others. Each song from “Plans” has been made into a music video, adding up to an anthology of 12 short films titled “Directions.” Eventually, they’ll be released on a DVD.

The videos were created by 12 different directors, and will be unveiled one by one on Death Cab’s Web site starting today. I realy liked it- check it out here, or go to www.deathcabforcutie.com for the full experience including a video introduction to “Directions.”

February 21st, the marketing dept. at the Utah Jazz will be giving the BYU Marketing Association a tour of the Delta Center. They’ll discuss sports marketing, and then hook us up with tickets to watch the Jazz play the Celtics that night. The event will be free to all MA members. I suggest joining. It’s $15 for a semester, $25 for a year. ma.byu.edu

What do you get when you stuff chicken with avacado, tomato, and various other…legumes, and top it with a red (or…magenta, if we’re talking in CMYK) sauce?

The One Show at the UAF luncheon. Some awesome interactive, TV, and design. Some of my favorites:

Science World: “Shaking hands spreads more germs than kissing.” You have to see the TV spot, but I couldn’t find it.

Cool interactive: The Interactive Salaryman. My favorite part is being able to travel up and down and across the screen without actually having to scroll.

In print, I’m a big fan of simplicity. Loved these Smith & Wesson ads.

And for TV:

BC Lions- Cheering Works TV Spot: video 1
Ameriquest- Don’t Judge Too Quickly: video 1, video 2
BC SPCA- Adopt: video 1

Most of the stuff was great, but there were a couple ads I thought were…weak. For instance, any commercial (or anything else) that uses a midget as a crutch. It’s definitely the easiest cliche I can think of. The second easiest cliche I can think of would be for that midget to get angry. Nice work, Orange.

All in all it was a cool show, and a good free lunch- thanks Rachel. Seeing the reactions and hearing some of the awkward silences during the presentation at BYU tonight would have been great though- VH1 and a couple Playstation spots probably got some interesting feedback in P-town.

And if you haven’t already, you need to check out OK Go’s music video for “A Million Ways.” It’s got nothing to do with The One Show, but garnered an award just the same. Good Stuff. Goodnight.

Amidst all the scandals these days (Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, The Linclon Group’s “PR” efforts in Iraq, etc.), it’s refresshing to finally see the end of one that immediately affects millions of Americans like you and me.

Junior Bacon Cheesburgers are back to $.99*

*at the 562 East 4th South Wendy’s in SLC. Your results may vary.

Jake and Alison (that’s my brother and sister-in-law) and Noah (my nephew) were here for the holidays and we went up to Alison’s family’s cabin for a day. The plan was to watch the Ohio State vs. Notre Dame game, but the power went out up there as soon as it started. Instead, we played in the snow.

The day we went up, the sky in Salt Lake was almost clear, and there was no snow on the ground. Even as we went up Big Cottonwood Canyon, there wasn’t any snow…just a bunch of dead leaves and critters. As we got closer to the top though, it was snowing and the road was snowpacked. It snowed most of the rest of the day, and the snow was probably about up to my shoulders.

The video below is their Argo 8×8 amphibous vehicle. The thing is incredible in the snow, and since it’s amphibious, in the unlilely event that we’d have broken through into an ancient aquaduct, we’d have been able to keep on plowing.

A full holiday update is on it’s way…but there’s a lot of other work to do with work and the restart of school keeping that project at bay.

Thanks to Leslie Walker for the article

If Internet dating sites can match people by trying to compute the elements of attraction, why can’t songs be matched with people in the same way?

That’s the idea behind Pandora, a new Web service that tries to match music you like with other tunes that share the same qualities. Pandora Media, the company behind the service, has been selling music-discovery software for years to big retailers such as Best Buy. Its Pandora service is the company’s first offering based on an unusual musical study it dubbed the Music Genome Project.

Over the past five years, a team of analysts studied songs played by more than 10,000 artists and attempted to classify their traits — not just which instruments are played and what the rhythm is like, but the melodies, lyrics and hundreds of other variables. Much as genes shape humans, the analysts theorized that certain describable qualities shape music and therefore should govern our musical tastes.

As implemented in Pandora, this technology works like a personalized Internet radio station. The site creates a playlist for you after analyzing a particular artist or song that you say you like, then streams the music that it thinks matches your tastes. And it does a great job.