Earlier this week I wrote about Brian Savelson, a film maker and self styled animator who has been tearing around the globe promoting his award winning short “Counting Water”. Today I bring you another piece from Brian. This time it’s a music video from Band of Horses for the song “Is There a Ghost”.

Brian is showing himself as an exceptional and versatile storyteller. I can’t wait to see his next project!

Despite the Writer’s strike, Lost will return on Thursday, January 31st.

I, for one, am giddy.

Here is the Season 4 Trailer.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best… especially when they are so painstakingly executed.

Brian Savelson took some construction paper, some sand, and a digital still camera and turned it in to a masterpiece of stop motion animation. He accomplished all of this with almost no formal animation knowledge or experience. Just Brian, his camera, and a mind boggling attention for details.

Ironically the story centers around a woman who loses site of the big picture when she gets lost in the details. Clearly Brian, and his masterful script, has not.
Anyway, enjoy.

Something fishy is going on over at Myspace. Apparently the once red hot social network site has been, well, compromised.

As a Facebook convert, I rarely check my Myspace account anymore. Recently, when I have logged on, I’ve been greeted by numerous suspect messages and comments. What is most alarming is that these messages aren’t coming from nameless fictional teenage girls (we’ve all grown to see through those) but from my own, real, flesh and blood, friends who’s accounts have been hacked.

These messages have been becoming increasingly frequent. This morning I got a message from a friend of mine asking me to ignore any messages coming from him about classmates of ours having been murdered. I didn’t ask questions. I just went to my preferences and deleted my account.

Myspace had better do something about this problem, and soon. In the meantime, for anyone not trying to screw me with a false coupon scam or bogus sex site, you can find me on Facebook.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am crazy for wikis. I have a wiki devoted to my family’s genealogy. I have a wiki that I use for collaborating with coworkers. I even have a wiki that I use to keep notes on my various half-baked screenplays. So recently when I came across this Wikipedia band name game, well, you can imagine my excitement!

Sufjan Stevens, if you are reading this, I think I have your next concept album.

This has been circulating around a number of forums recently. I’m not sure where it originated. I certainly can’t take any credit myself. Therefore let us assume that, like Wikipedia, this is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Here is how it works…

1. Go to Wikipedia. Select “Random article”.
This is your band name.

2. Select “Random article” again.
This is your album title.

3. Select “Random article” fifteen more times.
Those are your track titles.

This is what mine looks like:

Band Name:
Govind Swaroop

Album Title:
Sangihe Scops Owl

Track Listing:

1. Lauren Taylor

2. Seminole County, Georgia

3. Calera y Chozas

4. Climax (narrative)

5. Huthwaite

6. Hebron

7. Jekyll and Heidi

8. La Haute-Côte-Nord Regional County Municipality, Quebec

9. USS Pickens (APA-190)

10. M’Chigeeng First Nation

11. Ryan’s Rock Show

12. Hattiesburg (Amtrak station)

13. Captain Paul Ames

14. Sydney cockle

15. Colorado School of Mines

Enjoy!

Much to the dismay of my coworkers and more specifically, my office mate, I am known to wear flip flops to work in the Summer. In the Fall, perhaps even in early September, I push them to the back of the closet and they are replaced with more weather appropriate footwear. Perhaps L.L. Bean was thinking of me. Perhaps they felt bad for me. Maybe they wanted me to be able to wear Flip-Flops all year long! I can’t imagine any other reason why they would unleash these Shearling Flip-Flops on the world.

Shearling Flip-Flops? Really? Are there people out there thinking “I really want my feat to be warm, but I really love my new pedicure and I’d hate for it to go to waste!” Apparently L.L. Bean thinks so! They’ve bought prime real estate on the front page of CNN.com to advertise them!

Well, luckily there is still time before Christmas. If you hurry you may be able to snag a pair for yourself after you’ve gotten a pair for everyone else on your list. They will go perfectly with your Irish wool wetsuit!

Have you spent the last couple of weeks trying to come up with the perfect costume? Do you now, at 5pm on Halloween, face the prospect of going another year as the guy who forgot a costume? Well, I’ve got good news. If you, like me, are a nondescript white male with glasses, you’re in luck! Here is my list of three sure fire last minute costumes for bespectacled Caucasians.

#1 Rivers Cuomo

It isn’t that often that you get confused with a rock star. But if you’re white, have glasses, and are between the ages of 21 and 40, you probably get confused with Weezer founder Rivers Cuomo
on a daily basis. Now is the time to use this to your advantage. The best part about this simple, timeless costume is that you’re already wearing it! Sure, you can dress it up with an electric guitar or maybe a sweater vest, but that all stuff seams just a tad excessive. All you really need is to hum a few bars from “Undone-the Sweater Song” and hit on an Asian school girl. You’ll be the hit of the party in no time!

#2 Harry Potter

If you are looking for something a little more obscure this Halloween, why not go as the guy currently beating the pants off of Jesus & Co. on the NYT’s best seller’s list? Love him or hate him, Harry Potter is the bespectacled Caucasians messiah. You can either embrace him or spend eternity in Halloween purgatory. All you need for this fun and simple costume is a lightning bolt shaped “scar” on your forehead. Makeup is best, but in a pinch a black sharpie will do nicely. If you have time, you can dress it up with a rugby shirt or bath robe (Read: Wizard’s Robe). Then get a bit of twig and stumble around pointing it at things and swearing in Latin. “Expecto Patrón Margarita!” Priceless. If your looking for an easier alternative. Just take your glasses off and tell everyone you’re dressed as Daniel Radcliffe. It works every time.

#3 Gimungous, Attorney at Law

For this final costume, having glasses doesn’t really help you. In fact, being Caucasian is actually kind of a hindrance as well. Still, if you’re like me, you’ve been waiting all year for an excuse to pull that Luchador mask out of your top drawer at work and start roaming the halls, body slamming people. The best part about this simple, elegant and mildly offensive costume is that it goes with whatever you have on. Wear a suit to work? You’re “Lupo, Professional Banker!” Work at a Starbucks? How about “El Barista Vampiro!” Just because your Spanish is woefully bad, doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time! I once went as “El Scorcho, Television Chef”! Many men felt the wrath of my steel spatula that day. Good times…

Happy Haunting!

At one point I was posting new articles daily and had a seemingly endless stream of new, and occasionally fresh ideas kept flowing from my sizable blog glands. Then suddenly it was as if in my sprint for the gold I had suffered a horrible blogging injury. Everything ground to a halt. I let my bogging muscles grow cold and atrophy. It would seem that I had become the Dick Beardsley of the Internet.

There where many reasons for this of course. I had several projects at work go in to production at the same time. My daughter, being a small person, was frequently ill. Finally, my father, the nigh-invulnerable force of nature, had some illnesses of his own. (It was as if the world was telling him he was, in fact, grandpa aged.) All of these things colluded to provide me with a sizable, and frankly implausible, list of excuses. I used them liberally.

None of these excuses however had nearly as much of an effect on my blogging as that pesky Mark Zuckerberg and his damnable Facebook.

Unlike the “Digg Effect”, which causes an overwhelming surge in traffic, thereby crashing your website, the “Facebook Effect” causes a overwhelming sense that all sites outside of Facebook are no longer necessary.

The sensation is similar to leaving the downtown retail district and going to the mall. Everything you need is right there! Who needs a record store or a book store? They are all at the mall! Who needs a myspace page or a twitter account? Who needs a blog?? Who needs weather information or traffic reports? You have widgets for all that!

Next thing you know, you find yourself stumbling, glassy-eyed, around the food court. You are wondering where the time as gone, and how you ate all those Cinnabons. And when exactly did you get a Harry Potter Sorting Hat widget anyway? It stuck you in Hufflepuff? Seriously??

Sooner or later I’ll have to leave the mall and stumble, blinking, in to the blinding sun and hot asphalt that is the rest of the internet. I guess I can’t stay in here forever. Not to worry… Facebook will always be there when I need it. Right now, however, I could really go for a Cinnabon.

Every year, dozens of tag-lines are lost to callous re-branding and creative changes. We’re working to change that by providing abandoned and abused tag-lines with new, loving brands.

Here are 15 of our greatest success stories:

Victoria Secret. Anything Less Would Be Uncivilized.

Is it live, or is it beef?

Dow Chemical, Rip. Mix. Burn

Between love and madness lies iPhone.

Why ask why? Try Viagra.

Depends Adult Diapers. For those who think young.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. Paxil CR.

Wikipedia. You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.

Only you can prevent Microsoft Office.

Timberland Boots kill bugs dead.

Syrup of ipecac, taste the rainbow.

Don’t you wish everything was made like Gatorade?

Like a good neighbor, Mexico is there.

Zanex. Think Different.

We’ve done what we can, but we could always use your help. Post yours below.

Remember, do it for the tag-lines.

-TTRP

Is it just me, or does the recent campaign for Lotus Notes 8 bear a striking resemblance to the serial identity for Cliff Freeman Design? I’ll let you be the judge.