Matt of E+F, Laryssa and Gabe of Lil Dragon, and the author (behind camera) get their creative juices flowing.

At E+F, we work with an outfit out of Nashville called Lil Dragon Entertainment. Gabe and his cohorts help us translate our ideas onto video, mostly for television commercials. He’s been busy lately, and so have we, on a number of projects: WKU Football commercial, Web-only ad for WKU Alumni Association, new Bowling Green Athletic Club commercials, and a coming trip to Auburn to do Auburn’s men/women basketball commercials. The first and last are to be dramatic, the middle ones humorous.

That said, here are my memories of our meeting over Spencer’s fare yesterday:

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File this under “Things Known for Years by Those Paying Attention”:

Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.

Those are the words of Col. Timothy Reese, a U.S. adviser to the Iraqi military, in the rarest of communications — a soldier suggesting that he and his colleagues should actually withdraw.

Pundits like Larison and Bacevich have been saying this for years; the former a “paleoconservative” and the latter a military expert of the realist school. And their overarching premise has been this: American pols have never undertaken to understand Mesopotamia, have little if any understanding of what drives these people, and can never be a real agent of change there as long as the goal is something as romantic as “liberation” or “democracy.”

Iraq never attacked us, and in fact does not play any sort of strategic role in the region; all along its borders are our allies, places with no organized ill intent toward us or any real ability to mount an offensive. It’s time to leave, and in fact it was never time to arrive.

Jon Stewart makes fun of her, and a lot of people think she’s stuffy. But as a person whose politics are part paleoconservative, part libertarian (look those up on Wikipedia to be sure) — but who finds himself voting for Democrats because they’re less obnoxious than Republicans — Peggy Noonan’s reasonings usually strike me as dead-on. Consider her latest column, on the Big Mistake being debated on Capitol Hill:

President Obama appears to have misstepped on a major initiative and defining issue. He has misjudged the nation’s mood … His news conference the other night was bad. He was filibustery and spinny and gave long and largely unfollowable answers that seemed aimed at limiting the number of questions asked and running out the clock. You don’t do that when you’re fully confident. Far more seriously, he didn’t seem to be telling the truth. We need to create a new national health-care program in order to cut down on government spending? Who would believe that? Would anybody? [bold mine–R]

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My wife and I don’t go out to eat often, but when we do, we usually have no problem agreeing on a place to go. Yet oftentimes, the place we end up going isn’t the same place either of us individually thought of when we first decide to go out.

I am not interested in going to dinner with a great many people, and don’t feel the need to come to compromise with them on where I eat.

Had I been going by myself, I may have chosen Quiznos; had she, Thai Express may have been the destination. Instead, we discussed the issue until we agreed: Steak ‘n Shake.

What I’ve described is the essence of democracy: That a group of people discuss (whether explicitly or procedurally) issues and come to either consensus or compromise.

That doesn’t sound like our system, though. Take the current debates over health-care reform. Have a multitude of Americans been complaining about health-care costs for decades? Sure. And is our ratio of spending to results totally out of whack? Probably. But what’s going on in the halls of Congress isn’t limited to those questions… in fact, it may well be irrelevant to them.

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Rome Kandi: Host with the most!

A smattering of weird things you should read/watch/think about:

1.) “I Survived a Japanese Game Show”: The first entry is the most recent: I just found it 5 minutes ago! Sure, it has a lot of stupid American “reality” junk on it, but in its defense it boasts a.) the host from “Unbeatable Banzuke,” b.) lots of hypercolor graphics and audience shouting; and c.) some pretty bizarre games. The one I just watched was called “Squishy Squid Face;” the one embedded below is an elegantly simple challenge called “Bonk.” (Rest of the best after the jump.)

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I’ve heard it said that the harshest truths — the most spot-on, no-nonsense criticisms — usually come from those closest to you, especially your family. And so I was delighted to see conservative columnist Peggy Noonan’s recent impalement of the Palin Gospel, an absolutely scathing undressing of all the hypocrisy, double-standards and sheer thoughtlessness that surrounds this woman. Because, you see, I could’ve written much the same (though not nearly as well), but no one would listen.

Note that Noonan (nor I) blame Palin per se… if you found yourself in her shoes, a relatively normal woman in charge of a relatively unremarkable (though entirely unique) state, you’d probably jump at the chance to run for vice president, too. No, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of all the Republican elites who put her on such a high pedestal, then cried foul when reporters/commentators/citizens stated the obvious: she just isn’t ready. Read the rest of this entry »

A glimpse at our proposal. ©Earnhart+Friends 2009. Not for distribution. Identifying features removed.

The past few days have been really busy ones… I’ve worked further on developing Western Kentucky University’s football TV campaign, as well as a related campaign for the WKU Alumni Association (hint: Big Red, Gary Ransdell, an elderly woman and a elbow drop). The designers and I finished up work on a “creative exploratory” — a fancy term for a proposal on how a new campaign might look — then presented it this morning to a fast-growing bank chain headquarted in the region.

Turns out, my ideas aren’t so bad after all… they really dug it, and it looks like they’ll go from prospect to serious client very soon. More interesting, though, is the feeling of positive feedback… it’s something we weren’t good at in newsland, and it’s probably been months (if not years) since I heard “good job!” and felt like the person saying it really meant it.

I guess all jobs have their ups and downs, and I’ve dealt with a few minor headaches here already. But today’s been a good day, and I’m not ashamed to say so.

So far, I’ve worked on a “creative exploration” for a growing bank in the region; rewritten a direct-mail piece I thought was “done” months ago; drafted new copy for an ad touting a certain industrial complex’s “green” features (which, honestly, are few); filled out tax forms; perused eBay for a power source, which is lacking from the otherwise fine Apple display on my desk.

I’ve also wondered whether or not I have a truly original, truly interesting “campaign” in me… and, if I do, will any of our relatively conservative clients go for it?

I didn’t comment on Michael Jackson’s passing, mostly because I’m but 28 years old and his life didn’t really affect me all that much. (Ditto for Farrah Fawcett, and certainly not Billy Mays.) Former Titans QB Steve McNair, however, is a different story.

Growing up, my dad never watched football. Ours was a college basketball house; I got a kick out of rooting for Louisville while Pop cheered for Kentucky. I played a couple years of varsity soccer in high school — starting often, in fact, thanks to the unfortunate fact that our team wasn’t very good — and liked to watch the diving competitions in the Olympics… other than that, I was really never into sports.

That changed once I got to college, and only because I was an hour away from Nashville and my aunt had season tickets to Tennessee Titans games. I went to a game and started to figure out the rules; that led to my watching Titans games on TV while doing my laundry and otherwise procrastinating from coursework. In 2000, the Titans made it through the playoffs and into the Super Bowl — called by many the greatest Super Bowl ever, in which the Titans came up just one yard short of tying the game in the last seconds and forcing overtime.

Steve McNair was the quarterback, then, that cemented my love of football. He didn’t just pass, but could take off running in a split second. And unline most quarterbacks, he didn’t just slide safely to the ground seconds before being tackled; no, he was a massive man and would give defenders as hard a time as any running back.

So I’m sad to hear of his death, and even sadder about the strange circumstances… though the news is still developing, it seems he’d been having an affair with a woman 16 years his junior, telling her he was planning to divorce his wife. Just a reminder that fame and wealth come with a price — and that “immortality,” whether through sports achievements or whatever else, is quite the false hope.

Now that I have a particular type of, um, dataphone, I’ve been taking a lot more pictures. The camera on it isn’t high-quality (only 2 megapixels), but the light-adjustment is pretty good and I found a great suite of filters called CameraBag. Some of the filters are lame, and most are only good in certain instances. However, it’s making my walking-around life a bit more fun — I’d forgotten how much I enjoy taking photos. Here are a few of the keepers of the past month or so (click to see full-size):