I’ve never named one of my vehicles. I think it’s weird. You name people, pets, and ships, but not so much cars and motorcycles. So for the sake of making a facebook profile for my car so we could be in an ‘open relationship’, at least temporarily for hilarity’s sake, I had to choose a name that had solely alphabetic characters. I chose “Princess Beemer VonBeemersen”. It’s German, it’s lovely. Ever since I saw Enchanted I pretty much wanted to marry Amy Adams and she was a princess. Then I saw Tangled and I wanted to marry Rapunzel, too.

There is a great misconception as to what is a princess. Allow me to clarify: normally when you hear a girl is a ‘princess’ that means they’ve had everything handed to them, have never worked a real day in their life, and expect perfection and happiness to effortlessly fall into their lap at all times. Nay, friend! That chick in Tangled could paint, play guitar, really cared about people, and was fearless. Similarly the princess in Enchanted was so resourceful that she made a dress out of curtains. Yeah. That’s my kind of girl. She also had no malice in her heart. Hard to find.

Anyway now that I feel like I’ve seen those Disney movies too many times . . . back to the car. This thing freakin rocks. No kidding. I shopped long and hard and for me it’s a perfect match right now. It’s got power, handing, bassy bass from 2 subs under the front seats, great brakes, heated seats (for the ladies), and sex appeal. Yup. Booyah. It’s black on black with aluminum trim. The car is sick. I love it.

So I went for a little joyride the other day and happened upon an icy parking lot. After doing some donuts I was wishing for someone to be around to film me. Then I thought: ‘hey! I can film myself! I’ll just put my camera on that snow bank over there!’ So that’s what I did. Then after watching the videos and clicking on a random artist on Spotify I realized that it would be funny to put some sensual R&B to my sliding car. And here’s the end result:

I hope this video has brought you some joy. 10 points for guessing the song at the beginning.

# 1 It brought my Dad and I back from my mission. It was lovingly given to my by my 2nd cousin who lives in Valencia, CA. They drove it to Ventura where the mission home was and we drove it back to Kaysville, UT.

# 2 It was purchased by my great uncle in Cedar City, UT brand new in 1986 and has been owned by family members ever since.

# 3 This is the first car I’ve ever owned and also my first vanity plate: “PLAN IT”. I get a lot of laughs and compliments about that. I figure it’s motvation to succeed with ma business.

# 4 This is also the car I gave my first ride to Janie Thompson in. I can end a sentence with a preposition if I want to. Lotsa memories, lotsa memories.

# 5 The Jetta has prevented me from marrying a gold digger. I go to pick girls up and they have to love me for who I am

# 6 I took it on a 3,000 mile road trip in the summer of 2007 that completely rocked. It was Provo to Phoenix (sister) to LA to Santa Barbara and Santa Maria (mission) to Sacramento, CA (cousin) to Portland (grandparents) to Jerome, ID (mission buddy with many moo tows) to Kaysville, UT (parents). I found out on this trip that a) I’m kind of crazy in a car by myself as evidenced by the crazy videos I took b) the car can do 515 miles on one tank of diesel and c) I ain’t afraid of road trips and doing what I feel would be fun/good.

# 7 Some value other people’s possessions very highly as evidenced by the $2,225 price right now on eBay. It’s still got 1 hr 50 mins at this point. Kelly Blue book is $750.

Here’s the little you tube video I took to help sell it:

On an unrelated note Eric and I went and played some basketball tonight and after getting packed twice by this 6′ 5″ dude I scored on him with a fadeaway jumper. Take that tall dude.

On a car note I have decided what I will buy in the coming months. A BMW 328xi. Yes, folks the B’mer of balance. Fast, reliable, 4 doors, good in snow, bump in stereo, chick magnetism, FREAKING AWESOME. And not too outlandish. If you’ve never driven a late model BMW I assure you of their ability to alter your opinion on whether nice cars are worth it.

Enter Final Cut Pro verion ten (X). It comes with an impressively low $299 price tag and you download it from the “Mac App Store”. It’s more like iMovie (free movie editor) than any pro editor, though. People are calling it iMovie Pro. Lotsa fuss. You can’t even import a project from a prior version? Many features missing? Apple knows best I guess. Dear Omnicient Apple, I’m hungry, what should I have for dinner?

What a strange move by a software creator. You’d think they could gather a bunch of professional movie editors and ask them what they like and dislike about the software. Listen to customers maybe? I had a memorable experience with product development once while working a convention put on by Omniture. In 2009 I attended their ‘Summit’ event in Salt Lake City. They gathered all their most influential customers (many CMOs of fortune 500 companies) and asked them what they thought about Omniture’s products. It was an amazing moment. Their CTO, an intelligent and funny guy named Brett Error, lead the discussion and they gathered valuable feedback. On top of that they had a web page with a constantly changing board of features that customers wanted. Each different feature was voted up/down depending on customer demand. Now that’s cool. No wonder they grew rapidly and sold to Adobe for $1.8 billion.

I own a macbook and an iPhone but DO NOT consider Apple to be the greatest company ever with perfect execution on every product. Sometimes their decisions are downright ridiculous.

One of the most memorable experiences I have with design was at Arizona State when I saw Patrick Scofield give a talk. He kept repeating the words “positive, memorable experiences” in reference to designing products. Boom! Roasted, Apple. I think that’s what it’s all about. Creating positive, memorable experiences, not mass pandemonium by selling a sub-par product nobody asked for at a price no one was expecting through a medium no one uses.

Today I give you Flaming Pringles Man Mustache. Yes, breathe deeply. It’s a tribute to everyone’s favorite snack chip of ambiguous origins. On fire!

Enjoy