>{therealnickjones}<

yes it is time once again for a round up of all that is hot right now in the life of therealnickjones…

1. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
Ok this came out a while back and I am hesitant to even bring it up because it’s a little late on the post… If you think this is a ridiculous fear to have, brush up on your popular music knowledge with this diagram. Anyway, much love to my good friend and boss Mark Dawson for hooking me up with this album. I was blown away with Robert Plant… Sounds NOTHING like Zep. I mean my dad might even like him on this album….

2. LOST
Well my friends it’s back. J.J. please restore yourself from the debacle that was Cloverfield and blow it out this season. Forgive me for thinking that Heroes edged you out in its first season. They jumped the shark in Season II and here you are chugging into your fourth. Congrats. And please don’t take everyone off the island…. it’s kind of the premise to your entire show…

3. heartsupport
A lot of you know that I recently signed on with the boys at difted. You may not know that we are the driving force behind heartsupport. I’ve been shooting a lot for a new heartsupport message lately, and it’s turning out pretty nice. If you haven’t heard of the ministry swing over to the site and check it out. I’ll be in Atlanta this weekend shooting the last segment for the message, so anyone in the ATL give me a call, I might have some time to kill…

4. PackRat
I’m not one for facebook games, but my boy Keegan and the AlamoFire team have created a pretty cool little program. It’s pretty simple, but I’m not going to take up your blog reading time with the instructions. If you have facebook check it out here. If you don’t have facebook… well good for you…

5. Chipotle
Ladies and gentleman, you no longer have to feel for all of us in Oklahoma City… We now have our very own Chipotle. Who cares that they push a strong pro-health message, but are owned by McDonalds… They make one heck of a burrito. Grant and I once ate there three days in a row on a video shoot. If you’re going for the first time, get the chips and guacamole…. unbeatable…

You’re welcome Stockholm.

A couple nights ago I stayed up til 5am shooting a music video in an old bowling alley with one of my favorite bands, The Oh Johnny Girls. The music video will be coming out in a couple weeks, but here are a few screenshots to hold you all over…

I’m thinking Andy Tilly was this kids youth minister…. (just a little joke, I love the guy…) I honestly can’t believe this kid’s serious. His glasses ARE pretty awesome though…. famous even….

Still in LA, be home tomorrow.

I’ll have a full update on the Vegas/LA trip soon, but to tide you all over here is a picture of me in Anna Nicole Smith’s bed. That’s right her real bed. And a nice Leopard robe as a bonus. Enjoy. Full update coming soon.

I stepped off the plane in Colorado Springs tonight only to find that my good friend Craig booked me a Kia Rondo minivan to make me feel very hip during my one day here in Colorado. I worked on my Kia for about 20 minutes to scrape the frost off the window and then headed across town to find my hotel. I passed a nice Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn, Best Western, pretty much every hotel chain out there actually, and eventually came to my hotel. A Ramada Inn Limited that is sandwiched between a liquor store and a pawn shop. No Lie.

So as you all sleep I will be laying in wait for someone to break into my room or try to jack my pimped out Kia.

Tomorrow…. Las Vegas….

Baxter is getting all geared up for the big National Championship game on Monday. You will notice he is sporting an authentic LSU jersey flown straight up from Baton Rouge yesterday, and posing with his game face on. He considered changing his name to Mike for one day in honor of his favorite mascot, but thought it may be going too far over one game.

The house will be sporting a nice new LSU flag (todays little project…) and I’m just hoping it makes to Monday without some rabid Sooners fan pulling it down and setting it on fire. We’ll see…

Geaux Tigers!

more photos here.

ok so the picture above is a Nintendo DS. I honestly had no clue until just a few days ago what exactly these things were capable of. I came home at Christmas hearing stories of how my dad wanted to get one of these for Christmas. My reaction was probably like yours… You missed the age range by about 40 years big guy, but apparently, in a completely unexplainable turn of events, my dad actually knew more about a new tech gadget than I did.

Turns out the new DS is doing some pretty amazing things due to additional software that is available online. (This type of software is called Homebrew) My dad had stumbled across some artists that were using the DS as a true digital sketchbook with software called Colors, and was instantly hooked. When I saw some of the images, I was pretty much hooked as well.

So my dad and I set out on a great adventure to find a shiny, black nintendo DS. Now for those of you that have not spent the last month or so trying to find one of these, let me just tell you, you can’t find them anywhere. period. We searched for an entire day in EVERY store in Fort Wayne, IN looking for a black DS for my dad. We found about 10 pink ones, a couple white ones, and got laughed at for even suggesting we wanted a black one.

We woke up the next morning to disaster, because of all the Christmas snow, our basement flooded, and my dad started working on cleaning it all out. He asked me to call around and see if there were any DS’s anywhere in Northern Indiana. I started calling. I called everywhere. I broadened my search to stores within 100 miles. We HAD to find a black DS. Now I should point out, we’re not just a super compulsive family, there is a little bit of tech knowledge needed to make this thing run, and we both decided if we were going to make it work, we would need to do it while I was in town.

About half an hour into my search we had a breakthrough. Target on the north side of Ft. Wayne had two blacks and two blues.

I asked them to hold one for me. They said no.

I ran down stairs and told my dad. At this point he is a soggy mess with fiberglass splinters in his arm. He yells to pack his bag and get ready, we’re headed out. I run back upstairs for some last minute pleading with the Target guys. “We’re headed there RIGHT NOW, PLEASE hold on to a black one for me.” After a few minutes of discussing with fellow employees, the kid decides to hold one for me for one hour. I am eternally grateful.

We fight through the rain and snow and get all the way up to Target within the hour. I have decided on this marathon trip that I will pick up a blue one. Maybe it was impulse, but after the two day search, I NEEDED ONE. We ran into Target, raced to the electronic dept, and looked for the DS’s.

There were none.

We found the electronics employee who informed us that every DS in the store had sold in the last hour. Even a pink one to a kid that just wanted one so bad he couldn’t wait anymore… We told him our name and from under the counter he pulled out a nice, new, black Nintendo DS.

It was a beautiful site. The holy grail of our holiday search, a Christmas Miracle.

We installed Colors and started to play with it. The program worked beautifully. It truly was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. Pressure sensitive, bright, colorful… My dad made some awesome pictures in the first five minutes.

I instantly wanted one.

Knowing that we would be at ground zero yet again, I gave up on that dream nearly instantly. I knew the stock of every store in half the state. There simply were no more DS’s within 200 miles of my house. My dad and I headed by the local video store to pick up a celebratory movie for the night. I wandered around the store killing time. At one end of the store the little mom and pop shop had a case. At the bottom of the case…

8 Ninetendo DS’s. 3 of them Black.

Keep in mind this is in Huntington, IN. 5 miles from our house. In a little shopping center flanked by a little mexican place and a Goodwill store. We spent two days wandering everywhere, and here they are in our own backyard. I don’t know if it was the two solid days of shopping, the biting cold, or my dad’s drawings, but I immediately bought one.

We installed the downloaded Colors program and I started drawing….

We had problems. For some reason the pressure sensitivity didn’t work in the corners of my screen. Not a big deal if your playing Mario, but kind of a big deal if you’re trying to create a digital masterpiece. So I returned the DS to our little video store. I felt terrible. Little mom and pop stores take a hit when you return items like that, and the truth is the DS worked great, it just didn’t run my little program.

They gave me a new black one. We tried it in the store. It didn’t work either.

At this point my dad and I begin to sweat. We’ve just opened two black DS’s at a loss to this little store, and neither one works. We decide the most likely explanation is that this batch of black ones is bad. Solution? The special edition gold Zelda version.

Now I like video games, I’m not gonna lie. But I’ve never touched Zelda. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about it. But somehow here I was, at a little video store buying the special edition Zelda version for an extra $20. I’ve never felt like more of a geek in my life.

We open it in the store as well. The pressure sensitivity doesn’t really work on this one either. Now I have a dilemma. I’m not going to open every DS in this store looking for one that works perfectly. Truth is, this DS works fine, just not on a couple little spots. And I’m not really sure that the problem isn’t with my little program downloaded off the web… Now I wish I would have just kept my original black ones instead of this weird little Zelda version. But the moral side of me kicks in and I just say fine. I will take this one. I gave up, and I went home.

Here’s the positive. I love the little thing. It is an amazing little piece of technology. My dad and I did little picture chatting all night through wifi in a house that only has dial-up internet. I drew some pictures that aren’t great, but hey, I’m a film guy… Here’s one I drew on the plane…

Anyway, this is a really long story just to say, if you see me carrying around a special edition Zelda DS, I haven’t given up on life, I’m not playing Magic the Gathering, and I’m not buying black shirts with funny phrases on them from Walmart. I’m a professional doing what all professionals do when they have time to kill.

Trying to save Princess Zelda from the Ghost Ship…

Happy New Year Everybody!