(Second in a series.)
Jake Burton Carpenter, also known as Jake Burton, is the founder of Burton Snowboards and, by all accounts, one of the two or three most significant people in the history of the sport of snowboarding. I know the guy. (How I know him is a story for another time.) The last time I saw Jake, I told him about my plan to ride my bicycle all over New England & interview famous people, and/or interesting people, about a topic of great import to everybody on the planet. (That bike trip, which I *will* do, is another story for another time). Anyway, I asked Jake if I could interview him for my bike/video project. “I don’t want to interview you because I care what you have to say,” I told him. “I want to interview you because you’re famous.” “Not all that famous,” Jake replied. “Oh yeah?” I said. “So, how much did Hewlett Packard pay you to be in that commercial you did for them? How much did American Express pay you?”
If I remember right, it was Peter Krygowski who added, “Jake, for Christ’s sake. Your face is plastered on the side of every public bus in Chicago.” Jake said, “It is? I wonder if I’m getting paid for that.”
(Although the only IMDB link I could find for Peter was related to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Peter was also, before getting fired, the Art Director on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2. Or one of those early seasons. So when you meet him, prostrate yourself.) (Forgive me if I don’t recall the conversations precisely; the three of us were pretty drunk by the time this exchange happened, and for good reason.) (I believe Peter K. currently has something to do with “Guitar Hero”, although Google was pretty unhelpful on this topic.)
Anyway, whatever Hewlett Packard and American Express paid Burton to be in their ads is guaranteed to be a fucktonne more than I paid him to be in the advert below, since I didn’t pay him a thing. The production values of this vid are not exactly up to HP/AMEX standards, but what the hey. I certainly got my money’s worth. My only problem with the bit is that I expressly asked Jake to push the “buy the books” meme over the “download the free books” meme. Oh well. So thanks, Jake, and I look forward to interviewing you for real sometime this summer.
The rest of you, please imagine Jake saying “buy John’s books”, and act accordingly.
Just getting the eyeballs to the site is not such a bad thing. Then you have a chance to move them towards a sale.
Pity that the first book related link in the prime top left corner position leads to a page saying that The Pains will be released in December 2008…
Methinks you might need to do a little bit of thinking about the book pages as a sub site which sells something. All that ugly web commerce stuff like designing the paths which lead visitor from being a suspect to a prospect to a customer? It might feel dirty and commercial but it puts food on the table!
Observer,
You are 100% correct. I will work on that. The reason that this website sucks in that respect is that I am too damn lazy to fix it. I really am my own worst enemy.
But I’ll get on it, as soon as I’ve attended to Mother’s day responsibilities. Thanks for stopping by.