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From the man who brought you Christine O'Donnell's "I'm not a witch" campaign ad, comes a series of cryptic Web spots of a man on a motocross bike riding in Utah's red rock canyons with some country music in the background.
Totally disjointed text hits the screen: "Six days" and then "Did not become famous with his band Wizard."
Jon Huntsman Jr.'s campaign hired Fred Davis to create these Web ads to ramp up excitement as the former Utah governor prepares to announce his presidential run on Tuesday.
But really, they have many political observers just scratching their heads. Bloggers for major publications have called them "quirky," "surreal" and "unconventional," while Adweek labeled them "wonderfully weird."
The second ad, released Friday, has the masked driver — presumably Huntsman but really it is one of Huntsman's friends wearing his gear — continuing his ride along Monument Valley and the text this time is "Has seven children, one from India, one from China."
We have a few Huntsman factoids that would make good tag lines for the next in the series of Web ads found on JonHuntsmanJr.com: "Big fan of Napoleon Dynamite," or "Prefers tacos from food carts."
Worlds collide • Shortly after Huntsman announces his presidential campaign from New Jersey's Liberty State park with the Statute of Liberty in the background, he will race off to the Newark airport for a plane loaded with the unusual mixture of political reporters and campaign donors.
The plane will take the whole group to New Hampshire for a rally and then back to New York for a fundraising dinner (the reporters won't be allowed to sit in for that part).
The Huntsman team calls it the "Jon Huntsman Announcement Tour," which continues in South Carolina, Florida, Utah and Nevada throughout the week.
Huntsman leaving the "hazy ether" • Sen. Mike Lee got a political boost by serving as Huntsman's general counsel when he was governor, but that doesn't mean Lee will necessarily endorse his former boss in his campaign for the GOP nomination.
Lee says part of his reluctance comes down to the vague policy positions Huntsman has espoused since returning from Beijing and resigning as ambassador to China just a few months ago.
The senator says that isn't a criticism because almost all of the people considering a presidential run "want to keep a lot in the hazy ether, in the zone of obscurity."
Lee expects that to end this week, and he promised to keep an eye on what Huntsman says.
Rising up the ranks• Lee has penned his first book on his favorite political topic: a proposed balanced budget amendment. He announced Friday on Facebook that "The Freedom Agenda" will hit bookstores on July 25 and that those who want to get ahead of the game can preorder it on sites like Amazon.
So we checked. When Lee made the announcement, his book was ranked 385,941th in sales. By the end of business Friday, it had reached 91,163. Not a bestseller just yet, but not bad for a book on federal budgeting.
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Burr and Canham report for The Tribune from Washington, D.C. They can be reached at tburr@sltrib.com ormcanham@sltrib.com or via Twitter @thomaswburr or @mattcanham.