Forget stuff like abandonment, heartache and human tragedy; for HSI's Randy Krallman, all the sadness of the world is contained at the foosball table. Along with similarly gut-busting vignettes centering around 'the most dominant industrial supplies rep in the tri-state area' and 'the most skilled nail artist in the entire city', Krallman's ode to the merciless dominance of a pro-foosball player capped off a series of MTV idents that established him as one of the sharpest new directorial voices on the circuit.

The son of a military man, the 34-year old Krallman spent the better part of adolescence "moving around from armpit shitty state to armpit shitty state". After stints in New Mexico, Texas and Idaho, he ended up attending college in Utah, where he graduated with a journalism degree. As a "burnout snowboarder" he developed an interest in graphic design and parlayed that into an agency gig.

After the requisite spell of agency hopping, Krallman landed a gig as an art director at Lowe, where he was first clued in to the abject shame of tabletop gaming. "They had a foosball table, and I'll just cling to any distraction that'll let me avoid work," he laughs. It was here that Krallman and his work mates developed the cadre of 'brutal offensive violations' depicted in "Foosball". But for every special shot that made it into the final cut, he says, there were five that got left out. "One of them was 'The El Toro', where you raise your other hand up like a bullfighter and just peel off the shot," he explains. "That's flagrantly disrespectful."

Coming out of Lowe, Krallman eventually got the opportunity to direct and write a few small spots. Thanks to specs for the Comedy Channel, an MTV Cribs spoof for Coke, and his fruitful creative relationship with MTV, HSI eventually came calling.

These days, he's extending his humor to the rest of the advertising world, but don't liken his directorial game to a foosball champ's. "The better you are at it, the sadder a statement it is about you," he laughs. "That was the core of the MTV campaign - being really dominant at something no one gives a shit about."

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