Blog #2

1. So, I did not get a chance to tell my embarrassing story to the class but I suppose here is my opportunity!
I lived in Los Angeles (well, technically, The San Fernando Valley) from July 2006-January 2010. At one point in time during my inhabitance in California, I dated a guy who worked as a Casting Assistant on NBC's revival of American Gladiators. Typically, with television shows and movies, there is a "wrap party" held at the end of the season/filming. Well, the wrap party for American Gladiators allowed cast and crew to bring a plus one. Naturally, I was my then boyfriends plus one.


 The wrap party was held at a club in Hollywood and was flooded with the Gladiator athletes, NBC executives, minor celebrities, etc. There was food and drink and most importantly an OPEN BAR. A special alcoholic drink called "The Eliminator" was created in honor of the toughest course on the show. I immediately took advantage of the open bar situation and guzzled down several Eliminators proclaiming, "I don't think there's hardly any alcohol in these! It tastes like Ecto Coolers!" (for those of you who don't remember remember, Ecto Coolers were the Ghost Buster HI-C drink box with Slimer on the front).

The evening went from exciting to nauseating within a few short hours. My stomach began to churn and the room began to spin. "I think I'm going to be sick!" I declared. I was desperate to escape the loud music, flashing lights and high status attendees. My boyfriend was in no mood to deal with my drunkenness and was trying to mingle with higher ups in order to make contacts for possible jobs. I grabbed his arm and insisted that we leave the party immediately! I pulled him through the crowds while he protested our leaving. Suddenly, I couldn't hold my drinks in my body any longer. BLARGH! I puked all over the floor of the club. RIGHT IN FRONT OF SOME NBC EXECUTIVES. I could care less who the people were that i threw up in front of, but my boyfriend cared VERY MUCH. Needless to say, he was extremely upset with me and made sure I knew "just who those people were". The worst part? I had eaten Panda Express earlier that day...so my vomit was mixed with rice.  Upon which looking at I remarked, "aw, that was really good rice too!"


The moral of the story? Beware of open bars and drinks that taste like juice boxes!


2) McCloud describes amplification through simplification through cartoon faces. "Common wisdom holds that [a] photograph...[is] an icon that most resembles its real-life counterpart" (McCloud 198). But say, a cartooned drawing of the photograph eliminates the detailed features held in the photograph and creates a more abstract version of the same face. However,  McCloud explains that when a face is cartonned, “we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on details” (McCloud 201. ) McCloud suggests that when an image is simplified, or cartoonized, we can more easily project our image onto that face. We can view it as a reflection of ourselves. The narrator claims that if he had a more realistically detailed face, the reader would not absorb the message because the reader would have, "...been far too aware of the messenger to receive the message" (McCloud 208). Thus, we must take care to amplify the right details and drop the right details to create a balance between reader and message.


Works Cited
McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics”. Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World. Ed. Carolyn Handa. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2004, 195-208.