TOW #17 - Mental Health Care Access vs. Gun Access by Nick Anderson

Firearms can be exceptionally deadly when placed in the wrong hands. This political cartoon reveals its solution to the gun violence problem in U.S. Source: politicalhumor.about.com

                                   

            Nick Anderson's single-panel cartoon shows a guy who looks a little like a nutcase and another man, who looks a bit more "civilized" than the guy mentioned before,  smoking calmly while sitting in an armchair. The crazy-looking guy is at the bottom of the stairs that is labeled as "ACCESS TO MENTAL HEALTH CARE" while the civilized man is on the very top of the stairs. Nearby the lunatic, there is a gun store that is covered with signs like "COME RIGHT IN", "WELCOME", "OPEN", and "GUNS!!" with a smiley face. Of course, the crazy-looking guy is googly-eyeing the gun store with a goofy grin on his face. Even though this cartoon does not have any kind of speech bubbles or elaborate pictures, the cartoonist manages to make his message very clear: With the increased level of difficulty of obtaining a mental health care, more and more mentally unstable people are getting their hands on deadly firearms. Cartoon readers and other members of the audience could easily see that the slope of the stairs is unbelievably steep while the gun shop is literally only a few steps away from the lunatic. The steepness of the stairs represents the overwhelming challenge people must face in order to get access to mental health care while the closeness of the gun store symbolizes the easy accessibility of guns, rifles, and other weapons. Also, compared to the boring looking white staircase, the gun store with all the fancy and welcoming signs makes the latter look more...well, welcoming. After Anderson makes a connection between  the two different topics, it becomes more clear to the audience members that in order to lessen all the gun violence in U.S. and possibly the whole world, they first need to lessen the number of mentally unstable people who might cause violence because of their lack of rational judgments.  And what better way to lessen the number of mentally unstable people is there than to lower the slope of the "ACCESS TO MENTAL HEALTH CARE" staircase? I think that Nick Anderson managed to get a clear message across by using very clever symbols.

TOW #16 - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Review by Zaki Hasan

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second movie in The Hobbit trilogy. Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, continues his journey with the Wizard Gandalf and thirteen Dwarves in order to reclaim the Dwarven Kingdom from the evil dragon Smaug. Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

                Zaki Hasan, a hardcore Lord of the Ring fan, gives his candid opinion of the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug to his fellow audience of movie-lovers. At first, he writes his previous experience of the Lord of the Ring trilogy a little over eleven years ago when he "Could. Not. Wait" (Hasan 1) for the saga's continuation. Hasan claims to have "enjoyable enough experience" with the first movie of The Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey, but not enough for him to watch it "an embarrassingly high number of times in the theater, and a few more times on home vid" like he did with The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie of the Lord of the Ring trilogy. However, the biggest letdown was the recent movie The Desolation of Smug which Hasan describes it as "a three hour story with no beginning and no end" with "lots of middle" (Hasan 2-3). Don't get him wrong, he loves how the cast returns, including the elf archer Legolas played by Orlando Bloom, but he believes the movie to be "simply too much time spent servicing too little". He explains how Tolkien's book is a "breezy 300-page confection" while the trilogy Peter Jackson is making is a "nine-hour behemoth" (Hasan 5) out of it. Hasan admits that he sees the concept "why make one flick, or even two, when you can just as well make three movies, and three times the coin? After all, there were three hugely-successful Lord of the Rings movies, right?" (Hasan 6) but argues that Lord of the Ring trilogy was each movie adapted on one book while The Hobbit is forcing one book to be three movies to the point that the movies almost are their own separate entities. Hasan makes his review credible and effective by juxtaposing one Tolkien's trilogy with another. I believe that little humorous comments he makes during the review - like when he references The Desolation of Smaug as "a desolate slog" (Hassan 8) - make the readers to easily share his views.

TOW #15 - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson

A farm in Iowa. "About 95 percent of Iowa's landscape is still farmed. Iowa's farms produced more in value each year than all the diamond mines in the world put together. It remains number one in the nation for the production of corn, eggs, hogs, and soybeans, and is second in the nation in total agricultural wealth, exceeded only by California, which is three times the size. Iowa produces one-tenth of all America's food and one-tenth of all the world's corn" (Bryson 172-173). Source: www.secondshelters.com

                                                                                          

            In a chapter in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson talks about Iowa and its last golden age of the family farm to get his readers to understand a bit more about his childhood world. Throughout the chapter, Bryson shows great pride in Iowa's farming by giving interesting facts such as that here were 215,361 farms in the state in 1930 and the absolute maximum  that was predicted was 223,000 farms. As a child, Bryson spent a lot of time in Winfield near where Bryson's father grew up and Bryson's grandparents lived. Bryson describes the Winfield he remembers as a perfect town for a little kid like him because of "its hansom Main Street, its imperturbable tranquility, its lapping cornfields, [and] the healthful smell of farming all around" (Bryson 173). Bryson reminisces about how his grandfather's barn and the fields of corn  looked like the most fun places in the world until he went in and realized that they were really scary places to be. Whether he was drinking Nehi brand pop, watching TV that had seven channels (more than what he had at home), having supper provided by a group of chuckling women all named Mabel, watching tornadoes from safe distance, sleeping under piles of blankets, overcoats, tarpaulins, and old carpets or viewing a town called Swedesburg  from the windows, Bryson remembers that there was always some sort of strange adventures waiting for him down on the farm. However, Bryson expresses his sorrow at the end when he informs the readers that the Winfield that he used to know "is barely alive" and that the best thing that he can say is that he "saw the last of something really special." Throughout the chapter, the author uses a lot of vivid details, metaphors, similes and hyperbole to get the readers to almost actively feel what he is feeling. I think that sentences such as "If you so much as flexed a finger or bent a knee, it was like plunging them into liquid nitrogen" (Bryson 184) are effective in captivating audiences. 

TOW #14 - EPhone 900 Advertisement

Phone: "How to dodge a snakebite." Caption: "Fast Internet access when and where you need it. EPhone 900." Source: funnyneel.com

            In the EPhone 900 advertisement, there is a picture of a green snake that is opening its mouth, ready to strike any second. The humor of the ad comes in once the audience, probably a group of consumers of the new EPhone 900, notices a random phone with the text "How to dodge a snakebite" in the Google search bar. The way the picture of the snake is opening its mouth threateningly makes the audience to panic while the way the hand is casually pressing the Google Search button seem to slow the time down. This unique and indirect juxtaposition, the idea of a snake in the wild being in the same picture with a brand new technology, is the main element of the humor in which the viewers could clearly see that the situation is too crazy to be true. Once the ad captivates its audience with the little gag, it shows a caption that says "Fast Internet access when and where you need it. EPhone 900." All of a sudden, the funny message is clear: EPhone 900 allows the consumers to  have an Internet access so fast that they could look up how to dodge a snakebite even before the snake could strike. The caption that mentions the EPhone 900 is very significant in the advertisement because without it, the audience could easily make a mistake that ad is about Google and how it might save someone from danger by giving quick survival information or something. With that said, I believe that the ad is effective and attention grabbing, but if there are some things that I'm a little discontented about is that for an ad that is solely for a new product, it shows too much of the snake but not enough of the EPhone 900. If the placement of the product and the snake is somehow rearranged, the ad would be much better. 

TOW #13 - The Fault In Our Stars Book Review by X. October

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is about Hazel Grace Lancaster, a three-year stage IV-cancer survivor who meets and falls in love with Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor.

                X. October's book review shows exactly what he thinks of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green to his audience of young readers: not bad but not amazing either. As soon as he starts his review, he establishes credibility by acknowledging that he is a big fan of John Green and is a Nerdfighter* himself, which tells the audience that reviewer that he has a perfectly logical reason behind giving the book three stars out of five. X. October explains carefully that his main problem with John Green's book is that the characters are just not believable, and that the interaction between the main characters, Gus and Hazel, just would not happen between "real, emotional, scared, awkward, virgin teenagers, let alone ones with cancer who have been socially cut off for much of their lives" (X. October 2). The reviewer shows that there are many great elements in the book, but soon admits that the part in the book where a character flirts is "funny and witty and entertaining" but is also "the flirting of an experienced 25 year old" (X. October 2). Another main factor that prevented the reviewer from giving the book perfect five stars was that the main characters all had similar characteristics, same voice, thought pattern and high intelligence level as one person. Namely, John Green. X. October uses repetition at the end of the sentence to emphasize this point: "Hazel is John Green. Augustus is John Green. Hazel's mom and dad are John Green. Isaac is John Green." (X. October 3). The only good part of this is that "the person they are is an interesting person, which is why it's still a good book" but the book is still "just not the OMGOMGBESTBOOKEVER book that the 600+ 5-star reviews imply" (X. October 3). In conclusion, the reviewer believes that overall, The Fault in Our Stars is a great book, but lacks certain elements that can make it better. My Opinion? I believe that I need to read the book myself.

*Nerdfighteria is an internet subculture created by John Green and his brother Hank Green.

TOW #12 - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review by Susan Wloszcyna

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins is the second book/movie in the Hunger Games trilogy. It was released at November 22, 2013, and it has been receiving great ratings and reviews. Source: www.rogerebert.com

                        

Susan Wloszczyna's review on The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is directed at all the fans of the ever popular Hunger Games Series that features  a girl named Katniss Everdeen who is forced to play a deadly game of survival with other tributes from each districts. By the way Wloszczyna describes the second movie of the trilogy as something that "makes my inner feminist-leaning 13-year-old stand up and cheer" and gives the movie three stars out of three stars, anyone could guess that her intention of the review is to get more people to see this new popular movie. Throughout her review, Wloszczyna first summarizes her favorite part of the whole movie, when "Katniss...suddenly twirls about in her would-be wedding dress during a TV interview meant to distract the downtrodden populace of Panem" (Wloszczyna 2), but then moves on to symbolisms and deeper analysis  about the plot and characters that makes the plot of the whole story more intriguing. Wloszczyna discusses about the elements that makes the movie effective such as the plot, great actors with great talents, connection to the real world, Spectacular director and Oscar-winning writers, but she also shows how  the movie is criticized "from the same 'something old, something borrowed' disease that is the enemy of originality in too many Hollywood efforts of the late" (Wloszczyna 9). Apparently, there are many references in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire such as "Lost" and "Survivor", Star Wars, "The Running Man", and Roman and Greek mythologies, but Wloszczyna argues that there is one truly original invention, and that is Katniss, "the perfect antidote to the surplus of male superheroes out there" (Wloszczyna 11). To make sure that her review is not just a boring statement of facts, Wloszczyna uses allusions to other films and real life ideas, vivid dictions, and specific details to make a humorous yet very informing piece of writing. I believe that the author definitely persuaded me to go and watch The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

TOW #11 - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson

A cigarette ad from the 1950s. Back then, people believed that cigarettes actually were healthy, "by soothing jangly nerves and sharpening jaded minds" (Bryson 69). Source: www.google.com

            In a chapter in his book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson gives the readers who may or may not know about the 1950s a detailed account of the time period when he was a child. He shows that 1950s was an age full of dreams, endearing innocence, and excitement when people thought about delivering letters via guided missile, people setting fires on the White House were simply released into the custody of their families, and atomic bomb testing areas were the hottest tourist attractions. This was the time period when food, TV, car, and atomic weapon productions started to grow immensely, and when Disneyland was first opened. During that time when Bryson was a kid, he had a father who "was a fiend for piling us all in the car and going to distant places, but only if the trips were cheap, educational, and celebrated some forgotten aspect of America's glorious past, generally involving slaughter, uncommon hardship, or the delivery of mail at a gallop" (Bryson 79). However, just before Bryson's ninth birthday, his dad decided to go on a winter vacation, something that did not happen so frequently. Stranger still, the vacation is actually interesting to the point Bryson admits that "I had seldom - what am I saying? I had never - seen my father so generous and carefree" (Bryson 84); the family goes to great places like the Rockies, the lush Imperial Valley, Big Sur, Los Angeles, the beach in Santa Monica, and to top it all off, Disneyland. Through the use of humor, the author effectively shows how his kid-self fitted right into the age of excitement and allows the readers to view the time period through his eyes. Because Bryson experienced all these events firsthand and because he explains the time period so vividly, I and the other readers could tell that the author is very credible.