TOW 26

The King Can No Longer Afford Queens is an article about the rapidly changing real estate market in queens.  This article comments on how Queens has gone from a working class, predominantly white area, to a pricey land of the rich, and the article uses pop culture references and numbers to help convince their readers of this idea.  This article uses references from such shows as The King of Queens to show the type of stature queens has previously carried.  The King of Queens is a show less than a decade from its finale about a working class American family who lives in queens.  This is synonymous with Queens’s public image and plays off of it for the story line.  This also reflects the fact that not only was this idea true but it was so commonly thought that it would be the perfect background for this story.  Not only did this show flow with the profile of Queens, but it also strengthened it.  With a viewership of about 9 million weekly viewers it likely changed opinions and people who knew nothing about Queens believed it was just like the show.  The author needed more to show the change so they started to pull out statistics.  The author, Ginia Bellafante started to pick out figures for real estate sold in Queens.  Massive numbers in the multimillion categories started to come out and the image of Queens started to change in the readers mind.  This addition of statistics did something that little telling could, it showed the reader that Queens real estate really was getting expensive.  Further, these numbers help to convince readers because they give specific facts and the readers can judge for themselves how high end they think Queens is.  With a little extra prodding, Bellafante pushes the reader in her direction by comparing Queens to other high-end areas.  All of these techniques help in the end to illustrate the change in the real estate market in Queens.

TOW 25

One of the longest lasting ad campaigns is the Dos Equis most interesting man campaign.  These commercials contain an older man, who is identical the punchline of the commercials' jokes.  A lot of the jokes are similar to Chuck Norris or The Stig jokes.  These jokes are often things that are ironic and masculine at the same time and try to make the "most interesting man" a figure wanted to be replicated. After this they use his classic catchphrase "I don't normally drink beer but when I do I drink dos equis," as a way of bolstering the companies appearence.  These commercials utilize a couple of strategies to effectively get their point across.  The first if these is humor.  The commercials issually start with a joke something like "He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels."  These jokes do two things. First off they're interesting to the watcher and keep them engaged and entertained.  This means that they get their point across better and also keep the watcher thinking about their product.  Second off this increases the ethos of the worlds mos interesting man by making him sound more manly and more like the type of person men (the main drinkers of beer) would like to mimick.  The commercial tries to target a highly male audience yo make them feel as if manly people are drinking dos Equis and hope that they will take the Jim and believe that drinking dos Equis would make them seem and feel more masquline.  That connection is used because of the strength of male pride.  Men like to feel manly and beer and manliness oh hand in hand, so making beer seem manly would be an effective tactic, which it has proven to e as dos dos equis's sales have risen even when most beer companies have fell.

IRB Intro Post: Into the Wild

Into the Wild is the story of the last two years of Christopher McCandelless's life.  Starting at his college graduation, the story tells of how he hiked cross country trying to throw away his identity inspired by such idols as Henry David Thoroue. Along his way he stopped in many places and learned many things.  He enjoyed the company of many people and worked as he went, even for a period of time stopping to work at a grain elevator in South Dakota.  Eventually he did make it to Alaska as he sought to do.  From there it ends where he did.  McCandelless was found dead two years after he went off the grid in a bus in Alaska.  That is the story of Into the Wild.