Blog Post #11

When presented with the idea of an Anti-Ad, I was immediately thrilled. It was the idea of the essay that killed me, as well as the daunting task of actually being clever and witty enough to think up a decent ad or company to spoof. I was even more delighted when we were informed that we would be using Photoshop. I’m pretty confidant in my Photoshop skills, though they aren’t amazing, they still pass for decent. The other idea that scared me was that of putting our work online, on a website. I may possess sufficient ability in photo editing and retouching software, but I am beyond sub-par when it comes to just about everything else. I have no problem learning how to use new software, but it most certainly takes me a while. Not only that, but when we went over how to make a website, I wasn’t clever enough to be taking notes. I just thought to myself “well, my short-term memory won’t fail me. When we go over this tomorrow, I’ll be fine” then, alas, a few weeks later after I had long forgotten how to even open the program, I hear that we need to be making websites for our third paper. Fear struck my heart like… well… like fear. So not only did I have to try my best to learn how to be clever and witty, but I also had to find a topic to be clever and witty on, as well as quickly learn how to use this software again. “No problem, self!” I quickly proclaimed. “You can overcome this in no time!”
Well, about seven hours before we were supposed to have our third and final draft on this paper due, I still hadn’t learned how to use Nvu or SSH, I was still convinced that I wasn’t clever at all in my essay or Anti-Ad, and to top it all off, I felt terrible about the topic that I chose. Though, on the bright side, I did a decent job with Photoshop.
I was thinking about NOT doing Dodge for my anti-ad, but I really couldn’t think of any other commercials or ads that I had run into lately. I mean, that tends to happen when you’ve never had a magazine subscription in your life, and you can’t afford cable in college. I thought about spoofing those little Quizno’s or Subway (I forget which) creatures that Ms. O’Malley showed us in that video, but honestly, how do you spoof those? Photoshop a real animal? Honestly, they’re such a joke in themselves that I think it would be near impossible to successfully make fun of them, which is probably what that company was aiming for all along. Touché, Quizno’s. Touché. I also thought about other things that I thought were ridiculous, like that Ped-Egg thing (that stupid little cheese grater that you run along the bottom of your foot and it just scrapes off calluses AKA it probably eats your entire foot) or those male enhancement commercials (like Exten-z or Viagra), but I was afraid that the Ped-Egg would be too obscure a reference, and the male enhancement commercials would be a little (pun intended) inappropriate.
Creating the anti-ad was the best part. It was posting it to the internet and writing the essay that were my demise.