Debating who the greatest player of all time is has always been a classic among many sports fans. Tennis has not escaped the grueling conversation, especially since the moment the sport was submerged into its golden era at the hands of the three most successful men to ever hold a racket: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. Of these three, Roger Federer, fancily known as the Swiss Maestro given the patent grace of his movement and skills on the court, was the first one to “hatch” as a world-number-one-level player on the international tennis panorama. His unprecedented success in the early 2000s accompanied by the trademark elegance with which he played, earned him the admiration of the vast majority of tennis fans, who viewed him as the sport’s hero for revolutionalizing and popularizing a game that was reaching a stalemate scenario in terms of entertainment. This catapulted the Swiss to become Rolex’s most valuable asset and global ambassador as he epitomized the elegance and the success that served as the motto of the prestigious firm. Rolex fed off of the rhetorical situation of tennis’ impending doom, to give rise to the commonplace of greatness lying on the numbers. In their “Wimbledon 2010” advert, the firm explored this idea to dovetail the successful figure of Federer with their watches, by creating a kairotic moment, employing visual rhetoric as a pathetic appeal, and the challenging of well-established commonplaces as the common thread in the commercial. Similar rhetorical techniques were used in the firm’s most recent advert “Numbers Don’t Matter,” in which they surprisingly refute the commonplace they themselves established in the 2010 commercial, responding to a completely inverted rhetorical situation where Federer’s greatest rivals Nadal and Djokovic have matched the Swiss’ Grand Slam records and eclipsed many of his most valuable records. Employing similar rhetorical strategies Rolex adapts to divergent contexts in order to preserve its status as the “greatest of all time.”
Intriguing Elevator Pitch
After having witnessed the first set of elevator pitches by my classmates, of which all of them were of great sophistication and level, I found Jessica’s to be the most intriguing. I find the idea of analyzing the message and the visuals on a beverage can be the most original and intriguing of all. This is because I personally have thought many times of how companies sell their products just with the first look from the customer. Pure marketing strategies. I find marketing and consumer analysis such a fascinating world that Jessica’s elevator pitch was the one that stood out to me the most. The artifact in question was a simple energy drink can that may look simple and insignificant at first, but shields a vast number of strategies in reality.
Aside from the idea and the artifact itself, what I found to be interesting in her elevator pitch was the connection she made between marketing, social media, and famous characters. Given the bond that exists between the three, I found Jessica’s intention of analyzing the extent to which social media and the featuring of famous people assist marketing, to be extremely clever in this context of escalating globalization. With social media, everything, including public figures and energy drinks, reaches even the most remote of the locations on Earth, hence why Jessica’s plan of also investigating the reach of Bang’s marketing strategies is so relevant. Overall, I found this elevator pitch to be the most captivating not just because of a good delivery from the speaker’s part, but also for the invention side of the speech. The ideas behind the elevator pitch are of great originality and relevance to the current world we live in.
Elevator Pitch Proposal
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKO881UPjFc
Heroes should be immortal. Because they’ve done so much in the past and because they’ve meant so much in the past, their legacy, regardless of new events that take place and threaten the status quo, should always be remembered. Rolex, one of the most prestigious contemporary firms, firmly believes this. In their minds, Roger Federer’s greatness, the God of men’s tennis, the genius that revolutionized the game and helped us fans discover a completely different universe of tennis skill and perfection, should be perpetual.
However, the recent sequence of events with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic stripping the most important records in the sport out of Federer’s grasp has threatened the well-established idea that Roger Federer is, or at least was, the greatest tennis player of all time. It’s in this series of events, in the enemy’s success, that Rolex has found the rhetorical situation to root for the hero of the sport and to remind tennis fans that the greatest is the one that wears their watches, the Swiss Maestro. From the rhetorical situation, the Swiss watch manufacturer felt the exigence of restating Roger Federer’s legacy, not as the most accomplished, because he isn’t anymore, but instead as the most perfect and the most elegant. Rolex has felt pressured (exigence) of challenging the commonplace that the GOAT is the most accomplished, shifting the focus to beauty and off-court elegance. This reformatting of the commonplace is made in an effective scanning of the audience from the firm, knowing that tennis fans could hardly challenge this new GOAT argument in favor of Federer. Rolex has created the advert knowing the constraint that any sport-related argument made in favor of Federer would not only be easily rebutted but also be disrespectful towards Nadal and Djokovic in a time where they’re both enjoying great success and deserve to have the spotlight on them.
Rolex’s advert seemed to have come in the worst possible moment, during one of the multiple golden ages of Nadal and Djokovic’s success. The firm has taken the risk of being considered sore losers (felt an urgency) and has published the advert knowing that nobody would reject a hero’s defense. After all, it’s true that Federer is much more than what numbers may say.
Mushroom Wonders
I’ve always been bizarrely in love with mushrooms. For a person my age, this is certainly not something people anticipate whenever they ask me about my greatest culinary passions. This passion of mine may sound utterly outlandish at first to some. Or even silly or laughable to others. The only thing in which people coincide is the idea of uniqueness. This passion of mine is uncommon, different, eccentric… However, the reality is that the emotions that are left dwelling in you after eating quality freshly-picked mushrooms, make this culinary experience different from any other.
Eating mushrooms I myself spend hours and hours looking for has become an extremely fulfilling aspect of my life. Whether if it’s hustling my way up a mountain and zigzagging between every tree in sight, gracefully walking across a field as I comb the grass with my hands hoping to find any hidden treasure, or crawling on the humid forest floor exploring every square foot possible of land, the ordeal of searching for mushrooms has starred many of my greatest childhood memories. Many times, my family and I competed with each other to see who picked up the greatest batch of whatever mushroom we would be searching for that day, and you could see us all frantically scanning as much land as possible. Other times, we would just calmly walk outside with the dog and occasionally look at the margins of the trail to see if any “hat” (this is how you colloquially call the top of a mushroom) popped up from the ground. Every day would be a completely different adventure with new anecdotes to remember, and new successes to celebrate or failures (unfortunately every time there are more due to global warming) to regret. But the highlight of it all would be the day’s epilogue; dinner.
There are hundreds and thousands of different mushroom varieties across the globe. The ones my family and I always look for are the Boletus Edulis (commonly known as Funghi Porcini or Cep in Catalonia (see the first image)), the Amanita Cesarea (known in Catalonia as Ou de Reig), the Lactarius deliciosus (known as Rovello), and the Cantharellus cibarius (known as Rossinyol). Of these, the first two are, aside from the black and white truffles (shown below in right-hand image) and the Morchella (known as Murgula), is the most prestigious mushrooms that can be found in the Northeastern region of Spain. Specifically, the Amanita Cesarea, named this way because it was one of Emperor Julius Caesar’s favorite goodies, is of extremely high repute for its scarcity and irresistible flavor. Yes, what makes these funky-looking things that grow from the ground, so magical, is the flavor.
The best way of treating all of these goodies is by cooking them at a mild temperature on a pan with a small amount of quality olive oil, parsley, and a chopped down garlic clove (or two if you’re lucky enough to have many in your possession). In the case of the Boletus and Amanita, they would be ready when their texture has become gelatinous and their “foam” (found under the “hat”) has changed color. In the case of Lactarius and Cantharellus, you would know if it’s time to eat or not by looking at the color and the softening of the mushroom pieces. Don’t look for the gelatinous texture, but rather look for the shrinking and softening of these. Truffles, probably the most famous and recognized mushroom is just used in extremely small quantities to flavor certain dishes, usually by laminating it. Morchella, which has a pattern similar to beehives, strengthens its qualities in meat stews or with melted foie grass (see right below).
Once the preparation is complete, you can officially submerge yourself into a world of ultimate pleasure and culinary complexity (below an image of the Amanita Cesarea, a mushroom of supreme quality). Each different kind of mushroom transmits a different feeling and each different kind of cooking method does too as well. When eating boletus, you get carried to those humid forests of the mountains where the ambient is pervaded in wood scent. When eating Amanita Cesareas, which have such a subtle yet powerful taste, you travel to a palace of marble floors and golden ornaments. However, eating boletus with just parsley, garlic and oil is a much different experience than having them in a good pasta tomato sauce. The magical world of mushrooms is so vast and so extensive in possibilities that I could spend the whole afternoon telling you about it and most importantly, spend the rest of my life cherishing the art of mushroom harvesting and cooking.
For this first culinary post, which coincides with the start of the harvesting season, I wanted all of you to know one of the primary reasons for my food fervor. Mushrooms.
The Magical World of Pleasure
I have always considered myself a prisoner of pleasure in life. Of all the things that allow us to cherish our memories and learn from our experiences in the process. Within the overarching theme of pleasure, I’ve always felt more strongly magnetized to the film and culinary worlds, granted there can also be a close bond between both.
Food has always been one of the pillars of my personal “dolce vita.” I’ve always been quite a sybarite when it came to culinary experiences, allowing me to grow into a person that values food not just for its taste, but also for the feelings it’s able to wake up inside me. Food is an art just as paintings, music, and movies are.
Talking about movies, there is nothing that makes me feel more emotionally vulnerable than a great film. The acting, the setting, and the narrative all contribute to the thunderstorm of emotions I live through whenever I watch a movie that is appealing to me. The rise of feelings, of passion for both the culinary and movie worlds, are what have made me pick them as the best themes for my passion blog.
Commonplaces in Advertisements
During the recent era of crescendoing societal and technological modernization, adverts have become one of the most popular and effective pieces of rhetoric. Nowadays, turning on the TV, tuning the radio, or even picking up a newspaper is not conceived without coming across a company’s intent of convincing the public to purchase its product. Given this massive widespread commercial advertising simply as a means of communication, not just persuasion, it is no surprise they have become fundamental in the process of instilling and reassuring commonplaces in our minds. A common overarching theme in many modern-day advertisements is luxury and the portrayal of the “dolce vita” as a means of making a product more attractive to older generations. Examples of these range from cologne commercials where the protagonist is an elegant and successful man or woman, to car spots where the “owner of the car” is presented in an empowered figure over the rest. In today’s challenging world, these adverts promote the vintage commonplace of the “dolce vita” in order to present the product as an attractive luxury for the public.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYWv1oD3dv8
The one I’ve chosen to analyze is the Galaxy Chocolate advert featuring a CGI version of actress Audrey Hepburn. In the ad, Hepburn’s bus finds itself in a traffic jam with no clear getaway just as a handsome and classy man pulls up beside them in a beautiful vintage convertible and invites Hepburn to join him. She hastily hops out of the bus and onto the convertible’s back seat and as the man gallantly drives away, Hepburn reaches into her purse and starts eating her Galaxy chocolate bar. The sequence of events is a perfect reflection of what the 1950s “dolce vita” was like for upper-class men and women. The former were represented as handsome gentlemen and the latter as gentle and sweet “princesses.” Following this norm, men were always in possession of certain objects that raised their standards, in this case, the convertible, and women were so as well. In this case, it is the Galaxy chocolate bar that plays the role of a luxury symbol. The commonplace ingrained in many adults’ minds of one day being capable of living the “dolce vita” is the crux of the ad and thereby having access to Galaxy’s chocolate bar is depicted as part of the dream.