Wednesday, October 13, 2010

A groan-inducing potential tear-jerker



I hate it when this happens.

Just when tears are about to fall, there it is -- That glaring error that takes you out of the moment. What could have blossomed into an ugly-face cry turns into a wince.

First aired on Universal Sports, this video about the 1980 U.S. boycott of the Olympics has the potential to be a tear-jerker. The song is just right; clips of Carter's impending announcement are downright ominous. It forces us to imagine what it would have been like to sacrifice our childhoods to become elite gymnasts, only to have those years squandered by politics.

Your eyes brimming with tears, at the 40-second mark, you see it.

Annouces.

Annouces.

Annouces.

Sure, the video looks like it was slapped together on iMovie, with its creator foregoing safer fonts for the chic Century Gothic. But you were willing to put that aside for the greater good. It was made possible by the crushed dreams of Olympic hopefuls, after all.

But no, Universal Sports. My ugly-face cry is long gone.

You almost had me at annouces.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Effect vs. Affect

TIME's note about GAP’s hideous new logo (now reverted to the original) involves a commonly misused verb.

Feeling powerless to affect real change in this country? You shouldn't be: After consumer protest, the much-reviled new Gap logo has been replaced with its staid blue-boxed predecessor.
While the social media outcry certainly could have affected how things turned out for the logo, in this case its usage implies that the formerly powerless social media users were the impetus for real change, thus effecting it.

Effect, rarely used as a verb, is fitting here.

At any rate, I seriously hope this is just a ploy to drum up attention for the real logo. Nobody could have looked at this and thought, “Yes! Masterpiece!”

Right?