My Selection Number 3: Travis Abe
(G7, 459)

Why I Chose this Student's Report

I chose Travis Abe'shomepage because I like the style of his homepage. It has a "midi" that says "Due to some violent content, parental discretion is advice." The background of his homepage matches exactly the midi because he chose a bunch of skull (colored red) with a black background color to put in his homepage. I thought, his message is quite clear because his topic is about traffic psychology and I guess, the message he's conveying is that -- if you don't drive carefully, you're going to end up like one of those skulls --> DEAD!!! Another thing, the color of the skulls too is red and it usually means blood. It's also appropriate that he put that midi about parental guidance because I know kids are going to get scared if they see his background. The homepage is appealing to me because it's unique and I like the image at the end of his homepage, it's a reflection of the phrase "Drive with Aloha Spirit" in the water.

Retracing The Steps That Led Me To This Report

STEP 1:
When I did an oral presentation on Quincy Tan's reports, he had a link on Travis Abe's homepage. So, I checked his homepage by clicking on his name.

STEP 2:
As I clicked on his name, it didn't actually take me to his main homepage, only to that specific report where he was quoted by Mr. Tan.

STEP 3:
From there, it took me to the 409b homepage but I already had one person from G4, so I went back to the Prior Students Generations and I clicked on G7, there I saw Travis Abe's homepage again.

STEP 4:
I checked other students' homepages first before I decided to include Travis Abe's homepage. I checked on 3 other students from that generation and explored their homepages for atleast 2 hours, but I thought Travis Abe's homepage had the most interesting presentation.

Description Of The Topic Of This Report

The first report, he talked about how driving is portrayed in movies, television, and commercial. Before he did the report, he thought that "TV was a harmless little box that entertained us in our households." He read some of the reports from previous generations to get some ideas that will help him start on his report. First step he did is to choose three categories that one watches on TV like Cartoons, Commercials, and Movies (videotapes). Then, he decided what kind of rating he would use. His ratings include: Realism, Action, and Influence -- the highest is 5 and the lowest is 0.
For the movies/videos, he chose The Rock, Toxic Avenger, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. He basically described the part in the movie where the actors in the film protrayed bad driving. For realism, he rated The Rock as 1; for action, it was also 1; and for the influence of the film to the viewers, he rated it as 2. He rated Toxic Avenger as 0 for realism, 1 for action, and 0 for inluence. Finally, he evaluated Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and the ratings for this film is fairly high -- 4 for realism, 3.5 for action, and 4 for influence. I have seen The Rock and I agree with his ratings, as well as his ratings for Ace Ventura, but for Toxic Avenger, I have no comments because I never heard nor seen this film.
The three cartoons he chose to evaluate are:Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Speed Racer, and G.I Joe. He rated G.I. Joe as the highest with a total of 8 --> realism=2, action=2, and influence=4. Wow, I never really watched G.I. Joe so I don't know whether his rating is accurate. Actually, all the cartoons he listed, I haven't watched for years so I can't say anything about the accuracy of his ratings.
Finally, he did his ratings on Commercials and he included the following commercials:Pennzoil, Isuzu Trooper, and Shell Service Stations. The highest he rated was the Shell Service Station which totalled to 11 --> 3 for realism, 4 for action, and 4 for influence. I thought that his ratings were pretty high for all the commercials, he could have chosen better commercials to evaluate like maybe those Toyota commercials or Nissan commercials because those really show bad driving behaviors. The drivers drive fast and step on the brakes so suddenly to show people that their brakes work really good. I thought, those commercials are kind of a bad influence for young viewers because I have seen my nephew immitate one of those commercials when he was sitting next to me in the car. He would make this "Vroom, Vroom" sound and pretend he's driving. And then he would pretend to step on the brake and make this "Screech" sound. I know, he got that from the commercials that he watches, especially that he likes cars.
For his second report, his topic is about Video Game road rage. Here, he gave five examples of video games that indicates or show road rage like: Carmageddon, Roadkill, Fatal Racing, Need for Speed 2, and Interstate '76. For each one of them, he had a brief description of what kind of games they are and what exactly is bad about them. For Carmageddon, he said that this game is a "triple combination of Road Rage, Racing, and a Destruction Derby." I thought, this game was really bad because you have to hit and kill pedestrians to earn points. Now, this game should definitely be banned because it's such a bad message to be sending out to children. Roadkill, is another game like Carmageddon, where you drive along a road and kill old ladies and animals walking across the street. These games are really disgusting, I hope that children are not allowed to play these games because it's such a bad influence for them and to everybody.
Here's another game called Fatal Racing, just the name itself, you know that this game is going to be bad. But, Travis said that "this game had a very little road rage" because there's not much fatal scenes and the way they destroy cars is not very realistic -- it will only slow you down. I thought, that's kind of realistic, you will really slow down if you try hitting a car, isn't it? If being realistic, to him, is how good the graphics look then I guess this game is not. For the other two games, Speed 2 and Interstate '76, had to do with driving at a high speed. Speed 2, you drive highspeed luxury cars and according to Travis this game has shown no road rage whatsoever. I guess, that's just a matter of opinion of what a road rage is to you but to some, driving at a high speed like that is some form of a road rage. Interstate '76, has to do with the destruction of other cars. Here, the people you try to kill are "bad guys" unlike in Carmageddon, you kill innocent pedestrians -- that's according to Travis. As he explained further on what kind of weapons they used to target these bad guys, I thought this game was really violent.

I don't know, I guess, girls like me and violence don't mix. Guys may like these stuffs and may think it's just a game, but little do you know this might have an effect on them. Well, at the end of his report, he gave his opinion on the games and he thought they are really bad for children and that they should have ratings for these games as they're now proposing a rating system for bad driving in commercials. I agree with his proposal to have a rating system for these games, but I always thought they have some kind of a rating system outside the box when you buy them?

Reaction & Involvement

I thought, Travis' reports were sort of interesting because I know how hard it is to review movies, cartoons, commercials, and games. You have to create your own rating systems and then talk about why you think the movies, cartoons, etc. show bad driving behaviors. He did a good a job in explaining and describing each one of them, but I thought he left out some things like what the ratings mean --- if it's more than 8 points or something, will he suggest to parents of young viewers to supervise them when they watch these shows? He didn't really explain his point system in detail, but he merely assigned numbers for the three criterias he came up with. At first, I was really into the topics of his reports, but once I continue into the next pages, I was not that involved anymore because it seems to me that he was just describing each movies, commercials, cartoons, and the games. What he could have done is descibe the scenes that are related to road rage and then explain why he thinks they should or should not be considered as road rage using his rating system to back him up. For the games, he kind of did that, but for the movies and the others, he just described that portion of the movie that shows bad driving behaviors, then gave his ratings, and that was it -- no explanation whatsoever. I was hoping that at the end of his report, he will summarized each one of them and explain why he rated this specific movie, commercial, or cartoon that high and the others that low. Overall, I thought he did a good job because I know how hard it is to think clearly when you're doing this kind of report and I probably could have done worse than him. I just thought that there was something missing from his report, I just can't figure it out. Maybe, it's because it's kind of short compared to the previous students' reports that I evaluated.

Comparing This Report With Others In The Same Generation

I looked at Agren Ramento's report and compared it to Travis' report on Portrayals of Driving Behavior on TV. Her page is not as graphical as Travis' page, but the contents of her reports were better than Travis'. At the beginning of her report, she explained to us right away what she plans to do and what her ratings were about. Then, she summarized her selected reports from G6 on the portrayals of bad driving behaviors. After that, she reviewed the movies, commercials, and cartoons she included in her report. What I like about her review was that she described the event that shows bad driving behavior from the movie or commercial or cartoon, then she talked about the specific behavior that demonstrated bad driving behavior, and then she evaluated and analyzed the behavior shown by using her rating system. I thought, she did an excellent job with her report because she takes you step by step on how she came up with her ratings. Unlike Travis, he didn't really explain how he came up with his ratings for that specific movie, cartoon, or commercial. I was also going to include Agren's report on "How to be a Driving Buddy" but the link is not working.

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