Piece #1
For my first piece, I transcribed a “Phone Tap” (basically just a prank phone call) from a popular radio program, Elvis Duran and the Morning Show. This Phone Tap is entitled Mom, We Crashed Your Car and can be found at the following link: http://www.elvisduran.com/media/podcast-phone-taps-phonetaps/mom-we-crashed-your-car-24002446/ I started around :37 and transcribed about a minute of the phone call. My transcription is below:
A: Hello?
B: Barbara Fox, please.
A: Speaking.
B: Hi Barbara! This is Melissa Delrusso from [unknown].
A: Yes?
B: How are you?
A: Okay.
B: I’m calling you about the uh the accident.
A: There was no accident.
B: Yeah there was an accident on Highland Boulevard.
A: With my car?
B: Uh Danny and Nicole.
A: My son.
B: And the person driving the vehicle was Nicole Remoro.
A: Are you kiddin’ me?
B: No, and she is not insured, and so I’m just calling to let you know that they are probably going to be dropping you from the insurance.
A: Oh wonderful. Just wonderful. He didn’t even tell me about it.
B: The other problem is that they had left the scene of the accident.
A: Are you kiddin’ me?
B: No, and we managed to track them down and everything by video cameras that they have on Highland Boulevard.
A: Well it’s my son and his fiancee. He’s teaching her how to drive.
B: Oh.
A: I told him I didn’t want her goin’ anywhere out of the parking lot.
B: I don’t understand why he would let –
A: Neither do I, cause this is the second – I mean, I have a clean license.
B: Yeah –
A: This is the second time.
My methodology was fairly basic for this transcription. I used ‘A’ and ‘B’ instead of the names of the people, although I thought it was rather clear who is the prank-er and who is the prank-ee. I noticed it was fairly hard to reflect tones in the transcription. For instance, the pranked mother got angry at many points, and I considered putting double punctuation (Are you kiddin’ me??) or exclamation marks (This is the second time!) to express that, but decided against it in the end. I like how the transcription reads as more mono-toned, and leaves it to the reader to insert the tone. I think the whole exercise shows that I am the kind of person who would rather give the reader choices in how the piece is to be performed. I’d rather not give ‘stage directions’ and guide the reader toward one specific way of performing. This may be because of my background as an actor – I am able to see the reader’s choices as equally important and significant as the writer’s.
Piece #2
My second piece was heavily inspired by Matt Siber’s The Untitled Project, which was featured in Uncreative Writing and our class blog. I did a similar thing in attempting to rip words off of a cereal box and keep the same architecture, which I did in TextEdit. However, I thought it would be interesting not to provide a picture, and instead allow the reader to insert one of their own based on their preconceived notions of what cereal boxes usually look like. The result is below:
My completed piece of the text on a cereal box.
Again, I thought it was interesting how I would rather leave much of the piece up to the reader’s imagination. In this case, the reader is forced to conjure an image as a backdrop for the text. The fonts that existed on the cereal box have also been removed – this allows the audience to place their notions of what these fonts typically are (i.e. something exciting for the words ‘Reese’s Puffs’) to come to life in their heads, instead of having to guide them there.
AJ Golio Does Poetry 