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Serenity Someday...Maybe

by Another Trope 5/18/2013 - 1:18 pm

Frank Costanza: Serenity now! Serenity now!

George Costanza: What is that?

Frank: The doctor gave me a relaxation cassette. When my blood pressure gets too high, the man on the tape tells me to say 'serenity now!'

George: Are you supposed to yell it?

Frank: The man on the tape wasn't specific.

The "Serenity Now!" episode remains one of my all time favorite Seinfeld episodes. When I was fiddling with my previous blog, I had at one moment tried to expand my thoughts on the joy and happiness using Frank's approach to achieve peace of mind.  But in reading the wikipedia entry on the episode,  I discovered another thread in the episode was inspired by the same David Mamet play with which I was also trying to assimilate into the previous blog: Glengarry Glen Ross.

Frank Costanza: Starting tonight we're having a little sales contest. The loser gets fired. The winner gets a Water Pik. [Read more]

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Paging Dr. Maslow...paging Dr. Maslow

by Another Trope 5/16/2013 - 2:59 pm

“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
-- Rumi

Going back over some bookmarked articles, given my latest focus, a couple of articles caught my attention.  First there was the following passage from The Guardian article on Czech photographer Josef Koudelka::

After the Prague pictures established his reputation - or at least that of an "anonymous Czech photographer" - Koudelka left the country on a three-month exit visa to photograph Gypsies, a project he'd begun in 1966. Failing to return home at the end of that period, he became stateless, a status he craved the way others yearn for money or fame. He felt at home in exile. All he needed, he insisted, was a good night's sleep, plenty of film, and time. Everything else was a seductive distraction: the less he had, the less there was to miss. "I needed to know that nothing was waiting for me anywhere," he has said. "That the place I was supposed to be was the place where I was at that moment, and that when there was nothing more to photograph there, then it was time to leave for another place." [Read more]

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Humiliation Junction...What's Your Function?

by Another Trope 5/4/2013 - 5:07 pm

Sometimes one tries to move further along the tracks on a particular train of thought and then just like that one is right back at the old station. While I think humiliation and its role in the facilitation of what some authorities refer to as radicalization is an intriguing topic, I wanted to delve more into the collective perception of the radicalization process.

Critical to understanding the (shifting) core of this perception, I believe, is people's relationship with and understanding of tension and conflict.  In particular, tension and conflict as it relates to not only as an expression of human nature, but also in the formation of that same human nature.  These perceptions inform our politics, our understanding of our place in the world, and the place of others.  As with one of the facets of this tension, humiliation, this topic quickly pushes one to the notion that the personal is political (and the political personal).  [Read more]

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Falling Sideways Some More

by Another Trope 4/27/2013 - 7:05 pm

Do not drink too much. Do you hear me? I don't want you passing out or going to the dark side. No going to the dark side!

                             -- Jack Cole, Sideways (2004)

In the film Sideways, Paul Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, a forty-something unsuccessful writer, wine-aficionado, and  depressed middle school English teacher living in San Diego, who takes his soon-to-be-married actor friend and college roommate, Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church), on a road trip through Santa Ynez Valley wine country. Miles wants to relax and live well. However, Jack wants one last sexual fling; at least that is their expressed agendas for the trip. [Read more]

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Falling Sideways

by Another Trope 4/24/2013 - 12:24 pm

In the 1993 film Falling Down, Michael Douglas plays a divorcé and unemployed former defense engineer, William Foster, who goes on a violent rampage across L.A. while trying to reach his daughter’s birthday party at the house of his estranged wife.  Roger Ebert writes of this character:

What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders. [Read more]

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Getting Radical

by Another Trope 4/22/2013 - 5:48 pm

As I was leaving my place today, Andrea Mitchell on her MSNBC show asks her guest "...so what is the process of radicalization."   I don't know what kind of answer her guest gave since I then closed my front door, but the reporting on this event has had me more than once pondering the term "radicalization" in the current discourse.

Of course, this question is posed in the context of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath.  The term radicalization in this context it is understood has a more narrowed definition than the general term 'radicalization.'

Looking back over my days of youth and the circles in which I ran in, there was some touching upon this process. [Read more]

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Loser

by Another Trope 4/20/2013 - 3:08 pm

In the aftermath of the capture of the second suspect Boston Marathon bombings, one of the questions being asked in a number of circles is how did these two brothers become radicalized.  Part of the motivation behind the question is just the quest to understand why they did what they did.  Clarity around the motivation may facilitate for some of the victims and others traumatized by the event to a greater sense of closure.   For some this questioning into the 'reasons why' may be driven by what may be simply called academic curiosity.

Another purpose of this question, however, is posed with the intent to gain some insight into how we in a developed country can help prevent other young adults like these two from becoming radicalized in the future. [Read more]

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still...nothing to be done

by Another Trope 4/13/2013 - 5:51 pm

Best wishes on your birthday Mr. Beckett:

It may be because of the particular climate of mind around my eyes, but these days seem to be more aligned with your sensibilities than any time in recent memory.  The lingering Zeitgeist makes one come to the conclusion "you're on earth.  There's no cure for that." [Read more]

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It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

by Another Trope 1/20/2013 - 4:55 pm

The other week I was flipping through the channels and ended up watching Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.  It premiered just in 1963, a year before I was born, and it was one of my first memories of seeing a comedy that wasn't meant for kids.  In some ways I think it framed the way I saw and assimilated the "madness" around me as I grew up (preparing me to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail  as the summation of what it all means).  And in that I could spend a few blogs detailing the progression from that to now. [Read more]

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NRA and the Parable of the Tribe

by Another Trope 12/25/2012 - 11:48 pm

If liberals want to take on the NRA, then they need to deal with parable of the tribes as Andrew Schmookler puts it: [Read more]

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