The TPR Stream - April 2013
04.04.2013
Author and TPR monthly contributor Douglas Arvidson explores the world of being a news reporter in Key West during those heady times known as the 1980s. It was a world filled with dinner invitations from a drunken Tennessee Williams, bloody copy, and, of course, a 1981 Honda Nighthawk motorcycle with an inline, four-stroke, 650cc engine. She wasn’t just any motorcycle. She was Miss Blue. Ah, true loves are the hardest to forget…
05.04.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: The Words of Don Draper By The Editors
Everybody's favorite show about rich, white men and their problems returns this Sunday. What problems they are: adultery, intrigue, back-stabbing, power grabs, insecurity, alcoholism, suicide, ex-wives, current wives, and (never to be forgotten) emphysema As the philosopher Biggie Smalls once stated, "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems."
08.04.2013
Water Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink...By Ship Bright
TPR contributor Ship Bright explores the world’s oncoming water crisis and humanity’s willingness to ignore it. It’s a problem that in many ways is already evident. Four-fifths of all the illnesses in the developing world are caused by water-borne diseases with diarrhea being the leading cause of childhood death. As the world moves closer to the precipice, Bright shows just how close we are to disaster.
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09.04.2013
The Many Faces of V.V. Putin By The Editors
The emperor wears new clothes but rarely has an emperor worn as many faces as one Vladimir Vladmirovich Putin, and that’s not just because plastic surgery makes him look like a castoff from Real Housewives of Moscow. It is no longer simple enough to have great facial hair (see: Stalin, Josef), employ an entirely female crew of virgins known as the “Amazons” as your personal security detail (see: Gaddafi, Muammar), or kill indiscriminately (see: everyone, everywhere). Sadly, this is the nature of a 21st century autocracy.
10.04.2013
Descent from the Clouds: An Atlas of Rebirth By Vishwas R. Gaitonde
Finishing his trilogy on the adaptation of book into film, Author and TPR contributor Vishwas Gaitonde tackles the adaptation of the supposedly unfilmable novel Cloud Atlas. Moreover, how does the concept of reincarnation differ not only between the novel and film but between East and West? In a world where characters are “meeting again and again in different lives, different ages”, Gaitonde provides a compass that charts the universe of Cloud Atlas and might just provide a little direction in our own corner of the Milky Way.
11.04.2013
Thoughts on Augusta and the Return of Tiger Woods By Shaan Joshi
It sits on 365 acres of bikini-wax manicured lawns lined with dense flowering shrubs and giant oaks in Augusta, Georgia. For certain people this is Mecca and Hajj starts today. They will make their pilgrimage from as far away as their religion is practiced. If they cannot come they will huddle around TV sets for four days. They will shriek and clap uncontrollably. At work, their minds will wander to their smartphones and finally to the ever-counting clock that will eventually mark the end of their day. Family members and friends will worry about them, but then again it happens every year. This is the Masters.
12.04.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: How to Play with Words By The Editors
As Steve Martin says, “Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.” We at TPR appreciate words and the people that use them in fine employ. One of our favorite wordsmiths of the 20th century (and the 21st) is that galactic wizard known by the Earthly name Bob Dylan — or as we call him the original Tyler Durden.
15.04.2013
Love and Heroin: An Homage to Amy Protheroe By Philip Reeves
Ed. Note-Both are a drug. They will hook you with sudden rushes of euphoria. You will nod off in ecstasy. You will see your friends less and feel the world in such sudden urgency that any previous rendering of the world seems incomplete. It will become your joy and curse until nothing else exists but this single thing alone. And, then, it gets truly interesting. We are talking about love and heroin. When you combine the two you get the excellent VICE documentary Swansea Love Story.
16.04.2013
Response to a Tragedy: Fear and Loathing and Love By Jason Moore with a Letter from Hunter Thompson
I lived in Boston. It was my home. I wanted to be a musician for as far back as I can remember. It was hours locked away with a guitar that allowed me the easy assurance to do things like smoke certain substances in the bathroom of our high school (I got caught, but that’s a different story). It was Berklee College of Music in Boston and hard work that turned that easy assurance into a career as a musician. Boston was so much a part of my education and who I am today. That’s why I am left confused by yesterday’s events, fragmented by the two bombs that ripped my one-time home apart. All that’s left is solace and a sad wonder...
17.04.2013
Enter Daisy, Stage Left By The Editors
"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."
She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.
-F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
So enters Daisy Buchanan. Ah, that cream-skinned figure of East Egg, no doubt graced with an air of beau monde boredom and limp-wristed at the embrace of a long, slender quellazaire capped a with flame-tipped cigarette that flicks ash away as easily as its wielder discards men.
18.04.2013
Modern Martyr: A Tale of Domestic Abuse By Kristi Kirkpatrick
It's nothing like what you see on made for television movies or poorly funded docudramas. No one can prepare you or give you advice on how to properly handle it. No amount of liquor or drugs can numb the constant sting and fear that looms over you every second of your day. It's a slow process to break someone's soul; it takes careful planning and beautiful manipulation. Everyone thinks they would be strong enough to walk away, have the courage to take a stand, but that isn't how this works. Once it has crawled inside of you and starts to chew on the very core of you. When no one sees and the ones who do turn a blind eye, that's when the darkness eats you up.
19.04.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: Frank Gehry's Last Masterpiece By Anne Brechin
Architecture is one of the most enduring monuments which civilisations leave behind. Not just in a physical sense, but in what they tell us about the people who built them. The pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon in Athens, the Colosseum in Rome are all reminders of past civilisations and preserve a lasting impression of what these peoples considered significant and, not less importantly, what they considered beautiful. At the same time this monumental quality can contrast sharply with human mortality – a contrast currently facing Pritzer-prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. The completion date of his Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, an immense, complex structure which will be the capstone of his illustrious career, is set for 2017. Gehry is currently 83.
22.04.2013
Lobster Fishing in Maine and the Commerce of Competition By Ship Bright
Ed. Note - We all have childhood memories. Friends, summers, that first kiss and even that first job. For most kids that involves pimples and the fryer at the local Burger Shack. For Ship Bright, it meant baiting lobster pods and the important education of why one does not engage in heavy drinking the night before such an activity. Bright explores the fishery of his youth, how changing technology has impacted commerce in the region, and just how it is a fisherman tells another he’ll "burn your women and rape your houses.” Warning: next time you go lobster fishing in Maine, you might want to bring a gun.
23.04.2013
There are certain military maneuvers that stand above others in their revelation of ingenuity and their application of foresight. That is because in the time before science and letters lauded certain souls of humanity with wreaths of genius, the most intelligent of men applied their wits against each other in the arena of strategy and tactics. A week removed from the Boston Marathon, Chechnya has decided to do just that. In an effort to avoid scrutiny, they’ve clouded themselves in the great cloak of humanity known as ignorance, and used its fluttering embrace to bamboozle the most soft-brained among us into believing that if Chechens do indeed exist, they come from a place called the Czech Republic. The plan, strangely, hinges on the photo above.
24.04.2013
Paranoia and Polarization: Why Are My Friends Whack-Jobs? By Scott Archer Jones
Ed. Note - The United States is currently under the grip of its own fear and paranoia. Not over terrorism or a stagnant economy or even over mass shootings that leave 20 children dead, but rather over its own government. Nerves are on edge. Eyeballs scatter. Conspiracy theory has gripped the country and even infected its leaders. In the most violent gun country on Earth, lawmakers voted down a bill extending common sense background checks to every gun sold. Why? Dirty cash that greases the fear of a small but vocal minority that its government would oppress them into a tyrannical state – one full of fear and paranoia. Author Scott Archer Jones explores a country in the throes of its own delusional panic and what happens when facts don’t matter.
25.04.2013
Camping Out By Ernest Hemingway
Ed. Note - With spring finally rapping at the window what better time to offer a few, simple economical words on the great outdoors from a great outdoorsman. Written in 1920, before his first novel was published, Camping Out reveals a Hemingway that the world would soon come to love. Go on, grab the fishing pole and kick the can down the road.
26.04.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: Watch Three Years of the Sun in Three Minutes By Shaan Joshi
He was the pride of the village. A smart, athletic boy who seemingly accomplished anything he could conjure up in his vast imagination. When the village suffered from severe drought, he single-handedly dammed the river and formed an irrigation canal. When that infamous escaped convict came to these parts, it was the boy who went to him and convinced him of surrender. When the fields were infested with wild pigs that ate the crops and killed two farmers, he ventured into the tall rows of corn and slaughtered them one by one. Their babes were raised as meat for the village. For all of this and more, he enjoyed not just great fame but the village's women as well. The boy, spoiled by the hubris of accomplishment, one day set his sights on the sun.
29.04.2013
How to Waste Five Hours on Wikipedia By C. James Bye
One man, the internet and a whole lot of free time. This is How to Waste Five Hours on Wikipedia.
