Category Archives: Article and Blog Reviews

Review: Just Be Cool on The Public Blogger

I came across one of my favorite blogs, The Public Blogger, after getting a tweet notification. The title of their post on October 3rd was “just be cool”. Simple words that can evoke a powerful enough restraint in pickling circumstances. The article I read by Kendall F. Person, takes us through the settings of Quentin Tarantino’s acclaimed film, Pulp Fiction and engrossed the concept of “just be cool” in that era and applies it to modern day personal triumph of our own pride.

Telling someone to just be cool in the 80s or 90s would have garnered their attention as the term was better understood then, these days it seems we’ve forgotten that the little things are often not worth creating two tons of drama over. Teenagers are actively killing each other over nothing more than a Facebook comment, and parents are murdering entire households over custody battles and stressing situations. “Just be cool” seems to have lost its meaning. But that’s only because we have forgotten how to pick our battles.

There was a time when people understood that they had to choose their battles carefully, because they could not win them all and thus, would have to risk their losses on something that really mattered. These days society is conditioned to believe they can have it all, everything, however they want it. The world has no boundaries they say. So, teenagers want all of the freedom of speech without any of the criticism in their comment streams because “they can have it all, no conditions”. Drivers want to cut people off, speed, and drive recklessly without being cutoff themselves or given a ticket because “they can have it all, no conditions”.

This his breeds a culture of people who have no concept of boundaries or what just be cool means. But can we change that? Yes. Hear the words, say them, and deep down understand that jumping off the deep end just because someone said something you don’t like is a lose lose situation. Life deals blows and blessings equally, there is no such thing as “you can have it all”.

The term “just be cool” to me symbolizes a person’s ability to tell themselves that the world and the universe is a much bigger place than they could ever try to wrangle, and that sometimes for the sake of us all, turning the other cheek means you’ll have a tomorrow to look forward to.


Review: One Life to LIve on The Public Blogger

One often thinks of writing as a silent art, where reading and contemplating become actions that people can take, if the material is inspirational enough. But where some pieces may hold an inspirational message, yet not the opening attraction to relay it, other pieces become a show all on their own with a powerful message that wraps you in immediately.

That’s what I came accross when I ventured onto The Public Blogger, initially referred to by Kendall F. Person, and found the post One LIfe to Live. If not because another word has not yet been invented for a written pictureless, videoless, actorless, show; I would be tempted to call this post a theater piece. Because that is what is conveyed with the exquisite use of accompanying music, which boasts an immaculate level of inspirational prowess while the reader discovers a poem-like literary performance unlike any traditional writing today.

As I read into the words of self discovery that place power and responsibility of one’s success and happiness in their own hands, I found that this post was reminiscent of those internal examinations made by many of our past philosophers. That type of thinking, outside of what the normal reigns of society allow people to understand about the world and one’s place in it, is what many great thinkers before us tried to convey to the powerless subjects of rulers, kings and emperors in ancient times; in a world where people did not know their capacity of achievement or that they could control their own destiny.

It occurred to me that we have fallen into similar times, and that great thinkers such as Mr. Person, may very well become the next great philosophers of our time, quoted and referred to by later generations.

Person’s use of powerful music to occupy the background as you read paragraphs of human empowerment, make it easier for one to embrace the message, and heightens the experience, elevating it to the status of, as I stated before, a theatrical performance.  Void of an actor for which the reader to place his attention and a menagerie of costumes and images, this piece places the reader in a dark space alone, with nothing to judge or compromise their ability to reflect on a message of human empowerment, but their own internal feelings and thoughts of how they view themselves. It is only at this level that we as humans can ask ourselves, “Can I do this?”, without interfering thoughts of what society says you are capable of, what circumstances make it difficult for you to succeed and statistical analysis that often place people in a bracket and inadvertently shut them down. For example, reading a report that says 45% of students in Detroit will fail to graduate high school, may put a Detroit high-schooler in a mode that tells him there’s nothing he can do to stop this fate. It’s inevitable. And no movie, show, or motivational speaker can change that train of thought, it has to come from within.

Person’s literary show brings down the walls of conformity and enters the soul, and with a strong force of action, forces the reader to declare war on their inner demons.

Read the original post here.
Follow Kendall F. Person on Twitter @ThePublicBloggr
On Facebook at The Public Blogger

© C. J. Leger September 14, 2014