Tag Archives: reviews

Shine a little light …

  

With the replacement of two books in my post-Katrina library, one classic (BKS Iyengar’s Light on Yoga) and a modern interpretation and condensation of that classic, with great illustrations and “work in the posture” tips (Iyengar students Silva, Mira and Shyam Mehta’s Yoga: The Iyengar Way), I have again begun practicing yoga. It’s been a long time since I was able to comfortably do padmasana (the lotus position), let alone matsyasana (the fish), and it’s definitely been at least 75 pounds since my last sirsasana (shoulder stand)! I must admit, my previous practice never made it all that far – years of sitting at a desk had even then seriously reduced my leg flexibility – but let me tell you, it’s not EXACTLY like riding a bike. Very difficult to pick up where you leave off, particularly when the “leaving off” can be measured in dog (or tree) years.

But I’m back at it; working in the garden lately has reminded me of just how stiff, unlimber and soft I’ve become – and trying to get back into the swing of regular meditation with a body that unprepared for stillness is no picnic.

I can’t say enough positive things about Iyengar’s book: his discussion of breathing and the philosophy and art of exercise dovetails quite beautifully with my other current re-reading of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (the Swami Satchidananda translation and commentaries). And the Mehta’s book, although missing a number of key poses and definitely reduced in scope for a less comprehensive audience, particularly on the spiritual aspects, is very good with respect to step-by-step written and photographic instructions. Both works inspirational, and highly recommended for all.

I only managed about 10 minutes worth today; but already I can tell the difference.

Om namah shivaya, ya’ll 🙂

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Dear Coca-Cola

Dear Coca-Cola:

Please take a minute to review your situation. I realize that it must seem important to keep up with the Joneses (and I mean that figuratively; I don’t seriously believe the Jones Soda company is any significant threat to you), but REALLY. There are now so many different Coca-Cola products on the market (the latest being Coca-Cola Blak, which by the way tastes like a badly mixed Kahlua and Coke) that it is getting nearly impossible to walk into a convenience store and exit carrying a Coke and a pack of cigarettes. Not that it’s your business about the cigarettes, but …

I should think that your experience with “New” Coke (and admit it, you blew it there and in some tizzy over celebrity endorsements for Pepsi you listened to somebody who probably should have been committed and “changed” the Coke formula) would have taught you something. Keeping up with the Joneses did not help you there — and in fact, probably started Michael Jackson’s downward spiral thanks to his endorsement of your competitor’s product. Stick to what you’re good at. Stick to what works. Plain Coke works. Real Coke drinkers (who are your audience anyway) drink it. And isn’t that what you want, anyway? A devoted power base for whom if asked “Is Pepsi OK?” will say “Hell, no.” and drink tap water before substituting anything for a Coke. Those real Coke drinkers don’t need lime, cherry or vanilla varieties. Most of ’em don’t need Diet, Caffeine Free, Caffeine Free Diet, etc. either. Haven’t you noticed? Like the substance that used to be an ingredient in your formula, what you have is STILL pretty damned addictive. So don’t mess with it; don’t gussy it up, don’t change the packaging, the formula or the varieties. They’re simply not necessary. And here’s why:

Coca-Cola, not any other brand of carbonate beverage, is asked for nationwide. When someone requests a soda, soft drink, soda pop, a cold drink or a pop, chances are they mean Coca-Cola. Hell, sometimes ANY kind of soft drink is referred to as a “Coke”. Perhaps that’s because with the exception of Big Shot Rootbeer (which is only available in and around the New Orleans area anyway), and perhaps Verner’s Ginger Ale (likewise geographically limited, albeit to the Midwest rather than Midsouth) Coca-Cola is the most consistently satisfying carbonated beverage ever created. It also, with the aforementioned Big Shot Rootbeer again excepted, is the most logical, statistically preferable additive to any number of alcohol based cocktails. Who asks for an “Rum and RC” or “Jack and Pepsi”? A Bacardi and Tab? Get real.

So think about it, Coca-Cola. Focus on what you’re good at, and forget the short-term, fancy-pants fads and those “Coke drinkers” who think Coke isn’t good enough as is. They are NOT Coke drinkers.

Sincerely,
A Lifelong Coca-Cola Drinker (except for that short stretch of years, when due to the proximity of the Pepsi bottling plant to my grandmother’s house in rural Ohio, I was forced to swill things like Teem).

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On South Park

First, it’s a situation comedy. A situation comedy that deliberately offends some in order to humor others. That’s not really so unusual. It’s not really “teaching us to be tolerant,” however. The majority of comedy has always been (since Euripides, anyway) based on belittling, verbally abusing, mocking and perjorating other people, their beliefs, their way of life, the way they talk; or finding glee in their misfortunes. Particularly people that you either don’t know, don’t like or are afraid you might somehow be associated with. I agree, you have a right to say what you like. But do you have a right to hurt other people with that speech? Isn’t that really a form of hate speech? Or is it only hate speech if you or someone you like are the targets? In other words, did the burning of witches start with bonfires, or hateful, ignorant people striking matches while making fun of strange looking women digging along the roadside for medicinal herbs?

Second, it’s a TELEVISION program. Granted, it may be about entertainment, or cultural commentary, even, but its first and foremost function is to serve as the delivery mechanism for advertisements. And if that delivery mechanism reduces the warm, fuzzy feeling in a percentage of consumers, it will not continue to be broadcast. It’s not in the network’s best interest to incur boycotts, protests, hate-mail or anything that might threaten its bottom line, or the inclination of its advertisers to continue their patronage.

Thirdly, I don’t think it’s free speech issue, and using the example of Jesus defecating on Bush and the flag as an “acceptable” substitute for an image of Mohammed doesn’t prove the tolerance of Christianity over Islam regarding free expression. Suppose, instead, that they portrayed Jesus smoking a joint, fondling a transvestite prostitute and voting Democrat or attending a Klan rally (either one, both demonstrate extremes). THAT would have caused outrage. But the bulk of the South Park audience is probably in agreement with any of these scenarios as possible, if not probable; it’s only people who don’t GET the show (they would posit) that would be offended. But then again, that’s where your definition of humor fits into the equation. Satire and irony are one thing. The question I have for South Park is this: could they have made their point without being offensive? Without belittling anyone? Who would have thought it was funny? The dilemma here what people think is funny. If it’s not funny in a way that pushes the envelope, no one would watch, and the advertisers would suffer. On the other hand, if it’s too funny (in a way that makes poignant insights into the way we live and suggests a better way), most people wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t watch, and the advertisers would suffers. And finally, if it’s over-the-top top funny in the traditional belittling, mocking, smug way of most humor, someone’s bound to get offended (because we all take ourselves a bit too seriously, anyway) and the advertisers suffer.

Is this worth even talking about?

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Why is a Cat Like a Sidewalk?

OK, there’s a joke that runs something like this:

Q: If a hen and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, why is a cat like a sidewalk?
A: Because neither one of them can play the piano, of course.

In other words, life is often a scintillating series of surreal non sequiturs, and to the untrained, or unobservant eye, can seem to be nothing more than random, chaotic events.

Which brings me to my point of the day:

If you have never lived in the country, or have some actual genealogical ties to rural America, or at a minimum lived in proximity to the large masses of flyover country that border upon rural America, how authentic is your country music? If you don’t know at least one farmer, let’s say, or cowboy or rancher or sharecropper or cross-country truck driver or redneck-hillbilly-cracker-coonass-mudbug-hick, and you’re not or haven’t ever been one of the previous, how authentic can your expression of traditional rural music be?

It’s one thing to exploit the milieu of a musical form, either in novelty or parody or insult. And it’s another to pay tribute to a musical form that speaks to your heart or mind. To me, the majority of Americana artists out there today, particularly those who are considered alt.country, fall into one of these two camps. They’ve never seen a cow, or been beyond the Holland Tunnel, or traveled outside of a comfortable cellphone service area. Like today’s punks, who can buy suits off the shelf on Melrose Avenue that have been ripped apart and safety pinned back together, they may buy clothes at Walmart or thrift stores but it’s not because they HAVE to. It’s because they are trying to portray a certain kind of image — the kind that Old Navy with it’s brand new “trucker” hats and Hot Topic with its pressed and freshly embossed Clash t-shirts — an image that is not who THEY are. It’s somebody else’s dream (or considering the plight of the average farmer/truck driver, somebody else’s nightmare). The truth is this: nobody who HAS to work in a shirt with their name on it really WANTS that kind of job. It’s not cool to be covered in grease, or coal black, or road dust, or chicken feathers or cowshit. It’s not cool to be looked down on by the vulture doctors and lawyers who infest small towns and use up three quarters of the phone book preying on their aging, gullible and high-risk-for-accident neighbors. It’s not cool to speak with a drawl on a visit to New York and immediately be thought a moron or retarded, even though your IQ may be at least 20 points higher than the fast-talking, sharp-dressed go-getter who shoved their way in front of you in line at Starbucks.

As I’ve said before, part of the problem is that country music CANNOT be country music and have national significance. It is regional. Cajun music, while perhaps appreciated in Maine, is of both greater import and viriliity in Louisiana. What plays in Mecklenburg shouldn’t be the same as what plays in Bakersfield, unless somebody from one is on tour in the other. Not to say that there shouldn’t be cross-pollenization, or that one style can’t learn from another. But what should be most important to country music fans should be LOCAL music first. And live music, at that.

It’s about interpretation, filtered through experience, tempered by environment, forged by connection.

Or it ain’t country music. It’s, to paraphrase Johnny Cash, Nashville trying to sell records to folks who buy cowboy boots in New York City.

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Earthseasick

Tolkein’s world of fabled creatures
did not speak to me
of my own sense of purpose,
or responsibility

and so its strange translation
onto film I did not mind;
except the Ents and Bombadil,
who Jackson left behind.

But Earthsea, in which my own life
found endless parallel,
and traced a journey like my own
through a personal hell,

when wrought onscreen seemed stale and trite,
its lessons left unspoke,
and mists around its message
lost, somewhere on a fake Roke.

13 DEC 2004

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Give Me That Old School Religion, Part 1

WHAT: Patti Smith and Her Band
WHEN: Tuesday, June 15, 2004
WHERE: House of Blues, New Orleans

OK, so the impetus to see Patti Smith came about with relatively no warning, little advance notice. I was minding my own business, returning home from dropping my daughter off at summer Driving School, and listening to WWOZ which is one of the benefits of living in New Orleans (although you can now access this listener-supported station anywhere in the world, thanks to the Internet) – a jazz and heritage Music station that plays the Music of its own geographic location (as opposed, I guess, to college radio stations that depending on where you live, may or may not have much local original Music to support).

It was the tail-end of the first afternoon show, and I caught part of an interview in progress. The voice of the person being interviewed and what she was saying I immediately recognized as Patti Smith. Well, it wouldn’t have been hard to guess. There are, unfortunately, too few women in Music who are willing to pontificate on the philosophical and political implications of corporate America and its ultimate affect on the viability and substance of rock and roll. There aren’t very many men who talk that way, either. Maybe Lou Reed. To make a long story somewhat shorter, one of the things that Patti was passionately describing was that rock and roll belongs to the people, not to the corporations, and it’s about time we took it back. She wondered about the marketing of pop stars as punk icons, and also compared the corporate control of the major airwaves to a government administration that had not been elected. OK, so she and I agree politically on a great number of things.

It was not hard to convince stardances and her best friend of 25 years (whose birthday we needed something for, anyway), who came of age during the late 70s and like me knew who Patti Smith WAS, that it was essential that we attend the show.

Cut to the bar, prior to the show. The bartender (a young woman probably in her mid-20s) asked us (because, I guess, we looked like we would know), “There’s Patti Smith and Patty Smythe. Are they the same?” This is, mind you, a bartender at the House of Blues.

Short Explanation: Patty Smythe, 80s. Patti Smith, 70s. Patti Smith not married to John McEnroe. Patty Smythe probably doesn’t know Lou Reed. Patti Smith came first. Patti Smith would probably never duet with Don Henley. And so on. Of course, we knew enough to set her and the barbacks straight on the issues. LOL.

The stage room at the House of Blues is a great size to see a three to five piece band. You can get close enough (in fact, without too much trouble you can kiss the stage) to see everything clearly, to make eye contact. But there is enough back area by the bar to get some air, and the balcony affords a view of the throng from the safety of some distance. The House of Blues itself is at times, however, a bit creepy. There’s a preoccupation with death; a lot of RIPs, tombstone-like relief lighting, combination kitsch-revival sloganeering, and the underlying presence of religion gone awry. The combination of voodoo and hoodoo, but both given a Hollywood veneer, ya know. But the way they have it set up, you enter down an “alley” and step down into the club.

I can liken the show itself to a religious service, particularly given the intro provided by walking through the HOB to the stage room. Prior to the first number (there was no opening act), there was a pretty constant mid-level hum of chatter, laughter, meet-and-greet conversation. In the pre-curtain minutes, you could see that there were distinct crowd clusters in the audience:

First, the folks that had been Patti Smith fans since Patti Smith became Patti Smith. The older set, the ones who were former punks, now grown up along with Patti. These were of both sexes, and could be distinguished by the fact that they, unlike most of the rest of the audience, actually were dancing. These you could associate with the people at church who are there to hear the sermon and apply it directly, at that moment, to their lives.

Second, the folks that had been converted to their current politico-social framework as a result of Patti Smith. This is not the same as the first group, in that the first group ALREADY were converted when they encountered Patti Smith. They worshipped, so to speak, Patti’s gods; whereas the Patti converts worship Patti. Of course, these can be easily identified by the intense expressions on their faces as they strain to hear every single word that drips, drawls, screams, croons, or whispers from Patti’s mouth. These people DO NOT dance. They are seemingly non-affected by the medium in which the message is delivered, and show concern only the for the message (which is, of course, only half the message, and some would argue the less important half). These you could associate with the front row pew sitters who follow along in their highlighter-stained Bibles, know exactly when to shout “Amen” and somehow every week fail to appreciate that the sermon provides direct insight into the condition of their souls, and not just the poor folk back in the rear of the church.

Third, the folks that understand that to be considered alternative, one must be seen at a Patti Smith concert. I will not comment on this lot. These are the people who go to church to get a date.

Fourth, the significant others of the second and third groups. These are the people that end up as the dates or life partners of “religious” church attendees, who find the attitude of constant self-righteousness a little over the top, but basically are too busy or cowardly to make much of a stink about it. Besides, they enjoy the barbeque pork picnics and other social aspects, so long as they don’t turn into crusades to convert the surrounding picnic areas.

Fifth, those folks obviously not interested in whether Patti Smith or Patty Smythe were playing, as long as they were allowed to enter the club and party at the House of Blues, drinking copious amounts of alchocol, seeing and being seen. These are the people who attend church simply for the free food and drink. Doesn’t matter what’s on the table, or what kind of sermon they have to sit through to get it.

Sufficed to say, the best time was really to be had by group one; of which, our party of three was a member. It was obvious that these crowd cells would gravitate towards each other.

I’m tired of writing this already, and the show hasn’t even started yet. LOL. More later.

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The Element Book of Mystical Verse

Covering the poetic ground, so to speak, from the Vedas through Stevie Smith, this is a book that I picked up on a discount rack at Barnes and Noble about a year ago. Recently, I dug it off the shelf, looking perhaps for something to link myself as a poet to the ages. And I discovered something — modern Poetry tends to the concrete, to examining the trivial as if it were somehow majestic and universally enlightening — which it is, of course — and treating anything that touches on greater themes, on the piercing of the veil, reaching through the “Cloud of Unknowing” as some kind of wishy-washy, meaningless search for existence outside of the existential quagmire that we have created with our technology. Most of the Poetry I read lately from modern sources seems to be like our cultural bias — absolutely materialistic, with little or no spiritual significance to the reader. Most of it deals with our fascination with cynicism, and disregard of something more elemental.

Who has the time, most would ask, to delve into the dark night of the soul? After all, the darkness has been artificially illuminated by night-lights, television sets, street lamps and glow-in-the-dark alarm clocks. We are as a culture surrounded by the white noise of our own busyness. And that, I think, is our greatest tragedy. That regardless of the spiritual path we think we are on, we seek to remedy symptoms not recognizing the cause of our sickness.

When did we, as artists, become so useless? Where are those touchstones upon which the future can be solidly constructed? I realize that EVERY religion, regardless of its temporal might, is always only one generation from extinction. But we insist that the precepts and underpinnings of those religions can be passed from generation to generation with laws, edicts and some kind of controlling mechanism that will direct the energies of youth into suitable pursuits, with the spectre of eternal ostracism as the deterrent to aberration.

There is a sobering lesson to be learned from reading such a treasury of “mystical works”. Mysticism is about absolute personal and individual interaction with something larger than yourself — however you choose to define it. Ultimately, that is freedom and liberty — and perhaps anarchy. But it is absolutely essential to the development of humankind. To their evolution into something more than parrots who regurgitate upon command the experience of someone else and pass it off as their own interpretation of reality.

What we as a culture suffer from is spiritual plagiarism. And rather than fight against it, advising the individual to seek their own truth, based on where their feet are actually on the path, so many of our so-called elders rely upon the convenience of control to shape the world to be. No wonder there is “nothing new under the sun.” It is because we instruct our young to seek within the box that we ourselves are constricted within. So few wonder what is beyond the confines of the cardboard — so that when the natural elements deteriorate the boundaries, there is great shock and concern that the actual SKY can be see through the remaining wisps of corrugation.

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