Zuky

I'm Even Deeper Than Beau Sia

Writers On Strike Still Writing, On Behalf Of Strike

[ Via A Tiny Revolution ]

Pre-Holiday Roundup

Going into the holiday weekend, it seems like a good idea to lighten up the mood a bit with some vacuous pop culture — though I'm gonna stay on the topic of race for the moment, this being Thanksgiving and all.

First, via Angry Asian Man, one from the Time Machine: to your right, this 1987 magazine cover nicely sums up why the ignorant Sarah Silvermans of the world think what they do about Asians. I was in high school and a Time subscriber when this cover was published, and I remember thinking, This is probably good for my grades and bad for my social life.

Ironically, the kid in the blue shirt on the far left is Masi Oka, a Japanese American actor who now stars in the TV show "Heroes", and who is currently featured in People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue. Admittedly, Oka isn't The Man (obviously that would be George Clooney), and actually he kinda sneaks into The List under the miscellaneous banner "The Men of Heroes". Nevertheless, People does explicitly name Yul Kwon, John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim, and Edison Chen — surely the most Asian men ever to have been included in this silly annual tradition. I'm not sure what I think about all this, but Jeff Yang has quite a bit to say about the phenomenon in his Asian Pop column at SFGate entitled "Do You Think We're Sexy?".

Meanwhile in other oddball sex-related Orientalist news, pictured to your left and found on sale at eBay, "Fantasy Goddess of Asia Barbie".

No comment.

Finally, Rob Schmidt over at Newspaper Rock brings us our Thanksgiving links. First, from an Oct. 12, 1492, journal entry by Christopher Columbus, the first European stereotype of American Indians:

They seemed on the whole to me to be a very poor people. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. It appears to me that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants, and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians as they appear to have no religion.

At DN Online, Louis Jones reports on alternate views of Thanksgiving:

Each year, members of the Wampanoag Indian tribe and their supporters gather at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Mass. for the National Day of Mourning. The holiday occurs on the third Thursday of November, the same day as Thanksgiving, and it was started in 1970 by the United American Indians of New England in honor of American Indian people and their struggles, according to the UAINE mission statement.

The American Indian attendees of the National Day of Mourning spend Thanksgiving day protesting the oppression and genocide their culture experienced at the hands of European settlers. But not all American Indians feel the need to protest Thanksgiving, and perspectives on the holiday vary greatly among American Indian tribes, nations and indviduals, Kenan Metzger, Ball State University professor of English, said. Metzger is of Hochungra, Cherokee and German descent.

"It's important to get the voices of many Indians on the issue," Metzger said. "There's no monolothic American Indian culture or perspective."

Over at BeyondChron, Tommi Avicolli Mecca states unequivocally:

Thanksgiving is a lie. Just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

There's no more truth to the Hallmark moment of Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a feast of squash, corn and turkey than there is to Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag. No definitive historical evidence exists to prove either patriotic legend. According to my favorite history text, "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen, it was all manufactured to create a feel-good beginning for this country.

Thanksgiving wasn't invented by the Pilgrims. By the time the Mayflower pulled up at Plymouth Rock in 1620, Native Americans in that part of the country already had a rich tradition of marking the fall harvest with a major fiesta. The day wasn't recognized nationally until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a holiday. He had an entirely different motive than honoring the Pilgrims: Morale during the bloody Civil War. America needed a warm fuzzy holiday to make it feel good about itself again.

The Pilgrims were latecomers to the legend, not getting added to the mix until the 1890s.

Nevertheless, however you choose to spend your holiday weekend, I do suggest that we all take a moment to be humbly thankful for whatever blessings we have been given, because life on this magnificent Earth is precious, magical, capricious, and fleeting; and that's not a lie.

White Supremacy By Any Other Name

When now-disgraced comedian Michael Richards screeched into his microphone "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass!" followed shortly by "He's a n----r! A n----r, look, there's a n----r!" he was obviously attempting to drum up the vibe of a lynch mob closing in on its target. That's some funny shit, eh?

Here's how hilarious it is: To your left, Lige Daniels, lynched in Center, Texas, on August 3, 1920. To your right, Rubin Stacy, lynched in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 19, 1935. Here are but two among tens of millions of murders attributed to America's long history of genocidal white supremacy.

As you can see, these are mirthful family affairs. The children are smiling innocently. The parents are proud and upstanding.

I guess this is Michael Richards' comedic vision of America, and that of all those who are defending his invocation of the twisted pathology of sexualized white supremacist violence.

Yes, the n-word is "just a word": a word that has historically led to scenes such as these. If you're cool with such scenes, by all means continue supporting this word's use by "edgy" white folks (you say "edgy", I say "coward hiding in a mob"). You know why black folks "are allowed" to use the n-word (though it remains deeply controversial in the black community)? Here's a hint: look at the pictures and see if you spot any black folks among the living. Okay I'll fill you in: they're the ones being murdered; white folks are the ones doing the murdering. Get it? In the context of the n-word's countless unpunished crimes, black folks are not the accused.

"Just a word": what a moronic defense. I suppose "war" is "just a word" as well — unless you happen to be among those getting bombed and shot. "I intend to kill you and your family" are just words too, but if someone were to say those words to me, my response would be very unwordy. I think it's bizarre that middle-class American liberals appear to have become so comfortably, mentally astral that they believe that language and reality are somehow disconnected; as though words and thoughts are powerless postmodern playthings that have no consequences in the real world; as though every actual atrocity in human history didn't begin with "just a word".

Michael Richards and his ruined career are not the point here. The point is that if we're ever to move beyond our current racial strife, we need to begin with enough intellectual honesty to acknowledge and understand America's glaring legacy of white supremacy. As this popular comedian's tirade shows, that legacy is alive and kicking in the American psyche. Shrugging it off as a "politically incorrect" use of an insensitive "racial epithet", or as some mysterious "hostility" that bubbled up out of nowhere, demonstrates a profound ignorance and denial of this country's past and present. And as long as such ignorance and denial dominate our national discourse, we will remain unable to accurately and meaningfully talk about, think about, and transcend the blood-soaked, heavy-hearted legacy of the American Color Line.

We Are Fools To Make War On Our Brothers In Arms

These mist-covered mountains
Are home now for me
But my home is in the lowlands
And always will be

Someday you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher

And though it did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

Now the sun's gone to hell
And the moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die

But it's written in the starlight
And every line in your palm
We are fools to make war
On our brothers in arms

— Mark Knopfler, "Brothers in Arms"

Mocked Or Invisible In Our Own Country

From ABC News:

Few groups with as long a history in this country as Asian-Americans have been portrayed in such a limited variety of roles: The kung fu fighter. The studious nerd. The mercenary businessman. The "Dragon Lady." The prostitute.

In his new documentary, The Slanted Screen, writer/producer/director Jeff Adachi says these narrow screen portrayals are dangerous because they affect the way Asian-Americans are perceived in the real world, shaping and defining their identities. [...]

One of the most notorious Asian stereotypes was the character Long Duk Dong in the popular 1984 "brat pack" film "Sixteen Candles."

Young Japanese-American actor Gedde Watanabe played the undersexed, nerdy foreign-exchange student whose ethnicity was the butt of jokes throughout the film.

In "Slanted Screen," comedian Bobby Lee of MAD TV says, "My nickname was 'Long Duk Dong' in high school because of that character, and I think every Asian guy that ever went to an American school's nickname was Long Duk Dong because of that character. That means that you're not going to get any girls." [...]

A study released last month done by UCLA researchers for the Asian American Justice Center confirmed that there had not been a tremendous amount of progress for Asian-American actors looking for leading roles on network TV.

While Asian-Americans make up 5 percent of the U.S. population, the report found only 2.6 percent were primetime TV regulars.

And shows set in cities with large Asian populations, like New York and Los Angeles, had few Asian roles.

One out of five people in the New York City borough of Queens is Asian, but CBS's "The King of Queens" has no Asian characters. [...]

The danger, "Law & Order's" Wong says, is that Asian-Americans can become invisible in their own country.

"I felt a great need to prove to people that there was such a thing as an Asian-American person. I don't think that people in this country generally, widely understand that there are people with my face that were actually born here."

The lack of what Wong calls "an American landscape that's really diverse" on TV is "tremendously damaging for kids."

Wong says as a kid, this said to him, "You're not welcome. You're not welcome in this industry. And frankly, I'm not so sure you're so welcome in the country in general."

"People really trust and believe in what they see on the television," Wong told Stossel. "I certainly trusted and believed it when I was a kid. … And it did a number on me."

Tisa Chang agrees. "A young person growing up, seeing himself lampooned and caricatured with broken English or buck teeth or slanty eyes. … It's really quite an emotional and psychic trauma for a young person."

Yao Ming Accepts Award Wearing Longest Suit Ever

From China Daily (via Angry Asian Man):

Basketball megastar Yao Ming has been presented an award by the University of Houston as part of the 10th anniversary celebration of the University's Asian American Studies Center.

The award is a testimony of Yao's contribution to the development of the integration between Asian and American cultures.

Zou Yali, director of the center, says Yao Ming has brought a new light to this developing relationship.

She notes, Yao Ming is one of the most successful global figures who inspire millions of young people to achieve their dreams in many ways. He highly values education and provides scholarships for under-privileged students to attend university.

Yao Ming donated his jersey and raised 1,300 US dollars at auction. Two basketballs with Yao's signature have collected a total of 3,700 US dollars.

Proceeds from the gala will help further fund the development of Asian American Studies courses, research projects, study-abroad and scholar-exchange programs, and community activities.

Now Take Your Medication For Racial Dysphoria

From Amal at Austrolabe (via Racialicious):

Gwyneth Paltrow, beaded and adorned in clothing Africanus, looks out at us breathtakingly in the way only superstars can. It’s that sultry “bite me, you’re not this hot and successful yet still humble” look. Said look is usually accompanied by an artificial breeze.

“I am African”, declares a wind-swept Gwyneth, looking more Gucci than Ghana. Of course you are. We all are. Now, take your medication for racial dysphoria and rest a while.

To be fair, she’s not the only celebrity who took part in this monstrosity of a charity campaign, the purpose of which escapes me. All that resonates is the whiter than white faces decrying their Africanness.

While the photographs will act as little more than a reminder of how gorgeous famous people are, and just how far airbrushing has come, it thankfully provides long-lasting luvvie fodder for cynical bloggers just waiting to annihilate celebs who took the lyrics to “We are the World” literally.

Once upon a time celebrities knew their places in society – be rich, beautiful, and entertaining. Attaching one’s fabulous self to a cause was OK, so long as the star didn’t become it.

It’s getting harder to reconcile self-aggrandizing contemporary luvvies with their charitable tendencies, though. Now they all seem intent to air kiss their way to world peace, latching on to a cause that will enhance the public persona. Like an accessory (think Paris’ handbag puppy), the cause becomes synonymous with the star and what is little more than an exaggerated sense of self-importance translates into a Polaroid moment slash PR opportunity. Egocentricity feeds altruism. [...]

The work of celebrities is certainly valuable; their humanitarian efforts should not be discounted, but some perspective is needed – many more ordinary people do greater work without advertising it, and the approach is usually the no frills type. That is, no weird glamour campaigns. Superstars are particularly important when it comes to raising awareness. Usually, it’s more likely that the flavour du jour will get the needed media attention more easily than an emeritus professor who never sees daylight.

But it’s beyond ridiculous when stars lacking the relevant qualifications preach to the masses. In some cases, showing up to a fundraiser should be the most he or she attempts.

The Contender Finale: Steve Forbes vs. Grady Brewer

Two fighters remain in this season of ESPN's The Contender: Steve Forbes and Grady Brewer. They fight next Tuesday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles; the winner walks away with half-a-million dollars. Cutting to the chase: that means Steve "2 Pound" Forbes is 4 days away from a very nice paycheck and a shot at going big time. [Pictured: left, Steve Forbes; right, Forbes in black trunks and semi-finalist Cornelius "K9" Bundrage in blue.]

Having watched every episode this season, I'm as surprised as anyone to hear myself say that The Contender is great TV. I didn't watch the first season because, as a boxing fan, I wasn't able to endure the sight of an incoherent Sylvester Stallone acting as ringside expert and kingmaker. This season, Sly has done us all a big favor by serving as executive producer from behind the cameras, leaving the onscreen role to Sugar Ray Leonard. Although Leonard's contribution to boxing remains fiercely debated among the "knowing coves" of pugilism (some of whom still resent the flamboyant commercialism that the original Golden Boy introduced to the scene), I've found him to be a great host, bringing slickness, likability, and a battle-tested heart to his narration. The classic onscreen presence of head trainer Tommy Gallagher also helps give the show a gritty old-school feel.

What really makes The Contender work, however, is the simple fact that it's about boxing, and here's what I mean: The genre of "reality TV" usually involves creating elaborate forums for melodramatic interpersonal conflict. In most shows, that conflict plays itself out through manipulative scheming and petty hostility. In a show about boxing, however, there's no need for such pretense. Conflict, in its purest form, is built-in: In every episode, two men step into the ring and fight. The rest of the show can thus be devoted to painting positive portraits of the boxers and their families, giving all the fighters an opportunity to tell their stories, to talk about their struggle and sacrifice, to express their motivations and aspirations. It's a refreshing, often-stirring counterpoint to the negative images of boxing that usually grab headlines. And the irony is that a show about an allegedly-uncivilized sport is actually far more elevating and refined that the bug-eating, back-stabbing, race-baiting, arbitrary stupidity that dominates "reality TV".

The show's weakness is that when it comes to the technical side of the craft — the "sweet science" of boxing — The Contender's talent pool hasn't been quite up to snuff. All the fighters seem like good guys with lots of heart, but many have looked mediocre in terms of punching technique, footwork, upper body movement, rhythm and range. Some appear to fight on sheer toughness and courage, which is admirable in a sense but certainly not what boxing fans like me would prefer to see.

As a sidenote, I have serious doubts about the show's claim that all the fighters are natural welterweights, and that all have succesfully weighed in at 149 lbs before each fight. In particular, it seems implausible to me that Cornelius Bundrage is a welterweight. He sure looks like a middleweight to me.

Regardless, we're down to one final 10-round fight between Steve "2 Pound" Forbes and Grady "Bad Boy" Brewer. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll be close. Throughout the tournament, Forbes has clearly stood out as the savviest, most technical boxer of the lot. His clean, efficient footwork allows him to slide around his opponent for superior positioning, and his slick upper body movement and shoulder rolls make him hard to hit from any range. He doesn't have tremendous power, but he has good handspeed and can throw punches from a variety of angles. What's more, after losing the first round of his fight against Bundrage, Forbes showed that he's capable of adapting his style in order to find ways to win.

Grady Brewer, for his part, is a technically-sound boxer with decent fundamentals, but I think he's just too slow for Forbes and he has a couple of bad habits that could be dangerous. In his fight against Noberto Bravo, Brewer showed that he's vulnerable to the left hook immediately after he throws either hand, which will be a serious problem against Forbes. I anticipate that Forbes will rock Brewer with left hooks and right uppercuts, and even lead uppercuts. I think there's a real chance for a knockout here. It's too bad somebody has to have their ass beat, because Brewer seems like a genuinely gentle human being and an underdog that you just hope will prevail against all odds. I'm kind of hoping that I'm wrong about this; nevertheless, here's my bottom line:

Forbes by late-round knockout or unanimous decision.

Steve Irwin (1962-2006)

[ A hesitant note from Kai: As an avid amateur naturalist and lifelong fan of nature TV shows — including "The Crocodile Hunter" — I'm saddened by Steve Irwin's seemingly bizarre death. Yet as Steve himself often insisted, the harsh reality is that untamed nature is at all times and under all circumstances perfectly ruthless and unpredictably powerful. I'd like to think that just as Irwin's passionate life's work helped humanity to better understand and respect nature, so too will his sudden departure. Godspeed, Steve.]

UPDATE (2006-09-06 14:10EST): The measured, hopeful sentiments expressed above were clearly misaligned with media reality. Steve Irwin's death has become an embarrassing feeding frenzy. Between blood-thirsty tributes, fake sentimentality, and attention-jealous coffin-dancing, we're seeing the corporate media for what it really is: a dehumanizing spectacle of disempowering distraction.

Happy That!

As you may have noticed, I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks. Been busy picking up a wicked sunburn on a Carribean beach. Now that I've adequately completed that task, I'm back in the saddle. Ready for work, and for blogging.

Personally, I view the 2- or 3-week period surrounding the winter solstice as the most naturally powerful time of the year. So I like to just celebrate whatever the people around me happen to be celebrating: Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, New Year's, random gift-giving, whatever. Who cares what you call it? It's all good to me.

So whatever it is that you celebrate around this time of year, Happy That!

Peace and Light.

"Santarchy"

From CNN (via the Huffington Post):

A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus outfits, many of them drunk, went on a rampage through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses, police said Sunday.

The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy", began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokesman Noreen Hegarty.

She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on office buildings.

One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff, who were later treated by paramedics, Hegarty said.

The remaining Santas entered another downtown convenience store and carried off beer and soft drinks.

"They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves," store owner Changa Manakynda said.

Two security guards were treated for cuts after being struck by beer bottles, Hegarty said. Three people, including the man who climbed on the cruise ship, were arrested and charged with drunkenness and disorderly behavior.

Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group, said Santarchy was a worldwide movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas.

Independent Lens: A Lion's Trail

For the past few weeks, I've been limiting my media diet to a low-fat regimen of public television, a couple of newspapers, a handful of blogs, and of course books. It's been nice. The blathering heads of the corporate networks are fading from my mind and memory like an unpleasant dream. In place of the commercial media's chattering labyrinths of fragmented thought and disconnected symbol systems, I'm hoping that a sharper, stiller worldview will have time and space to emerge.

One of the simple, concrete pleasures of this experiment has been re-discovering just how good much of the material shown on public television is. It's kind of encouraging: Despite everything that our corrupt federal government has done to sabotage America's public art and culture in general, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in particular, public television still offers higher quality programming than any of the commercial networks. I've been recording a few of PBS's documentaries and news programs on my DVR and usually watching them late at night with a good snack. Beyond avoiding the insulting tedium of incessant advertising and branding, PBS doesn't have shows about irrelevant celebrities or bug-eating or the corporate news read by an irrelevant celebrity news personality. Let's face it: with notable exceptions, commercial media is at best superfluous and at worst degrading. In contrast, the material I've caught on PBS has been largely substantive, elevating, and culturally enriching.

News shows like Frontline, NOW, and Wide Angle for the most part offer crisp, well-researched investigative journalism on an impressive range of relevant issues. And PBS's documentary series are uniformly excellent. In the American Masters series, Martin Scorsese's recent documentary about Bob Dylan, called "No Direction Home", offers up some of the most nuanced and enjoyable historical film-making I've seen. And in the American Experience series, "Malcolm X: Make It Plain" is an amazing portrait of an amazing man, featuring some of the best footage of Malcolm at the microphone.

One small film, however, has captured my imagination more than any other thus far: Independent Lens has brought us a 52-minute rough gem entitled "A Lion's Trail", which traces the fascinating and instructive history of one of the most famous songs of the 20th century, popularly known as "Wimoweh" or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Employing an unadorned, meandering, slightly ponderous storytelling style, director François Verster has pieced together a seemingly modest yet subtly rich cultural narrative about music, Africa, and the West.

Verster opens the film with grainy black-and-white footage of a group of Zulu hunters attacking and killing a large male lion with spears and shields, interspersed with textual slides establishing the premise of the movie. We learn that the basis of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (i.e. chord progression, basic harmonic and lyrical textures, chorus) was written by a Zulu man named Solomon Linda (pictured above) and recorded by his singing group, the Evening Birds, at Gallo Records in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1939. It was named "Mbube", meaning "lion". The record was a local hit, and the Evening Birds became a hot item on the Johannesburg-Durban circuit for what is known as the Isicathamiya style of traditional African singing.

In fact, this singing style continues to thrive today, and Verster's exploration of its vibrant offshoots on either side of the Atlantic is the beating heart of "A Lion's Trail". The narrative spine of the film, however, is the story of what happened to Solomon Linda, his song, and his descendants: "Mbube" went on to be recorded (with various embellishments) by some 180 different artists around the world. In the first anglicized version, Pete Seeger softened the B's in the song's mantra "Uyi-mbube" into "Wimoweh", which he recorded with The Weavers in 1951. Ten years later, The Tokens recorded a nifty pop arrangement with a 10-word verse ("In the jungle / the mighty jungle / the lion sleeps tonight"), which hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Subsequently, the song was featured in over 15 movies, in countless commercials, and in the one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, Disney's "The Lion King". Yet Solomon Linda never received a cent in royalties. Under South African apartheid, with full American complicity, blacks were denied ownership of copyrights. Solomon Linda died in 1962 so poor that his family couldn't afford a gravestone. To this day, his daughters and grandchildren live in stark, though dignified, poverty.

A substantial portion of "A Lion's Trail" follows the travails of Rian Malan, a tenacious South African journalist who first brought the story of Solomon Linda to the world in an article published in Rolling Stone in 2000. According to his own account, Malan expected the publication of his article to pressure the corporations and other parties involved to at least partially compensate Solomon Linda's daughters for their father's uncompensated work. It didn't work out that way. Malan, having gotten himself involved in the matter, felt obligated not to walk away and ended up becoming a reluctant crusader working to bring belated justice to Solomon Linda.

Malan is a grim-faced, brooding, troubled type who appears to be battling his demons by trying to force himself to do the right things. Despite being born into white Afrikaner privilege, Malan turned against apartheid and fled South Africa in the 1980s to avoid serving in the army. In his own guilt-torn words, "I ran because I wouldn't carry a gun for apartheid, and because I wouldn't carry a gun against it." He later returned and wrote My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience. His ongoing inner struggle shows on his sharp-featured face. Most of the clips we see of Malan in "A Lion's Trail" depict bouts of negativity and whining about obstacles and the contemptuous injustice of it all, which is unfortunate because his genuine love of African music and culture is obvious in his rare moments of joy. Regardless, what comes across beneath the embattled exterior is a man working his heart out for a noble purpose.

Indeed, a key characteristic of "A Lion's Trail" is the film-maker's desire to find nobility in a story that is essentially about corruption and the gnawing violence of white supremacist imperialism. It would have been easy to allow outrage to take over the film, but by keeping the story silently focused on music and human nobility and interconnectedness, Verster takes the high road and gives us something beyond advocacy journalism. He shows us not only what's wrong with the world, but also what's right with it.

What's right with the world? Here's a good place to start: music. And "A Lion's Trail" gives us plenty of it. From the opening scene, in which we hear for the first time Solomon Linda's resonant voice smoothly soaring and dipping in the original 1939 "Mbube", Verster weaves a musical thread back and forth, back and forth across the Atlantic, pulling the continents together into a single fabric. In a New York church, the Manhattan Brothers still have the chops and smooth moves from the old days in Africa. At the grave of Solomon Linda, his daughters build a tiny fire with matchsticks and herbs as an offering; they sing in prayer. Next to a Brooklyn basketball court, people on the street gather around drums in dance and trance. In a church in the South African town of Clermont, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a singing group that collaborated and toured with Paul Simon in the 1980s, raise the roof and bring down the light with a performance that has the ladies in the congregation jumping out of their seats with arms upraised.

That's what "A Lion's Trail" is all about: music, and its ability to connect us to something beyond ourselves. For the descendants of Solomon Linda and the inheritors of African song, music isn't just entertaining or fun or even sublime; it's their source of light, it's who they are, it's how they live. Unlike royalties, that can't be stolen.

UPDATE (2006-09-24 20:47EST): From the Dept. of Better Really Really Late Than Never, here's the news:

Last Friday [February 2006], [Solomon] Linda's legacy finally received some justice. After a six-year battle his surviving daughters Delphi, Elizabeth and Fildah, who had claimed almost R10-million from copyright holder Abilene Music, settled their dispute for an undisclosed sum. The settlement involves back payment of royalties to the family and the right to receive future payments for worldwide use.

The basis for the family's case was the Dickens Provision, which stipulates that 25 years after a creator's death, all rights should revert to the heirs, who would then be entitled to renegotiate deals and secure better royalty terms. [...]

"The settlement came about as a result of pressure from various sectors of society, both in South Africa and overseas," family lawyer Hanro Friedrich told Business Day.

It's unlikely that this pressure would have come to bear if it hadn't been for Rian Malan, South African journalist and author of the bestselling My Traitor's Heart. [...]

"It is the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa," Malan says of Mbube, "a tune that has penetrated so deep into the human consciousness over so many generations that one can truly say, here is a song the whole world knows.

"[I]t mutated into a truly immortal pop epiphany that soared to the top of the charts here and then everywhere, again and again, returning every decade or so under different names and guises.

"Navajo Indians sing it at pow-wows. Japanese teenagers know it as TK … It has been recorded by artists as diverse as REM and Glen Campbell, Brian Eno and Chet Atkins, the Nylons and schlockmeister Bert Kaempfert. The New Zealand army band turned it into a march. England's 1986 World Cup soccer squad turned it into a joke. Hollywood put it in Ace Ventura Pet Detective.

"It has logged nearly three centuries of continuous radio air play in the US alone." [...]

Mbube is now edging towards the 70-year-old mark, and only now is Solomon Linda's family seeing any real financial benefit. But how much has it earned over all those years, all those covers, for other people?

"I put the question to lawyers around the world, and they scratched their heads," Malan says. "Around 160 recordings of three versions? Thirteen movies? Half a dozen TV commercials and a hit play? Number Seven on Val Pak's semi-authoritative ranking of the most-beloved golden oldies, and ceaseless radio airplay in every corner of the planet?

"It was impossible to accurately calculate, to be sure, but no one blanched at $15 million. Some said 10, some said 20, but most felt that $15 million was in the ball park."

It's unlikely that Solomon Linda's daughters will be seeing anything like that, but at least some justice has now been done. The court settlement means they will be able to escape the dire poverty under which the family has lived since their father's death. The money will go into a trust, to be administered by SA Music Rights CEO Nick Motsatsi.

Linda wasn't bitter that his song brought success to others. "He was happy," his daughter Fildah told Malan. "He didn't know he was supposed to get something."

Guerilla Art

Archive (back by request): August 11, 2004

Banksy rocks: The subversive British artist has created a 20-foot solid bronze sculpture weighing three and a half tons, and cemented it in a public square named Clerkenwell Green in London. The statue depicts Justice, holding a scale and a sword, with her skirt raised to reveal kinky thigh-high boots, a thong, and dollar bills stuffed in her garter. The plaque on the pedestal reads "Trust no-one". The artist released a statement with its unveiling:

"This is a brand new monument for London. It is a monument dedicated to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid. It's the most honest depiction of British justice currently on display in the capital. I hope it stays there for good."

(Via WorldChanging and Lying Media Bastards)

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

The Matrix in Haiku

Online author kitten has rendered The Matrix entirely in haiku form (3 lines, respectively 5, 7, and 5 syllables). It's an impressive literary feat, and an entertaining read:

Door swinging open
Trenchcoated man and lightning
Very dramatic

    MORPHEUS
    At last, we now meet.
    I am Morpheus, but you
    Already knew that.

    NEO
    It's a great honor
    To finally meet you, sir.
    I've been waiting long.

Chairs and a table
Facing each other, they sit
The answers coming

    MORPHEUS
    So.  You're here because
    You know something important
    That you can't explain.

    I will explain it.
    The Matrix is all around.
    Even in this room.

    You can feel it
    When you go to work or church.
    Even when you sleep.

    You're a slave, Neo.
    In a jail you can't see
    Can't smell and can't touch.

    Unfortunately
    You can't be told what it is.
    You have to see it.

In his hands, two pills
Red and blue, they are offered
A final warning

    MORPHEUS
    This is your last chance.
    You can take the red or blue.
    These are your choices.

    Take the blue pill, and
    You will forget what happened.
    You'll live as you have.

    Take the red pill, and
    You will come with me. I can
    Show you the Matrix.

    Remember, Neo
    I'm only offering truth
    Nothing more than that.

Converging Forces in Late Summer

Two months of bloody mideast war, ugly presidential politics, and airheaded American summer pop culture have kaleidoscopically melded together on the world stage and culminated in massive protests against the Republican National Convention in New York City, a great Olympic games, and a schizophrenic MTV Video Music Awards dominated by a "Choose or Lose" political message.

The ongoing horror in Iraq, resulting in many thousands of deaths, is a product of the Bush administration's tragic failure in the mideast "war on terror". As one placard I saw over the weekend said: "George W. Bush: #1 Recruiter for Al Qaeda, 2 Years Running!" Disastrous White House policies have stirred a justified, if overpersonalized, rage at George W. Bush and his cronies, which is unleashing itself in massive popular demonstrations in New York City against the Republican National Convention this week.

The Bush administration's crass exploitation of 9/11 is frankly disgusting to New Yorkers. The Rovian Machiavellis in the Republican Party are wielding the memory of 9/11 as a tool to cynically manipulate American emotions, in the service of a corrupt political agenda. That's the level to which the highest office in our democracy has sunk. It's a flagrant betrayal of the spirit of the Constitution and the vision of the Founding Fathers. American democracy has been broken, rendered dysfunctional, not just by the Republican Party but by the two-party corporate mob that has forcibly grabbed hold of the nation's steering wheel.

The fake news media would rather talk about the weather. Well, I guess the presidential race has been a pretty big news story lately — at least when irrelevant celebrity trials, hyped-up storm systems, and missing white girls aren't dominating airtime, which is rare. To be fair, the "swift boat" controversy has given the election story some juice. But the mainstream news isn't about to go so far as to discuss the actual policy issues at stake in this election, like how to heal the wounds of the Iraq tragedy, how to revitalize the American economy, and how to address the great overarching issues of the 21st century, from building a clean energy grid and stopping AIDS, to generating a domestic and worldwide culture of progressive civic democracy with dominion over the anti-democratic forces of corporate neo-imperialism.

If you haven't noticed: anti-democratic corporate neo-imperialism is exactly what's been going on in the world for the past 30 years. Bush's invasion of Iraq simply takes the process of corrupt privatization to a brutal new extreme.

It makes sense that the corporate news insists on focusing not on policy but on trivia: campaign stops, faux folksy pageantry, and lame cultural stereotypes projected through soundbites and photo ops. In other words, the news is all about the stuff that doesn't matter. The stuff that matters falls by the wayside. I guess liberal media bias isn't all that it's cracked up to be. One reason for the media's fakeness is that according to corporate law, corporate activities aren't allowed to jeopardize the company's profits. Therefore, since NBC is owned by General Electric, you can't expect NBC news to give you the facts about the US government's military expenditures, since GE is one of the Pentagon's biggest defense contractors and NBC isn't allowed to endanger that. Yup, that's why privatizing everything and consolidating the media works so well for the megacorporations.

Indeed, America is well on its way to privatizing democracy itself, like any other corporate brand whose name is a lie. The White House and Capitol Hill might as well refer to themselves the General Electric White House and the Lockheed Martin Capitol Hill and put tags on the buildings saying "Democracy! Made in Taiwan". And political leaders might as well get rid of those boring blue suits and instead wear those jumpsuits that race car drivers wear covered with corporate logos. At least it would be clear which brands are paying for laws.

Seriously though, corporate branding has become a driving force in our society — as I was reminded when, for better or worse, I watched the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) on Sunday. I was amazed by the degree to which corporate brands have appropriated pop culture and absorbed countercultural propaganda into their marketing agendas.

In the 1980s Neil Young wrote a satirical rock song called "This Song's For You" (a parody of Budweiser's "This Bud's For You" ad campaign) which skewered the rise of corporate sellout rock. The song has turned out to be prophetic. Rock music is now commissioned by corporate brands for the purpose of advertising. At this year's VMAs, just about everything and everyone was branded, and it was hard to tell where the awards show stopped and the commercials began. Gap ads were slick productions with Lenny Kravitz rockin' out on his electric guitar and Sarah Jessica Parker semi-dancing in a bunch of almost-funky outfits. The ubiquitous iPod song ("Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" by Jet) was played both during the show and the commercials. There were lots of ads for video games, and an award for "Best Soundtrack From A Video Game" was presented to a band called Tony Hawk's Underground, who thanked their corporate sponsors for financing their rebellious music. Some underground.

MTV likes to pretend that it's hip to be gaudy and vain and self-glorifying and corporate-sponsored and shallow. Rappers need to wear diamonds and pop idols need to show skin and everyone needs to constantly preen and pose like runway models. The more crass, the more corporate-branded, the better. Why speak softly and carry a big stick when you can scream at the top of your lungs and pound a diamond-studded corporate advertising stick against the wall? From a certain perspective, it's all in good fun. At the same time, it reveals a deep insecurity and immaturity in pop culture, a weak-minded need to keep up with Joneses which, despite pop culture's false image of pimpy rebellion, is every bit as conformist as the 1950s Beaver Cleaver family. Golly gee, shake that booty.

On the other hand, there is some genuinely good stuff coming out of mainstream pop culture: Alicia Keys, Outkast, Linkin Park, Evanescence. Even Lenny Kravitz and Jet are playing some good solid rock for Gap and Apple. The Black Eyed Peas cranked out one of my favorite albums in years, Elephunk, then promptly sold one of the best songs on the album, the awesome pumping party anthem "Let's Get Retarded", to the NBA, which reformulated the song as "Let's Get It Started" for its TV ads. Ouch. That's some seriously cut funk. But even though the original uncut and undiluted version is cooler and deeper, "Let's Get It Started" is still a damn good song. It makes you nod your head and wince with the pounding rhythms. It's good funk and the Black Eyed Peas are an awesome group. Which leads me to the fundamental question: Who's playing who? Are the corporations playing the artists? Or are the artists playing the corporate brands? Or a mix of the two?

It's hard to say. Based on what I saw during the VMAs, it's still being worked out. Seems to me that no matter how much counterculture the corporations appropriate into their marketing pseudo-culture, there will always be a genuine subculture for real dissidents, revolutionaries, and rock 'n' rollers.

Like the VMAs, the Olympic Games were branded to a new extreme. Coca-cola secured a crazy deal with the Olympic committee declaring that ticket-buying fans at the Games could get kicked out of the stadium if they were wearing clothes adorned by logos of Coke's corporate competitors (i.e. Pepsi). That's probably part of the reason tickets didn't sell all that well: European fans were put off by the crass advertising. Nevertheless, I felt that it was a great Olympic Games. I love the fact that every 4 years citizens of the world come together to see who's got more athletic mojo. It's so much more fun than blowing each other up.

Interestingly, the two big stories in Athens were the US basketball team's underachievement and the Iraqi soccer team's overachievement. On the hoops front, it seemed that America was to some extent a victim of its own success. The NBA's global popularity (especially in the wake of the 1992 Barcelona Dream Team) has led kids around the world to grow up idolizing Michael Jordan. The result: other countries can play ball. Combine that with Americans going soft for fame and money, and you get a USA team that gets crushed by Italy, Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina.

As for the Iraqi soccer team, it was easy to predict that the Bush administration would try to politicize the Olympics by running TV ads claiming credit for the presence of Iraqi athletes in Athens. What's telling is that the Bushies have so little regard for the actual Iraqi athletes that they didn't even run the idea by them. The Iraqis clearly were not pleased, as Sports Illustrated reported:

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes." [...]

To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power.

But they also find it offensive that Bush is using Iraq for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions. "My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?" [...]

Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed Manajid's cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would "for sure" be fighting as part of the resistance.

"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid says. "Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq."

Try branding that.

Guerilla Art

Banksy rocks: The subversive British artist has created a 20-foot solid bronze sculpture weighing three and a half tons, and cemented it in a public square named Clerkenwell Green in London. The statue depicts Justice, holding a scale and a sword, with her skirt raised to reveal kinky thigh-high boots, a thong, and dollar bills stuffed in her garter. The plaque on the pedestal reads "Trust no-one". The artist released a statement with its unveiling:

"This is a brand new monument for London. It is a monument dedicated to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid. It's the most honest depiction of British justice currently on display in the capital. I hope it stays there for good."

(Via WorldChanging and Lying Media Bastards)

Women Who Rock

To follow up on my previous post applauding Juliya, metalhead hostess of Fuse's rock show Uranium, for her irreverent reporting from the Democratic National Convention: Philadelphia Weekly has a cover article profiling eleven trail-blazers who demonstrate that women in rock are not only being seen in front of cameras, but are also being heard behind them. It's a good thing:

"The story of women picking up guitars has been told, so we've elected to focus on a much-less heralded revolution: women who have influence and power behind the scenes — whether through running labels, booking clubs, promoting records or recording albums. All these women, whether they stand onstage or work behind the curtain, share one thing in common: They rock."

2004 World Stupidity Awards

Perhaps not all that surprisingly, George W. Bush came up big at the second annual World Stupidity Awards, walking away with 3 Golden Dunce Caps...

The World Stupidity Awards were created in the year 2003 to salute achievement in ignorance and stupidity. Although there are awards for those who kill themselves in acts of stupidity, there are none for those still living, who are likely more influential and dangerous ... The Stupidity Awards are here to give the titans of nincompoopery and the promoters of ignorance the credit they deserve. The awards focus on the phenomena of willful stupidity in an era of unprecedented knowledge and informational access. Nominees are invited to attend the award show. Winners take home, stupidity's "holy grail" the coveted "Golden Dunce Cap" at a glamorous ceremony at the world's largest comedy event, The Just for Laughs in July in Montreal.

Stupidest Man of the Year
2004 Winner: President George W. Bush
Other Nominees: John Kerry, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld

Stupidest Woman of the Year
2004 Winner: Private Lynndie England
Other Nominees: Courtney Love, Martha Stewart, Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson

Stupidest Trend of the Year
2004 Winner: Trucker Hats
Other Nominees: War, Spam, Climate Change, Terrorism

Stupidest Government of the Year
2004 Winner: The Government of the United States
Other Nominees: France, North Korea, Canada, The United Kingdom, Australia

Stupidest Media Outlet (which has made the greatest contribution to furthering ignorance worldwide)
2004 Winner: Fox News
Other Nominees: The Mirror (UK), Air America, The New York Times, Clear Channel

Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet
2004 Winner: George W. Bush & Prime Minister Tony Blair
Other Nominees: Kim Jong-il, Osama Bin Laden, Ariel Sharon & Yassar Arafat, Jessica Simpson

Stupidest Movie of the Year
2004 Winner (tie by audience vote): Gigli & The Passion Of The Christ
Other Nominees: New York Minute, The Day After Tomorrow, Scooby Doo 2

Stupidest TV Show of the Year
2004 Winner: The O'Reilly Factor
Other Nominees: The Simple Life, The Swan, Average Joe 2, Fear Factor

The French Weigh In On Harry Potter

This is one of those French socialist intellectual things that just makes American right-wingers beat their chests with red-blooded rage: The New York Times has run an op-ed, translated from the French paper Le Monde, about the Anglo-Saxon neoliberal capitalist underpinnings of the Harry Potter stories:

We have, then, an invasion of neoliberal stereotypes in a fairy tale. The fictional universe of Harry Potter offers a caricature of the excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social model: under a veneer of regimentation and traditional rituals, Hogwarts is a pitiless jungle where competition, violence and the cult of winning run riot.

The psychological conditioning of the apprentice sorcerers is clearly based on a culture of confrontation: competition among students to be prefect; competition among Hogwarts "houses" to win points; competition among sorcery schools to win the Goblet of Fire; and, ultimately, the bloody competition between the forces of Good and Evil.

This permanent state of war ends up redefining the role of institutions ... Harry Potter, probably unintentionally, thus appears as a summary of the social and educational aims of neoliberal capitalism. Like Orwellian totalitarianism, this capitalism tries to fashion not only the real world, but also the imagination of consumer-citizens. The underlying message to young fans is this: You can imagine as many fictional worlds, parallel universes or educational systems as you want, they will still all be regulated by the laws of the market. Given the success of the Harry Potter series, several generations of young people will be indelibly marked by this lesson.

WorldChanging remarks:

What most Americans don’t know about French intellectuals is that they only critique ideas and people they care about. It’s a sign of respect… err, most of the time. (This is alas one of the great misunderstandings driving the current Franco-American discord. The French care about America, but the reverse is not true.) Since culture is something they care a great deal about—in some ways the French see this as their specialty, with both good and bad consequences — this is naturally a topic analysts like Yocaris feel compelled to weigh in on. And weigh he did.

It seems to me that in a democratic society, a little high-profile jousting among prominent intellectuals is probably on the whole a good thing. Moreover, the actual substance of the French socialist critique of Harry Potter is rather intriguing. Sure, French intellectuals can be a bit annoying, but so can the intellectuals of any culture in the world, each in their own uniquely annoying ways. Obnoxious Americans like to say that without the US, those French intellectuals would be speaking German. What's left out of this picture is that without French intellectuals, America would not exist, seeing that Thomas Jefferson lifted, er, derived the philosophical underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence from Jean Jaques Rousseau's The Social Contract.

The juvenile jealousy of right-wingers notwithstanding, there are still plenty of Francophiles in America:

Marketing Democracy

From the New York Times, we learn that American democracy is turning to Madison Avenue for help in convincing young Americans that voting matters:

Today, Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan voter-registration group started by the television producer Norman Lear, will raise two giant billboards in Times Square, showing Christina Aguilera and André 3000 with their mouths held shut, next to the message, "Only you can silence yourself."

"We're approaching a cause as a brand," said Howard Benenson, chief executive at Benenson Janson in Studio City, Calif., the Declare Yourself agency. "It's not any different than any corporate American company," he said. "It's all about creating a brand of passion for consumers."

I'm not much of a Christina Aguilera fan (great voice, not much else), but the image of her face with her mouth stitched up is decidedly cool and evocative.

Of course the big question is, Who benefits from more young voters? I suspect the conventional wisdom is correct: Democrats and Greens gain. For one, the ads appear to be geared toward hip urban kids, and let's face it, liberals and progressives have a lock on urban hip. (The Republicans' 18-wheeler "Reggie the Voter Registration Rig" is just too damn dorky for words.) Moreover, a progressive view of history suggests that, for the most part, each new generation trends in a slightly more open-minded direction than the last, so that regressive attitudes such as racism, sexism, and homophobia gradually decline. And obviously a decline in racism, sexism, and homophobia at the voting booth is bad news for Republicans.

[See previous post: Protest Music Returns]

Can't Buy Me Sex (Happiness For Sale)

From the New York Times, we receive the following words to apparently live by, from a scientific paper entitled "Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study" by two economists, David G. Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew J. Oswald of the University of Warwick in England:

"Money does seem to buy greater happiness. But it does not buy more sex."

Mr. Blanchflower and Mr. Oswald are among the leaders in the fast-growing field of "happiness economics," which applies econometric techniques, traditionally limited to quantifiable matters like wage rates, to the amorphous arena of human emotion ... They estimated that increasing the frequency of sexual intercourse from once a month to at least once a week provided as much happiness as putting $50,000 in the bank ... A lasting marriage, by comparison, offers about $100,000 worth of happiness a year — that is, on average, a single person would need to receive $100,000 annually to be as happy as a married person with the same education, job status and other characteristics. Divorce, on the other hand, imposes an emotional toll of about $66,000 a year, though there may be a short-term economic gain from the immediate relief provided by leaving your spouse.

Possibly the least expected finding of the paper, said Mr. Oswald, was that in general, "Greater income does not buy more sex, nor sexual partners."

"That was surprising to us as economists," Mr. Oswald added, "because by and large, we think money can buy anything."

Attack of the Killer Garbage Bag Children

Good laughs from A Tiny Revolution, which offers some of the funniest material I've found so far in the desert wasteland of blogistan:

America's Death Warnings Should Be More Clearly Written

I just bought some plastic garbage bags, and the wire ties that come with them have this message stamped on them:

"WARNING -- TO AVOID SUFFOCATION, KEEP PLASTIC BAGS AWAY FROM CHILDREN"

I like this, because it seems to be saying that if children get their hands on plastic bags, the ones you bought or any others, they will use them to kill you.

The cheap-horror-flick image cracks me up: zombie-like children with grey skin and yellow/red eyes coming after you, breaking down doors, trying to put a garbage bag over your head.

Spider-Man India

From WorldChanging, for some reason this is just way cool:

SPIDER-MAN EXTENDS FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TO STREETS OF BOMBAY!

Bangalore, India (June 14, 2004) — Marvel Comics & Gotham Entertainment Group ... announces the launch of Spider-Man India.

Spider-Man India interweaves the local customs, culture and mystery of modern India, with an eye to making Spider-Man’s mythology more relevant to this particular audience. Readers of this series will not see the familiar Peter Parker of Queens under the classic Spider-Man mask, but rather a new hero – a young, Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar. As Spider-Man, Pavitr leaps around rickshaws and scooters in Indian streets, while swinging from monuments such as the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal.

Mumbai’s (Bombay’s) first web-swinging superhero will be joined by a reinterpretation of the classic Spider-Man villain, the Green Goblin -- reinvented as a Rakshasa, an Indian mythological demon.

“We feel this is one of the most exciting and unique projects in comic history,” said Gotham Entertainment Group CEO Sharad Devarajan. “Unlike traditional translations of American comics, Spider-Man India will become the first-ever ‘transcreation,’ where we reinvent the origin of a Western property like Spider-Man so that he is an Indian boy in Mumbai and dealing with local problems and challenges.”

UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Pete's Summer Globetrotting (which is a fine travel blog, at that). Make yourself at home. Peace be the journey.

Single and In Love

It seems next to impossible to write or say anything meaningful about love because "love" has got to be the second most abused word on the planet (next to "God"). But here's a short essay from the Christian Science Monitor (which I consider one of the best papers around) that I found incredibly refreshing: a reflection on finding beauty and love in everyday life as a single person.

Feeling complete without being in a relationship doesn't mean resignation to living a life of solitude. It means being completely willing to love, even if it feels hard.

This understanding can relieve singles from feelings of anxiety for not finding the "right one," and it can even free those in relationships from concerns about being with the "wrong one." For me, accepting that I wasn't missing out on the good in my life lifted those depressing feelings of loss. What I did finally lose was that nagging question: "What's wrong with me?"

I'm no longer afraid of being alone on Friday nights, even if they are a bit quiet, because a Love-filled quiet isn't lonely at all.

Personally, most of the powerful, transformative moments of my life have been spent alone, either on the meditation cushion, or in nature, or with a book. And two of the books that have had the strongest influence on the way I look at life and love (aside from spiritual writings from folks like Thich Nhat Hanh and Sogyal Rinpoche) have been The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm and All About Love by bell hooks.

Both of these books work with the premise that love is something that we should seek to generate rather than receive. Sometimes a small change in perspective makes a big difference.

Beer Ads Go Bollywood

UPDATE: More on Bollywood here: "Hum Aapke Hain Koun: The Unabashed Cheesy Grandeur of Bollywood"

Bollywood is blowin' up in Western pop culture and I'm lovin' it: Indian-inspired film and fashion shows, Desi hip hop and Bhangra beats, glossy magazine covers and swanky New York club parties, even an over-the-top Broadway musical. The latest development in this welcome South Asian invasion: Manish Vij and Xeni Jardin bring us a bunch of ads that hilariously spoof Bollywood's stylized musical cheese. In particular, the beer ads rock: "A film about love, peacocks, and cold, frothy lager" and "Ingenious because less gaseous".