Think of it as a “Dharma-Slider,” maybe…

At any rate, in this video of Steve Martin doing his best Michael Jackson/”Billie Jean” the “video credits” at the end link this song to “Poly Sutra Records” — the Pali Sutras being are the literal words of the Buddha. Why he chose to make this pun derived from “PolyGram Records” is a mystery — he could have gone for Poly Ester, or Poly Amorous, or whatever. But that’s Steve for you; he’s our most intellectual goofball.

Nothing momentous here, but hey, it’s Steve Martin as MJ, on The Worst Horse.

Thanks to kin for sending it, via The New Yorker.

Via the Bhutan Observer:

Sight-seeing in Switzerland does not leave a vacationer horrified, but Prabhat Choudhary, his wife and daughter were shocked to see a Lord Buddha statue garlanded with a pair of shoes at a footwear shop in Geneva.

“We were strolling on shopping street when my 15-year-old daughter insisted that we got into ‘Anne Fontaine’, a designer footwear shop. There in the shop, we saw a 4-ft statue of Lord Buddha on the shelf displaying shoes and slippers, garlanded with a pair of shoes,” Prabhat, a realtor, recalled.

The family was shocked. Prabhat’s daughter, was furious. Though her parents were a bit frightened, she persuaded them to let her shoot the sight with her videocam. The girl, a student of Patna’s prestigious Notre Dame Academy, accomplished her mission without anyone - the shop staff or the crowd of customers - knowing about it.

Back home, Prabhat has sent a letter to the ministry of external affairs, requesting it to take up the matter with Swiss authorities.

I’ll let the image do the talking for a moment here:

Beautiful, ain’t it?

In case you didn’t know: it’s a portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma, as rendered by the great Shepard Fairey. You know, he of the Obama “Hope” poster, the famous “Obey/Giant” campaign, and a zillion other things.

I for one feel that we’re quite fortunate that the attentions and talents of so gifted a visual communicator are being applied to something that so many people in our community care so deeply about.

(If you’re reading this right now, you’re part of that community. At least that’s how I see it.)

The Obama/Hope image, which became truly ubiquitous, is only one example of how much real, capital-H Hope — and possibility – a good image can convey. And it seems that, more and more, this is becoming Fairey’s stock in trade. Though he can paint a bleak — but often necessary — picture with some of his images, he does “Hope” very, very well.

He sure has here, hasn’t he? And I think when it comes to Aung San Suu Kyi, the more Hope we can muster, the better.

Via ABC News Australia:

A Japanese company has agreed to withdraw from sale a figurine of Buddha with a bulge between its legs.

The plastic figurine of the seated, grinning Buddha had upset monks from an eighth century temple in the ancient capital of Nara.

They complained that the statuette had an inappropriately large bulge between its legs.

The manufacturer has agreed to pull the figurine from sale.

A marketing official has told the AFP newsagency that the company normally approves all Buddha designs unless they are extraordinarily strange.

Thanks to reader/commenter Johan for a link to this silly-ass thing.

[Via the Daily Camera:]

The walls of Front Range Boxing are lined with Lao Tzo quotes, alongside photos of Dave Gaudette with famous boxers and trainers.

“Gaudette was 16 years old when he fell in love with boxing. Another twist: At the time, he was studying to be a Franciscan priest.

“I’ve always been drawn toward the ultimate, the bigger picture,” he says. “Every once in a while, the time and the ego melts away. And that’s the closest you’re ever going to get to God. I’m talking about the ‘dis-ease’ of philosophy. If you’re satisfied with everything, there’s no impulse to look beyond your next experience.”

He continues, without a breath in between: “Do you know the story of the Buddha?”

Read the rest here.

Via Bookseller.com, though it seems now that the book in question will be published by Spiegel & Grau (Doubleday):

Jonathan Cape editor Alex Bowler has over-powered rival publishers to buy a book on superheroes by Scottish ­comics “legend” Grant Morrison, [called Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero]. … [Bowler] promised Supergods would be a book “like no other”, adding: “Our world and the world of the superhero are going to be fed into the brilliant blender of Grant’s brain, so expect philosophy, anthropology, Buddhism, mad ­science, capes and punk rock.”

Supergods will be published in August 2010.

Fans of the Horse and of metal might wanna check out my new roundup of Buddhist-influenced heavy metal album covers, over at my blog on Shambhala SunSpace.

The article, called “Heavy Metal Dharma Thunder,” features eleven examples of this surprising but time-honored trend. Check it out here.

In a new interview conducted by NZRock, David Vincent of the classic metal band Morbid Angel — no lover of religion — says the despite his leanings towards the late Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, he’s got no problem with Buddhism:

NZRock: You’ve been affiliated with the Church Of Satan for a long time now…

David Vincent: I don’t deny it, but I’m not really active in terms of like this hierarchy. That can be just as much of a country club, you know, political thing as anything else can be. I joined because I felt like it was a good idea and it’s a great antithesis to a number of things out there. [...] I really feel that organized religion is really at the center of a lot of problems and a lot of closed-mindedness that we have in this world. Wars, I mean, hell, Islam is the worst offender, I mean as bad or worse than Christianity. Probably the only organized religion that I don’t have a problem with would be Buddhism, because it’s almost paganism. It’s just a different path that works, these other things they don’t work. Any religion that has this belief, this system that just subjugates women the way that they do, I just have no respect for it at all.

The whole interview is online here, metalheads.

You gamers (and “evil Buddhists”) might wanna check out this report on Shambhala SunSpace about “Cursed Mountain,” a new game for the Wii that, according to IGN.com:

repurposes Tibetan Buddhism to fuel its survival horror premise. …Cursed Mountain puts players at the control of Eric Simmons, an explorer who takes to the Himalayas in search of his younger brother Frank. Naturally, as Eric he ascends the mountain he’s pulled deeper and deeper into a supernatural world, haunted by the dispossessed as they perpetually linger in a state of Bardo, victims of a curse on the region and in limbo between this life and the next.

Sounds like fun. (And I’m only half-kidding.)

…plus, Dinosaur Jr., Lou Barlow, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks(!), Mono, Faust, Roxanne Shante, Diamanda Galas, and more — that’s who’ll be appearing at Pop Montreal this year. Quite the lineup, huh? Get more details here.