[UPDATE: I've just put together a new interview with DeStefano, for Shambhala SunSpace. I hope you'll check it out.]
On NBC’s Last Comic Standing, the gruff Mike DeStefano, a seasoned comic, has become an audience favorite. And actually, it’s clear that the comedian’s persona is just that — a persona; at heart he’s a big softy and a family kind of guy. He’s also a former addict celebrating more than a dozen years in recovery.
Buddhism, clearly, plays a part in all this (though DeStefano identifies himself primarily as a practitioner of “recovery comedy”). Last night on the show viewers saw Mike’s monster Buddha tattoo (shown here) and also heard a joke that I imagine we’ll be hearing people repeat for a while:
“I went to a Chinese restaurant… They had a suggestion box, so I wrote ‘Free Tibet’.”
(It’s not “What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?*” but, hey, not bad, Mike.)
Other evidence of Mike’s interest in Buddhism? His new comedy album is called OK Karma. And here’s the cover (left).
He’s also written a book entitled Bada Bing Bada Budda.
Check out Mike online, here.
Update: click here to check out DeStefano’s contribution to the (true) storytelling podcast, the program, titled “The Junkie and the Monk.” It’ll give you a taste of Mike’s personality and background and — while it’s seriously rough stuff at times — it’ll make you laugh. You’re gonna like this guy.
(* “Make me one with everything.”)
Is it true?
Who knows? But the rags are all saying she’s using Buddhism to find relief from the pressures of jail.
Quoth The Daily Star (for example):
Wild child Lindsay Lohan is turning to Buddhism to get her through her jail hell.
The off-the-rails star, 24, who has been sentenced to 90 days in prison, has decided to seek solace in the religion in a bid to conquer her demons.
An insider revealed: “Lindsay’s been fascinated in the Buddhist faith for a while as several of her inner circle follow the teachings of Buddhism.
“Lindsay’s devastated about the jail sentence and has been crying non-stop. She’s been told to seek spiritual guidance and find her inner peace.
“She’s decided to study the art of meditation so she can stay calm through breathing techniques while she’s in jail.”
Same old story: Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. Maybe she’s sincere, maybe she isn’t. All snarkiness aside, let’s just hope she gets better. And let’s hope our media does, too.
You may recall this March ‘09 item about comedian/actor Rob Schneider being a Buddhist. Well, in a new interview that’s part of the press junket for the Adam Sandler-penned movie Grown Ups, Schneider talks a bit about his experience with Zen.
“”For 13 years I’ve been into Zen Buddhism,” he begins. “I only understood it a few weeks ago.” Read more here.
Thanks to Danny Fisher for the tip.
For reals, says the Las Vegas Sun, quoting an interview in Architectural Digest:
Superstar entertainer Cher has said she is now a Buddhist, but added with characteristic self-deprecation, “who should always be in after-school detention.” [...] I’ve played around with Buddhism for years,” continues the actress, a devotee of the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. “The soul of the universe, everything that I need, I can find in its practice.”
That new issue of AD is on stands now.
Related (well, not really, but also from today’s news): NFL star Ricky Williams is a meditator.
With the news that Twin Peaks — David Lynch and Mark Frost’s unlikely ABC smash hit — is celebrating its 20th anniversary, now seems like a fine time to re-present this appreciation from the Horse’s archives. Enjoy.
A MAN LAYS DYING on the floor of a jail cell between two mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Not even two weeks ago, despite his middle-age, he’d had a head of youthfully dark hair; now, it is completely, shockingly, all-white. The sprinkler system of the sheriff’s department that holds him has been set off, creating the effect of a tumultuous indoor downpour that rains down upon the white-haired man and his captors.
One of his captors — the very one who has most doggedly pursued him — is kneeling down. The white-haired man has committed the kind of unthinkable crimes that would disgust and shake most of us to the core, but Special Agent Dale Cooper instead remains very much with the moment. He holds the white-haired man, stroking his hair, comforting him even as the horrors of his crimes are finally admitted between last gasps. Then, Cooper speaks. The words come to him naturally:
“Leland,” he says, “the time has come for you to seek the path. Your soul has set you face to face with the clear light and you are now about to experience it in all its reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum, without circumference or center. Leland, in this moment, know yourself, and abide in that state. . . Look to the light, Leland. Find the light.”
Though spoken as much from the heart as from the head, Coop’s words are not truly his own. Compare them with this famous passage from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, meant to be recited to the dying as they pass on:
“O, nobly-born [so and so by name], the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path [in reality]. Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy guru hath set thee face to face before with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience in its Reality in the Bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre. At this moment, know thou thyself, and abide in that state.” [W.Y. Evans-Wentz (translator and editor), The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford, Third edition, 1957)]
Leland, though in his final moment, is surprised, almost smiling, in response to Coop’s urging that he find the light: “I see it!”
“Into the light, Leland,” Coop says, ” Don’t be afraid.”
And with that, Leland Palmer is dead.
It’s unusually moving; hardly your typical primetime TV jailhouse scene.
But this is no ordinary jailhouse, and it’s certainly not ordinary TV.
This is Twin Peaks, where nothing — not family, not FBI-men, not even the owls in the trees — is as it seems. (more…)
Someone actually hired a plane and flew this over the Masters today (click the photo for more on that):
Look, I’m all for having a larf, but as one friend said to me: “Very sad that someone actually paid money to do that.” And as I said back, “What if — just what IF — the dude is sincere? Not that I think that horrible Nike ad helps that argument…”
In case you missed it on this past Sunday’s Simpsons.
“Had a powerful meditation just now,” he wrote yesterday. [...] “Caused an earthquake in Southern California… Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake. Sorry about that.”
Seriously, he wrote that. See it here. He had to be kidding, not knowing it was going to be as bad as it was, but still — kinda unfortunate.
Yes, that’s right — people are protesting Akon’s “insult to Buddhism.” Protest = good. Protest with violence = not so good.
Buddhists protesting by throwing stones? Ridiculous.
Isn’t it?
Update: the Sri Lankan government has denied Akon a visa.
March 24 update: Akon has postponed his Sri Lanka tour.
March 27 update, via tamilweek.com: “Akon visa denial has wider impact on Sri Lanka and Buddhism”
The tattoo in question, via farm4.static.flickr.com
Sports site TSN reports that:
“English welterweight Dan (The Outlaw) Hardy’s stomach tattoo was airbrushed out of the UFC 111 fight poster because it is ‘anti-Chinese government stuff,’ according to UFC president Dana White.
‘”I’m trying to get into China,” he told fans at a question-and-answer session Tuesday. ‘I don’t need anti-Chinese government stuff on my fighters.’
“Hardy, however, says the tattoo — the fighter’s favourite — is a Tibetan Buddhist prayer written in Sanskrit.
‘”It’s basically just like a prayer for focus,’ Hardy said. ‘It keeps me walking the path that I should be walking without veering off and distracting myself.’
“Apprised of that explanation, White said: ‘That’s not what I heard.’
[...] “‘I heard that it was anti-Chinese government, so I ripped that thing off it. I’m not going to put him on a poster with anti-Chinese government writing on it when we’re trying to get into China. . . . I don’t know what this stuff means, so I’ve got to be safe.’
But, as the MMA site Bloody Elbow (nice name, that) points out:
“The tattoo is the well known Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum” which has no political significance in relation to China.”
Well, not quite no political significance. While the tattoo isn’t an overt anti-China statement, China sure is sensitive to hearing about Tibetan Buddhism. Some, like Robert Thurman, would even go so far as to say that the Chinese government is trying ‘re trying to, um, airbrush it away.
