I often think about the luck I’ve had in getting to speak to the comedian, Mike DeStefano. Mike had been around a long time, then went on NBC’s Last Comic Standing — and almost won.

I got to speak to him a couple of times, one of which was for an audio interview for Shambhala SunSpace. It’s good stuff and I do recommend you checking it out. But if you really want a concise taste of who Mike was, check out this new piece, “Uneasy Rider,” culled from the WTF Podcast for “These American Lives,” a NYT piece curated by Ira Glass about people who died in 2011.

Mike was hilarious, and a beautiful, fearless guy.

(Thanks to the great Sam DeWitt for the heads-up on this one.)

I just learned that that’s how comedian Eddie Pepitone identifies and markets himself. (A documentary by the same name is also forthcoming.)

So is he Buddhist? I can’t really tell. His new album is called “A Great Stillness.” That seems like something, no? A Google search turns up a reference or two or three to Pepitone from Zen teacher Brad Warner — who counts the comic among his favorites — and some gags from the Pepitone’s Twitter feed:

• “Watching Saturday Night Live is like watching a Buddhist monk light himself on fire except for no reason.”
• “As a buddhist child I got teased a lot for renouncing all thought.”
• “I studied zen Buddhism with Maharishi Gus Lobotomovich and he always said “shit, did you hear that?”

And here’s a quote from a new AV Club interview with Pepitone: “You wanna give life meaning against all of this pain and anguish. You’re trying to give it meaning and you’re trying to be happy, but you have all this stuff that is in the way. And that’s the stuff I talk about.”

Know anything about the Bitter Buddha? Let us know.

First there was the Muppet Show’s Animal meditating with James Coburn. Now there’s this, also by way of Brad Warner’s Facebook page.
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Kinda an extra-mishmashy set of ideas, but hey.

Nice find via Brad Warner’s Facebook page: James Coburn tries to teach Animal to meditate. Or at least to relax, relax, relax.

Considering that meditation has played an ongoing and meaningful role in the Occupy protests — note for example the related coverage my colleagues and I have been posting on the Shambhala Sun blog — it will be interesting to see how Buddhists respond to this Conan segment from Thursday night, in which Triumph the Insult Comic Dog takes on Occupy Wall Street and a meditator gets in his line of fire. …You’ve been warned. But will you laugh anyway?

There’s been lots made of the Steve Jobs/Buddhism connection. Thanks to eagle-eyed friend and reader Sam DeWitt for sending on this latest example. Sam writes:

“Walter Isaacson, author of the new biography Steve Jobs, was interviewed on The Daily Show. He talks about Steve Job’s ‘Zen stare,’ in which he would not blink when staring down an opponent — or something like that. Buddhism is also mentioned a few times in the interview, and it is just all-around fun. (It is The Daily Show after all).”

See what Sam is talking about, watch here. (In Canada? Then go here, and watch the third segment of October 25th’s show.) Thanks as always, Sam!

Last night, Chef Jose Andres joined Coco to talk rum and other concoctions. While we’re told by the Conan’s Facebook page that “Buddha” appears in the segment, that’s not quite right. It’d be more accurate to say that it’s Hotei, aka, the “fat Buddha,” or the “happy Buddha” who makes the cameo here, at around the 5:20 mark. Also appearing are lots of disembodied replicas of his body parts — all made of Jell-O.

This is not the first time Hotei and rum have made a pop-culture appearance together; see the entry for Pyrat rum on this page of the Dharma-Burger archives. But it’s almost certainly the oddest.

Here on the Horse we often discuss Dharma-Burgers, or manifestations of the ongoing collision of Buddhist imagery and ideas with pop-culture. Such occurrences can run the gamut: sometimes they can be subtle, fleeting nods, and sometimes they can wallop you over the head. Sometimes they’re funny, and sometimes they’re not. Blogger Scott Mitchell (The Buddha is My DJ) sends on a remarkable new example. See what you think of it.

Thanks, Scott! And thank you, Mr. Pizza!

Check out this single-panel from “Bizarro” cartoonist Dan Piraro:

It comes from his blog (and of course is published in a bazillion papers, etc) along with Piraro’s personal comments about meditation: Sample: “This cartoon was the brainchild of a friend of mine from my previous life back in Texas. It immediately made me chuckle because I hate contest shows and love meditation.”

Visit Bizarro online here. And see also: “Ya Gotta Love this Zen Comic.”

Ladies and gentlemen, set your sights upon a vision unlike any you’ve ever seen before. That’s right, it’s a Thai Buddhist monk planking.

And it’s apparently a problem that needs to be addressed.

At any rate, this wins for Photo of the Day. Hands down.