You may have seen that the awesome blogger TMcG, on her blog Full Contact Enlightenment, recently shared that she has bought a new skateboard deck from Skull Skates. Part of the company’s “True Champions of Justice” series (which also features Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa), the deck pictures the Dalai Lama, accompanied by the maxim, “Be Kind Whenever Possible, It Is Always Possible.”
Some people are less thrilled than TMcG is about the deck. Blogger/activist (and friend) Heidiminx thinks it’s “disrespectful to the max” to depict His Holiness there, especially since most skaters are likely to grind the bottom of the deck. She’s encouraging online friends to write the company and share their thoughts, though she reports that “When I left a comment on their page that this was disrespectful, they deleted it.”
So what do you think? Is it disrespectful? Sure, it’s not what an adherent of Tibetan Buddhism would do, but it seems (to me, at least) like a gesture/idea made out of respect. Personally, I think it’s cool that Skull feels it’s worth depicting such “True Champions of Justice” — it’s more meaningful than much of the usual skate-deck art fare. Likewise, TMcG has followed up with a comment from Skull that seems to satisfy her sense that her purchase wasn’t ill-placed. Check it out and join the discussion here.
Not that he’s endorsing it, but the people at Victorinox say that His Holiness uses one of their famous Swiss Army Knives — at least according to this new Bloomberg article.
Being that he’s an avid tinkerer, it only makes sense… (I’ve almost always had one; I can think of no other item that could make me feel, so much, like a boy and like “a man” at the same time. What with the saw, and the magnifying glass, and the little scissors, one was always ready. And then when you got older, you never had to look far for a corkscrew or a bottle opener…)
Anyway, odd for them to drop His Holiness’s name… But they dropped the Pope’s, too. Hitting all the Religious Knife-lover’s Market bases, I guess.
A parody by Bob Odenkirk, of the Dalai Lama’s “tour rider” — a la Van Halen and their infamous, unreasonable “brown M&Ms” demand — has just been published by the often quite funny and smart and worthwhile Vice.
Now: am I pointing to this because [I think] it’s funny and smart and worthwhile, or because it, um, exists?
And by best, I mean “absolute stupidest”:
Sure, Bieber may be the spiritual and temporal head of the ‘tween set… But come on. Duh. (Via.)
Born I, he of the late great rap duo Shambhala, continues his reincarnation as a solo artist with this new video. As with Shambhala, there are references to meditation, and both Born’s malas and a a Dalai Lama photo make cameos — along with a typically fly ride. (Born’s Shambhala-mate, Agua, makes an appearance too.)
More from Born here.
Toldja about this on The Worst Horse the other day. Here’s the actual video:
So. Thoughts?
Love this shot of the Dalai Lama, getting in some treadmill time…
…from the new (Oct 4, 2010) issue of the New Yorker.
From a new Huff Post interview with Mickey Hart (a “rhythm master” if ever there was one):
Mickey, what is an issue that’s bugging you?
Well, it’s about the rhythm of things. If you look around at the Gulf, North Korea, or Iran, it’s a rhythmic thing I see. We’re out of rhythm with the world. It’s a rhythmic universe, and nature is very efficient and likes to be in rhythm because it’s most efficient. When you break that rhythm and come between it, you have arrhythmic events and it will destroy, it will not build. It will decompose as opposed to compose. Saying the world has gone mad is not a proper way of saying it, but I look at it as the world has gone out of rhythm. If you look at it in rhythmic terms, it’s much more explainable. It’s gone out of rhythm, and we’re not in rhythm with it, and that’s the problem we have in all of these hot spots and these scary places with the Islamic militant views and the extremist religious views. All you have to do is tune into the Dalai Lama, who is about the opposite of that. Now, that’s a rhythm master. That guy is really in tune with things. So, we need to be listening to more of that, and we need to be thinking of things in terms of getting along in rhythm, and being efficient and flowing, and being more aware of our surroundings. When I look at the news, in total, that’s what I think of.
Read the rest of it here.
Coming in English on Sept 28:
A graphic novel on the life and personality of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will now be available in 10 languages in different parts of the world, an innovative, fun and colourful source of information which is expected to especially appeal to the children.
Japan’s renowned cartoonist Tetsu Saiwai, who wrote the original ‘The 14th Dalai Lama – A Manga Biography’ in graphic form, has plans to feature the life histories of many iconic personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa through his manga (Japanese graphic) art.
More details here.
