Listen to Jeremiah Cymerman’s new LP, “Sky Burial” With titles like "Crazy Wisdom," "Mount Meru," and "Skull Bowl," Jeremiah Cymerman's new album of electroacoustic experimentalism displays a clear Tibetan Buddhist influence. You can listen to and download it online, here.

Rob Lowe and Maria Shriver: Your newest celebrity Buddhists? "Parks and Recreation" fans might have wondered if Rob Lowe was dabbling in Buddhism -- and not just because of the references his P&R character keeps making, like last week when he said he'd raise his child Buddhist, or the story linked to in the comments here -- but this story seems to confirm it, and also suggests that Maria Shriver has turned to the practice too. ...Or, perhaps, it's just gossip. After all, this is the same outlet that reported that Bill Clinton has turned to Buddhist meditation, and, well... that's just not true.

Dharma-Burger! “Fall Out Boy Save Rock and Roll” Rock band Fall Out Boy have released a new album with a young monk (and friend) on its cover... More about it here, if you wish.

Trailer: X-Men’s “Wolverine” As Jeffrey Kripal's book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal says, "Wolverine spent some time in Japan as a boy, speaks fluent Japanese, and practices Zazen." We see a little of his background come into his adult life in the trailer for Wolverine's coming new movie -- including some temple-based violence. Here you go, comics geeks...

Dharma-Burger! The “cellphone for Buddhist monks”? I guess sometimes "an app for that" isn't enough. You need a whole phone. Even if you're a Buddhist monk! According to the copy published with an article about it on tech-site Trendhunter.com, "This rotatable Nokia phone is made specially for Buddhist Monks... this Tibet Nokia phone is perfectly in harmony with the universal law of life and death. The red saffron color is traditional for Buddhist monks and makes this phone even more religious." (I'm glad they avoided hyperbole.) Though actually a couple of years old, the phone does seem to be real and have various Tibet- and Buddhism-related features. You can read more about those here.

Trailer: “Sri Siddhartha Guatama” Thanks to a trollish Sri Lankan movie review that was so negative and mean it might make even Joe Queenan blush, I've come across the trailer for Sri Siddhartha Gautama, another retelling of how the Buddha became the Buddha. It's not in English, nor is it subtitled, so I can't vouch for the dialogue. The look of the thing sort of suggests a cross between the film Siddhartha (based on the Hesse classic) and -- really -- Deepak Chopra's Buddha comic series (which has been discussed at some length here on the Horse). Anyway, here it is if you wanna see it.

Japan Times tells the tale of Takahiko Inoue, yakuza boss — and Buddhist priest A month after his death, Japan Times tells the story of Takahiko Inoue, who was both a yakuza boss and a Buddhist priest, simultaneously. It's quite a story. An excerpt:

He reconciled the two realms as follows. Buddhism has its rules. The Inoue-gumi had its rules, taken from the Inagawa-kai Yokosuka-Ikka. Inoue worked to uphold them both. In some places, they actually overlap. The Inoue-gumi rules forbid: 1) using or selling drugs, 2) theft, 3) robbery, 4) sexual misconduct, 5) anything else that would be shameful underninkyodo, the humanitarian way. To become a Buddhist priest like Inoue, you have to follow 10 grave precepts. Do not: kill, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, lie, drink or cloud the mind, criticize others, praise oneself and slander others, be greedy, give way to anger or disparage the noble path.

Read the full thing here.

“How Not to Treat the Buddha” Another week, another flareup over a Buddha image on a toilet. (See this previous one also.) That seems to be the way of Dharma-Burgers: some people like them (they clearly sell), some people don't like them, and some people really, really, really don't like them. Often, of course, this has to do with local or national culture as much as it does with pop-culture. Anyway, you can read about the latest Buddha/toilet flap, with some nice commentary and links, in "How Not to Treat the Buddha," a new NYT/IHT item, here.