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.

In South Africa, that’s what Boxing Day has become.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So have yourself a Happy Day of Goodwill today. Who cares what the date is?

Black Book has published a new interview with Chef Laurent Manrique of Millesime, the restaurant (or, “casual seafood brasserie”) found in NY’s Carlton Hotel. Manrique — known for his Tuna Tartare; you can watch a video of him preparing it here — is, as you might have guessed by my posting about this here, a Buddhist, and he addresses this with Black Book. A sample quote: “Buddhism helps me remove the unnecessary things on the plate; if it’s not important, what’s the point?” Read more of the interview here.

Thanks, for the zillionth time, to Konchog Norbu.

The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan has joined a long list of successful (and notably creative) people who have started up with Transcendental Meditation TM — for example, David Lynch (and musical accomplice Angelo Badalamenti), Paul McCartney, Clint Eastwood, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern (and about 90 percent of his staff, if I understand correctly), Paul McCartney, David Lynch, Laura Dern, Russell Brand, and so on. Some people perceive TM as sort of culty but it seems to be mainstreaming itself quite easily — as the work of the David Lynch Institute, which is bringing TM to kids’ schools, and elsewhere, makes clear. Sullivan also expresses sympathies with Buddhism here.

Thanks, yet again, to Konchog Norbu for the heads-up.

Slight Heavy Metal Update: After posting this, another TM advocate of note came to light: songwriter Mike Hill, whose band Tombs released its album Path of Totality this year. That album is, hands-down, one of the best of 2011 (well, sez me) and like Yob’s Atma LP (also released this year, and perhaps THE best release of the year), is informed by meditation. In this case, the meditation is TM, inspired, as Decibel magazine writes, “by David Lynch’s book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.” Though it should be said that Hill tells Decibel that his “personal regimen includes not only meditation, but yoga, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and the ingestion of natural psychedelics.”

See also the Horse’s piece about Yob’s Atma: “Metal for Buddhists? Buddhism for metalheads? Who cares? It rocks.”

Thanks to friend Konchog Norbu for pointing out this Mercedes-Benz ad from a couple years back. I kinda thought I’d posted it here, but no.

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.

If you’re a Buddhist, the idea that Karma = Santa Claus might seem like a pretty false analogy. And yet Scientific American (!) blogger John Horgan writes that,

Buddhism, at least in its traditional forms, is functionally theistic, even if it doesn’t invoke a supreme deity. The doctrines of karma and reincarnation imply the existence of some sort of cosmic moral judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with nirvana or rebirth as a cockroach.

I did not know that. Huh. Huzzah, Science!

Horgan writes lots of other things, too. I wonder what you’ll think of them.

When I was a young, bitter punk rock kid, much of the (very small amount of ) light I saw in the world usually came from seeing that others had as caustic and cynical a take on things as I did. One exception, though, was Pianosaurus, a band that absolutely slayed on their instruments – all of which were children’s toys. Their record, Groovy Neighborhood (left), was playful and non-cynical. To my best friend Josh and me, it was summer freedom on vinyl.

I always wondered what happened to those guys. Well, now I have some answers, thanks to Marc Maron and the newest installation of his fantastic comedy-insider podcast, WTF, which features non-comedian Dr. Stephen Dansiger – psychotherapist, happy family man, and lifetime musician who’s played with some great bands, including Pianosaurus. So: why is this relevant to this blog? Well, Dansiger is also a Zen meditator now. (He’s friends, too, with Josh Korda of Dharma Punx.) And he talks about all of this, and how he’s gotten to the other side of some seriously rough times, on WTF. Click here to listen online. Or download via iTunes.

Warning: if you’re not comfortable with the word that the “F” in “WTF” represents, this won’t be easy listening for you. But it’s a good listen nonetheless.

You may have seen a post on Gawker today about how the ”UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Is Now a Meme.” Now, by way of Occupy Lulz on Facebook (and the Facebook friend who brought the below to my attention), comes this, um, arresting contribution to the meme:

The “Pepper Spraying Cop” continues his beat across the internet. You’ll find some of his many tragicomic manifestations at his new, dedicated Tumblr, which includes a few more run-ins with religion, Eastern and Western.