National Western Stockshow happening right this very second. If you haven’t been, you should. Ranching, semen selling, hog weighing and steer auctioning is alive and well. Thank god. I consider ranchers and farmers the true blood of America. All the respect in the world to these people. Thank you.
So..this video from Invincible was banned from MTVu for being “suicidal”. How is it that this video is viewed as more of a threat than the regular line up of hiphop videos. For real. A gay jewish hip hop emcee writes a song about depression and that’s deemed “too problematic”? Weird. Read more here:
My new friend Chip (see reservation art down below) turned me on to this Academy Award winning movie. It’s frankly incredible that I hadn’t known about it before. The movie is about the recent history of the Navajo and Hopi tribes and their tangling with the US Government and Peabody Coal. Relocation, environmental hazards, genocide, mistreatment, corporate and government power, coal and uranium strip mining, water rights, native american traditions, prophesy…this has been going on for over 100 years. This film has friends of the family in it, locales that are within miles from my childhood home. I shared the bus with these indians, some of my best friends in the day were from this area..my brothers wife is from this area, they were married in the traditional way….it’s all processing with me right now. I’m not sure there is any area in the United States right now that is as wrought with issues as this area. All under my nose.
The movie, while interesting and revealing, should certainly be taken with a grain of salt..and a big scoop of blind eye for the horrible sound track and low production values. It looks like its from the 1970′s but it’s not. Good on em for trying to get the word out though.
BTW…seriously…the movie Avatar..you can NOT tell me isn’t inspired in some way by this story. Effort to move the natives off their sacred land so “unoptanium” (uranium) could be mined, kill the tree of life, natives understood balance of mother earth and sanctity of life…Na’vi (Navajo)…come on. Unfortunately…nothing is simple or easy. Nuclear power is a pretty great power source..does it all have to be handled so crookedly though?
Read this on WebUrbanist today. Apparently some small towns in Germany are experimenting with a system for conserving energy and expenses by having the streetlights only turn on when someone requests them to be on. That request is transferred via cell phone. Pedestrians (or drivers) call the phone number associated to that quadrant of street lights and they turn on for 15min.
Pretty good idea.
Video here: Dial4Light
My good friend Jen invited me to volunteer at the CAP food bank yesterday for pre-Thanksgiving food dispersal. I had a great time packaging food (celery, eggs, butter, milk…celery, eggs, butter, milk…celery, eggs, butter, milk), and bagging turkeys (musta been 200 or 300 birds I bagged), and handing out food to some Denver’ites that are less fortunate than I. It was a great experience for me, I enjoyed doing some hands on labor for the good of people. I don’t do enough of that.
If you feel like helping: Colorado AIDS Project.
Ok my two fans….and me. I have a few things in my back pocket. Let’s start with this….a little bit of irony..
I ran into this kid at a park while I was house shopping in the ghettos of Denver..and this park had a stream..where he caught this fish. Rock huh?! Kid caught the fish with a stick, a string and a hook. I’m serious. Old school fisher in the heart of Barnum. So..not only did this little go getter catch a fish, he found an old gatorade bottle, also compliments of the stream, and stuffed his fish in head first so he could take him home and put him in his fish tank. Which, is kinda cruel, but that’s the irony or the point of this story. Here is the fisherman, and his haul, in a piece of trash..
Now..here comes the irony part..this kid put his fish in a piece of trash he found floating down the river..the river that dumps into another river which dumps into a lake..NOW..if we lived anywhere but here..the river most likely would have dumped into the ocean at some point. Somewhere. And those of you who know me well..know I was upset about the Great Pacific Garbage patch a few years ago and after alerting everyone I thought would listen to me..I tried to adjust my life to not purchase anything in plastic and realized in despair that it is pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to do this. You try. Everything is packaged in plastic it seems. I also felt morally responsible, making handbags of plastic, and considered quitting. Did for awhile actually. I tried hard, for awhile, to change my lifestyle. Plastic is prolific though. Anyway, a fantastic photographer Chris Jordan has released a series of images he has taken of bird corpses on a island near that floating Gyre and which show the impact that floating, delicious looking, mass of our old gatorade bottles and combs and plastic trays from that pack of Oreos I bought, has on unsuspecting birds. Check it..
My friend Robert Muratore worked on this film as a cameraman.The movie is about the Tibetan / Chinese struggle over Tibet. Despite the awareness raised surrounding the Olympics, many people still don’t understand the situation. Watch the trailer. It looks absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to see the whole thing.
Tuesday was the 50 year anniversary of the (failed) Tibetan uprising against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. It was a week later that the Dalai Lama fled. 1959. The Chinese (government) then systematically destroyed as much of the culture, the followers of the Tibetan religion, the monasteries and the religious relics as they could. Having family who is Tibetan, the subject strikes a little closer to my heart than most.
I tried for years to boycott all that is Chinese in support of the Tibetan people. In today’s economy that’s near impossible. But really, after all these years I’ve grown to understand and support the Chinese people and their efforts to join the global economy, with or without their government. (see last posting)
I saw the Dalai Lama in Tucson a few years ago. He was, and continues to be, super inspirational to me. I think its important to remember that it’s all part of the process of living and dying, learning and growing. Deal with what you are dealt with in the most positive manner and you will be closer to that which you should be.
To you Chheten Tamang.
Om Mani Padme Hum ..eh?
Ok..this one is a little esoteric. Found it in the NYTimes today. We all know the Chinese government can be a bit..misguided..and tyrannical. Right? And we all know how they have tried from the get go to censor the internet over there. Among other things. Which we won’t get into here. But to the credit of the Chinese people..they have come up with a video & song & product line & social commentary about a mythological Grass Mud Horse which bust right through that heavy hand in a really carefree way . So.. written in Chinese characters, “grass mud horse” is benign. But verbalized is quite lascivious..or crude. Which ever. So..because the Chinese characters are “grass mud horse” they are flying right by the internet censors. Further more..to add insult to the whole thing, the song also talks about the struggle with “river crabs” that when spoken mean “harmony” which is a euphemism for the Chinese cultural cleansing. Brilliant. I love how smart this is. And how the internet is able to transcend the fascism of the Chinese government. Sweet. Oh..and “fuck your mother”. 
Two videos..both good. (updated the first video 3/30/09 w/video w/annotations)
Always keep your mind open and your curiosity peaked.
I went to a show the other night at the Hi-Dive. Packed house for 3 out of town bands. Dawes, Other Lives & Delta Spirit. In between sets I ambled over to the merch tables, just to browse. I love looking at what kind of design the band deems their to be their image at the moment. Next to the merch table there was a table that had nothing to do (or so I thought) with the bands. Invisible Children it said, and there was a stack of DVD’s..all sorts of different ones. “Have you heard of Invisible Children?” the friendly beaming face said to me. “No.” I stated flatly. And in the next 5 minutes I was reminded of how powerful the medium of film & video can be. What an incredible undertaking and resulting accomplishment. This team started with a simple documentary of their experience in Uganda..and from that have created such a worthy foundation with an admirable cause. Not only are they collecting millions of dollars used for building schools in Uganda and donating hundreds of thousands of books for those schools but they are waking the awareness of other cultures and those cultures strife in otherwise sheltered American kids. And they are doing it with creativity and style and excitement.
Fantastic.
Please go check their site. Invisiblechildren.com
