CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells (Wisdom Quarterly) MICHAEL JACKSON DOCTOR FOUND GUILTY
First Herman "Koch" Cain, now this. Child music idol Justin Bieber is being accused of having gone "all the way" -- possibly against his will, certainly without his consent. (By law minors are not able to consent to sex).
Now someone is pregnant, and baby, baby, baby Bieber is willing to take a paternity test to prove it is not him, uh, his. One thing's sure: former-child star abusing Conrad Murray will not be conducting that test. No comment yet from girlfriend/beard Selena Gomez.
While these allegations would give little Bieber street credentials with Ludacris and the rap/hip-hop underworld, it would shock and scandalize soccer moms and church groups everywhere.
Was baby Justin, shown here with Ludicrous in possibly the world's most viewed video, statutorily raped by Mariah Laci Yeater (shown below)?
They have already lost former Mouseketeers Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera and with Lindsay Lohan in and out of jail, anti-sex trafficking advocate Ashton Kutcher cheating on Demi, and Drew Barrymore having gotten away with more than all of them (allegedly).
What is our world coming to? Not since the Partridges or Bradys were dating (each other) or Donny and Marie and the Mommas and the Poppas seemed a bit too close have the tabloids had so much to wag about. Oh, Justin, say it ain't so!
Buddhist/comedian Jim Carrey loved Cannibal Corpse so much that he asked them to perform their megahit "Hammer Smashed Face" in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
My girlfriend and I were miserable in samsara. She was at the University of Hawaii and more miserable than I, asking: "When will the suffering end?" "We'll go East in search of enlightenment," I would answer. "You better finish school first and body surf more. Or we can go to a concert?"
In the meantime, we soothed ourselves with the idea of starting a wholesomegrindcore band. I look Tibetan (like Gomo Tulku), and she is Scandinavian (like Alissa White-Gluz), and we were vegans. (I still am).
With our crazy mops, we were either going to be called Zen Zero or Decorticated Disenchanted Strands (DDS), because we wanted to cut our long sun kissed hair down to the skin with revulsion or grow very long yogi dreadlocks like the guys in Carcass (see below).
Devi and dragon (angel and titan), we would jointly sing the lyrics she wrote in a special notebook in class along the lines of Carcass (classic British vegan grindcore) coroner jargon, girl bands, Cannibal Corpse (a comedic, carnivorous American band made famous by their appearance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), Cradle of Filth (dark British death metal), Dimmu Borgir (reptilian Norwegian black metal and our first concert experience), Deicide (darker American metal), Kittie, Dead Kennedys (San Francisco punk rock), and smaller wannabee bands of ALL kinds in Los Angeles.
If Carcass and other vegans could sing that meat eating is as gross as cannibalism with no one noticing, surely we could certainly extol the Dharma without anyone caring. And we'd feel good about it.
There's a way to rage at the universe with themes of disgust, dukkha, mindfulness of death, craving for liberation from samsara, and corporeality in general. Dress Goth, date around, and have music soothe the savage breast.
Sometimes renunciation grows to a fever pitch and becomes aversion (dosa) wanting nothing more than magical powers (abhinna) and enlightening everyone that things are empty and repulsive.
Female death metal singing lessons (Angela Gossow)
Carcass taught us that things "reek of putrefaction" in a "jigsaw quandary," and it seemed so Buddhist/tantric/yogic to cover their song "Carneous Cacoffiny." That's a song from their hyperintelligent album/medical tome "Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious." We had a really good sense of humor back then. I guess I was a bad influence on her. But she won complete freedom, so it all worked out. And they were her lyrics after all.
The latest entry from the ever-expanding realm of metal/Buddhism crossovers is the cover and title of the new EP by the great doom/drone band, Queen Elephantine:
The Tibetan-thangka-style art is one thing, but it doesn’t really get more metal than “Garland of Skulls,” does it?* (Queen Elphantine has dabbled in imagery from world religions and cultures, what with album titles like Surya and Kailash, and song titles like “Search for the Deathless State.” And you can download their record, Yatra (as in the Hindu term for “pilgrimage”) for free here.)
Hear the slow, dirgy, powerful track, “Potency,” from Garland of Skulls, here.
(See here for another recent — and recommended — Buddhism/metal crossover.)
For a while now I’ve wondered about the band Yob. (Their name refers to a classic Warner Brothers cartoon; I distinctly remember being a teenager in bands and seeing the cartoon and thinking, Good band name.)...
The last words in the shorter version of the sutra are “Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté Bodhi Svaha!” The basic translation, as I understand it, is “gone (or ferried) with everyone to the other shore right now!”
A little more Googling about Yob and Buddhism turns up a quick reference in a Rebel Extravaganza interview with vocalist and guitarist Mike Scheidt, in which he responds to the interviewer’s question about the use of the word bardo in the song “Ball of Molten Lead” from 2004’s The Illusion of Motion LP:
I’m surprised that one jumped out at you, man! A bardo is a term used in Buddhism. A bardo is a segment of life. The Tibetan Book Of The Dead goes into it, the bardos of life… the stages of life and death. More in depth, when you get into the places where the book deals with learning how to die. We go through time periods of trying to understand and remember who we are outside of this life.
And the band has a track called “Asleep in Samsara” on 2002’s “Elaborations of Carbon.” Is all this a coincidence? And more important: does it matter?
I’m not saying that Scheidt is a Buddhist or that YOB is in some way a “Buddhist band.” (And either way, they get points for clearly not trying to cash in on Buddhism’s cultural cachet. They’re hardly hitting us over the head with the references here.) They probably wouldn’t want to be identified as a Buddhist band, even if they were. And I’m not saying they are. All I am saying is this:
1) Metal can be a lot smarter than some would ever think.
2) Buddhism can be way more metal-confluent than some would ever think. (It can also be way more punk- or hip-hop- or baseball- or business- or whatever-confluent than some would ever think, too.)
First Herman "Koch" Cain, now this. Child music idol Justin Bieber is being accused of having gone "all the way" -- possibly against his will, certainly without his consent. (By law minors are not able to consent to sex).
Was baby Justin, shown here with Ludicrous in possibly the world's most viewed video, statutorily raped by Mariah Laci Yeater (shown below)?
