With Tom Cruise so very in the news, it’s time people started to read up a bit on the history of Scientology. As your friend and trusted adviser, I’ve scoured the interweb for the finest “primer” available.

HERE IT IS.

Straight from the New York Times’ archives. Fortunately, the article escaped from the modern day “Operation Snow White,” Scientology’s well-documented effort to remove all critical mention of itself from all global media.

“Scientology’s Puzzling Journey from Tax Rebel to Tax Exempt,” is a fascinating read about, well, a bunch of folks who believe they have ‘power’ and insight. Follow it up with the above link to Snow White, and you’re off to the races.

Now, the fact that they believe that humans were trapped on earth 75 million years ago in chunks of ice, banished by Xenu, ruler of the Galactic Federation (I shit you not) - that doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just as realistic as the other creation myths (check out Mormon founder Smith’s ‘magic crystals’ story), and who knows, it could be true. No, I’m not a nutjob, I’m just saying we can’t dismiss out of hand what we don’t know, no matter how ‘crazy’ it seems. Could be we all live in a bowl of Jello, and are bound any moment for Charlton Heston’s diseased bowels. Could be. No, my questions about Scientology have to do with the organization’s massive amount of criminal deception.

Just because they want to be recognized as a Church doesn’t mean they have to act like one.

If I disappear…ask Tom Cruise about my whereabouts. Heh.

I know, I’m likely really late to the party on this one, but I absolutely have to give credit where it’s due. In this case, it’s to Paris’ agent or whomever it is that convinced the media to run with the following quotes and info from Ms. Hilton:
“I changed all the light bulbs to energy-safe light bulbs, and I’m buying a hybrid car right now,” the celebrity heiress explained just yesterday. Further, she said turns off the lights, doesn’t leave the TV on or the watter running when she leaves the house. “Little things that people can do every day to make a huge difference,” she added.

Now, I’m a bit torn on this. On one hand, it’s great that she’s doing all the things most six year olds do. It means she’s growing up and sending a positive message to millions of American teens and celebrity-enthralled adults who still haven’t gotten the “You’re Pretty Much Doomed for Having Shit in Your Own Bed” memo from Mama Earth. Yet, endorsing the notion that turning off the lights and tele is going to make a massive difference is almost criminally negligent.

It’s easy to pick on Paris, too easy in fact. I’ve done it before and feel guilty about it as I have a rule (sort of) about belittling someone who I’ve never met, unless their actions are willfully harmful to others. Could be her heart is in the right place. You decide.

Damn, I must be getting soft in my old age to let her off so easy.

This is exciting! My first fashion review!

My ever-perfect wife Andi (of the nation’s premier ethical-apparel store, Arboretum) brought home to me a new pair of black pants by Edun. Owned by the ever-righteous Bono, Edun is, according to its website, “founded on the premise of trade, not aid as a means of building sustainable communities. The company works on a micro-level to help build the skill sets of the factories where the clothes are produced.”

I own a few Edun pieces, but never before had I sported the pants (Omega Twill Chinos), as I’m a Rag & Bone man to the core (my all-time favorite men’s line - also available at Arboretum, btw). And while I love you, Bono, these pants pretty much suck hard. The fit is fine for a skinny bastard like me, but two massive complaints:

UNO: No belt loops. While this is absolutely rad in a pair of women’s pants, it’s a joke for men. Men are generally bigger (though at 6′1″/165 I’m not exactly massive) and fluctuate in actual pounds more than do women. This means we need belts to make adjustments for those days when our bowel movements are exceedingly large. Without a belt loop, I have days where they fit just right and others where I can’t wear them.

DOS: The front “pockets” are laughable! They’re deep enough to hold six, maybe seven Tic Tacs. Try putting a mobile phone or a money clip in there and you’re bound to be frustrated. After some work, I did manage to squeeze my money clip in, but it came popping out whenever I sat down. Oddly enough, shallow front pockets are another feature commonly found in women’s pants. I suspect women are quite concerned with maintaining nice lines in front. Most men need those pockets to put things in. Hence the pocket in the first place. I won’t even get into the ‘flying wings’ that are the back pocket flaps. When I have time I’m going to unstitch them by hand.

There are darned good reasons clothes are built differently for boys and girls. The reason is called gender-differentiated ergonomic requirements. Whoever is designing for Edun seems to live in a fantasy world where men and women have identical builds and social requirements.

Bono, if you’re out there, I’m rooting for your line. Your wife’s line. I’m rooting for just about everything you do. I highly respect the noble mission that you’ve set out to achieve with the Edun line. The Africa-to-Africa production cycle is fantastic.

I’m sure my wife and her partner are going to be aghast that I’ve given a less than glowing review to a product they carry. However, my duty is to be honest. And, honestly, these pants are shite. Bono - pick up the phone and call Rag & Bone. Maybe they can loan out their designer.

[tags]africa, arboretum, bono, clothing, pants, rag & bone, bono[/tags]

Okay. Once in a while I leave all this doom-and-gloom climate catastrophe crap behind and just post about something amazing. Like the time I posted about hip-hop masters, Grand Buffet. Or about my new stories+photos PolaFiction website (I really could dedicate a whole ten gazillion website to Polaroids). Or that one post about my fantasy meeting at a Turkish bath with Dick Cheney and Al Jolson (seriously, paw through the site, you’ll find it.)

This day, I submit to you that I may well have found the first and only PERFECT WEBSITE. Miranda July made it. She also made that one really great, really funny movie with the goldfish scene that was so perfectly beautiful that I still stare off into space when I think about it. What was it called? I can’t remember. No, I can. It IS called “Me and You and Everyone We Know.”

Seriously, the website - it’s flippin’ genius.

CLICK HERE AND FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF.

Oh, yeah . . . you should buy the book. I’m going to.And whatever you do, don’t tell my wife that I now officially have a totally top-secret crush on Miranda July. My secret is safe with you guys, right? No, no. . .Andi never reads this site. She only reads the other one. So shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

(Confession: I really only posted this because I’m hoping that Miranda is the type of person who obsessively checks the links to her website (help me out, click her site already!), notices this, reads it, clicks to the Polafiction site, reads the lame stories there, is drunk enough to think they’re decent, then contacts me to work with her on dozens of world-shattering screenplays. This scenario, unlikely as it seems, will quite likely play out very much as described. You wait and see. What, you’re calling me delusional? Fuck you. Wait and see.)

[tags]miranda-july, polafiction, polaroid, dick-cheney, turkish-bath[/tags]

At last, a bit more info on Leo D’s new project, ‘The 11th Hour’. I’ve high hopes that this film can pick up where Gore’s film let down. . err. . . left off. In interviewing dozens of noted thinkers, the film seems to be ready to deliver on the “What can we do?” topic as well as well and truly get to the root causes of our current climate change predicament. Gore was nifty with the Power Point, but he left out pretty much every significant detail and refused to implicate his former paymasters. It’s almost time for another “why the hell do the Dems get all this ‘green’ credit when they continue to do so damned little” rant, but I’m going to table it . . . for now.

Here’s the link to the new site. Scant on info, but it looks like there is more to come. Oh, my main man Lester Brown was interviewed for the film, but he doesn’t show up on the bio list yet. Leo - are you reading this? I’m certain you ar, so will you do me a quick favor and get Les’ profile up? Thanks! We should grab dinner again at Papalote’s - I can’t believe those tofu burritos! Wearing that silver El Santo mask for anonymity was genius, man!

I’m dedicating today’s song to Leo. He seems to be the real deal.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s ‘The Lion Lair’ [audio:lion.mp3]

[tags]leonardo-dicaprio, 11th-hour, al-gore, lester-brown, papalote, tofu-burrito[/tags]

Turns out Al Gore is mulling an offer by Ralph Nader to run as the Green Party’s Presidential candidate in 2008. As my loyal readers know, I was the first to put forth this notion into the ecosphere with THIS POST which was widely circulated on the web. My first real scoop!

From the article,

“Sources close to Gore said Ralph Nader has sought to recruit the former vice president to run as the candidate for the Green Party. They said Gore has not rejected the offer and was consulting with family and friends to determine the feasibility of such a candidacy. . . Gore, largely estranged from former President Bill Clinton since 2000, is said to have concluded that he stands no chance of beating Hillary for the Democratic presidential nomination. But sources close to Gore said the former vice president believes that he could present himself as a genuine liberal in any general election that would include Clinton.”

Look, the time has never been better for a WINNING third party run. If Gore doesn’t do it, that insiduous Unity ‘08 ticket is going to cost the Democrats the White House. In two years, every liberal in the world will be thanking Gore for doing the right thing. Just because the masses can’t see the logic now (and polls will likely show this), is no reason to not do what must be done. As it stands, the Dems and Reps are offering only pro-war, environmentally-ignorant candidates. We cannot afford to allow either party to win.

RUN GORE RUN!!! (And, yes, I will serve as an advisor to your campaign.)

[tags]al-gore, ralph-nader, green-party, tod-brilliant, climate-change, global-warming[/tags]

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Los Angeles (besides shooting hundreds of Polaroids with a mad gang of Pola-nerds at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market - we got run out by security for no reason at all, but that’s another story, parts of which can be found at my Flickr page), was a brunch with the superstar duo, Abby and Amanda AKA The Ditty Bops (pictured at left - their photographer is great).
Not only is their music beautiful, and their eco-themed comics funny as hell, they’re both quite nice, seem super sincere, and are more than avid supporters of an environmentally-sustainble future. In fact, last summer they made their way across the U.S.A., from coast to shining coast, on bicycle - playing dates as they went. How many of your favorite bands, no matter how eco-conscious, use pedal power like this? Flippin’ amazing, I tell you. You can read all about their bike tour on the DITTY BOPS BIKE LOG.

Check out their music, artwork, comics and more at THE DITTY BOPS ROCKIN’ WEBSITE.

For those of you in Los Angeles, the Ditty Bops are playing in Santa Monica on the second of March at world-famous McCabe’s Guitar Shop: BUY TIX HERE (almost sold out)

A sample track for y’all: Wake Up

Certainly you’ve read something about Global Cool in the past few months, no? This week, the assortment of celebrities and green thinkers at Global Cool announced their “Ten Years to Save the Planet” campaign. While the campaign itself may be a bit thin on substance (legislation, sweeping change), it’s a solid step. The whole campaign, with its celebrity tie-ins and educational videos strongly mirrors the Mtv ‘Rock the Vote’ campaign of the ’90s, and I have to say I applaud the effort (how rare is that?). At the very least, it recognizes and points out quite clearly that we’re at the threshold of an irreversible ecological tipping point, after which, well, we’re absolutely doomed (it may be too late, already, but let’s be hopeful and say it isn’t).

Okay, that’s all well and good, and I’m certainly going to donate to the cause, as cutting a check is easiest way to save the planet, right? Yet, the greatest thing I found on the site is under a section called “Green Day(ting)”. Check this out:

If ‘metrosexual’ was the buzzword of the late 90s and early naughties, thanks in part to sensitive sarong-sporting types like David Beckham teaching men to shave properly, then right now ‘ecosexuals’ are all the rage.

Holy mother of god! I’ve had this, well. . . conflict . . .that I’ve been feeling within myself since I was a wee lad. I’ve felt different, not quite like the other boys in the gym. And now I know why!

I AM AN ECOSEXUAL!!!

Say it loud! I’m green and I’m proud!)

There. I just came out. Quite publicly, in fact, on a blog that is read by tens of thousands each day. In case I was at all nebulous, even a bit vague, as I don’t want to mirror Bowie’s waffling on the sexuality subject back in his Ziggy days (he really played the press that crazy Duke):

I AM AN ECOSEXUAL! I AM AN ECOSEXUAL! I AM AN ECOSEXUAL!

I wonder what my wife will think?

+++

P.S. - It all seems to have started here.

P.P.S. - Thanks to the eco-fashion house, GreenCloset for letting me appropriate their logo. Hopefully, this link will make it all square.

I love George Clooney, and this vehicle looks vaguely interesting. Yet, I’m waiting for George to stop endorsing electric vehicles (like this, the Tesla and the Tango) and start endorsing the immediate redesign of our urban and suburban cities into, as Richard Register puts it, “Ecocities”. The solution is not to rework the car, but to eliminate the need for the damned things. Okay, largely eliminate the need. We don’t have time to screw around with electric cars. Converting them all to electric will do far less good than reworking our cities. In short, alterna-vehicles are the wrong tree up which to bark. Okay, maybe not entirely wrong, but I sure wish people would be paying equal attention to the other side of the equation. Did you like that? “Up which to bark?” Oh, what a lovely language we speak.
Register puts it this way:

The car is part of a whole “living system” with all parts integral to one another, not unlike a literally living organism. The built infrastructure of our current city/town/village is this: Cars/sprawl/paving/cheap energy infrastructure. It happens to be a pathological system, but nonetheless it functions basically like any living organism with integral organs, one of which happens these days to be cars. To “improve” the car is to fool ourselves that we are improving the whole system. In fact we are making it possible for people to expand sprawl development because these parts of the whole do not exist in isolation from one another any more than do our organs, bones, muscles, sense organs and so on do. Thus “bettering” the car expands geographically and perpetuates in time the disastrous infrastructure we have now that is gobbling land, killing 500,000 people in “accidents” facilitated by policy (that which builds roads and promotes car ownership), paving agriculture, competing with hungry people for fertile soil as ethanol production from agriculture surpasses food production in many parts of the world so elitists can continue driving while many of those 90% of the world’s population who don’t own cars are hungry and some of them actually starving.

The eco-blogosphere is filled with drooling descriptions of vehicles these days. Isn’t that just fundamentally wrong? Eco-bloggers high-fiving each other at car shows? Our energies are being diverted. I hope we wake up fast. We’re almost out of time. No, really–we’re almost out of time.

For all you ‘baby-steppers’ out there, spare me your baby-steps bullshit. We were supposed to take those thirty years ago. If we can’t sprint, we’ll die.

Milton wrote, “Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise.”

By this standard, how many of the world’s famous citizens deserve their fame?

Given that a number of our greatest scientific and political minds have devoted themselves to help solve our planet-wide environmental collapse, why are these men and women relegated to virtual obscurity? Certainly they are among the greatest examples of Milton’s “clear-spirited?”

How many Nobel Peace Prize winners can you name? Compare that to the number of Grammy winners you can list. Grasp my point? It isn’t your fault . . . we simply don’t value heroes any longer. Instead, we cherish entertainment personalities and self-anointed celebrities (see WHY I’M FAMOUS for details).

Enjoy this great essay by Amy Henderson, entitled “Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture.” Written in 1992, the past fifteen years only highlight the clarity of Henderson’s insight.