From the White House to Straightedge punks: Contrarianism is uniquely American.

Washinton Times article by Sri Keshava

New York snark Vs L.A. nice

N.Y.C. Vs L.A.

snark Vs nice 

New Yorkers can be snarky when it comes to Los Angeles.  Sometimes it’s not even snark but rather a bona fide reaction to a successful smoke and mirrors campaign.  When it comes to the City of Angels, New Yorkers tend to lick the outside of the honey jar.  And frequently refuse even do that.  On occasion even the sweetest New Yorker can be heard uttering something along the lines of, “Yeah… it’s just that people from L.A. are sort of... shallow.”  It’s not true.  Or rather it can be, but it’s an illusion half the good people of L.A. are happy to perpetuate in a diabolical attempt to avoid a mass east coast exodus west.  It’s a similar scenario between Sydney and Melbourne (a microcosmic homage to bed pal America for anyone that cares).  Melbourne, our New York proxy has analogous opinions about Sydney-siders.  The good peeps of Sydney, like good Los Angelinas, hear the slander and just don’t give a crap. Maybe it’s that response alone that sends New Yorkers into a rage?  Remember, pot is legal in California.  No wonder, “it’s all good,” is part of Californian vernacular.

So the shallow part…  Absolutely.  There is an absolute repulsive, retch-inducing side to L.A.  It’s called Entourage and it’s got a few flavor variations.  Fake boobies.  Yeah.  Sunset Boulevard.  Yeah.  But doesn’t New York also have the Frying Pan and Wall Street?  (And all the clichés that hitch along for those joy rides?)  Don’t get me started or I might have to mention a few other charmed spots in the Big Apple.

Los Angeles has something that New Yorkers enjoy, but perhaps too little: The humble house party.  No wonder New Yorkers think Los Angeles is full of douchebags.  Statistically, there are a large percentage of said douchebags out on the town on any given Saturday night.  (New Yorkers, does the term: Bridge and Tunnel ring a bell for anyone?)  Very few have been invited to the humble house party.  And if they are at a party, they’re at a douchebag’s house party like Heff’s.   If he were canine he’d be an Australian sheep dog, keeping the herd localized.  Thanks Heff.  In homes scattered all over Los Angeles, from historic Pasadena to nature’s Topanga Canyon; from Victorian mansions overlooking downtown in inner-city Angelina’s Heights Echo Park to Venice beach… and every where in between, good people are inviting their friends over to eat, drink, talk, dance, celebrate and get to know each other better.  It’s a rather nice human tradition.  The only problem is that you’ve got to be invited.  Los Angeles is a jewel opened through relationships.  If you’ve got fake titties, (and without malice,) you’re likely not invited to my party. I’m pretty sure you don’t even want to come. 

 L.A. has some of the best hiking a major city in the world can offer.  I’d be curious and open to suggestions where there is better – all things compared.   L.A. has great beaches.  They pale to Australia, but that’s a personal issue I have to deal with.  New York is a vortex that can forbid escape for months at a time.  Think of that feeling when you’re returning from a rare breakout to upstate New York.  You see Manhattan in the distance over the river, and it starts sucking you back in.  You can physically feel yourself being pulled (willingly mind you) into the vortex.  L.A.’s vortex is interrupted by gorgeous mountains and a Pacific ocean that consoles the frazzled with the promise that no matter how crazy the city can be, you can stand on her shore and let the negative-ion charged wind blow the crazy right out of you.  A true snarky New Yorker will hate me for even mentioning the term negative ions.

I recently went to a house party in New York; a fantastic ground floor garden apartment.  Of course it was in Brooklyn, because when one talks of anything fun in New York it’s probably happening in Brooklyn.  It was such a nice party with truly good people.  They were very New York, in every likable way.  But good people are good people.  Just like Americans as a whole need to travel more and enjoy meaningful experiences with other people in other countries, New Yorkers need to leave New York and just maybe pry the lid off the honey jar and get their fingers sticky.

Straightedge punk Vs Vaishnav monk - Gurus, Rock Stars & the Men In Between excerpt

They were the new soldiers of Straightedge, a movement of fresh-faced kids who reject drugs and impropriety. Their appearance and manner began as a mix of tough healthy jock and Leave it to Beaver goody-two-shoes nerd, but any chance of being called ‘pussies’ was made redundant by the mix of frantic, epilepsy-inducing music and angry, screaming vocals that could send even the Godfather of Punk, Johnny Rotten, sniveling into a corner begging for mercy.  Why so incensed to right the wrongs of the world, even he’s at a loss to explain.  For the most part they were just a bunch of rich white kids from the tri-state area.  But young raging hormones need only a hint of reason when seeking an alternative cause to champion, and Straightedge was born out of contrarianism to the current status quo.  In the 1960s and 70s, kids rejected parental dogma by embracing drugs and free love.  Decades later, Straightedge punks practice defiance by rejecting the very freedoms for which their Flower Power parents so valiantly fought.   

Straightedge is a floating ethos.  It doesn’t stop at drugs, but extends the ban to cigarettes, alcohol and in its extremes to meat-eating and casual sex.  Practiced with humility, I can see how the Straightedge movement is easily more constructive than most contemporary alternative youth cultures.  With their strict and puritanical rules, one can even draw similarities between an austere monk and a Straightedge punk.   If you group all these aspirants, monks and punks together into one, you can better divide them not by way of ideology, but rather by underlying intention.  One group is thoughtful, gaze introverted, with personal growth and service to humanity at its core.  The second hides behind dogma and uses the alliance to foster feelings of exclusivity, superiority and ego-based power.  No mortal is wholly innocent or diabolical.  Neither the faithful nor the revolutionary is exempt from the dualities of human nature.  All subcultures are microcosms of the macrocosm called humanity.  At the end of the day and on no matter whose team you play, many people are good, a few are bad, and a couple are just downright f-ugly.  

 

Washington Times article - Going Green Part 3

Washington Times article - Going Green Part 3

Washington Times article - Going Green Part 2

Washington Times article - Going Green Part 2
by Sri Keshava

Washington Times article - Going Green part 1

Washington Times Going Green article

Excerpt: Gurus, Rock Stars & the Men In Between - If my boobies are to have a fighting chance they have to be delivered with absolute conviction.

Like any romance, it’s hard to know when it moves from fantasy to reality. Is it the acceptance of the walk? Was it the conversation late last night in the studio while I worked? From a woman’s perspective it’s the moment we lay eyes on our prey. The rest are mere markers along a path already paved in anticipation. But when does the prey begin to participate as co-predator? Five minutes into our walk on a brisk spring afternoon along a desolate trail, the Devotee pulls me off the path, through brush and into a clearing cushioned with hay. It’s too perfect. He clearly knows about the haystack and planned it all along. We lay looking at the sky, talking for ages about what I don’t know. But I do know the feeling; the exquisite feeling that can only be felt when your heart is broken. When you believe you’ll never love again, only to find that on the contrary, you will… and it will happen here, on this field, in this late afternoon sun… with this man.

Quietly and confidently he leans in and kisses me. It is slow and gentle and everything I need - easily equivalent to five Hassidic therapy sessions. After that it gets hazy. I know we roll around in the hay literally and innocently. I gaze into his smiling eyes. I can see his soul. I pull back. I don’t want him to look at me. If he gets a really good look he’ll come to his senses and realize I’m not pretty, or at least that I’m older than him… whatever that implies I don’t know, but I’m sure it isn’t good. No matter how much he looks at me, he doesn’t see the faults I find so glaring. As the minutes come and go he remains stubborn. In the face of all logical reasons why; he likes me.

We plan to spend time together later tonight at the studio. At first we toss around the lackluster idea of watching a movie. For some reason and with an intensity of feeling I can’t explain but know to be true I say, “Our time together is so precious. Let’s forget the movie and get to know each other.”

We rendezvous at ten p.m. Everyone has left and I enter his office where he often spends the night working. I finger the books on his shelves, opening them at random. We choose poignant words and discuss what they mean personally, and in our life. He shows me photos of his brothers and sisters, and his Mom. He shares how his father left when he was a baby, and how his mother raised him in a rural Hindu ashram. I touch his hands. They are beautiful and kind. I look into his eyes. I feel safe. I am in the presence of goodness and I feel it to my core. I sit on the couch and he on a chair, close but opposite holding my hands in his. As he looks into my eyes he pulls me forward, and gently kisses me. I have never met a man who so perfectly embraces the feminine and masculine at once, a man whose gentility and kindness are balanced by absolute strength. I am embracing art itself.

“Take your top off” he orders matter of fact. “I want to give you a massage.”

Smoke billows out of my ears as millions of synapses go off in an attempt to figure out how to get the top off, hide my boobs and look blasé all at once. I still believe that at any moment he is going to come to his senses and realize, “Oh this is not what I purchased… look at her little boobs, what was I thinking?”

Challenged by the seeming innocence of his request, I follow suit. When I feel trapped with no way out, I take on a go for broke attitude and give it all I’ve got. With head held high I strike my best pose, and with the posture of a dancer sitting tall I look him square in the eye and slowly peel off my shirt, giving most strippers a run for their money. There in their naked glory exposed to the world are my beautiful compact, ever-erect breasts. If I am going down, I am going down in a blaze of gunfire. If my boobies are to have a fighting chance they have to be delivered with absolute conviction. I raise my chin, cock one eyebrow and slightly smile meeting his gaze defiantly as though, “There you go! My boobies… aren’t they gorgeous?”

He smiles in appreciation, and in this moment they truly are. I lay face down, soothed by his warm, strong hands as he rubs oil over my back in long sensuous strokes. Without word or interruption he worships me for what seems hours, knowing exactly where to venture and when to retreat. I can’t understand it. My whole life I’ve spent every ounce of energy trying to stop men from getting down my pants, and here is one that is allowing me to simply enjoy his company and relinquish my title as chastity belt keeper. He is either the kindest man I’ve ever met, or the most diabolical. It seems impossible that he can be anything other than a very experienced, and therefore untrustworthy lover. He laughs when I share my opinion, impressing upon me that I am merely number three in a very short list of women.

My notion of love, intimacy and sexuality has been off my entire life. As much as I crave authentic, heart wrenching experiences, I was in danger of never having them. I have been external and superficial. Of course he saw my small boobs, and yes he probably saw my extra years. He also saw my elbow, my big toe and left eye. That’s the point. He saw me, inside and out. It isn’t that he likes women with big boobs or small, he likes my boobs because they are mine. If I had big boobs he would like those too. Oh my God, I have met someone who likes…. me. I spend the entire night topless, with helpful suggestions that I get a boob job thankfully a distant memory.