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Intellectual House o' Pancakes Webdiary

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2007-11-19 - 12:41 p.m.

A few years back (wow, this globbe has been around for a while) I opined that The Tibetan Book of Yoga was one of the simplest, most eloquent yoga books I'd read (and I've read way too many), and today I was delighted to accidentally discover that there is a study center right here in Manhattan that offers Tibetan Heart Yoga classes as well as dharma talks, retreats, and a lending library. Yay.


Of all the German CDs I've been listening to in the past three of four days, the band that stands out the most is the maddeningly Google-resistant Sperrmull, who recorded one album in '73 and then disbanded (most of the members did not pursue musical careers).

The album isn't earth-shattering, but it's got some solid, joyful, riff-heavy tunes, pretty good stuff for first-timers. It makes me wonder what would have happened if they'd stayed together and developed as a band.


Barrelfish Shootin� Time

For reasons still unclear to me at press time, I rented a DVD of the TV show Bones last night. If you don't know the show, it's based on the books of a forensic anthropologist, Kathy Reichs. I guess I figured that after a long and productive weekend, I would relax with a little mindless but gorey TV.

But all this aggressively mediocre show did was make me restless to examine the lineage of the stock TV drama protagonist who is too tough, too closed-up, too in love with her work to have a meaningful relationship. We are meant to see this as a deep but utterly forgivable flaw, because, as flaws go, it sure beats the flaws of the actual people we know (and are) in real life.

Most people are flawed in unglamorous, unattractive ways. They are flaky, they are needy, they are boring, they forget to give you their half of the rent before leaving on vacation, they like Black Dice and want you to like them, too. Why don�t these people become TV forensics anthropologists?

Also, I don�t watch much episodic TV, but it seems that in a post-Six Feet Under world, we should have recovered, as a society, from stupid hour-long dramas. Even 24, the most ridiculous action show on TV, at least seems to know it�s ridiculous and really goes out on a limb to top itself every episode. But shows like Bones seem to want to be taken seriously, and so its awfulness becomes kind of sad.

But not that sad.

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