Princess and the Frog

Steve Perry is quite right that is you ask your friends a question, the answer will be slanted by the choice of group. That’s one of the reasons I refused to “come to a conclusion” about the Race versus Gender issue. But I still think it’s a neat trick. Want to know if measles or chicken pox is worse? Ask ten people who’ve had both. Being homeless or being a dwarf? Ask homeless dwarves. How about being shot or stabbed? You get the point. No, not definitive by any means. But I think it cuts closer to the truth than asking the separate groups. And miles better than a mere hallucination or thought experiment.
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First image from “Princess and the Frog”, the new Disney animation, and their first black Princess film. Looks pretty. I loved Aladdin, and thought Beauty and the Beast was classic. Have never actually sat down and watched all of “Little Mermaid”, can’t handle “Pocahantas” and thought “Mulan"” great fun. Definitely a huge change: I consider Disney to have been THE most racist studio in the 20th Century (uncounted thousands of character images in animated films. Not a single animated black person in a full-length animated film during all that time. I worked with former Disney animators while working on “The Secret of NIMH and spoke with them about this. It was no accident. Only when the new generation of animators came in as the “Old Men” retired did this have a chance to change. Another reason why I say that time is gonna take care of this. Thank God for old age and death, eh?)
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My meditation this day was strange. Ordinarily my visualization goes from my third eye to the base of my spine. This morning…BANG! It went WAY lower, down into the sub-human animal stuff. There are teachings that have to do with past-life, and trans-evolutionary charkas. I have no idea what that was about, but if I had to say, I’d think my subconscious was giving me a visual metaphor for some kind of internal shift. Like opening up a sub-basement. More work, but wow, get those sump pumps running and see what comes out.
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Director’s Guild has come to an agreement. Let’s see if the Writer’s Guild follows. Wouldn’t mind if it takes a few more weeks. I’m still struggling to clear my desk of projects backed-up from last year. An embarrassment of riches, to be certain.
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Today is Cloverfield day! Can’t wait. Read some reviews reviling it for “exploiting” 9/11 imagery. You know, I wasn’t in New York when the towers fell, so I can’t say anything about what that felt like. But I’d bet there were Japanese critics criticizing “Godzilla” for exploiting Hiroshima imagery. I think monster movies have always functioned partially to allow us to take REAL fear and vent it through imaginary image systems. I bet Cloverfield will make monster box office in New York.
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See Tom Cruise’s Scientology video? Strangely enough, while Scientology is strange stuff, it’s certainly no stranger than some of the stuff I’ve experimented with over the years. And I think that people criticize its beliefs kinda unfairly. I’m not at all certain that the stories in Scientology are that much stranger than the core stories of most other world religions. In fact, I sometimes wonder if that’s part of what disturbs people about it. But then there’s another part of me that just laughs. I remember A.E. Van Vogt telling me that he was playing poker with Hubbard back in the 50’s, and Hubbard complained that there was no money in S.F.

The “real” money, he said, would be in starting a religion. Then he set out and did it. Wow. Impressive man. My guess is that he had some genuine insights, and then went down his own rabbit hole. I can only hope he believed his own ideas. But considering stories I’ve heard about the end of his life, I tend to doubt it…
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I gained about ten pounds in the last 6 weeks of 2007, and it’s coming back off pretty fast. About 2 ½ pounds a week, actually. Amazing the way people shove food at you, attached to serious emotions.
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Ah, Huckabee and the Confederate flag. Do I think he’s playing to racists when he says it should be up to the states whether the flags come down? Yes, I do. I’ve known hundreds of black folks proud of their Southern Heritage. Never seen one flying a Confederate Flag. Are whites who fly it bad people? I’d say no. But I do think they are either oblivious, or don’t give a shit. That’s all right. That’s their privilege. As it’s my right to factor that flag into my overall evaluation of them. Poking around that wonderful site “Stormfront” and you’ll see the EXACT same arguments about cultural identity and so forth…but the racism is more nakedly visible. And follow a link or two to some of the even viler sites, and you can find yourself mired in human sewage.
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Do I think the Surge is working in Iraq? Well, many stats are more positive, so I’d say “yes” from a narrow perspective. And if you put a cop on every corner, crime would drop. Everyone knows it. But if you can’t sustain that level, you’ve just put on a band-aid. In fact, if some of the intelligence folks are right and our efforts are creating terrorism, then as soon as we pull back, things will get worse—so it’s purely cosmetic.

On the other hand, maybe the reduction in violence will give public institutions in Iraq a chance to catch their breath and root. I’d like that, I really would.
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Yoga yesterday was relatively easy, but I was sore as hell. I think I must have dug deeper into my body/mind complex than usual. HEY! That might have something to do with my meditation this morning! Just made that connection. Strange how this stuff fits together. Just finished reading Coach Sonnon’s new book on “Prasara Yoga.” It is an attempt to go beyond Ashtanga (which links static poses with a single flowing motion) to create “movement flows” of varied intent, releasing tension from the body across all major planes of motion. He’s created five flows (Forest, Spider Monkey, Diving Dolphin, Flock of Pigeons, Tumbleweed) that incorporate the ideas of Shadow Yoga and his own Russian disciplines. Wonderful.

Note, though: I still shade toward considering Scott’s stuff more “fitness” than “health”—although he deals with health issues one hell of a lot more efficiently than 99% of what passes for fitness in America. Most “fitness” stuff is really about looking good in the mirror. Scott goes WAY deeper than that. But if you’re just starting out, I’d seriously suggest traditional yoga first. Those static poses are like putting your car up on the rack to look at the suspension, and running a diagnostic on the engine. Scott’s Prasara is like taking your car for a controlled run on a closed track, with sophisticated diagnostic equipment running computer-assisted scans. An order of magnitude more sophisticated—and difficult for a raw beginner.

But that said, if you have your foundation, I see nothing out there to touch what Scott’s doing, and I watch his excellent core expanding to include an entire range of movement, all the way to ultra-performance. So if it isn’t quite “rooted” yet, you can compensate for that at any bookstore or strip-mall. What Scott has, is as rare as an honest politician.