Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, November 08, 2009
How green is your Zen?
Here in Shanghai the way to enjoy your Taichi or Kungfu in the park with a green spin is to choose Feiyue canvas training shoes.
No leather, made in the city and cost about 30 RMB. That’s about $4.50 US, but more like half that as money goes twice as far here.
Alas, some cheeky entrepreneurs are selling them to ‘the west’ online for 10 times the real value.
Anyway, they are the official shoe of Andy Best since giving up skateboarding (well, doing dangerous tricks on them due to injuries) and giving up his last guilty clothing pleasure - skate shoes (always with suede or leather).
Posted by Andy from shanghai on 11/09 at 02:53 AMThe official shoe of Andy Best...I like that.
Posted by Mickey Z. from Astoria on 11/09 at 09:19 AMYou’ll Have To Speak Up Dept: Van Halen has some good heart-starters, but this one always shakes off the dust: http://tinyurl.com/c4drsg It may be the greatest metal anthem ever. Will anyone ever top the lines “Bang your head! / Wake the dead!”? I’m thinkin’ nyet.
Posted by Zen Prole from Pac NW on 11/09 at 09:33 AMlove the urban safari article…
The roach facts were pretty enlightening. Gross, but enlightening.
When I was a kid, I used to have a “pet” albino pigeon in Central Park that would fly onto my hand and eat. A homeless woman taught me how to train it to come to my hand. Only in NYC.
Posted by JOS from Oak Park on 11/09 at 10:54 AMAfter reading that Detroit article again, I just went and re-watched Michael Moore’s Roger And Me.
Quick recap for those who haven’t seen it. The opening premise is quick and simple - GM close 12 plants across a year and the end result is 30 000 jobs and the essential death of the town. Upon looking in to it, Moore finds that the company was in profit but simply relocated the factories across the border and then wanted to invest the ‘savings’ in other business for more profit. Weapons companies to boot.
He then spends the movie (set across three years) trying to get a meeting with GM chair Roger Smith to ask him to come up to Flint and see what happened first hand and meet the people.
Never mind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, if you want to see a real horror movie, this is it.
During the end scene where Smith reads his Christmas address, saying it’s a time where we show our humanity, and it’s cut with footage of the burnt out homes and a family being evicted on Christmas Eve, I was literally shouting angrily at my TV and calling him a f*cker.
Posted by Andy from shanghai on 11/09 at 11:01 AMThanks for the vid. Zen.
Andy: I still think that’s only McMoore film worth watching.
JOS: Sounds like you’re missing NYC, huh?
Posted by Mickey Z. from Astoria on 11/09 at 11:38 AMoh yeah…
Posted by JOS from Oak Park on 11/09 at 12:25 PMI’ve met the Laughing Yogi a few times. He’s quite a character. I usually see him at raw food events, but on my recent trip out west, I was walking along Venice Beach, taking in the sites, and there he was. That was so random.
Posted by Charles from Jersey City on 11/09 at 12:29 PMBy the way, I’m a bit sick at the mo and I’m watching a bunch of movies in a row. I just watched Bertolucci’s The Dreamers about the three friends finding themselves among the backdrop of the May 68 riots in Paris.
At the end the student and the siblings finally comes to an impasse where Theo wants to run at the police and throw the bomb but Matthew says it will make them as bad as the police. Then they split up, presumably for ever.
But what’s great is that they film doesn’t condemn or support either way and I found myself breathless and admiring Theo. After all, it was Matthew who chided him for only reading the books but not being out on the streets.
Sorry if ppl have not seen the movie.
Posted by Andy from shanghai on 11/09 at 01:14 PMTalk about green zen. Went on a great tree-huggin’ hike today here in utterly delicious fall weather. Gotta do any and every thing to mitigate the stress of shaleshock...there’s the real possibility of upstate New York becoming a major battleground in the environmental movement.
Posted by Keir from here and there on 11/09 at 04:05 PMAs always: great (if depressing) cartoon, poem, pieces, etc.
It is only 9:17 am here but already quite warm: temperatures are going to rise to 92F - and there are still people down under who say that there is no such thing as global warming!
Hello, Andy, Zen Prole, JOS,Charles, keir and Mickey.
Keep cool!
Posted by Helga Fremlin from Daylesford, Australia on 11/09 at 05:19 PMHi Helga.
Thanks for the links, Keir.
Andy: I haven’t seen that film.
Charles: I think if I ran into that laughing yogi, I’d automatically be in hysterics.
Posted by Mickey Z. from Astoria on 11/09 at 08:05 PMHi everyone again, and loving the Keir comments as usual.
Mickey, the film is very cool, more about the three students than the riots but it’s very telling.
Another director made a film as a direct riposte though, called ‘The Real Lovers’, I think. Rather than show three young students who lose themselves in their own world as the May 68 incidents happen around them and eventually shake them out of their slumber - the second film shows someone who loses themselves in a bohemian lifestyle AFTER the riots when he believes that they ultimately failed.
Two different takes.
Anyway, most people are so hung up on the nudity in The Dreamers that you’d hardly know it was about May 68 and facing your passions and beliefs when reading about it.
Posted by Andy from shanghai on 11/10 at 01:28 AMThanks again, Andy.
Btw, a new post is about to go up.
Posted by Mickey Z. from Astoria on 11/10 at 05:17 AM
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