The Sheila Variations

That last line of the article: "For what, after all, is more likely to entice a sex symbol confronting middle age than the promise of eternal youth?" OUCH!

There's a very peculiar thing about LA - religion here isn't an expression of inner-spirituality. It's a fucking scene. Ten years ago, on the heels of the Great Topping of His Royal Highness, Lord Cobain, it was Buddhism. Give it a year or two. Mark my words; in 2006 the Next Big Thing will be worshipping the sanctity and healing powers of mushrooms or Santeria voodoo rituals or some shit like that.

She's just another lapsed Catholic, looking to fill the spiritual hole in her life. Frankly I have more respect for someone like Mel Gibson. Though I don't have much use for his version of Cathloicism, at least his faith seems honestly come by, not the cult flavor du jour.

Nevermind all that, what is wrong with her hair that she keeps wearing the most god-awful looking hats for? Is it falling out or what?

Every day is Ascot to Madonna.

I knew a guy once who was very into that faddy Buddhism - not the real Buddhism - but the more materialistic gimme-gimme version of Buddhism. It was all about chanting for a raise, chanting for a part on a soap opera, chanting for all these material things.

I remember being at a party in Chicago and hearing one faux Buddhist say, proudly, "I chanted for green lights today as I was racing to my next audition."

This ancient religious custom being reduced to 'chanting for green lights'. Ick.

LOL When we were kids driving around with my mom we used to chant, "Change, change, alla alla change" at every red light we came to. Seemed to work, too. ;-)

Finally back from jury duty and I must say, "assholically," that's inspired.
M>

I noted in the article that the Kabbalah Center regards itself as the center of the struggle against Satan. That would explain why it is in Hollywood.

I'm shocked that they even acknowledge there's a "Satan". That seems way too black and white for a group all about self-actualization and breathing and meditating on things that YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE MEANING OF.

I thought Jews didn't believe in Satan... I also thought Kabbalah was only supposed to be studied by Jewish males over 40. But hey, what do I know?

Kabbalah- it's for insecure trendoids and Hollywood types for whom Scientology isn't nutty enough.

(Besides- who knew Yossi Klein Halevi could be so catty?)

I also thought that Kabbalah was for Jews. Britney Spears is in no way, shape or form a Jew.

I like that: Scientology isn't nutty enough for me, I'm gonna give Kabbalah a go.

I wonder if there's a center here in NYC. I really want to go. Just to check it out. I will do a bit of research on it.

RE: Chanting for green lights.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space."

Try it. I DARE you! Watch the spaces open up!

What a coincidence. Just today I read this story about how the Hebrew symbols Britney had tattooed on her neck are gibberish. However, the most amusement I got out of the whole thing is the hilarious irony that tattoos are verboten to Jews.

You pinhead.

Tattoos also go against the Confucian dictum not to deface the body your parents gave you, but nutjobs all over have Chinese characters printed on their bodies that say things like "unreliable delivery service" or "small penis":

http://journals.aol.com/aiibrat/Random/entries/261

In Japan, some hotels don't even let you in the fitness center if you have a tattoo (Yakusa, don't ya know...)

It's not just the white boy fad Buddhism that prays so crassly for material stuff, Chinese Buddhists do, too. As with all religions, the real thing is hard to find. As my wife (a former Buddhist) says, the monks take a vow of pvoerty, but how many skinny monks do you see?

Ascot, heh.

"Ev'ry duke and earl and peer is here/
Every one who should be here is here..."

Kabbalah is the new Scientology, the real contest is seeing which one will drain your wallet fastest.

Either by conversion or litigation, Bill!

Speaking of which, y'all should be careful bad-mouthing the Scientologists. I think they might be the most sue-happy organization on the planet.

Well, John, China and Confucius aren't exactly isomorphic. Plenty of Chinese are (or, well, were, before Mao) Buddhist, Christian, or whatever else. So it's not quite fair to impugn someone for breaking Confucian rules simply because they used Chinese characters (and as often as not, it's Japanese Kanji).

I'd also been under the impression that technically, in the Pentateuch, the prohibition was on tattoos "in remembrance of the dead" or something along very similar lines; not, in spirit or in letter, a prohibition against decoration, but against the cultic practices of some non-Jewish religion of the time and place.

(With typical rabbinical caution, of course, this has been expanded to all tattoos, to avoid any chance of pissing off God inadvertently.)

They are sue happy, but the guys over at Operation Clambake manage to stay up, despite constant threats.

Sigvald, Confucian and Chinese are not synonymous, but there are elements of Confucian thought that are pretty universal in Chinese society in all its geographic and political forms (Overseas Chinese, ROC, PRC). Temples in Taiwan tend to have Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist deities in the same building. The concept of religion in Asia is less exclusive and more eclectic than in the West. Mao used a lot of Confucian ideology that happened to promote submission to authority. There is still a lot of Confucian culture in the PRC.

The same comment applies to Japan and its acceptance of certain Confucian principles. The social stigma of tattoos is one case in point, so claiming that a given tattoo is Kanji does not really get the wearer off of the hook for violating the rules of Asian culture, especially given the ~65% overlap in fundamental meanings between Chinese and Japanese characters. For many of the short words people use in tattoos, the Chinese and Japanese characters are identical, and the person is an equal opportunity offender. Groups like the Yakusa flout the tattoo rule in Japan, making body art even more socially unacceptable in the mainstream. Hence the ban on tattoos in some Japanese hotels. In almost all Asian societies that borrowed culture from China, getting a tattoo is seen as low class behavior. The article I linked to above notes an offended Asian artist who inked "Insert General Tso's Chicken Here" right below some girls navel.

When I posted that piece where I compiled all the terrible reviews of Battlefield Earth, I got a couple of nasty letters from Scientologists. And it wasn't even a post about Scientology - I just love bad movie reviews.

It was creepy too - I got the emails within 24 hours of it being posted.

I had no idea how they found me.

The big thing a few years back was the "JewBu" fad- Jews who sort of assimilated Tibet-style Buddhist meditation into their religious practice. Not sure if that's still around or not.

The article I linked to above notes an offended Asian artist who inked "Insert General Tso's Chicken Here" right below some girls navel.

That is so goddamm funny.

Sheila wrote:
When I posted that piece where I compiled all the terrible reviews of Battlefield Earth, I got a couple of nasty letters from Scientologists. And it wasn't even a post about Scientology - I just love bad movie reviews.

You were helping bash their pet project. You are the enemy. And so am I. Which brings me to my favorite alleged L. Ron Hubbard quote:
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."

I think they would have wanted to stay as far away from B: E as they could, as one reviewer noted "This movie is like watching the Pope accidentally catch on fire while giving Easter Mass. If that's not a time to rethink your spiritual choices, what is?"

I read the book twenty years ago. Still have it, in fact. On the cover it says "Soon to be a major motion picture." Year on the copyright page: 1984.

Emily - I didn't trace the link back far enough. Go here:

http://www.soufoaklin.com/tattooartist.html

“I don’t even like General Tso’s!” Baker sobbed. “I’m a vegetarian!”

Bill:

This movie is like watching the Pope accidentally catch on fire while giving Easter Mass. I am snorting with laughter. That is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

As a matter of fact, all of these comments are funny.

"I wonder if there's a center here in NYC. I really want to go. Just to check it out. I will do a bit of research on it."

Don't do it, red. You're in the door, all bets are off. Next thing you know, you haven't eaten in four days, your credit cards are maxed and NYC is a distant memory.

"Battlefield Earth is much better if you've read the book. It's still a steaming pile of dung, but a much better steaming pile of dung. The book is pretty good, actually."

Scott, I read the book and liked it. The movie is still the most sucktastic thing I've ever seen.

Madonna is a phony, but I think its wrong to judge her too harshly. In our society it requires enormous strength of character for a celebrity to maintain a relatively normal, healthy frame of mind. Most of them fail miserably, but it's an illusion to believe that most of the rest of us would be unfazed if we were in their shoes. We, as a culture, treat these people as if they are not really human, and then we feign shock when they exhibit signs of incipient insanity.

Celebrities generally chase after boutique religions because they offer the celebrity a chance to feel good about themselves. It's a tough situation to be in - knowing that many more deserving artists go relatively unrecognized and unrewarded while you enjoy fruits that in many cases far outstrip those which are truly earned.

For all her millions, her high-profile celebrity marriage, her connections with so many of the "beautiful people", I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that Madonna is not any happier with her life than I am - possibly less. What we do to celebrities - paying them ridiculously huge sums for the right to intrude in grotesque and obscene ways into their lives - is simply wrong. We're now pushing that scenario downward to the level of "normal" citizens through these ever-more disgusting reality shows. The latest one is built around the premise of having a fake competition in which people with absolutely no talent will be told that they are stupendous, only to learn in the end that we were just having a sick joke at their expense. Hey, they'll be paid for their humiliation - what's the harm?

Unfortunately, the collective will for us to step off the warped path we're now following is nowhere in sight..

I'm not "feigning shock", and I never said I thought Madonna was happier because of her millions. I think she's a phony. But after all, I don't know her. I can imagine she's looking for peace, solace, whatever, but she's a freakin' phony, in my opinion. I cannot back this up, because I have never met the woman.

Don't you have a celebrity that just goes up your ass for no apparent reason, Mike R?

MikeR -- you have a point, but there's something you're really overlooking. Most famous people are not "accidental celebrities". They whore their images and pay publicists HUGE amounts of money to beg the press and media to pay attention to them. While you're spot on about a lot of us forgetting that these people are indeed human and deserve to have their feelings respected to some degree, I have a hard time mustering too much pity for anyone who has chosen to put themselves before the country's eye, especially someone like Madonna, who worked her ass off to be and remain as famous as she is.

I'm with Sheila. I think she's a phoney. We probably wouldn't still be talking about her if she wasn't.

Well, let me just add something here, at the risk of sounding like a total idiot.

I know a lot of semi-celebs. Nobody as big as Madonna, but I have friends and family who are extremely successful, and you would recognize their names. And they're just regular people, who have kids, and visit their families, and go to mass on Sundays, and who happen to make a lot of money, and get mobbed by fans when they go to Mardi Gras.

Perhaps fame of the bright-white-hot-light (Madonna Michael Jackson) variety does something more extreme to someone's psyche. I am sure it does. The loss of privacy is intense. I can only imagine. Harrison Ford came and spoke at my school and said, "You know, it was years before I got accustomed to my fame."

Madonna is, indeed, another animal. Harrison Ford chose to be an actor - his celebrity which came with Star Wars took him by surprise. Madonna HAD to become a star. She chased the spotlight. By the way, I don't judge her for this at all. I admire it, actually. Nobody is going to GIVE you anything in this world, and you have to chase after your dream with all you are worth.

And just because I'm criticizing her for her phoniness doesn't mean that, somehow, I hold her to a different or a higher or whatever standard than I do to people who are not celebs.

Like I said, I do not know her personally. I am addressing her public persona, sitting next to her Kabbalah guru, talking in a British accent, wearing an Ascot hat, and saying she is "enlightened".

I can't believe I just wrote a series of tragically earnest paragraphs about Madonna. But I have. And I just have to learn to accept that.

I'm not sure I'd bust on Madonna for being a phony now. In one sense, she's never been anything else--but in another sense and at the same time, she's anything but.

I'll probably explain this poorly, but to me every move Madonna has ever made, every public syllable (and probably a great many of the private ones) she has ever uttered, has been about positioning and advancing Madonna™ The Brand. One can't rip on her too hard for this because she's never made a secret of it.

To the extent that she isn't claiming otherwise, I see this as just one more repositioning. Of course, I'm a cynic about such things. And I may well have missed the bit where she said, "I used to be a (whatever her brand message was at a given moment), but all that's changed since I found inner peace through Kabbalah." If she's making that claim, then you may fire when ready, Red Gridley. :-)

Ken -

I guess I think we're saying the exact same thing. At least I don't see the difference.

I probably didn't explain myself all that well, Red. The "feigning shock" comment was directed toward our culture at large - we all participate in this, myself included. I didn't mean to imply that I see Madonna or other celebrities as victims - clearly most of them chose this life, and scratched and clawed their way to achieve it.

Virtually every person on earth wants things that, if received, are in fact not good for us. Joe Schmo next door wants to marry a plastic blonde bimbo, does, and then has to endure years of misery. Madonna is certainly no more deserving of our compassion than Joe, but I guess what I was trying to say is that she's also not LESS deserving of compassion. She wanted it, she got it, and now she has to live with it, as Emily suggested. Fair enough, but I do still think the profound intensity of the spotlight we put on these people is something with which virtually no human is fully equipped to cope. We basically offer them a deal with the devil. It's true they gladly accept of their own free will, but it's an ultimately inhumane deal that I just don't believe we, as a civilized society, should be offering.

Sorry I'm late replying, but we've been in a semi-crisis mode the past few days formulating our response to the Sasser worm situation...

I liked some of Madonna's early music (early mid 1980s) but stopped liking her around the time of her "Like A Virgin" video.

Even during her height of fame ('80s and '90s) she was being a phony. She knew very well if she grabbed her crotch in videos and so on that she would get attention for it which would also help boost her record sales.

Madonna wasn't misbehaving because she was trying to "sexually liberate" women or any of that other nonsense that feminist college professors like to blab on about.

Madonna did finally admit to this in a recent interview:
"I had to finally admit that I did a lot of things to satisfy my own ego, for the fun of shocking people and out of an overblown sense of self-importance," she said.

"Before having Lourdes I wasn't at all interested in what I could do for other people," Madonna added.

"I looked at the people around me and I thought: What can they do for me? Do they look good next to me? Will they give me what I want from them?..."
--source:
Ananova.com

Some of you may want to drop by the
Anti Madonna / I Hate Madonna discussion board, where we sometimes post information about her relationship to Kabbalah, among other issues.

For red who wrote,
But after all, I don't know her. I can imagine she's looking for peace, solace, whatever, but she's a freakin' phony, in my opinion. I cannot back this up, because I have never met the woman.

I recently had a Madonna fan tell me at my discussion board that I can't pass any sort of judgement on Madonna because I've never met Madonna personally. That attitude makes no sense to me.

This individual finally had to concede I had a point when I said, "I've never met Adolph Hiter or Josef Stalin in person, but I'm perfectly comfortable saying and thinking that each man was a monster based upon what I have seen and read about each one."

So you don't necessarily have to know someone personally in order to make some kind of conclusion about them.

Plenty of people feel as though they have the right to make judgements on political figures such as George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, and yet they do not know either man personally.

Flea Dip -

Well, thank you so much for randomly dropping by and telling me my own opinion makes no sense.

I don't really take Madonna as seriously as you seem to, judging from your email address. And that's fine. But putting Hitler and Madonna into the same sentence seems a bit extreme to me.

Perhaps Madonna is so suckered into Kabbalah because she is, at heart, a mind-controlled sex slave. This is probably too "X-Files-ish" for most people, but there are books and websites out there detailing this sort of thing. Ever wonder why she acted so weird and out of control in her 1994 Letterman appearance?

Excellent post! I too have been rather alarmed by the treatment of such a beautiful spiritual tradition as commodity. I am seeing that occur with some grounds of Christianity (vesica pisces) that leads people to think that by acquiring and possessing certain things, one does not need work on anything else spiritual.

I gained profound respect for the Jews in reading up on the Kabbalah, but I would never claim to understand or be a Kabbalist because of my research into it. It has led me to a spiritual path in the tradition I was raised in (Christianity) but even there, I have been exhorted to remember that this path is not about Me. It's about G-d.

you know, i just stumbled across, for the first time, some access hollywood piece on "kabbalah, religion of the stars" or some such dreck. i was so mortified by what i saw that i had to run in to my computer and dig up some sort of info on this abomination calling itself kabbalah on tv. this website was the first place i found.

i studied kabbalah pretty intensely for many years, from the late 80's or so. though i set my serious digging aside some time ago (life intervenes, y'know?) it's principles still guide me in many ways. i've been aware of the growing fascination in hollywood, and i've watched with some amusement in recent years as madonna, then others were declared the new figureheads of this "movement". but i really knew nothing about what these people were actually doing until now.

i'm sick. truly sick to my stomach at these people and their red strings and goddamned water and 10% tithing. what the hell? satan? i want to vomit. this is NOT kabbalah as i know it. the "kabbalah centre"? laughable. sickening moneygrubbing whoremongers. i nearly threw my shoe at the mewling "rabbi" showing off the bottles of water for sale. i cannot fathom what i see in front of me.

this is not kabbalah, folks. i really don't know what else to say. it's just not.

ok, i'll go lie down now. sorry to vent.

g++

I think there are some other perspectives that need to be aired here. Madonna and other celebs are just like the rest of us in their journey to figure life out and find answers to the ultimate questions...except that they also know firsthand(unlike many of us) that fame and wealth don't satisfy. You guys are being very cynical. Transformation does happen. I see it in Madonna and I was never much of a fan. I have recently started a study of Kabbalah and I also feel a change in outlook. It's hard to explain, but things don't appear as hardened....the heart begins to open and your eyes see things in different light. Of course, this experience can occur with most any spiritual practice. Our cynical world hates anything that brings inner transformation....ever considered that some of you have fallen for that?

Brian:

Have you read the rest of my blog or just this one post?

quoting from above:

Madonna did finally admit to this in a recent interview:
"I had to finally admit that I did a lot of things to satisfy my own ego, for the fun of shocking people and out of an overblown sense of self-importance," she said.

"Before having Lourdes I wasn't at all interested in what I could do for other people," Madonna added.

"I looked at the people around me and I thought: What can they do for me? Do they look good next to me? Will they give me what I want from them?..."

This, I think is a sure sign of what may not be brainwashing, but at least an example of how Madonna's enlightenment via The Kabbalah Centre has directed her to believe that the old Madonna was some sort of egomaniacal maniac. This is certainly not the case. Would this old Madonna have participated in Live Aid? Would that old Madonna have donated the proceeds of concerts to AIDS foundations in the honor and memory of loved ones? Contribute music to benefit albums for charities like Special Olympics and Sweet Relief? I'm not saying that she was a saint, but come on!