It's a moral outrage. Who is running the marketing department for the City of LA? "Ride the D, Ride the D," it's everywhere. There's a double entendre in there, as if they aim to drain the main vein or choke a lizard. The "D" is the new D Line, of course, but some school-age kids might think it refers to a real Richard Johnson.
The Metro is the new partially underground way of getting around the west coast megalopolis, Earthquake Town. As we continue to await "The Big One," which we have been waiting for for the past 30 years since the last time they re-announced it's another 30 years, but it's coming. It's coming. And there's no need to ever ask after every temblor, "Is this the Big One?" Why?
Unisex hoodie, sexy crop top (shorts not included)
It's because when it's the Big One, you'll it's the Big One, because you won't have to ask, "Is this the Big One." Your certainty will obviate the question. Lately, Netflix is a Joke has taken over every venue in the city, even far off post-fire Altadena, at the Eagle Lodge on Woodbury.
Section 1 of the D Line Extension is a historic moment bringing rail transit for the first time to a part of Los Angeles' Miracle Mile on Wilshire Blvd. Commemorate this LA transit milestone with a comfy and stylish "Ride the D" dad hat to look like a real D Head! A classic dad hat never goes out of style—made of 100% organic cotton.
LA wants us to "ride the D"?
Who knew mass marketing worked so well?
Last week the Los Angeles Metro announced three long awaited subway stations on the D Line. The video has over 1M views across platforms. An hour after posting, the team quickly followed up with merch to celebrate, a shirt that simply reads “Ride the D.”
They did a full year’s worth of sales in under 24 hours. The design made it ontoLate Night with Seth Meyers. They couldn’t have predicted one piece of merch could become this big of a moment.
We can't hardly wait for hardy May Eight!
When working in social, one is often asked to see the future. What format will break through? How can we get this to go viral? The truth is, even the best social teams surprise themselves.
Jane Ashley, who leads the social media strategy at LA Metro, told me: “We didn't anticipate that the announcement post would be completely eclipsed by something we barely officially promoted.” That’s the fun of working in this industry:
Each team member got to sleep with the trophy as they passed it around between themselves.
RODGER SAYS:"Major League Baseball RIGGED this thing for the Dodgers, the West Coast Yankees, to win it again...""The good thing about the Dodgers winning is that there's going to be a hard salary cap next year...and you're not going to be able to buy Godzilla or Mothra or any members of the Yakuza next year...." "I hope ICE raids your parade." [Ally then asks, "Rodger, you're a member of the Latino community, correct?"] "That is correct, but I'm not a member of the..." Will his hate fuel more wins for LA's team? Tin Cap, was a giant magnet used to get the baseball stuck under the fence?
(KROQ) DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, Southern California - KROQ (106.7 FM)'s Morning Zoo "Klein. Ally. Show." took a call back in March from Rodger, who called back today to mock the suggestion of a "threepeat."
This whole thing is fake, Rodger says, with Chinese (Asian) AI and money spoiling the sport with big paychecks for a select few and a middle-class struggle for the rest of the team.
The "Klein. Ally. Show." dares to give this disgruntled naysayer and crank a voice on LA/OC's airwaves in an attempt to break "Dodger fever."
Since the hype was real for the Dodgers on opening day, of course K&A had to mark the return of listener "Rodger the Dodger Hater" by having him back. Is Roj right? Will the Dodgers choke, or will history repeat itself with another successful parade?
There's nothing like cake and parades to keep everyone from noticing the collapsing economy, starvation (food insecurity) of the needy, and ICE gangs roving the streets of the nation to raid whomever they want whenever they want backed by the orangest dictator ever.
Mass hysteria for city's sports team
Dodger Stadium tickets sold out in an hour, ranging in price from $38-$135 plus $75 parking.
Yummy, fine French pastry ideas for celebrants
Let them eat cake, some European royal allegedly once said. It was Paris before the guillotines were brought out onto the square for Le Revolution. There's going to be a cotillion at the new White House in Hermitage West Hall, the design for which dummy Trump stole from President Vlad Putin and the Czar's Palace, now a museum called The Hermitage.
Teammates honor Yamamoto and Rojas at rally
If you can't beat them, enjoy them: Watch live coverage of the 2025 Dodgers Championship Parade as LA celebrates its World Series champions. This LA Times feed features official pool video provided by media partners, along with live scenes from around the city. Source
Are Sydney Sweeney andWisdom Quarterly's numbers too big? Every time WQ reaches another million views, boobs. It's good for men's hearts, says science, but what about our lizard brains?
Her Instagram post comes after critics called her “not pretty.” [Do they say the same of Tate McRae, who is essentially her less well-endowed twin?]
Sydney Sweeney isn’t letting a little bit of controversy get her down. After headlines about her being “not pretty” and a bad actress made the rounds last week, she shrugged everything off and did what anyone would:
Cover up your man-boobs, Boobs!
She wore a slogan T-shirt that showed everyone that she’s staying above the fray.
Deep in a carousel of images shared over the weekend, Sweeney showed a snapshot of herself in an oversized gray sweatshirt that reads, “Sorry for having great t*ts.”
.
“Good times and tan lines,” she captioned the post.
Last week, producer Carol Baum, who worked on Father of the Bride and its sequel, said at an event that Sweeney is “not pretty” and “can’t act” — and that her hit rom-com Anyone But You was “unwatchable.”
Even with those comments, the film has earned $219 million at the box office worldwide.
According to the Daily Mail, Baum made her comments during a panel in Pleasantville, New York.
(Amy Sussman/GA/The Holly-
wood Reporter/Getty/InStyle)
“There’s an actress who everybody loves now: Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney.
“I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie [Anyone But You] because I wanted to watch it,” she said.
“I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie — sorry to people who love this…romantic comedy where they hate each other.”
It's a "man's world," right? I'm just making the most of it. "Sex sells," but who's buying?
Cover your beauty, Syd! It's distracting our eyes!
“I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty. She can’t act. Why is she so hot?’ Nobody had an answer. But then the question was asked, ‘Well if you could get your movie made because she was in it, would you do it?’” Baum continued.
“That’s a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know. Your job is to get the movie made.”
Sweeney clapped back, saying in a statement shared by Variety: “How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman.
If that’s what she’s learned in her decades in the industry and feels is appropriate to teach to her students, that’s shameful. To unjustly disparage a fellow female producer speaks volumes about Ms. Baum’s character.”
After Baum’s statement was shared, TMZ reported that she is “already expressing regret over the whole thing” and “wishes she never would’ve made her original comments.”
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COMMENTARY
It's very interesting. Fran and I were on retreat with an enlightened Buddhist nun.
(Yes, such people exist even if no one realizes it or can bring themselves to accept that such a thing could be possible in this decadent age, the Kali Yuga. But it was decadent and overcome with lust when the Buddha awakened and attempted to teach humans and devas the way to the end of all suffering. He assumed it would be hopeless because living beings in those days were so obsessed with sex and sensuality. This is, after all, the Sensual Sphere or Kama Loka we're living in).
There was calm and bliss (piti).
She asked a very straightforward question during a Dharma talk after a long day of meditating: "Where does clinging [lust] come from, outside or inside?"
"Like rain, does it (lusting for or clinging to the delights of the senses)," I asked myself, "creep in the poorly thatched roof of the physical senses and mind (the sixth sense)? Or does it arise from within (from some innate badness) like bubbling, oozing, staining crude oil?"
We were all stumped. We had all seen beautiful things. We had all, for having seen them, experienced lust, distraction, craving, preoccupation, obsession, thirst (tanha), desire, yearning, pining, and languishing, sick when we didn't get what we wanted, thrilled-then-disappointed when we did get it.
We were all hesitant. We all wanted to be good students, wanted to be right. We did not want to disappoint her as Americans. So we were waiting for her to drop a hint. Finally, someone dared to say that clinging (like lust) had to be coming from the outside.
Why? We were all peaceful and fine until someone dared to walk around provocatively dressed, thereby ruining our calm (samatha), stillness (samadhi), onepointedness (ekagatta), mindfulness (sati), and renunciation (nekkhamma).
Is this explained anywhere? (Abhidhamma)
Just as we were starting to let go and be free of the outside world's pull on us, some clinging or lust (for food, sex, a massage, a blissful experience) got the better of us and ruined the meditation. Clinging held us like six bondage straps, making us involuntary servants to this coarse, crass, and crappy body.
We were here for the bliss and rapture of meditative absorption, the calm and cool of mindful awareness, the insight and liberating-wisdom of spiritual knowing-and-seeing. The body and all its wants stood in our way, we thought.
Seeing a lovely, hot, shiny body, a little too much skin, one button too many undone, whew, it could be days before the mind simmered down again.
Clinging (repeated craving and grasping) had to be coming from the outside! We were fine until the outside world -- the boobs of a beauty or glistening muscles of a rugged and handsome person -- ruined us. It wasn't our fault! We were mere babes in Toyland!
The skull is like a thatched roof. And we are safe inside our guarded skull, until that darn rain seeps in from the evil (lusty, sexy, and provocative) world outside.
I can't help it if people stare at me.
"Is a fully enlightened person still overcome by lust [greed, craving, grasping], aversion [anger, fear, hate], and delusion [wrong views, distortions, ignorance about ultimate matters]?" she asked in answer to our suggestion that clinging had to originate outside ourselves.
"Well, no," we answered. If such liberated folks were still obsessed with greed, hatred, or confusion just because they saw sights, heard sounds, smelled scents, tasted savors, and felt sensations (to say nothing of mental past memories and future projections of these), what hope would there be for any of us in our practice?
Turning away, averting one's gaze, restraining the senses is just the first step. It might be difficult, but that's not all there is. Buddhism is NOT about severe austerities, penance, pious acts of self-mortification. It is about withdrawing into mental seclusion, calming the mind, exercising mindfulness, then cultivating insight that breaks through the illusion.
One develops the ability to see through the unreal, the superficial, the misleading. If this body were beautiful, why then we should celebrate it. If this body were the way to happiness, why then we should all become hedonists and have at it. If licentiousness and easy virtue were the way to liberation, why then we should condemn anyone who stood in our way and was being a stick in the mud at the party!
It is exactly because beautiful things in the world are constituent in nature not compact, ephemeral not permanent, disappointing not satisfying that they are not at all what they seem.
They are superficial illusions, they are disappointing, they are painful and struggling to get them is painful, and not getting them when one craves them is painful, and finally getting them is ultimately disappointing and not fulfilling. And we have been treading this hamster wheel for aeons beyond measures, past lives beyond comprehension, and most of us can see no end in sight.
So if there were a way to see things as they truly are, what would happen? We would become dispassionate, disillusioned, and detached. The mind that clings would let go.
Clinging and reacting to things in the world with lust, annoyance, or confusion comes not from them but from us. And when a person becomes enlightened, one has seen through the charade. One has seen things as they really are. For example, let's get gross.
I thought you liked my poop. You bag it.
Let's say we had a naked inflatable doll, beautiful, exquisite, the perfection of proportion, complexion, and symmetry, comely, alluring, and more real than real. But inside it was full of poop and worms and a stench so foul as to make us heave involuntarily. If a little leaked, or we opened its mouth or other openings and experienced the ugly inside behind the beautiful superficial outside, how might we feel?
We might feel tricked, deceived, upset to have been taken in by a shiny exterior. Or imagine a pretty pink bag, smooth and reflective, potentially useful to carry things like our lunch or precious possessions, only to find out that bag contained dog feces. Yikes! Suddenly we turn away, clutch our stomachs, berate ourselves for almost touching it.
What's inside this body? Or that pretty body covering Sydney Sweeney? (Well, I'd rather not think about that! Of course not. That would ruin all the fun of the illusion. Flowers are pretty and alluring, but they're steeped in fertilizer, worms, fungus, dead bodies, microbes, pathogens, pale threads taking in nutrients. Most of us instinctively avoid the muck or are stained, tainted, and stink.
Conclusion
People can be free. Practice.
If beautiful objects had the intrinsic ability to grab, take hold of us, make us obsessed, we would have little to no hope of escape.
But because lust (craving) and clinging arise not due to beauty, but due to the interaction of beautiful stimuli impinging on the senses (contacting consciousness) and our response to it, which is rooted in delusion, we can escape.
That delusion, very broadly stated, is a failure to see pretty phenomena as transient (radically impermanent), incapable of satisfying or fulfilling us, and it not being real (not a self, not what it seems.
When we see things, even the most beautiful things, as they really are (impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal), then the heart/mind lets go. There is no effort to reject beautiful things, only to see them as they really are. The effort is to see clearly (vipassana).
Whether things are ugly or dull, the same is true of stimuli that provoke aversion (fear or anger) or delusion (wrong view or ignorance). "Boring" things (that provoke inattention because they neither give rise to lust or anger) are neutral and peaceful, but craving makes them dull and something to get away from as we go in search of delight.
So by calm-and-insight we can be free here and now, even if beautiful creatures parade in front of us with next to nothing on and even if Hollywood feeds us airbrushed images and AI beauty pageant winners.
DW News, August 11, 2020; CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Thai students protest gov't and monarchy
Thousands of college student protesters in Thailand have rallied in anti-government protests, demanding political change. The rally on August 10 was the biggest in recent months. Protesters are calling for the resignation of military Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power in 2014 in a violent coup and who last year came out ahead in rigged and controversial elections. Protesters are also calling for reform of the untouchable monarchy, a call that's been taboo in Thailand due to strict laws preventing anyone from so much as "insulting" the new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, or any other royal.
Spontaneous outbursts of emotion, rare in Asia, have been few and far between as the beloved king's death was expected. There was a vigil in effect for the hospitalized 88-year-old (BBC.com).
King Bhumibol Adulyadej (left) with family
This (Theravada) Buddhist king was the world's longest reigning monarch. He was beloved by his people, staying out of politics and war as much as possible. Meanwhile, military coups, business alignments and scandals were brought on by prime ministers and junta generals, which sought his blessing to soothe the people. The law against any kind of criticism of his majesty made him immune to public ridicule. Even an implicit jab or unflattering Facebook post could get one years in prison. Here's the story from the former empire's propaganda arm, the BBC.
Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, has died after 70 years as head of state.
The 88-year-old king was widely revered but had been in poor health in recent years, making few public appearances.
He was seen as a stabilizing figure in a country hit by cycles of political turmoil and multiple coups.
Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn will be the new monarch, the prime minister has said.
The announcement
The royal Buddhist family tree of Thailand with King Bhumibol on second row (BBC)
After two days of speculation and rumors surrounding the king's deteriorating health, the palace announcement confirming his death finally came early on Thursday evening.
"His majesty has passed away at Siriraj Hospital peacefully," a statement said, adding he had died at 15:52 (08:52 GMT).
In a televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said Thailand would hold a one-year mourning period, that flags would fly half-mast and all entertainment functions must be "toned down" for a month.
In a later statement he urged vigilance, saying national security was a top priority.
"Everyone will need to be alert in every region and throughout the country to ensure safety," he said.
The king's death comes as Thailand remains under military rule following a coup in 2014.
A palace official, speaking to crowds outside the hospital, said the body of the king would be moved to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok on Friday.
The people's grief
Visits to Thailand and its many Theravada Buddhist temples are a trip (nattapan72/flickr).
New king: Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
King Bhumibol was widely respected across Thailand, and thought of by many as semi-divine [deva-human hybrid or demigod, which is the possible origin in the West of the "divine right of kings" concept in that the sky visitors ruled humans then left behind their children with human mothers to rule in their place as regents until their return].
Hundreds of mourners gathered outside the Bangkok hospital where he died, stricken with grief at the news. More
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