Yoga Goes To War

Yoga Goes to War

Sailors and soldiers are seeking enlightenment in uniform. Are tow-truck drivers and Wall Street traders next? [LA Times]

YOGA MAGAZINES seldom fail to offer a glossy dive into the sandalwood-scented world of downward-facing dog poses, toned bodies and organic tank tops. But the August edition of Fit Yoga magazine is an exception. Turn to Page 6 and you'll see a pair of mildly euphoric U.S. naval aviators on the deck of an aircraft carrier doing their yoga practice in full uniform. There are no yoga mats in sight, only combat boots, survival flashlights and helmets. And, yes, you guessed it, they are doing the warrior pose.
Don't ask, don't tantra — but there are yogis sneaking into the military. According to Fit Yoga and the Associated Press, yoga is becoming increasingly popular among soldiers eager to improve their stamina, flexibility and mental focus.

Conventional wisdom has it that war and yoga don't mix. There's a reason Hollywood has never bankrolled titles such as "Yoga Is Hell," "Full Metal Stretch Pants" or "The Bridge Pose on the River Kwai." But maybe it's time to reconsider...

...Most people already have a kid, a spouse or other dear pest who has tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to convert them to yoga practice. And here comes the pitch again, during your quiet moment with the Op-Ed page. If you're rolling your eyes, consider taking a step further into a lion pose by also sticking out your tongue and exhaling deeply. It's good for clenched jaws and teeth grinders. And it combats a slew of health problems from cardiovascular disease to depression and even the side effects of chemotherapy. So it isn't surprising that soldiers are doing yoga. The question is why more people aren't.

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I took yoga classes for two years during when I was an undergraduate and let me tell you guys, if your girlfriend has been asking you to go, please go, you won't regret it. Hell, who wouldn't want to be a little more flexible here and there?

Battle of the Sexes

Reposted to Forbes.com after a massive backlash from bloggers and writers, this article by executive editor Michael Noer has now been given a counterpoint article by one of the sites' women writers. In the original article, Noer urged men not to marry "career girls," lest they leave you for greener pastures, and other misogynistic nonsense. Slate chimes in with a painfully adolescent rebuttal while Salon lets him have it with juicy quotes from women execs and more [Metafilter].

Music News

Rock 'n Roll Baby: In popular music singing about pedophilia is a familiar tune [American Sexuality Magazine]

Would you like some sweeties little girl?
Come a little closer
I’ve got the kind of toys you’ve never seen
Manmade and a bit obscene
Little angel come and sit upon my knee
-Mr. Tinkertrain, Ozzy Osbourne

In Ozzy Osbourne’s Mr. Tinkertrain, child molestation references, coupled with testosterone driven metal riffs, come off as a tongue-in-cheek tale of innocence lost. Osbourne seduces underage prey in song, and he isn’t the only mainstream artist to do so. Across genre and time, popular music has routinely lionized behavior considered deviant and even criminal. Consider Motorhead’s “Jailbait,” Depeche Mode’s “Little 15,” The Who’s “Fiddle About,” and Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs’ “Li’l Red Riding Hood.”


Some of these songs are celebratory or lecherous; others analytical or cautionary. They imagine encounters between minors and adults and suggest everything from lust and romance to statutory rape and even molestation. They have also topped the charts, sold millions of albums, and resonated with America’s popular consciousness.

Clearly, there is dissonance between societal norms that criminalize and cultural artifacts that exalt the same behavior...

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The Music of America [American Spectator]:

LIKE EVERYTHING TYPICAL of America, this musical culture issues from the spontaneous interchanges of ordinary people. The American song exists because people have enjoyed it and asked for more. It is the musical expression of consumer sovereignty. And like everything typical of America it gets up the intellectual nose. Coming to America as a refugee from Nazism, the philosopher and critic Theodor Adorno took it upon himself to pour scorn on the music of Hollywood. For Adorno this disgusting sound, riddled with cliche and kitsch, was not art but ideology -- the sweet pill of false consciousness which numbs the senses of the working class. The American song, Adorno argued, be it by Gershwin or Berlin, by Jerome Kern or Cole Porter, is an instrument of capitalist exploitation. It is not the consumer or the producer that is sovereign in this debased musical culture, but the "owners of the means of communication," namely the capitalist class. Under socialism, Adorno implied, all this fetishism would be blown away and the emancipated proletariat would be whistling the ideology-free music of Webern and Schoenberg in the streets...

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Featured Album: Nick Drake, Pink Moon

One of the greatest "dark night of the soul" albums in the history of pop music, Pink Moon is astonishingly short, 28 and a half minutes, to be exact, and is one of the most musically stripped-down and emotionally naked albums ever recorded. Just Drake's acoustic guitar, his entrancing, velvety voice, and some foreboding, gutwrenching lyrics that only hint at his state of mind at the time. That blend of simple, honest beauty with a hint of dread is perfectly exemplified on the album's title track which serves as the opener. Over his gentle, yet insistently strummed guitar and minimal, plaintive piano notes (that tiny bit of piano was the only overdub on the entire album), Drake lays all his cards on the table, singing, "Saw it written and I saw it say/Pink moon is on its way/And none of you stand so tall/Pink moon gonna get ye all."


The rest of the album is just as straightforward. "Place to Be" is still sad enough to melt the hearts of female college English majors even today, but is emotional without getting too weepy, poetic without becoming pretentious ("Now I'm weaker than the palest blue/Oh, so weak in this need for you"). The instrumental "Horn" is so gorgeous, Drake doesn't need words to convey what he's feeling, while the devastating "Know" needs just four simple lines to bring tears to your eyes ("Know that I love you/Know I don't care/Know that I see you/Know I'm not there"). Drake's deft guitar playing shines on "Free Ride", a song with one of the more memorable pop hooks on the album. Meanwhile, "Things Behind the Sun" offers words of warning over a pastoral melody: "Don't be too wise/For down below they never grow/They're always tired and charms are hired/From out of their eyes."

Read full review at PopMatters

Pink Moon
Place to Be
Road
Which Will
Horn
Things Behind the Sun
Know
Parasite
Ride
Harvest Breed
From the Morning

Bonus mp3s:

Joshua Radin - "Star Mile" (Live)
Surfjan Stevens - "Godzuki"

Awhile back someone was asking me to reupload some AC/DC...well that never happened, but here's some AC/DC for you anyways my friend:

AC/DC - "Go Down"
AC/DC - "Let There Be Rock"
AC/DC - "Problem Child"
AC/DC - "Whole Lotta Rosie"