http://suicidegirlsblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=4648

by Brad Warner

Only a few more days before the annual War On Christmas ends! So get your shots in quick!

Ever since returning to the United States after spending eleven years of my life in Japan, the furor over Christmas has been especially amusing to me. Add to this the fact that I’m a Buddhist and not a Christian or an atheist – those being the two groups who are most upset about the matter – and I find it extra double-double hilarious (with whipped cream on top).





[Elora in Naughty Santa]

SuicideGirls recently ran a piece about rival billboards on either end of the Lincoln Tunnel, one purchased by a Christian group and one by an atheist group with pro and anti-Christmas messages respectively and all the resulting hub-bub that caused. I live in New York now, but I haven’t been near the Lincoln Tunnel so I’ve missed all the fun, but it’s yet another example of the seasonal silliness.

These days even devout Christians will admit that there’s no real reason to believe that Jesus was born on December 25th. That day was originally a Pagan holiday to celebrate the winter solstice, their calendars being a couple days off from the actual date. This celebration was co-opted in the Middle Ages by the Catholic Church as a way to spread their influence. Even those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible admit that it says nothing to indicate Our Lord and Savior was born in late December.

Oddly enough, it is the fact that the two birth stories presented in the New Testament are so contradictory that has led most serious Biblical scholars to conclude that there really was an actual guy named Jesus, or Joshua or Yeshua if you prefer, upon whom the stories in the Bible were based.

For a time there was some serious speculation that Jesus was an entirely fictional creation. Now it seems more reasonable to believe that he actually existed and that he was born and raised in Nazareth. Later on it became important to establish that he was born in Bethlehem in order to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. So stories had to be constructed to account for how he could have been born in Bethlehem when he was known to be from Nazareth, some 80 miles away with a few hostile towns between them.

The familiar Nativity scenes that cause so much furor when they’re erected in certain public spaces are actually a composite of elements from the conflicting accounts in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. Luke talks about shepherds coming to worship the baby, but says nothing about the wise men or about Herod’s slaughter of all male children in Bethlehem, these elements appearing only in Matthew’s account. It’s the slaughter of the innocents that really gives the game away. It’s impossible to believe that such a heinous and terrible event would go unrecorded in any history of the time apart from the New Testament. But we have no other records of it. That even Luke fails to mention it pretty much seals the case. The gospels of Mark and John say nothing about Christ’s birth at all.

Christmas is a big deal these days in many parts of the world where Christianity is a very small minority religion. It’s huge in Japan. It’s not a national holiday. But people love all the iconography. So the streets of Tokyo are almost as loaded with Christmas decorations every year as those of New York. The way you celebrate Christmas in Japan is you order a big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Christmas cake from your local bakery. Then you go out and have a big drunken party.

I spent one Christmas in Hong Kong where I was supervising a holiday themed Ultraman live stage show. The hotel across the street from where I stayed has a three-story neon display of Santa Claus swinging a baseball bat. I have no idea what that means either. In the park nearby I watched a group of children performing a pageant based on the story of Noah’s Ark.

Buddhism doesn’t have anything equivalent to Christmas. Though there are a few festival days associated with events in Buddha’s life, they tend not to be such a big deal. At least they aren’t in Japan. Last weekend I spent three days staring at a wall in celebration – if the word “celebration” is appropriate – of the day Buddha’ supposedly attained his enlightenment. Commonly this is commemorated on December 8th. That also happens to be the day in 1980 that John Lennon was assassinated and the day that the Japanese think of as Pearl Harbor Day. Americans say it was December 7th, but in Japan it was already the 8th when the attack happened, due to the fact that the International Date Line lies between Hawaii and Japan.

As in the case of Jesus, there are some myths surrounding Buddha’s birth. A bull elephant is said to have somehow walked into the right side of Buddha’s mother. The little tyke emerged from a slit in that same area several months later. He took seven steps and said, “I alone am the World Honored One!”

Unlike in Christianity there have never been any strong attempts by the Buddhist clergy to make the general populace accept these legends as literal truths. Some scholars these days even speculate that these birth stories only came into being when Christian missionaries began to show up in India. The Buddhists heard the stories of Christ’s miraculous birth and countered by making up miraculous birth stories for their guy too.

The insistence that the stories in the Bible must be accepted as literal truths has never made a whole lot of sense to me. The folks who insist on such beliefs seem to fear that their entire religion stands or falls on whether the stories in their book are historically true or not. But I always figured that if the lessons Christ taught were valuable it doesn’t really matter if he was actually capable of miracles or not. It doesn’t even matter if he actually existed. The lessons would be just as true if he was a fictional character. And anyway you can never hope to prove this stuff one way or another, so why waste your time and effort trying?

The whole War on Christmas is a complete joke. So what if a few atheists protest nativity scenes and insist on saying “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?” It’s not going to change anything in any major way. Apparently Best Buy, Home Depot and Dick’s Sporting Goods employees aren’t allowed to say “Merry Christmas” while the folks who work for Macy’s, K-Mart and In-N-Out Burger are. You can find a more comprehensive list HERE, though I think it may be a couple years out of date. But even if that’s true, so what? These major retail chains know they have a lot of Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and atheists customers as well as customers of Christian denominations like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t celebrate Christmas.

Me, I like Christmas. I like the songs. I like the lights. I like the trees and the presents. It’s fun. I like A Christmas Story and Bad Santa on TV. I like the old Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special. I don’t really care if Jesus is the reason for the season or not.

So have yourself a merry little Christmas this year, whether you believe in it or not!

***

Brad Warner is the author of Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between as well as Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up! and Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff that you can click here to see.

You can also buy T-shirts and hoodies based on his books, and the new CD by his band Zero Defex now!

And remember, Brad’s books, apparel and CDs make great Christmas gifts!!

by Andrew E. Konietzky

I was again asked by the beautiful staff over at SuicideGirls to create a Top 10 Holiday Films list. As with my Horror Film Top 10, it is impossible to list all the applicable films or put them into some definitive order. I must once again post a small disclaimer; we all have our Holiday favorites we visit each year. You may prefer having a drink in Dorry’s Tavern with Mrs. Deagle in Gremlins. Others may want to attend the Christmas party at Nakatomi Plaza in Diehard. And Buddy the Elf, is already calling me a cotton-headed ninny-muggins for not mentioning Bad Santa, Better Off Dead, Dutch, or The Ref. I know I’m going to miss some, but here are 10 of my peppermint and gingerbread sprinkled seasonal faves.





[Antigone in Naughty and Nice]

The Film Strain’s Top 10 Holiday Films

1. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

“My mouth’s bleeding, Bert! My mouth’s bleeding!” – I am 39 and every time I see this film it makes me cry like a little baby. I actually got all choked up just remembering lines while writing this and looking at quotes. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about an intervention by his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and the contributions he has made to his community. Make sure you have a box of tissues, while viewing. I guarantee that even Dexter Morgan would tear up while watching this film.

2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

“It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes, or bags!” – I am talking about the animated film with the awesome Boris Karloff, as the narrator and voice of the Grinch. The live-action version with Jim Carrey was great, but nothing compares to hearing Karloff dispense his opinions on the Whoville Christmas. Make sure not to miss it, this upcoming season.

3. Emmett Otter’s Jug-band Christmas (1977)

“Look at the birds up in the tree.” – I’m surprised by the number of people that don’t know about this Christmas special. Even my girlfriend has never seen it, which may be a point against her. In this one-hour musical special, Kermit the Frog narrates the story of Alice Otter and her son, Emmet, who live along the river in the village of Frogtown Hollow. Ma and Emmet struggle to make ends meet through odd jobs and projects for neighbors and villagers, but this Christmas they dream of having enough money to buy each other a special gift. Great songs and a mix of rock and country music highlight this seriously underrated holiday special. Jim Henson Studios needs to make this an always-aired show each year.

4. A Christmas Story (1983)

“Fuuuuuuuuuudge!” – My mother hates this film, and I’m not sure why. It could have something to do with my sister and I playing it for 24 hours non-stop on Christmas Eve on year. Based on Jean Shepherd’s short stories and anecdotes, and including material from his books In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, the story revolves around Ralphie, our junior male lead, overcoming a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to his owning the precious Red Ryder BB gun. In each of the film’s three acts Ralphie makes his case to another adult and each time he is told the same thing… “No, you’ll shoot your eye out.” Amazing film that will remind you of being a kid, and the unique way children see their lives.

5. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)

“Six bucks and my left nut says we’re not going to be landing in Chicago.” – John Hughes… it is a damn John Hughes film. Do I really need to say more? Neal (Steve Martin) is trying return to his family for Thanksgiving in Chicago after being on a business trip in New York. His journey is doomed from the outset, with Del (John Candy) interfering by inadvertently snatching the taxi cab that Neal had laid claim to moments before. The two inevitably pair up and begin an error-prone adventure to help Neal get back to his home. It is a feel-good film showing us how the things that make us different can also join us all together. A Touchy-feely film that’s downright hilarious at the same time. It was also recently revived, or in some critics’ eyes rebooted, in the film Due Date.

6. Scrooged (1988)

“I never liked a girl well enough to give her twelve sharp knives.” – How many times can Hollywood beat Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol into the ground? Many times it seems. The version directed by Richard Donner (Goonies, Superman, and Lethal Weapon) is the best one in my mind. Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a conceited, cynical television programming executive – like we never knew those existed. He has found great success and wealth but only by becoming cold-hearted and cruel. His ruthless concentration on his career has cost him his true love, the warm-hearted Claire (Karen Allen) – whom, to this day, I have a huge crush on – but back to the film. Frank’s cold actions have alienated him from his family and friends. Once a new commercial is criticized by staff member Eliot (Bobcat Goldthwait), Frank responds by firing him on Christmas Eve and the “three ghosts” snowball starts rolling. Great film, great cast, and some great laughs culminating in a teary sing-along.

7. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

“We’re gonna have the hap hap happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye.” – How could you not want to spend a Christmas with the Griswold family as they set out to find the perfect tree and have an “old-fashioned” family Christmas? For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Griswolds, Clark is food additives expert who works for a company that doesn’t appreciate him. He sets high standards for holiday events that no one can live up to and is notorious for dragging his grudging family along on every painstaking detail of every scheme. His long-suffering wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) is the voice of reason, who keeps the family rooted in reality and responds with frequent deadpan bewilderment to his constant disasters. Clark just wants to stay at home in the snowy Chicago suburbs this year. But he didn’t bargain on bickering family members, non-working Christmas lights, or Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) and his hillbilly family turning up unannounced. Being from Florida, Cousin Eddie is priceless, and hits close to home. That’s all I am saying on that, since I’d like my family to still talk to me this holiday season.

8. Toys (1992)

“We’re going to fight fire with marshmallows.” – One of my all-time favorite films. It took director Barry Levinson over 10 years to develop the film, but just over 10 months to shoot. An eccentric toymaker’s (Donald O’Connor) last wish is that his brother takes over the running of his business. The brother is a military General (Micheal Gambon), and is out of touch with toy making, and out of touch with reality too. The business should really have been given to Leslie (Robin Williams), who was much more like his toy making father and is still a child at heart. A very deep film actually; it makes you feel something you’ve always known to be true but just weren’t quite aware of. The amazing and goofy visuals, wrap themselves around a subtle social critique. Even the musical score adds to the overall vibe of the film. In my mind it is a complete work of art, which many people have completely overlooked in the theaters and on TV.

9. Nightmare before Christmas (1993)

“Forgive me, Mr. Claus. I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mess of your holiday.” – This could be the reason why the Disney Store would never hire me. About a year after this film was released, our local mall got a Disney Store. This was back when Disney tried to hide the fact that they made this film, due to the strange and dark nature of the story and characters. They were looking for managers and they used to do interviews in a group setting. We were all asked which our favorite Disney films were. I said Nightmare and The Black Hole… END of interview. Needless to say, this is one of the most memorable holiday classics of all time. Now of course, Disney has Nightmare merchandise all over the place. They even wanted to do a line of Direct-to-DVD sequels in CG, which thankfully Tim Burton has blocked. Thank you, Tim.

10. Pieces of April (2003)

“Well, the cranberries were easy. I just had to open the can.” – Who? Why? What is this film? Yes, that’s the general response when I tell people about this little known Thanksgiving tale. It stars Katie Holmes, before Tom and the Aliens got to her. I was expecting a comedy but got a very moving story about a young girl who desperately wants to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner for a family from whom she feels estranged. Katie is great as April, and whether or not you like her as an actress, you will be pulling for her by the film’s end. The overall story follows her as she plans a dinner party she desperately wants to be a success. Her lack of skill forces her to fall back on the kindness of neighbors she’s never taken the time to meet. April’s family meanwhile, are on their way into the city to her apartment, whining and complaining about having to visit the “bad” part of town and missing no opportunity to criticize her, while trying to ignore the elephant in the room – the fact that the mother (Patricia Clarkson) has cancer and may not live to see another holiday. It feels like one of those movies that is based on actual events in the life of its writer or director. It’s full of tiny details that make the characters feel completely authentic, rather than creations. Clarkson received an Academy Award nomination for her performance.

***

The memories growing up attached to each film and the time it was first viewed warms my heart. I know, I know, I did not even touch on the enchanted world of Rankin/Bass (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, and Rudolph’s Shiny New Year). I am sure that Yukon Cornelius and the Heat Miser will be haunting my dreams now. As I said once before, a Top Ten list can only have ten and this was a very tear-filled list to assemble. I love these Holiday films like they were children. I will remember them, watch them, and love them until I am a very crotchety old man yelling you younger folks to get off my damn lawn. Now, go on and git!

Merry Christmas Eve from your local Buddhist columnist!

I’m down in Knoxville, Tennessee with my sister and her family. This week I appeared on my niece, Skylar’s YouTube show. Check it out:




Also check out my blog for the outtake version.

Tonight children all over the world go to sleep believing a mysterious man will break into their house late at night to leave them fabulous gifts. My niece is 11 and gave up on Santa Claus a few years ago. But she has some friends her age who, she says, still believe or at least pretend to believe to please their parents. I gave up on Santa when I was about seven, but my sister was two years younger so I made-believe I believed a bit longer. But I think most kids have outgrown the Santa myth by first or second grade.

For kids raised in religious families, the time you stop believing in Santa (or Hanukkah Harry or Kris Kwanza or whoever you choose) is often highly traumatic. I mean if Santa, Rudolph and the toy making elves aren’t real, what about the Father, Son and Holy Ghost? Even though my own family was not religious, I can clearly recall going through this dilemma in my childhood. For friends of mine who grew up in more religious households the realization that Santa was made-up triggered a massive crisis of faith from which some of them still haven’t recovered.

Faith is a tricky subject. While some Christians try to pass amendments recognizing Christmas, other Christians don't even have faith in Christmas. When faith means believing in the literal reality of things you cannot see, hear or touch you’re bound to run into trouble. In that very narrow sense of faith, faith in the reality of Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole and faith in the reality of Heaven and its Angels on High are precisely the same. They are both objects of the mind and, as such, both equally insubstantial and unreal. There is no more reason for a rational person to believe any more in one than the other.

This is why faith often turns people into psychopaths. It’s very hard to maintain the façade of believing in something you know deep down is just a figment of your imagination. In order to try and destroy your perfectly reasonable doubts you have to resort to all kinds of crazy shit. You might even fly a couple of airplanes into some big buildings just to prove to everyone you really believe in some bizarre fantasy although you know perfectly well you don’t.

People who come to Buddhism trying to escape from that kind of faith into something more sensible are often shocked when they hear Buddhists talk about faith. In fact a lot of Buddhists avoid talking about faith to those unfamiliar with the Buddhist take on the subject for fear of scaring them off. This sometimes leads people to feel they’ve been duped when they finally hear their teachers mention the subject a couple of years into the practice.

But faith and belief are important aspects of Buddhism. Human beings need faith and belief. This is one of the many reasons atheism is such an unsatisfactory alternative to religion. When we try to completely give up on faith and belief we feel empty and discontented. Like that poster on Agent Mulder’s wall says, we all want to believe. And like Agent Mulder, when traditional religions fail we’ll turn to UFOs, or Comet Hale-Bopp, or the The Dear Leader, or just about any whacky thing just to satisfy the very deep desire we all have to have faith in something.

To be sure, a lot of what falls under the heading of faith in what passes for Buddhism these days is little more than the substitution of one fantasy for another. Even the faith in “Enlightenment experiences” professed by some mutant strains of Zen Buddhism is just another fantasy. For my man, Dogen, though, faith was never directed at any object of mind. Faith was a matter of practice. You could have faith in the practice of zazen because you could actually enter into the practice yourself at any time. It’s not necessary to hang on to any belief in things unseen or far away. As your practice deepens, your real experience of the object of your faith grows. You come to see that the image of reality you’ve been fed by your parents, teachers, and religious leaders is utterly mistaken.

Tim McCarthy, my first Zen teacher, always liked to say that to practice Zazen you need an equal amount of doubt and faith. Without some kind of faith it’s just too damned hard even to sit yourself down on the cushion and do the practice. But without an equal amount of doubt, you’re far too likely to fly off into some kind of fantasy about the practice. The mistake that religions all make is to try to promote faith exclusively and kill all doubt. That just makes people crazy.

As far as Santa Claus is concerned, I’ve gone from not believing in him to having complete faith that he really exists. This comes from the explanation I heard my sister give Skylar about her take on Santa. Santa, she said, is just a name for the spirit of free giving that exists in all of us. The image of Santa as a fat man in a red suit is just an image we’ve created to express that spirit of free giving.

When we look at it that way, Santa is real and the Easter Bunny is real and Hanukkah Harry is real, and so too are Jesus and Heaven and Muhammed and all the rest. Even Buddha is real.

Me, I hope Santa brings me a copy of that new KISS DVD.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

Did I tell you I got a MySpace page? Well I do. I resisted it for a long time. But it’s actually kind of fun.

Anyway, here’s a question I got from one of the people who reads my stuff there:

What do you do when you treat others in a caring, giving, compassionate way...always thinking of others, But it is never appreciated and you are treated really shitty?

Compassion is a big buzzword among Buddhists in America. Everybody’s all like, “Compassion, compassion, compassion….” It’s so fucking annoying I just want to slap them. Be compassionate to me and shut the fuck up about compassion, why don’t you? Why doesn’t anybody ask me about fun stuff like that mummified dinosaur they just found? I shoulda become a paleontologist like I wanted to when I was six instead of a fucking Buddhist monk.

Sorry. Where was I? Oh. Compassion. OK. Compassion is funny stuff. It’s very important to be compassionate. But at the same time you can’t try to be compassionate. Cuz when you try to be compassionate you just screw everything up. Real compassion doesn’t have anything at all to do with your attempts to be compassionate.

Dogen said that compassion is like a hand reaching back to adjust a pillow in the night. That is an example of perfectly selfless and compassionate action. A problem arises and you fix it without ever even being aware of having done anything at all. It doesn’t matter that the person who performs the action and the person who receives its benefit are the same.

The problem for my MySpace friend was that she was trying real hard to be compassionate and that she expected some kind of reward as a result. It’s not necessary to worry too much about the results of what you do. And don't worry too much about deliberately trying to be caring, giving and compassionate. Sometimes when you try too hard at that, you end up doing more than what's actually necessary. Sometimes it's OK to let people suffer a bit. Sometimes it's what they need to go thru and if you interfere with that you're not really helping.

When you see someone suffering it’s sometimes really hard to accept that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Of course I’m not talking here about a situation like if you’re driving through the desert and you come across a Volkswagen bug on its back on fire with twelve screaming orphans inside. You don’t just drive by that and go, “I guess they need to suffer.”

The problem is when you react to every problem you come across the way you’d react to seeing twelve screaming orphans in a burning VW bug. You feel like, “Oh my God! I need to go fix that NOW!” And you end up just being an interfering busybody and making everybody resent you for it.

I see people who are into Buddhism getting into this kind of stuff all the time. They hear that the Bodhisattva vow says, “Beings are numberless, I vow to save them all.” And they think they gotta run around pretending to be Wonder Woman or something just saving everybody from everything. It doesn’t work like that. Wonder Woman is a cartoon character. You aren’t.

So how do you know when what you’re feeling is real compassion and when it’s just the desire to meddle in things that don’t need your meddling in them? The only way is to cultivate the same state of mind you have when you’re reaching back to adjust a pillow in the night. You have to be very, very quiet and listen to your intuition.

Real compassion is never emotional. It’s not the kind of messy, fuzzy wuzzy feeling like you get from watching this video:



God that kitty cat is so fucking cute and precious I wanna go to Japan and just crush the life out of him with my bare hands!!!

Sorry. Where was I again?

Oh yeah. True compassion is never that heated feeling of “I gotta fix that!” It’s very spontaneous and clear. Sometimes it’s not what you think of as being nice either. Sometimes real compassionate action looks like just the opposite.

This time of year we’re all spending way too much time with our families. Often the most difficult relationships we have are the ones that are closest. It’s sometimes nigh on impossible to know how to be truly compassionate towards your no-good alcoholic dad or your conniving manipulative mom or your slutty sister or your bonehead brother. We all get into these family get-together situations and think we’re the only sane person in the room. It’s sobering to remember that every single person there is thinking the same thing about him or herself too.

With families the problems are compounded because everyone seems to be needing, expecting, even demanding that you act in whatever way they expect a compassionate and caring person to act. This is especially true if they know you’re a Buddhist and they’ve seen Richard Gere or Lisa Simpson or somebody say something about Buddhism on TV once and figure they therefore know all there is to know about how Buddhists are supposed to behave. But most times they’re dead wrong. Most people don’t have the slightest clue what real compassion is.

The best thing to do is to act carefully without too much haste or urgency and without any expectation of reward or even recognition. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me intellectually, but I’ve noticed that the Universe has a way of working things out. Even if your mom is too bombed on prescription painkillers to notice all the things you did to keep her house from going to hell the week you were there, someone, somewhere, someday will notice and things will balance themselves. It takes a bit of faith to be able to let go and fall backwards into this. But if you do it just seems to work out. It’s useless to speculate why.

Real compassion isn’t about trying to be compassionate. Real caring isn’t about attempting to measure up to some phony image of what a caring person is supposed to look like. Real giving isn’t about handing over everything you have just so everyone knows how giving you can be. Just be very, very quiet and see what needs doing then do it and be finished with it.

And the next time you see me, don’t ask me about compassion. Ask me about the new KISS DVD instead. That’s true compassion.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

Ho, ho, ho! I'm feelin the holiday lovin' from my family today as I keep my new demon child tattooed on the back of my head under wraps to avoid Christmas coronaries and ensure my favorite gifts are not sent back to the dollar store.


Tattoo by Lenny Renken on Dave Tedder

I'm pleased to report that the past week's tattoo news is more jolly than my previous posts of flesh-eating bacteria and lip sewing "tattooers". In fact, the news was light and fruit cakey.

The fruitiest story of them all involved Britney Spears, naturally. After finally regaining my sight, which was brutally taken away from me via non-stop flashes of pantyless c-section scar/crotch shots, I was treated to a TMZ video of Brit Brit walking into Devil Doll Tattoo in LA with her 15-year-old sister and walking out with her very own "personal work of art" – a star tattooed on her hand. I swear she's doing all this to torment me. In my efforts to educate the masses on the artistry of tattoo, the most famous female in the world goes all country every time she gets needled.
.


Let's recap Britney's numerous tattoo snafus: a butterfly and vine on her right foot, a pair of poorly inked pink dice on her left wrist, an even worse fairy on her lower back and a Japanese symbol on her bikini line. Money cannot buy taste.

Ok, I'm sounding like the tattoo Grinch but what better gift could I possibly give y'all than to feel morally and artfully superior to a so-called A-lister.

[There are also rumors that Brad Pitt just got needled with a Sanskrit blessing tattoo to protect his family but no photo or video evidence has been found. I'm guessing Sanskrit will be the new nonsense Kanji. You heard it here first.]

Beyond vapid celeb tattoo news, there is some light ahead for the upcoming new year -- from the realm of darkness no less. Paul Booth will be releasing a brilliant documentary on the Art Fusion Experiment in 2007, for which I saw a preview and will review for an upcoming Needled News. If you don't get off on mocking Britney and are feeling the holiday blues, a look at this six-minute preview for the film will inspire you. And that kind of inspiration is probably the best gift I could give.



Best wishes to you -- whether and whatever you celebrate.

Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture.

With the holiday season rapidly approaching (since it starts in October nowadays), companies are strenuously pushing to get the hottest toy of the year; something to replace the Tickle Me Elmo or Furby. I can only assume that in this rush, certain aesthetics are overlooked.



On Amazon.com, the mayhem has already begun.

"Skeeter" says:

And "E. Donato" adds:

This year's Harry Potter Vibrating Broomstick, indeed.

After 13 years, the Vatican is pulling the plug on its annual Christmas concert. While no specific reason was given, papal insiders say Pope Benedict’s not a fan of "popular" music, preferring Mozart and Bach instead.

In Pope John Paul II’s time, the annual concert was the Vatican’s way of getting jiggy with it, drawing such wholesome singers as Whitney Houston and Dionne Warwick (as well as B.B. King and Bryan Adams). While Pope John Paul II usually made a point of meeting the musicians, sources say the current pontiff doesn’t roll that way, preferring instead to focus on the "spiritual essence" of Catholicism.

Also, the Vatican is reportedly looking to avoid any embarrassing outbursts made by musicians, as at the 2003 concert when Lauryn Hill accused the Church of moral corruption.

Last year, a Brazilian pop singer was dropped from the concert because church officials feared she would promote the use of condoms in stopping the spread of AIDS.

Guess it's just choirs and alter boys from now on.


Lauryn Hill at the 2003 concert