Michelle Borok's Posts

Kim Jong-Un is plodding his way along to become a benevolent leader. He went to the Mangyongdae Funfair and scolded the staff for letting the park become neglected. There’s great video of him bending over and plucking blades of grass out of cracks in the pavement and looking bummed out.  He says it’s an insult to the people.

To me it looks just like every other Soviet era created children’s park. We have one here in Darkhan. Peeling paint, carnival rides that haven’t been operated in years, chips in the giant fiberglass and plaster animal slides, but the people still come. Not so much in Pyongyang I imagine. Looks like the only time it gets any action is when a group of foreigners have paid through the nose to get the VIP tour.

Story from The Telegraph and NHK.

A 52 year old Flilipino guy lost it on a Cathay Pacific flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong. He tried to attack the cabin crew with a knife (maybe the tiny one they give you to spread hard margarine on your dinner roll) and nearly made it fully into the cockpit,  before he got taken out in a head lock by a fast thinking Mongolian business man.

The Mongolian man, Z. Buyannemekh (pictured on the left) is best friends with a nationally known Mongolian wrestler, and like most Mongolian men hanging out in the countryside, practices wrestling moves with him.  He’s pretty humble in this interview with The UB Post, but the news outlet is now catching some flack from Pinoy media for calling the attacker a “terrorist”.

In Mongolia horse races happen all year long, even in the crazy cold winter. In the winter, young horses (mostly 4 year olds) gallop across snow covered flatlands with jockeys only a few years older than them (7-10 years old) for a day of races, for crowds that grow throughout the day.

Like most things here, it’s not quite like what we’re used to in the West. For starters, races are run like endurance races, over rugged terrain (no real track to speak of), in extreme weather, and for 15-20 kilometers (about 10 miles). Spectators don’t just stand and watch the race, they ride along with the racers, either by horse or car. The winner’s circle is more like a winner’s mob, as everyone tries to touch the sweaty coat of the winning horse for good luck. The winning horse is celebrated far more than its jockey and ends up taking home a thick felt winner’s blanket, and a headpiece goes over its bridle that gets decorated with medals and prayer silks.

The races are definitely a group activity, like most in Mongolia. Half the fun of going is moving from vantage point to vantage point and visiting with friends and relatives you run into along the way. After the races (which go on for a couple of hours with one race after another) it’s time for vodka and catching up. Horses that have been scraped clean of sweat, walked, and cooled down get loaded into the backs of Korean made mini-pick up trucks, and driven home to get back to their herd and run free on the steppes again.

Of course, I prefer the weather of racing season at Santa Anita, (and I desperately miss my horse, Squid) but the thrill of speeding through the snow with horse and rider, hoping you don’t crash into other cars trying to do the same, can’t be beat.  I put together a video of some of the racing action from the backseat of Tsogtoo’s car.

You can see the video here…

Winter also brought the Moto Cross to Darkhan, similar action but with Russian Jeeps instead of horses. A presentation of the drivers and their modified race cars takes place in the plaza of the theatre and then everyone drives to the “track”, a selected bit of steppe with enough dips and curves to create a satisfying chance of danger, spin outs and machines catching air. Like the horse races, it’s all about finding the best spot for watching the races, catching up with friends, and being close enough to get hands on and help get flipped over cars & drivers back on track. Literally.

More photos on flickr.

This kind of thing doesn’t happen in the US… a president with questionable ethos gets arrested before sunrise in a very well armed, well documented, heavily helmeted raid. This is a minute-by-minute video from outside of the compound. It was a standoff… so it lasted a while.    Former Mongolian President Arrested

The cherry on top is the ex-president being hoisted up in the air, shoeless feet (with socks on) sticking up from the melee. He didn’t go without a fight. Mongolians, like most Asians go shoeless at home, and the police plucked him from his swanky hideout filled with his personal security and his posse just before dawn. Accused of corruption while he was in office, he ignored multiple requests to come in for questioning about his activities while governing a country during an important time in its emerging capitalist era.

Now lets see what happens… some people think he’s to blame for the economic struggles of the majority of Mongolians while a small handful flourished. Other people are behind him to govern again, now for the opposition party. Parliamentary elections are coming up… People are pissed.

Sound familiar?

Happy belated Women’s Day! March 8^th was International Women’s Day, which is very much celebrated in Mongolia. In the States, only pinkos and commies care to recognize a day that honors and celebrates the gender most often under-represented, under-served, and misunderstood around the world, but here it’s different.

The holiday is a national one, so banks, schools and government offices are closed. Luckily got to celebrate for two days! On Tuesday, March 6^th the matriarch of my Mongolian family to-be, Emee (“grandmother” in Mongolian) was given an award for being one of Mongolia’s herdswomen of the year. Emee’s had this honor several times over the years, and proudly displays her plaques, medals and certificates in her ger in the countryside. The ceremony was in Ulaanbaatar, and most of the family couldn’t attend, so they threw a party for her the following day.

I was part of the set-up crew. Men and women worked together to turn a small rural-district restaurant into a reception hall. Fresh fruit, heaps of candy, a never ending supply of vodka, and a 3 tiered cake were set up for special guests and honorees.

As people started to trickle in they were seated according to gender and then age, eldest sitting closest to the woman of the hour, women to her left and men to her right. I didn’t expect to be seated at all, since most of the set-up crew were on their feet serving guests, but I was told to climb past the elder men already seated and take a seat of honor at the head of the table with Emee. It was a complete surprise and totally, completely humbling. One dude was NOT happy about it, but favorite elder cousin Matchika defended me and shielded my from his stink eye.

The next few hours were a blur of Mongolian food, shot glasses that magically refilled themselves, toast after toast after toast, songs about Mongolian mothers, more vodka, songs about Mongolia, some beer, presents for Emee, and toasts with airag – fermented mare’s milk. The night ended with karaoke, as all celebrations should. Songs were sung in Mongolian, Russian and English.

I spent the next day (the actual holiday) pretty hungover, but with no women’s work to do, so it was the best kind of recovery day. I walked around the neighborhood a bit – I still had an evening English class to teach – and almost everyone out and about was carrying flowers, cake or gifts for an important woman in their life. It gave me the warm fuzzies on a cold day. The holiday is a bit commercial, but here that means a $20 dinner for 2 or a $10 cake. I’m ok with that since the sentiment is still there, and despite the evidence of commericialism, the importance of celebrating of women in Mongolian society isn’t diminished by it.

In case you were wondering, dudes get their day here too. Just last weekend it was soldier’s day. There are female soldiers in Mongolia, but this is pretty much a day to bro down. Naadam, in July, is a celebration of the “three manly sports”. It all kind of works out…

Happy Tsagaan Sar to all of you, and now 2012 can finally start!!

Even before I got to Mongolia, Agii was excited for me to be here in time for Tsagaan Sar, the celebration of the Mongolian lunar new year. Now I get it. The holiday is about more than starting a new year right, it’s about family coming together, and in a country where family can be far flung, the importance of coming together is honored.

Elder’s homes are visited first, so that meant Emee’s ger first. Emee is mother to 9 children, sister to Agii’s mother,  and has over 15 grandchildren.  She counts about 32 in the extended family, but others say it’s more. I think nearly 75% of the estimated extended family made an appearance while we were there. I had a mild fever, a head cold, and zero appetite for anything but lemon tea, but I held it together to meet more of my new Mongolian family. The greeting is special. You hold up the elder’s extended forearms draped in a blue silk prayer scarf, to show them you support them, and they kiss you warmly on both cheeks. Way better than hugs.

Preparation for Tsagaan Sar takes weeks – months for some. The spread above includes a stack of bread, sweets, milk curds, and sugar that represents Shambala, a land of peace, happiness and tranquility. The sheep beside it is referred to as “big meat” because… well, the whole sheep is there. It gets snacked on throughout the day. Husbands cut pieces off for their wives and children. Agii thankfully cut me only the tiniest piece. Everything you see on the table got snacked on, including some vodka, wine, beer, fermented mare’s milk, and endless buuz. For White Moon you’re supposed to eat lots of buzz and “white” foods (dairy products). I mostly drank wine and beer whenever I could.

Extra horses were brought out from the range for photo ops, and to be ridden by visiting family. I mostly hung with the kids, cause they weren’t trying to feed me mutton, and they were about running around and exploring. We lugged the two toddlers, Panda and Tigee up to the top of these massive rocks and took lots of photos until my camera battery died.

It didn’t help my cold at all, but it was totally worth the hike. These kids are all fantastic, and made me feel just as part of the family as all their parents have.

Things to remember for next Tsagaan Sar:

1. When you walk in the room, look for people you didn’t already give the traditional greeting to. Start clockwise and double check each face so you don’t skip anyone.

2. Don’t stick the snuff bottle up your nostril if your nostril is full of snot. If you get snot on the snuff bottle, wipe it off before handing it back to your elder.

3. Don’t get sick before Tsagaan Sar!

4. Don’t say no to vodka anymore. Ever.

Every time I came back into the ger more family appeared. Eventually we gave our gifts to Emee, and Agii’s two cousins who live there with her and made the long drive to Erdenet to celebrate with Agii’s mother and another aunt. It was an exhilirating but exhausting day. I’m so glad to have come here in time for it, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s holiday!

I’m now pretty much settled in at home in Darkhan. After a grueling flight with an over 24 hour delay at the Moscow Shereyemtevo airport, due to an engine fire, I made it to the Chinggis Khan airport in Ulaanbaatar last Tuesday morning. Moscow was miserable, but I passed the time making friends with some super friendly English speaking Mongolians, and a Dutch airline pilot named, Martin. Martin and I were both headed to Mongolia for love, and it took us way too long to get in together on a bottle of duty free whiskey.

I spent the past few months in LA selling off and giving away all my worldly goods and ended up leaving LA with 9 suitcases packed to the max with art, saddles, boots, and some things I now think I could live without. Somehow, I made it past customs without any taxes. I just frustrated the poor customs officials into submission by playing the insistent American. It totally worked, and finally, after 8 months of Skype via translator friend Heegii, I got to see my fiancee, Agii. I won’t bore you with the details of all that – you can catch my love-gushing on twitter and Facebook.

Darkhan is about a 3 hour drive from Ulaanbaatar. I have no idea what that is in kilometers, but it seems like it might be a good idea to start learning the metric system. There’s a road, and it’s paved, but you also spend about half the time swerving around on it, dodging massive potholes. The scenery along the route was snow covered steppe, horses pawing for grass in the snow, and the occasional small herd of cows trying to cross the road.

We arrived at the apartment that Heegii found for Agii and I through May, and were greeted by my new in-laws-to-be with lots of Mongolian kisses, kindness and  tradition. Fresh milk was splashed on the threshold before we crossed it to mark the clean start of a prosperous life together, and I was dressed by Agii’s aunt in traditional clothes and a handmade headdress. Together we drank warm fresh milk from a silver bowl and held a blue prayer scarf to honor our finally coming together.

Next up is a traditional Mongolian wedding. I have no idea when. Maybe in Spring when my parents can be here. Gotta get legal here as well.

Agii’s family lives in the countryside outside of Darkhan and they have a good amount of livestock, business ventures in the countryside and in the city, and are an incredibly warm and popular bunch. It’s very good company to be in. We’ll be in the countryside often before we move to Ulaanbaatar in the Spring. Agii’s help is needed with work, and I am in desperate need of Mongolian housewife lessons from his cousins and aunt.

Next week is Tsagaan Tsar, the White Moon Festival. It’s the celebration of the Mongolian lunar new year, and it’s a big deal. Lots of preparations for families to make. There are familiar things like clearing debt, cleaning house, and making sure you start the year off right, but there will be lots of unfamiliar things as well. I’ll share what I find in case you find yourself in an elder’s ger not knowing what to do. I’m happy to have good teachers here.

Crazy story from the Washington Post’s Foreign Policy page, blending international finance, smuggling and anal beads. Perhaps this is the start of a “C’mon Korean People!” trend on the GR blogs….

Gold smugglers busted.

The Year of the Rabbit is winding down (not over yet) and it played out like the celestials said it would. 2011 was a metal rabbit year, which means it was a time for resilience and determination. Don’t know about you, but that definitely seemed like the theme of 2011 to me.

Resiliency for GR meant getting back to basics. Surviving the economic storm has meant remembering what sets us apart, and what matters about what we do. It’s been a really emotional, unpredictable and unexpectedly rewarding learning experience. I think everyone who has felt some financial hurt in the last couple of years can attest to this. When times are lean, look to the things that always give back – love, family, friendship, generosity, and creativity.

There was a lot of loss this year, and I’m not sure enough time has passed to know what the silver lining will be. But this year was definitely about taking personal inventory. I don’t think life is about being “somewhere” by a particular time in your life. It seems more meaningful to make every moment matter when you remember that in an instant a tsunami, cancer, flash floods, or a thousand other ends can take everything away.  2011 was a reminder to be grateful and brave.

In 2011 I became determined to make the biggest move of my life, in response to being moved in the biggest way by Mongolia and a Mongolian man. This year will forever be marked for me as the year that everything changed. I’ve spent every day since I got back in May preparing to disassemble my life here, and with just the nuts and bolts of who I am and what matters to me, make a new life in Mongolia. After my last art show at GR2, ushering in the Year of the Dragon with my Giant Robot family and friends, I’ll be hitting the road. Heading to the second largest city in Mongolia, Darkhan, up North by the Russian border. I won’t be starting over in Mongolia. I’m just going to be doing what life up until now has prepared me for.

My 95 year old grandfather and I are both fire dragons. I predict 2012 is going to be a big year of changes for both of us. This will be a water dragon year. Water helps calm the fire dragon, makes room for more perspective and patience. I’m feeling that wave already. Hopefully you are too, and all of us can make something wonderful of 2012. The world is waiting for us to make the most of things.

The above Post-It is by talented young illustrator, Jarrett Quon. His work, and the work of 186 other artists will be available for tonight’s Post-It Show 7 at GR2. As of this moment, we have 1259 pieces of art here for you. Earlier today Eric posted some general guidelines, but I wanted to pass on some more tips so you can fully enjoy your Post-It Show experience.

Most of you know that Giant Robot’s art shows aren’t the place you go to “be seen”. Our shows are where you go to check things out! Our mission is to share the artists we’re really excited about with all of you. The Post-It Show co-curated with Mark Todd & Esther Pearl Watson is the most massive vehicle to share new work, and one of the basic principles of the show is about sharing. The work is priced fairly at $20 for the majority of Post-It’s, making original art by incredibly talented participating artists available to a very wide audience. That brings us to the first rule of Michelle’s Post-It Show Survival Guide:

Don’t get greedy!

There are 187 artists and 1259 pieces of art for a reason – so that as many people as possible get to enjoy and collect work from a wide range of artists. When you come to the Post-It Show and try to poach every piece by a single artist, that work ends up going home with you and everyone else that comes through to see the show never gets to see it, much less have an opportunity to purchase it. There’s a beauty in the ephemera of the work in the show. Tiny pieces on paper that isn’t archival. Cash and carry means the show changes everyday as works leave the gallery, but for the opening night, everyone who comes out to celebrate the show with us and the artists in attendance should be rewarded with the opportunity to see the show as a whole, and everyone who shows up has the same opportunity to purchase work as you do.

I’m not sure of any other gallery that sells as many individual pieces in one night as we do for the Post-It Show. It’s a challenge that we’ve tweaked over the years to create as democratic and efficient a system as possible. Rule number two of Michelle’s Post-It Show Survival Guide:

Please be patient!

The show, like all Giant Robot Shows, is installed the night before the opening. That means you have over 6 hours on the day of the show to come and check out the available work. There’s a lot, so it takes some time. Some people are better than others about knowing which pieces they want to take home. They are prepared with photos of the pieces they love and they even remember where they found the piece on the wall. Others seem to need a lot more time to browse the entire length of the wall to make their decisions. We can’t control these things. We will help people with their selections as fast as we can, but as you’re waiting for your own turn to choose work, please remember that we are doing our best to keep things flowing. Come by early, sign up as soon as you get in (list is going out at 6 pm tonight)  and leave us a way to contact you if you head next door to get dinner at gr/eats. We’ll call you on your cell if your name is called and you aren’t here. The next person on the list will get helped, but we’ll try for you again before we move on. While you wait, make some new friends! The gallery will be FULL of awesome people who like some of the same stuff that you do. Participating artists will be here hanging out as well. Enjoy the evening, meet people, catch up with friends and when your name comes up, we’ll get you set up with some beautiful artwork.

Those are the basics really.

Enjoy the night, hang out with us. As crazy a night as this is for the GR crew, we look forward to closing out the year with this show. For us this show is about old friends, new friends, discovery and sharing. Every day should be about those things.

Wired Science shared  this feature on a new iPhone app that sends you pictures from hidden cameras in the wild. They’ll send you kinda creepy surprise snapshots of wild animals minding their own business,but getting Big Brother-ed by the Instant Wild app that’s free for your phone or iPad, or you can also check out the random pictures online. This is great for anyone who misses the Baby Pandacam craze of the beginning of the millenium – this is just less warm and fuzzy and more cell-phone stalker steez. Keep tabs on animals in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Mongolia and some bummed out not-so-wild animals in a UK zoo. Still, fun to see what they do when they think we aren’t looking.

Last night, my awesome pal Michelle let me be her tag-along for the first of three LA performances by The Cure, part of their final “Reflections” tour. The promise: a concert of the first three studio albums, including my favorite, Faith.

Promise firmly delivered.

I don’t have to tell you about The Cure. You know them. They’re the crossover band of the last several decades, loved by goths and sensitive jocks, when bullying wasn’t a legislative agenda.  Their earliest releases aren’t as accessible as their albums in the 1990s that were complete with music videos, and now make appearances in your favorite karaoke song books. I didn’t discover these records until after Disintegration came out when I was in Junior High. It took a solid education of punk rock and it’s earliest incarnations in British new wave, to help me develop a solid taste for the earlier work. This stuff is good though. Classic really, and the sound at The Pantages was stellar.

It seems to take a reunion show these days for me to melt away into a live show, when you know every song because you’ve listened to them a thousand times. Those experiences are magical though, and they remind me of a time when music was about discovery. Discovering new bands, making music that was beyond. Being able to listen to a record over and over to commit every chord, every hook, and every lyric to memory. Realizing that these songs were about moments in your life, or a life you wished you were living.

I miss that magic in music.

If you didn’t get enough of the far-away cell phone pictures in your Facebook feed last night, you can check out more of my picture here. I am the reluctant concert photographer who’d rather be dancing, but I tried.

Shortly after the March earthquake in Japan, which took out the Fukushima nuclear reactors, a team of brainiacs  went to Japan with a plan. Safecast was born one week after the earthquake and has been busy ever since. Very cool work to empower people. Two thumbs up.

“Safecast is a global project working to empower people with data, primarily by mapping radiation levels and building a sensor network, enabling people to both contribute and freely use the data collected. After the 3/11 earthquake and resulting nuclear situation at Fukushima Diachi it became clear that people wanted more data than what was available. Through joint efforts with partners such as International Medcom and Keio University, Safecast has been building a radiation sensor network comprised of static and mobile sensors actively being deployed around Japan – both near the exclusion zone and elsewhere in the country.”

Learn more about Safecast and what they’ve been up to in Japan:

All this week we’ve been encouraging folks to bike the stores and make use of the brand new bike racks that were installed last weekend. The racks are free and were easily requested through the LA Department of Transportation.   More and more people are biking in Los Angeles, and not just to be part of a party ride, but to make the most of their time in traffic and explore their neighborhood (and new ones!) in a way that’s much more conducive to seeing what’s actually going on where you live. The Giant Robot stores on Sawtelle have lots of neighborhood regulars, so the bike racks have been getting lots of use!

Mal is a neighbor who stopped in today and picked up some cool buttons from Future Colors of America (Aiyana Udesen, Matt Furie & Albert Reyes) and also tried his luck with the Busy Beaver Button Machine. Mal has rad sunglasses, a nice bike, and good taste in buttons! Come by today and tomorrow for the final days of our Ride Your Bike sale and get 25% off your purchase at Giant Robot or GR2. Be like Mal!

Uh oh....

Over the years I’ve collected lots of different things. One theme that runs across a lot of my vintage collections is blatant “Oriental” racist images.  I’m always fascinated by the fact that these images used to be totally acceptable as home decor, and when I found these items in thrift stores, antique malls and flea markets I snatched them up. This imagery shaped the future of Asians in America for generations to come. It made the stereotypes that began with the first wave of Asian immigrants in the 1800s acceptable in mainstream culture all the way until… well, even now I suppose. My skin still crawls every time I see Yellow Face cosplay at conventions. This stuff just doesn’t ever seem to go away…

This pattern set from the late 1940s is a double whammy with China Boy’s friends Susie Cotton and Sammy Bean.

Pretty nuts. I wonder how many of these sold, and how many women made these dolls for their children?

The Hazara people have been in Afghanistan a long time, and are there now, living through yet another war. Their troubles aren’t important to the media, but they’re real. The average American knows so little about Afghanistan even though we pump billions of dollars into war efforts there. Tons of different ethnic groups like there, or try to, and face unimaginable challenges to preserve their cultural heritage. Buddhism had a long history there until Islam shoved it aside and destroyed much evidence of its influence on the land and culture.

Eurasianet.org did a cool piece on some young Hazara who have been given the chance to study in Mongolia. Their faces are amazing! They look like their Mongolian classmates. They are considered by the Mongols as ethnic Mongolians, even if they’re having a hard time adjusting to Mongolian winters!  There’s a really well done video interview with several of the Hazara students now studying in Ulaanbaatar.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64351

Before.

WHOA! Right? Crazy!!

Check this one out…

Mall Santas never die, they just grow real bellies made of jelly.

In the process of doing some Lunar Eclipse cleaning, I came across some photos I brought back from a trip to Korea. They were pictures that my grandfather had. The photos were sent to him in Korea by mom, so he and my grandmother could see how our lives in the US were shaping up to be. There were lots of Christmas photos in the mix, and seeing them was the first time this month that I really started to reflect on what Christmas has meant to me over the years.

On Sunday, I tried my hand at figure drawing for the first time since 1995. A friend has been hosting a semi-regular live drawing session at his place with several of my favorite LA artists. It was a privilege to be invited, and a chance to get my drawing muscles back in shape. Couldn't pass that up, even in the rain.

We had an incredible model who gave us dynamic poses and exuded CALM, which was perfect for all the internal stressing out I was doing about making the most of this opportunity. Working with so many talented artists makes it hard to think about creating my own art again. Seems odd, but that's the way my brain works. I'm inspired on an almost daily basis to do it, but the doing part is hard sometimes.

This session was structured perfectly. We started with five minute gestural poses, 10 minutes, and then graduated on to 20 minute poses that let us spend more time with our work. It couldn't have been better. I was working in charcoal to keep things loose and it worked. I tried switching to pastel at the last minute, but decided against it. It was hard to switch to a harder pigment, especially when I had finally, after almost two hours, finally reached a point where my hand was continually moving on the paper.

This whole experience was more proof that it is vitally important to return to the passions that you may have put up on a tall shelf and forgotten. There are so many experiences that pass through our lives, and there's no reason that we can't find them again and discover that they're still a part of who we are.

I think I'm late to the Nina Paley party, but I'm crashing it anyway. Just watched Sita Sings the Blues after it came up in a dinner convo with old friends and new about recent break-ups. Par for the course topics: how to channel something bad into something good, how to make sense of the non-sensical, and how to cope with the challenges of dating creatives. One of the hosts of the evening (there are three inhabitants of The Clown House) mentioned an ex who made a brilliant film about the topic at hand. It has a space phone app that he showed us, and the graphics were compelling enough to watch it as soon as I got home.

You should watch it too.

There are better ways to watch it, I just needed to see it right away. Who can resist a movie with the subtitle “The Greatest Breakup Story Ever Told”?! Now, just to be clear, this story doesn't speak to my recent experience, but it's still worth sharing here.

Top 3 reasons to watch, share and support Sita Sings the Blues, from someone who isn't really a film critic, she just likes what she likes:

#1 – The animation and the music. I'm lumping them together because they play off one another throughout the film in the same way. Nina juxtaposes iconic Hindu art with a more modern illustrative style, that still manages to reference animation of the past. Her storytelling makes it pretty seamless. The narration (totally unscripted) does most of the heavy lifting though, and even her use of narrators is a nod to tradition. The music is used the same way. Sita is voiced by Annette Hanshaw, a jazz singer of the 1920s and 30s who I have many a tune from in my own music library. It all works – the sculpting of the love story with the lyrics of those old love songs is brilliant.

#2 – I'm the number one fan of taking religion, especially the ones that seep their way into cultural identity, and making it your own. It's how I live as a Buddhist. It's the only way I'd ever recommend being religious. It appears that Nina Paley ran into some trouble with this film and bummed some people out with her take on the Ramayana. I get the critiques, I truly do. I've read my Edward Said, but I think it's unfair to assume that there aren't a ton of people who find their spiritual path by taking in texts like the Ramayana, and processing them through their own filter of culture and memory. I do get completely weirded out by people who identify as fill-in-the-blank-Eastern-religion that they have little or no cultural connection to, but Nina Paley was wise here – she let the telling of the tale (a tale that has been retold about a thousand times in some of the most grossly commercial ways ever, and gets re-imagined all the time) be told from three very unique perspectives who have very tangible connections to the culture it came from. I totally respect that.