Messenger Boy

By Cat Perry

IF LA NIÑA AND GLOBAL WARMING CHEATED YOU of your winter sports fix, you have one last chance to get it back. Warmer than average temperatures have made the snow season a light one even in snow country. On the bright side, though, there is plenty of powder (and more to come) in Colorado, Utah, Vermont, and New Hampshire for skiing, snowboarding, snowbiking (have you tried that?!! Crazy fun.)—and any other crazy snow sports you can think of.

Find flights to all your favorite destinations fast! Go to Fare Compare maps. For tips on other airlines servicing your favorite destinations and more logistical tips, review FareCompare.com’s ski vacation tips.

Cat Perry is an editor, a writer, and an adventure seeker based in Brooklyn, NY. When she’s not busy at the health and fitness grindstone, she is trying out new adventures from snow to sand to green mountain tops, both around the world and around the corner. Follow @CatPerry_ on Twitter.

By Cat Perry

“This Is My Winter” is a stunner snowboarding film that follows Xavier de le Rue—one the world’s best big mountain, backcountry snowboarders—on a chase from Skagway, Alaska, to the Alps for the perfect winter. The video was recently released from de le Rue’s all-things-extreme production company called TimeLine Films. Look out for this and more sick video from TimeLine on Vimeo.

THIS IS MY WINTER (full movie english) from TimeLine Film on Vimeo.

June 24, 2011

Update: 33 Ayes, 29 Nays — Marriage Equality PASSED

In an extended New York State Senate session, a few issues still remain on the agenda, from the “non-controversial” to the very controversial: raising statewide property tax cap, allowing of Yellow Taxi Medallion status to about 1,500 livery cabs, and, again, passing marriage equality.

Here, the LIVE video: Democrat and Republican senators will be making their cases about where they stand on gay and lesbian couples being allowed to marry in the Empire State. So far, 31 of 62 senators have publicly endorsed the legislation — but that’s one shy of a majority. Though the live feed may not be a gripper, more than 32,000 people at time of publishing are tuned in, on a Friday night at 9:30 p.m., and many millions more are waiting to see whether New York will become the sixth state, in addition to Washington, D.C., to allow sax-sex couples to marry.

He combines afrobeat and freestyle like no other, and, calling electro music his “heartbeat,” Chico gives it all he’s got in his new album Analog Drift.

As a child, he grew up in a very musical Cuban family (is there anything BUT that in the Caribbean?). In the ’70s and ’80s in New York City, while all his friends wanted to do was run through the denizen that was Hell’s Kitchen, he wasn’t allowed to, so Man found himself always digging through the record crates at LP stores, passing hour after hour listening to the greats.

Fast forward thirty years, and in celebration of Analog Digital, Chico plays off of his love of old-school, both with the album title and the laid-back and transporting sound he creates. The album was released this fall on Wax Poetics.

He played live in KCRW studios in Santa Monica, for “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” and he spoke about his favorite aspects of playing mind-blowing music for so many years. “Seeing people slowly letting go” gives him the deepest satisfaction, and that’s become one of the most important things for him to experience/influence in his shows.

Download his album as an MP3, or pick in up on CD or double LP.

In a step backward for LGBTQ international human rights protection, the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly voted to remove references to sexual orientation from a resolution that condemns extrajudicial and arbitrary executions. The committee is charged with handling humanitarian issues for the General Assembly. This marks the end of a decade-long inclusion of sexual orientation in the resolution.

UN flags

Why the change? Led by Benin, on behalf of the African Group, there were 79 in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions, and 26 absent votes counted for the measure.

The turn of events follows a September 2010 meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva in which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the “particular vulnerability of individuals who face criminal sanctions, including imprisonment and in some cases the death penalty, on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” About the extraction, Cary Alan Johnson, executive director of IGLHRC said, “This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development.”

Read the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission’s full press release.

George W. Bush’s new memoir Decision Points sold 775,000 copies within its first week on the market, almost reaching total sales of Bill Clinton’s My Life. But the book did not claim the honor that a few other politicians have managed to reach: the New York Times bestseller list.

Since the book was released in the first week of November 2010, Americans could not get away from comments flying about the former president’s decisions throughout his presidency and his sentiments expressed in his first interview, with Matt Lauer, on NBC—particularly, Mr. Bush’s still-raw wounds from when hip-hop rapper Kanye West stated on national television, about the president’s response to Hurricane Katrina, that “George W. Bush does not care about black people.” This comment, according to Mr. Bush, ranked as “the worst moment of his presidency.” Not the realization that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Not the several trillion dollar deficit. Not September 11, 2001.

The door to that back and forth blew open upon the publication of Decision Points, and since then, surprisingly, the two have, though not in person and instead through each of their preferred interviews behind safe boom mics, made headway to settle the matter. However, with race being one of the most sore and yet overlooked topics of national conversation in America; many have ideas about how to more forward progressively.

Hip-hop video blogger Jay Smooth on his website IllDoctrine.com shares his thought about how to discuss race and actually get somewhere in the conversation, or, as he puts it, “How to Tell Someone They Sound Racist.” Take a look:

Now, if we can just figure out a way to counter the tit-for-tat storm that will likely ensue upon publication of Sarah Palin’s latest book today, Nov. 23, America by Heart, in which she jabs at First Lady Michelle Obama about her 2008 remarks about race and patriotism, and criticizes her for attending the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church for so many years.

Palin also digs at President Obama in a passage on racial inequality, saying that he “seems to believe” that “America is a racially unjust and unequal country.”

We’ll certainly hear more about Palin’s views as she takes to the road, on tour to promote her book. What more will be uncovered about our country’s high-voltage views about race and equality? Time and a flurry of indirect attacks will tell. Read more excerpts of America by Heart, in Geoffrey Dunn’s article for The Huffington Post.

“It’s not rocket science,” says aerospace engineer and DJ Mark Branch about being drawn to deejaying, chuckling to himself. By day, he supervises electromagnetic tests for the Hubble Telescope at NASA; by night, he pumps out rhythms to the dancing masses, from local school children to Bill Gates and 3,000 of his closest Microsoft friends.

Mark’s name on the dance floor is DJ Scientific. To explain to Studio 360’s Kurt Anderson why he, one of the few black aerospace technicians at NASA, plays songs that rhyme about atoms and stars over a hip-hop beat, he says it’s because he loves science and music. And Mark has one governing philosophy: The sky is the limit. To show young people of color that they can dream beyond the environments they grow up in, 3,000 miles up and beyond, he DJs. Just two turntables and a mic. It’s a simple formula for him; speak their language and you’ve got their attention. It doesn’t hurt that he’s clearly loving every minute of it. Hear a broadcast with DJ Scientific at Studio 360:

Now head to his MySpace page.

Out of chaos springs beauty when it comes to illustrator and graffiti artist Swoon. “The things that drew me to [New York City] are its intensity and its harshness.”

A Florida native, Swoon illustrates her large-scale evocative portraits and with the occasional help of a small army of volunteers, cuts away until just the curves of humanity show. Using wheat paste, Swoon tags her drawings onto the gritty cityscape she now calls home. Each tag is more detailed than the next, yet the end result is the crystal clear vulnerability of her subjects. Swoon’s art leaps off of the most derelict structures, and beyond her tags, Swoon has sailed rogue flotillas to Venice and built beehive-like shelters in Haiti for earthquake victims.

See Swoon in Park Slope, Brooklyn, speaking to Walrus TV:

Interview with Gothamist, Swoon shares her obsession with outsider art and giving back to communities.

A New Testament church in Gainesville, Florida, has proclaimed an “International Burn a Quran Day,” in commemoration of the ninth Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and to “protest radical Islam.”

Citizens, both Muslims and their allies, are perplexed and angry. Even military leaders, including an outraged General David Petraeus, are calling for the event to be called off in anticipation of the international sweep of backlash, which has already begun in Kabul, Afghanistan, with shouts of “Long live Islam” and Death to America” heard from the more than 500 protesters on Monday of this week. “We’re concerned about the implications of a possible Quran burning,” and ” it puts our soldiers in jeopardy,” Petraeus said.

Watch three CNN videos here, including a statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an interview with the Rev. Terry Jones at the heart of the controversy, who says that moderate Muslims will get behind this event.

Officials are rushing to publicly condemn the burning Rev. Terry Jones has organized at the Dove World Outreach Center. The pastor sticks by his decision and has laid out why he holds such hatred toward the religion in his new book Islam Is of the Devil.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, an Islamic advocacy group, Council on American-Islamic Relations, called on Muslims and allies during the month of Ramadan to host “Share the Quran” dinners to educate the public about the religion. With Jones’ actions, Muslims worldwide are fearful of the effects this act will have on their everyday lives as they fight for acceptance in an increasingly Islamophobic U.S. and Europe.

Even the National Association of Evangelicals has condemned the day, calling its members to “cultivate relationships of trust and respect with our neighbors of other faiths.” Meanwhile, the Dove Center’s website sells “Islam is of the Devil” T-Shirts, offers “free shelter and food for women who want to escape from Islam,” and has blog posts, including “10 Reasons to Burn a Koran.”

Hasn’t Rev. Jones ever mulled over Mahatma Gandhi’s passage “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”? What he says about fighting extremism with extremism? “We’re praying on it.”

September 8, 2010

Two asteroids are expected to pass within 154,000 miles of the earth today, NASA says, as they pass between planet earth and the moon. Scientists and children alike will delight in the fact that the asteroids should be visible with medium-size amateur telescopes. Astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona noticed the masses.

The larger of the two, asteroid 2010 RX30, will fly by at about 5:51 a.m. EDT, and will be about 33 to 65 feet wide. The second, 2010 RF12, is estimated to be 20 to 46 feet wide. Space.com estimates it will pass within 49,000 miles (79,000 km) a few hours later at 5:12 pm EDT.

See a rockin’ September Sky Guide by Space.com and don’t miss this supernova story for more about the mysterious masses.