Endopolis

Yeah, I came back to Yahoo, and I’m proud of it. I’ve actually been meaning to write this post for a while but finally felt compelled to do so after seeing what’s going on in the company today, and reading some disparaging remarks about the company (again) in the blogosphere.

Here’s my story. It starts way back in 1998 so bear with me. I was a newspaper reporter struggling to make ends meet on an annual salary of less than $20,000. In the Bay Area it’s almost not doable. I eventually started covering some high tech stories in Silicon Valley and was exposed to a number of technologies and people doing interesting things. (This after attending Cal Poly and somehow missing the whole computer science thing.) Anyway, I somehow lucked into a part-time copywriting gig with Yahoo that paid more on the contract than I was paid in three months of work at the newspaper. It planted the seed, even though copywriting wasn’t really for me: There’s opportunity in web content.

A year later, I took a job as editor of a startup regional newspaper which turned into a magazine covering the dot com boom. It folded but not until we covered some cool stories and I, again, was exposed to some incredible people and companies. It was easy back then to see $$ in content. I will never forget going door to door in South Park, dropping off our magazines and seeing creative people doing cool stuff online. So, I taught myself HTML before the magazine folded.

By late 1999 I was working at TechTV, and was finally really doing web content as a reporter, editor and producer and making well over double my newspaper salary. I was stoked. It was a great place to work. But I was a south bay guy, and had always kept my sights on Yahoo. Why? It was the first company doing web content at scale, and doing it at scale in ways that nobody else was doing. I interviewed with Yahoo at one point around 2001 and barely lost out on the job to someone I’m still friends with today. (Yahoo is that kind of place.) I was bummed but it was fine – I figured I still needed to grow. Funny enough, I also interviewed at Google around that time, just as they were beginning to monetize search. I thought the place was weird. Not sure what that says about my judgment, but there you go. If it had been a good fit I might be retired by now. C’est la vie.

In 2004 TechTV was bought by Comcast, and I was given the option to move to LA to join the new G4TV network. I declined and took a severance. Prior to walking I helped lead a content deal with Yahoo, in which TechTV video was distributed out to Yahoo News for a new technology section they were building. Through my contacts at Y News I inquired about a job, and there happened to be one opening. I applied, and was lucky to nail it. That was in 2004.

I worked first as a producer and soon as a product manager for News until late 2008, starting out on the team when it was tiny and working through its massive growth, the media group’s move to Santa Monica, the push into original content, and the rise and fall of our CEO Terry Semel (and many other managers). I left the company at the peak of its uncertainty in Nov. ’08 for a good opportunity, to run the content operation at a startup. Ultimately, that didn’t work out for a number of reasons. It is what it is, and it was a great experience.

I interviewed at a handful of companies early this year. When I asked myself what I really was looking for, the following emerged: 1. I wanted to be working with really smart, great people, both on the engineering side and the content and product side. 2. I wanted to be involved in building web content experiences and products at a really big scale, 3. I wanted some job security and benefits (hey, it’s the economy, stupid) and 4. I really still liked Yahoo. I had been hearing good things about management and the changes that happened while I was gone from friends still at the company, so I figured it’d be worth another shot. In March, I was hired, and I’m now leading product management for a team that builds cool custom content and advertising experiences. Our group is responsible for delivering on a lot of revenue, and our sites serve millions of users. I’m lucky that I can check all the boxes that I wrote for myself during my job hunt. Hell, I’m lucky I got a job this year.

I’m not one of these I-bleed-purple Yahoo people. I’m cognizant of the fact they could lay me off tomorrow without cause. I don’t sell my soul to companies. In fact for a while I really didn’t think I’d end up working at Yahoo again. But as a Yahoo user since around 1995, I definitely have an affinity for the company and its products. With News, I worked with great people and learned more on the job than I ever had before. I wanted that again, so I found a great opportunity and went back.

The company has its faults and challenges and hasn’t always made the best decisions. Hindsight is 20/20. But the company isn’t dead. Far from it. I’m not sure why anyone implies it or ever writes Yahoo’s obituary. It’s got the talent, it’s a huge brand, has a gigantic user base and world-class advertisers. What is Yahoo? I see it as a media services company – we provide services and content, and we sell ads. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Every time I see a freakin’ Twitter fail whale, I’m reminded of one way Yahoo is amazing: our sites don’t go down. This is actually an internal mandate, and frankly is something that can add to the infamous bureaucracy we all read about. But, our sites don’t go down. There aren’t many web companies that can achieve this, especially given the traffic Yahoo sees. There are smart people at Yahoo who have figured out how to make this happen and are preparing for problems of bigger scale. This is just one example of things I’ve seen within the company that prove there are countless good, well-reasoned decisions that are made at Yahoo every day.

Here’s another. On Dec. 26, 2004 a huge earthquake hit Indonesia and the ensuing tsunami devastated the region. There were only a couple of us working during the holiday, and nobody knew the magnitude of the event until the next day. We went into scramble mode, and held an emergency version of the editorial meeting generally attended by editorial folks from across the company. With the holidays there was only a handful of people there. As we discussed our coverage options and pages we could launch, I looked to my left and realized that David Filo was sitting next to me offering ideas, the availability of engineering help and hardware support. The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina. Yahoo mobilized, the founders got involved (I parked next to Filo yesterday – the guy still goes to work), we provided great coverage, Yahoo sourced millions of dollars in aid, and the company helped people on the ground in New Orleans. There are worse companies in the world…

So when was the last time you saw a 404 on a Yahoo web page? Google does search really well but does it have the best News, Sports, Finance and Entertainment websites online? I believe in the powerful combination of human editorial and great technology, and nobody has both like Yahoo. I’ve been involved in quite a bit of strategic planning recently and have been exposed to new leadership that continues to bring fresh ideas and good opportunities to the company. The future remains to be seen but it’s definitely bright, and I’m again stoked to be working at Yahoo.

Filed under: Life by Steve Enders
3 Comments » Tagged with: web content • work • yahoo media

I’m a big fan of Jon Krakauer, mostly because he is what I once aspired to be. I’d still like to be able to research and write the kinds of stories that he tells: complex, non-fiction and incredibly well reported/sourced narratives of adventurous people who are drawn to and ultimately affected by forces larger than themselves.

With each of his books, Krakauer has expanded his range and has gone from stories of wayward youth and outdoorsy tragedy (“Into the Wild,” “Into Thin Air”) to history and religion (“Under the Banner of Heaven”) and now, mainstream news and current events.

I just finally finished his latest book, “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.” Tillman’s life and death was fairly well documented in his/my local San Jose Mercury News, so I felt like I knew the story. Local boy does well in football, makes it to the NFL, 9/11 compels him to join the Army (wha?), he dies tragically (turns out due to friendly fire), his service and death are exploited by a desperate military and Bush Administration, his family fights for the truth surrounding Pat’s death and exposes a cover-up that leads straight to the White House. And in the end, I felt terrible for the Tillman family and it simply confirmed that the war on terror was good for just about nothing other than to get Bush re-elected.

Turns out Pat Tillman’s story is much more complicated than any of that. I don’t think that this is Krakauer’s best book by any means (I say it’s a toss-up between “Wild” and “Banner”), but perhaps it’s because I was already familiar with the story. The first quarter of the book describes Tillman’s youth and relies a lot on tales by mother Mary Tillman via her book “Boots on the Ground by Dusk” (which I haven’t read). Throughout, Krakauer slowly begins to juxtapose worldwide historical terror events against Pat Tillman’s life, which of course culminate on 9/11 and during his rising NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals.

This is where the book gets really interesting, as Krakauer dives deep into Tillman’s comprehensive personal diaries and interviews with his then-girlfriend (his eventual wife) Marie and other friends to get inside the character I previously knew as just a high-strung and confused jock. Tillman was much more than that, and the middle of the book reveals some deep and also seemingly contradictory views on religion (Tillman was an atheist), life in the Army (mostly hated it), his penchant to explore and challenge conventional thought (he was a conversationalist and admired Chomsky), and his love for his family and wife (he was constantly torn to leave them for the Army). Tillman passes up lucrative NFL contracts and chances to escape boring, regimented military life simply because he’d given his word and commitment that he would do his three years in the Army, no matter how much he despised it. And he does it with his equally tough brother Kevin, with whom he shares an incredible bond, by his side the entire time.

Krakauer also details other similar and terrible friendly fire incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the manipulative faux “rescue” of Jessica Lynch (in which Tillman played a small role) and of course climaxes with vivid descriptions of the events surrounding Tillman’s death. The second half of the book is riveting.

Yet some of Krakauer’s best writing ever in any of his books comes at the very very end, in the final 10 pages or so where he probably very knowingly slips into a beautiful essay that examines why Tillman died. As a reader, I stopped in my tracks and had to back up and start the section over as it occurred to me where the author was going. Quoting a portion of it would be worthless, because as a whole it’s so eloquent — just to get to the end and this part alone makes reading this book more than worth it.

Read it for yourself, Pat Tillman’s family, and the country.

Filed under: Current Events, Media by Steve Enders
1 Comment » Tagged with: 9/11 • afghanistan • army rangers • friendly fire • jon krakauer • pat tillman

There are worse places to be stuck than in a nice London hotel. I’m right in the thick of things, two minutes from Covent Garden and five from Soho. It doesn’t suck to be me, even though I bitch about this damned volcano on twitter and to anyone who also wants to share complaints.

I was supposed to leave this morning. Now I’m booked on a Tuesday flight, but I’m skeptical that it’ll take off. The whole thing is almost comical. You can’t see any ash anywhere. Today was another beautiful bright blue day, clear as a bell and with no flights, no contrails mucking up the sky. I had a long stroll through Hyde Park and wished I was wearing shorts. Thousands of people were out enjoying the park.

Luckily, my company is footing the bill for me to be here (for now). There are about 20 Yahoo’s here from around the world, so it’s costing the company a pretty penny and that likely extends far beyond those of us who are stuck here. And I’m not trying to get home from a vacation, I’m not penniless and holed up on a bench at the airport or couch surfing on long-lost friends’ couches.

There are painful stories everywhere around town. Yesterday afternoon I dipped into the only quiet pub I’ve found in Covent Garden and started talking with a stranded Australian who was trying to get back to Sydney so he could meet up with his wife, and the two were scheduled to jump on a flight to Hawaii for an anniversary vacation. Now he’s trying to book his flight direct to Hawaii instead, but chances are he won’t make it at all since he can’t get out of Heathrow. We shrug our shoulders and share a laugh about it, tipping our pints back, because that’s all you can do. Might as well drink and make the best of it.

Even the bartender at the pub is stuck; she’s trying to get home to France for a big family reunion. The trains are jammed and if you really want a ticket, you have to pay a premium upwards of $300 or more. Speaking of premiums, my hotel rate has conveniently gone up $50 a night, and they removed breakfast and tax from the charge. “That’s business, I guess,” said the guy behind the desk. The airlines may be losing $200 million a day, but some people are getting rich off this mess. It’s amazing, really, to think of all the various people and downstream businesses that are affected by this. It is such a big deal.

The only reason I want to get home so badly is to provide some relief to my poor wife who’s home juggling two babies, our son and her job. This weekend has felt like a vacation for me, and it isn’t fair. I’ve had some fun (a little too much fun last night, oww) but it sure would be more enjoyable if there was an end to the ash cloud in sight. Instead, we’re powerless to do anything about anything, and that’s what is so frustrating.

Filed under: Current Events, Life by Steve Enders
No Comments »

Today was the last of my weekday swims. Or at least the last of my midday weekday swims. I’ve enjoyed a couple months off of work (enjoyed isn’t quite the word for it, but let’s look at the bright side: I get to swim at 11am, 1pm, or pretty much whenever I like).

Anyway, the latest workout has been good and challenging without being too much. Need to remember this.

Warm-up:

• 1×100 freestyle
• 1×100 free kick
• 1×100 breaststroke

Main (rest 15 secs between each set):

• 6×50 free
• 6×50 mix (free kick, frog kick, free pull x 2, breaststroke, free)
• 6×50 breaststroke
• 6×50 kick and pull mix (legs about to fall off by this point)

Cool down:

• 200 or 300 (50s of free and breast mix)

total yards = 1700

Filed under: Life by Steve Enders
No Comments » Tagged with: swim for fitness • swim routine • unemployment fun

Gents. Dudes. Men. We like to exercise and get sweaty (or in my case use the pool) at the gym. Some of us like to shower and/or shave, and change our clothes there. All that is cool.

But let’s get a few things clear, OK? Despite how much you stink the place up, the men’s locker room at your local gym is NOT your bathroom. Therefore, you really ought to submit to a few decency rules, if not follow some common courtesies. Let’s run through a few, shall we? If I ran the gym, I’d put these 10 rules up on the walls:

1. Put your used towels in the provided basket, damnit.
2. Don’t be gross: Do NOT throw your used bandages on the floor, especially in the shower.
3. Do not under any circumstances trim your finger/toe nails in the shower. Do it over a garbage can or something.
4. Hocking loogies in the shower is not allowed. At all.
5. When shaving or brushing your teeth, please don’t let the faucet run. Have you not heard we’re in a perpetual drought?
6. When shaving or brushing your teeth, for the love of all that is good and holy, please cover yourself with at least a towel.
7. Furthermore: keep your bits off the countertops. Really now. We’re f*&#ing serious.
8. Please be at least somewhat discreet. Do you two naked octogenarians really need to have a conversation in the middle of the room? Great, say Hi and move along. Get dressed, then carry on.
9. The shared counter-space is not inside your house. Therefore, use it quickly and then get your crap off of it. Hurry up.
10. When using under-arm deodorant spray, please make sure nobody is standing behind you and is affected by your Right Guard cloud.

Thank you,

The Management

Filed under: Life by Steve Enders
No Comments » Tagged with: decency rules • exercise • gross locker rooms • gym locker room

Long time no post. With our 73 children, we’ve been busy!

I’ve wanted to log my swim routines for a while, so here goes. First, an intro.

I’ve been living with pretty bad and consistent back pain/sciatica since last March when I tweaked a couple of discs while demo-ing our backyard. Old man! I don’t need surgery, but the orthopedic surgeon told me to exercise like crazy with something low-impact like swimming, and then go to physical therapy. So over the summer I hopped back in the pool to swim laps, something I haven’t done since my freshman year of college. I used to be a good swimmer (I was a lifeguard and swim instructor in high school and some college) and with surfing my love for water and stroke never died, but right as I was getting into the swing of things … boom … we had twins.

My back is still screwed up, and suffice to say that besides my consistent stretching and core strength routines, the pool has offered the best way to keep loose and in shape, and has reduced my overall pain. I aim to get into PT this week, and I’ve been seeing a chiropractor once a month, primarily for deep-tissue muscle work.

Working at a startup, plus tending to our three kids, hasn’t allowed me the time to get into the pool nearly as much as I’d like, but I’ve tried to keep a steady schedule of going twice a week. It’s just enough to improve my distance, lung capacity and stroke. Incidentally this has been one of the most unhealthy years of my life (thanks son and daycare!). So it seems every time I get my routine going and I start feeling good in the water, I get hit with a cold or something. Then back to square one.

My goals have been pretty doable, and I’ve been hitting them so far. I started out wanting to build up to a straight 500 yard freestyle, after a good warm-up and with a cool-down. Check. I do that and more now each time I get in the water. Now I’m on the cusp of doing 1,000 yards straight. I did my first one the other night, and when I got out of the water I felt an endorphin high that I’ve never had before – it was amazing! So now I want to hit the 1000 yard mark regularly and build to a mile straight. That’s about 70 x 25 yard lengths. After my swim Friday evening, I realized I had come 100 yards short of a mile (broken up), and I was pretty bummed I hadn’t thought of it before I got out of the pool.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Masters swim group workouts, trying to emulate some of it each time I go. Masters would also be a goal but I’ll have to improve my speed and times. Anyway, typical routine now is looking like this:

• 3×50 freestyle warmup at intensifying rates of speed – 15 sec. rest between sets
• 1×100 breaststroke fast – 30 sec. rest
• 1×200 breast and free
• 1×500-1000 yard free (I did a 600 this morning and could have kept going if time wasn’t short)
• 1×100 breast
• 1×100 free
• 3×50 free at fast then reduced speed to cool down

= approx 1300 yards total, or more or less

Filed under: Life by Steve Enders
No Comments » Tagged with: back pain • exercise • sciatica cure • swim routine

My son turns four tomorrow. Four! It’s incredible, how the time has flied.

Our daughters — we have two of them, twins — are just about four months old. Four months! Time flies…

Collectively, we’ve lost years of sleep between all these kids. That’s to be expected — it comes with the territory. When the boy was born, a co-worker congratulated me and said: You know, having kids is God’s way of saying you’ve had enough sleep. Little did I know that it’d be about two years before he slept through the night on a regular basis. We screwed up. We tried the cry-it-out thing, albeit half-assedly. I’ve slept on his floor, more times than I can count. We’ve kept doors open, lights on, responded to binkies flying across the room, wails of “Maaawwwmy…” coming down the hall.

And now, two girls. It’s starting all over again.

So a confluence of events has told us that it’s time to get control of this whole lack-of-sleep situation, not the least of which is being tired. Keeping the girls on the same schedule is crucial. They need to sleep together, eat together, and play together. Otherwise, we’d be on a round-the-clock mission to keep them fed, changed, playing and sleeping.

Enter, sleep training.

After consultations and reviews of a couple of different kinds of sleep therapists (yes, there are a few), we settled on one who didn’t cost an arm and a leg, yet seemed to have a pretty good system and a legion of devoted, well-rested parents. Vivian Sonnenberg came highly recommended through various twins club parent groups, and so we met with her a week ago.

She came and met with us for a couple of hours, evaluating every aspect of how we were raising our babies. She looked at how we put them to bed, how the crib was arranged, how much we were feeding them, how cold the room was, our bedtime ritual. The net result has been a complete revamp of our day-to-day routine, and setting up a pretty rigorous schedule that we’re to adhere to based on some time-tested rules.

So now, the babies eat at fairly regular intervals. They nap predictably three or four times a day. They get a couple of sessions of decent play time. They go to bed by 6:30pm. Best of all, they’re starting to sleep through the night.

Prior to all this sleep therapy, we had a pretty (we thought) decent routine. Wake up around 7am, feed the babies in the morning. They’d nap (restlessly) around 10am, wake up for lunch and play, nap again in the early afternoon for a while, then be awake til around 7pm when we’d put them to bed. Looking back on this, they were often fussy when eating, hard to put down for naps, and generally over-tired. Vivian noticed this right away. In fact, one of the babies had been diagnosed with acid-reflux and we had been giving her some Zantac because of her feeding fussiness. That seemed to work but since we’ve been on the changed routine and more sleep, the “reflux” seems to have mostly stopped. At night, they’d wake up and we’d feed them at around 11pm, 2am, and 5am, changing diapers each time. Binkies would fall out and we’d rush to pop them back in, stretching the feedings out an hour or so if lucky.

The new routine so far looks like this: No binkies. We don’t swaddle them in tight blankets, but rather bundle them up in sleep sacks and with a space heater in the room. Vivian told us the babies like to have their hands free and move their knees up while positioned on their sides, so that’s how they go to bed now, and they seem to like it. They wake up around 6am. We feed the babies, and put them down for a nap just an hour after they’ve gotten up. Then they basically get about three more naps throughout the day, plus a detailed regimen of feeding and play time. They’re in bed for the night by 6:30pm, after a nice quiet feeding in their room with pajamas on.

This also gives us a nice amount of evening time with our son, and time to ourselves. We even watched a movie the other night.

Here’s the downside. The babies alternately wake up during the night and scream and cry. The deal is that we let them “cry hard” for 20-25 minutes before going in and picking them up (and feeding them). We give them up to 45 minutes of off-and-on crying before picking them up to feed. On Friday night, they woke up and cried once but put themselves back to sleep pretty quickly, and we had a really nice sleep. Last night, they were awake and crying off and on between 1:30-3:30am, and then they woke up at 6am. I don’t even really remember what happened between all those hours. Jo got up and fed one of the babies, and I got up early to feed the other.

So, we’re not out of the woods yet, but we’ve been told to give this adjustment period about 12 days to kick in. Already we’re seeing signs of progress, but we’re a week in and are already seeing some benefits. The routine also makes “cry-it-out” a little more palpable, because the crying doesn’t just tear at your soul. The babies are only a few months old, so they’re not smart enough yet to be such manipulators, the way our son was when we pathetically attempted (and failed with) cry-it-out when he was about 18-months old.

I’m pretty sure we’re on the right track. Ask me again in another week to see how we’re doing…

Filed under: Family, Life by Steve Enders
No Comments » Tagged with: getting babies to sleep • life with multiples • sleep therapy • sleep training • twins

Sent to the editor of my community’s Sunnyvale Sun newspaper (which happens to also be where I cut my teeth as a reporter).

Editor -

We just read the latest about the ongoing saga that is the Sunnyvale Town Center development, and the foreclosure the center is currently going through. The town center project is an utter embarrassment to the city, and the Sunnyvale Sun should be holding the city council and the city manager’s feet to the fire.

Our family decided to buy a home near Washington Park in 2006 for many reasons, but the then-pending development of the town center was at the top of our list of reasons to move into the neighborhood. After seeing the plans for the center, we thought it’d be wonderful to someday be able to walk to downtown and enjoy the new shops and restaurants that were due to open. Since the place is half-built now, I’m confident it will be completed someday. The question is: when?

One idea that could help push for a solution: Perhaps the Sun can host a community forum, where city leaders and developers will show up and answer tough questions about how the center ended up in this mess, and what they’re going to do to make it right. I understand the current macro-economic climate had a devastating effect on the builders’ ability to complete the project, but I feel like our city has completely failed its residents, and the Sun should be pressing hard for answers. The city’s residents deserve them.

Steve and Jo Enders
Sunnyvale

Filed under: Current Events, Life by Steve Enders
No Comments » Tagged with: bad redevelopment projects • sunnyvale town center

Me and a crew of three reporters/editors blitzed the Clinton Global Initiative last week in NYC. It was an incredible experience and there are far too many good stories to tell from the week.

It was a week I’ll never forget, personally, and it was also a great week for Tonic. We got a lot of compliments on our coverage from around the convention — from journalists and from folks involved in CGI. Their praise meant a lot, and made the long hours of prep work and stress worth it.

You can see the archive of our work, here: http://www.tonic.com/tag/clinton-global-initiative/

Filed under: Current Events, Life, Media by Steve Enders
No Comments » Tagged with: clinton global initiative

Last week, a new advertising campaign geared at providing understanding of Islam kicked off in the south Bay Area and was all over the news. But there’s another ad campaign happening globally (and locally) without any fanfare, which is backed by an odd organization and extols the planet-saving virtues of vegetarianism.

As a guy who doesn’t eat anything that ever had a neck, I can dig the message. But the group behind the ads, something called Supreme Master TV (suprememaster.tv), is downright creepy.

The grainy iPhone photo at left was taken in Mountain View two weeks ago as I drove home from work and was surprised to find the ad on the back of a valley transit shuttle bus. My boss has seen a similar billboard in the Dublin, Ireland airport. Another billboard is said to exist on I-880 in San Jose. Suddenly, the SM is everywhere!

I first became aware of the SM at a fave vegan/vegetarian lunch spot in downtown Palo Alto. The Loving Hut is a great little place, if not a little weird, that makes very good vegan sandwiches. It’s also got a plasma television on the wall in the dining area broadcasting a bizarre loop of shows distributed by the Supreme Master. A few weeks after visiting the restaurant for the first time, I started to see cars around the area sporting big bumper stickers for the TV network and going veg. The websites are linked pretty tightly — perhaps there’s an affiliation.

The ads don’t say anything about the SM. What little of the broadcasts I’ve seen are very odd, with robot-looking, plasticky hosts, grainy video (I’ve seen mostly shows/footage about our dear animal friends, natch) and a lot of text covering the screen in multiple languages. I’m starting to see the SM everywhere lately, and it’s starting to freak me out a little.

This weekend, we ordered take-out from Merit Vegetarian in Sunnyvale — the place is one of my favorite vegan/veggie joints in the area. I walked in and was shocked to see that behind the counter and up near the ceiling, they’ve recently installed a large plasma TV with the Supreme Master broadcast showing. Surprised and probably acting a little weird myself, I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew what it was. She said No and shrugged her shoulders as she handed over my bags of food. Looking back at the restaurant as I left, I saw a huge poster in the window to Be Veg! Go Green! with the Supreme Master logo on it, just like the bus ad.

The website is only of slightly better quality than the shows. The network’s mailing address is in Arcadia, Calif. but I’d be surprised if the shows are shot in the US. According to the website…

SUPREME MASTER TV is a free-to-air satellite channel broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a variety of engaging programs in English with over 40 languages and subtitles. Being the ideal television channel that brings to your life Nobility and Spirituality. Broadcasting on 14 satellites platforms across the globe.

And, the Supreme Master is revealed as Ching Hai, a woman born somewhere called “Au Lac” who was involved helping her community during her youth, later separated from her husband, and went on an enlightenment journey through the Himalayas where she became fully enlightened.

She’s quoted:

I have a dream. I dream that all the world will become peaceful. I dream that all the killing will stop. I dream that all the children will walk in peace and harmony. I dream that all the nations shake hands with each other, protect each other and help each other. I dream that our beautiful planet will not be destroyed. It takes billion, billion, trillions of years to produce this planet and it’s so beautiful, so wonderful. I dream that it will continue, but in peace, beauty and love, yeah? That is my dream.

Sounds like a nice person with a good dream. But what’s with all the TVs showing up in my favorite veggie restaurants? Is my seitan dinner funding SMTV?

Here’s the thing: Wherever I go, people raise eyebrows at my eating choices. No matter how liberal California may be, there’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t find myself telling the story of my vegetarianism to someone. I don’t mind explaining if people ask — to me my diet is hardly a big deal. I don’t preach my lifestyle to anyone. If you want to eat a juicy steak, go for it (though really I wish you wouldn’t, for various reasons). You’ll never see me scoff at meat on your plate.

Supreme Master TV isn’t hurting anyone (that I know of) and may be perfectly innocuous, but it smacks of a religious cult’s mouthpiece. And it’s suddenly everywhere, and directly associates with vegetarianism and veggie food. The TVs in my favorite restaurants appear as brainwashy, sub-conscious background noise (not to mention just plain bad television). Frankly, I don’t want to be enlightened when I pick up my food or sit down for lunch. I just want to enjoy a meal. Can vegetarianism ever escape its label as a bizarre and bland food choice for the holier-than-thou set? Not with relationships such as this.

Supreme Master, you’re also preaching to the choir by broadcasting in these restaurants. So as a conversion vehicle, it falls flat. Who’d want to go home and tune in after seeing the show in a restaurant? The message, while noble, is weird in its presentation. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I just don’t get it. It makes even less sense when the employees of restaurants don’t even know why the TV is on.

I’d rather these restaurants ditch the TV. Please, just pass the freakin’ tofu.

Filed under: Life by Steve Enders
4 Comments » Tagged with: television cults • TV with food • vegetarian cult