Web Monitor
15:50 UK time, Thursday, 24 September 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today, Web Monitor considers a popstar who chose Annie Lennox over the Dalai Lama, the Death Guy who chose life, and the philosophising skateboarder. Share your favourite bits of the web by sending a link via the letters box to the right of this page.
• When he was 15, a friend of pop star Mika's mother took him to see the Dalai Lama. But it wasn't a wholly positive experience. , that he's only interested in enlightement if it's about how to advance his career:
"She thought I might find it illuminating at this impressionable age... but I was completely uninterested, except for one thing, Annie Lennox was there, sitting in the third row. And I went up to her and said, 'Annie, hello, my name is Mika. I know this is a holy Buddhist thing but I really want to make it!' She looked at me, almost upset, and then she went, 'Listen boy, if you have to make it, you won't have a choice. You'll have that burning.' Then she turned around and walked away. I thought, 'well, that's a load of use, it's the worst piece of advice I've ever heard!' But now I get it. She was right. I don't have a choice."
• Why would , albeit a famous skateboarder - Tony Hawk, but still just a skateboarder? Well, according to Forbes, with estimated earnings of $12m last year, Hawk is the world's highest-paid action sports athlete. And he puts his success down the those transferable skills learnt on the skateboard.
"In my personal success, everything is amazing; every day I have this 'How did I get here?' moment. In terms of skateboarding I'm not surprised, because I always felt like it can have a huge, positive impact on your life. It taught me about self-confidence, about tolerance, about diversity, and I always felt like there was something more there than people were seeing. You know, I'm 41 and I'm still a professional skateboarder - it's just insane!"
• Gary Laderman is chair of religion and professor of American religious history and cultures at Emory University but to US media he is known as the Death Guy. After publishing two books on death, Mr Laderman became an "expert" and was wheeled on to TV whenever a famous person died. Now Mr Laderman has had enough. He about his planned departure:
"I'm sick of being the media's go to guy on death. I want to stop thinking about death. I want to stop writing about death. I want to stop being interviewed about death. But people keep dying, and the dead keep returning, and I'm not getting any younger, and everyone is trying to figure out how best to live with death, especially us aging baby boomers whose religious appetites are no longer fully satiated by traditional religions. Still I have to confess I feel a cringe (tinged with nausea) when I hear someone say 'you're the go-to expert on death rituals'. Not exactly a badge of honor, but it could be worse, right? I could be an expert in, say, Protestant theology, or Reform Judaism. While it's easy to complain about my lot in life, there is no doubt that death has been very good to me and brought me an unexpectedly rich livelihood."
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