Just when you thought everyone has seen Brokedown Palace, a Ms. Samantha Orobator puts on her “invincible” cape and jet sets to one of the scariest countries (I have been) for drug trafficking.  In Laos, if you even mention drugs you can get thrown in prison or loose a finger or something. They actually have “undercover" officers who hang out in western bars, waiting for someone to drop the D bomb.

According to the Huffington Post article, Ms. Orobator attempted to smuggle 1.5 pounds (680 grams) of heroine, IN HER LUGGAGE, from Laos back to her home in the United Kingdom last August. It amazes me the stupidity of people, if Ms. Orobator were even to do a pinch of research as to what she was getting herself into, by simply typing ‘Laos’ into Google she would find that: A, it’s a single-party communist country B, the penalty for trafficking drugs is death and C, it’s probably smarter to throw yourself into on coming traffic.

Its obvious Ms. Orobator didn’t do her research and now she is locked up in a Laotian prison with severed communication with British authorities, lawyers or anybody for that matter. One life saving move on Ms. Orobator’s part was getting knocked up. Turns out Laotian law prohibits execution of pregnant women. Whew! Samantha, good save for you and all the addicts and families you could have ruined with your immature stupidity. I advise everyone to visit Laos on their next holiday, it's one of the most beautiful places on earth, just don’t be a moron when you go. Cheers mates.

.

WA$TED television

Season 2 WA$TED television series on Discovery Channel's network Planet Green to RE-UP soon! This show demonstrates how a variety of different people's lifestyle choices waste energy.  Peep the show and see frat boys, firefighters and families get TRASHED! as they are challenged to improve their consumptive and wasteful habits for cash prizes.  Learn tips on how you too can reduce the waste you produce everyday.  For more info, check it here.

Hi! I'm Kelly Mahoney and baby, I GOT YO' GREEN.  I'm psyched to be posting on the GO blog.  My posts will focus on environmental issues without the tissues -- this means ideas, innovation, information and all you need 2 know concerning the culture, business and industry of sustainability -- how 2 get involved and make an impact as individual, organization, whatever you may be...a village...it takes all kinds!  Check my posts - you'll know them cuz you'll see the heading: KELLY GREEN.  When not getting busy with GO, I work for Natural Resources Group, City of New York Parks Dept. as a Project Manager/ Borough Liasion and am collaborating on a book / field guide to the future of historic cities to be published by Parsons and the Newschool.

CARE's National Advocacy Conference started today in Washington.   Green Owl is participating in the annual event, which gathers over 500 people on the Hill to lobby for key issues in the fight against global poverty.  This year's issues include:

-Fighting Global Hunger, Modernizing our Approach to Food Security
-Tackling Climate Change and Reducing its Impact on the World's Poor
-Protecting and Empowering Girls by Preventing Child Marriage

After meetings with policy experts (like Tonya Rawe above) and CARE staff from across the world (CARE is active in over 70 of the poorest countries), we'll hit the Hill tomorrow to push for policy change and to build relationships with representatives in the house and in the senate.  

More on the CARE conference tomorrow.

Puma builds a new store in Boston with recycled shipping containers.  Full story here via Inhabitat.

Esau shows Puma love in Central Park.

Lately, there has been a bit of a scare for us New Yorker’s who rely on the subway for transportation. Word on the media-hyped-desensitized-audience-therefor-headlines-must-bleed-or-scare-the-shit-out-of-you street is the MTA, (Metropolitan Transit Authority) was going make all of us bend over and grab our boot straps. With a bunch of talk about 23% fare increases in a year’s time and eliminating 24 hour service, people were questioning the possibility of the city sleeping for the first time.

But alas! There is such thing as a bailout for common folk; and the senate is finalizing a bailout plan for MTA right now. According to the New York Post article, the fare hike is now dangling somewhere around a reasonable 8%. In addition to the financial chaos the service scare would create, another pressing issue would be the environmental threats. Externalities from increased congestion, car exhaust and motor bikes would not paint a pretty emission picture. Consequently, New Yorkers could have more air problems which, in turn, are soil and water problems. In the long term, we could face sprawl concerns due to the severe traffic and access to resources. It’s good that at least 1% of the people who make decisions for all of us remembered the term “domino effect.” If New York’s subway system were to really deteriorate to those extremes, a piece of me would die; part of my love for this city is the piece of mind I have from not supporting automobiles and fossil fuels. I am real glad real people get bailouts too.

President Obama and cabinet cronies are restructuring American income brackets to enforce tax changes. According to these new structures, $250,000 means you’re rich bitch and your getting taxed.  In the Fortune Magazine article there is an obvious frustration with these changes, and how effective they’ll be “…raising taxes probably won't accomplish much when it comes to getting us out of these troubled times.” Hmmm, funny how the author is the senior editor for Fortune. I wish some Americans could understand the concept of building each other up and out of this mess. Instead (like in this article) we opt for the individualistic side and fight for things and the status they bring to us, not people.

Sorry, $250,000 dollars is far better off than most; we still have hunger and extreme poverty in this “modern” country and people are so caught up on loosing their Coach purses and country club memberships, they find it absurd to be responsible for easing the misfortunes of their own country: sad. The article further nags “…taxing the rich isn't likely to yield nearly as much as governments are hoping for, and it may not yield anything when the numbers are all totaled.” Perhaps it’s not about numbers. Perhaps it’s about a change in attitude, for people to stop buying junk with plastic money and help out their fellow neighbor. If Obama wants America to be a country where everyone has the option for education and health care, then we’ll need to take turns on the slide.

Growing up most my life in poverty, I know first hand how the system can keep you down; limit education, health care, social mobility and the chance to be something besides a laborer. I know how terms like relative poverty and absolute poverty can weave together and create scarlet tape that leaves families down and out of their dreams. It’s time people stop being so damn selfish and realize working together and helping each other isn’t about how much wealth your loosing, but how much strength, stability and integrity you can gain. It's out turn on the slide bitches.

While everyone is flipping their shit over Bat For Lashes and Ida Maria (not to discredit them) Green Owl is more of an underdog rooter. This little jewel, Selah Sue, is a Belgium born 19 year old with mad talent. Currently unsigned, Selah Sue is traveling Europe spittin her Jamaican-esque tongue with Little House of the Prairie swagger. Yes, we like those pure of heart artist, before they dive into the music industry and all the dark pain that follows. Check out Selah Sue's Myspace, she's one dope sister.

The 101 Runners

This wasn’t our first Jazzfest (nor will it be our last).   But this time Jazzfest was different: there was something in the air, an optimism that wasn’t imaginary.  New Orleans was coming true.

Depending on how you arrive in New Orleans, there are vastly different perspectives to be gleaned.  If you drive by the 9th ward where decimation is still in style (some buildings haven’t been touched since the flood), then the future looks bleak.  

But if you take a different road – say highway 61 – the shattered cityscape that I remember from 2006 has changed.   From the right angles, New Orleans looks better, a lot better than it did a few years ago.

You feel it in the people and in the music.  From the creole cabdriver to the accordion player to a local artist / philanthropist, there are similar threads: New Orleans is on the right road and now it needs YOU – as a traveler, as an artist, as an organizer, as a teacher or as anything.

This city is a magnet for new blood and that’s especially true at the Colton School.   In exchange for community service, artists and creatives get free studio and performance space in a mammoth building outside the French Quarter. 

The place is teaming with life: old pianos and new sculptures in every corner,  a puppet show over here, a writer’s workshop over there.    This wasn’t just a drunken dixie smile on Bourbon St. -- this was innovation rearing its head in New Orleans.

In late-night festivities that crown the long-days of Jazz Fest, the Colton School also hosted a number of concerts in its former school auditorium.   On Saturday, we stayed till 4am while Trombone Shorty gunned his way through a 2 hour plus set and Jonathan Batiste kept it funky on a side-stage.   

Music throughout New Orleans is as good as it’s been in years.  Dixieland brass swirled between the palm-readers on Jackson Square; Mardi Gras Indian chiefs played at sunset in the fairground; hobos warbled old ballads on fiddles in the French Quarter.

When the music stopped (did it ever?), we walked down blocks and heard the silence in New Orleans, the heat as it begins to swarm in the early-summer; the emptiness of a ravaged city.  Those pauses seemed ghostly like they too were being magnetized, drawn back from oblivion and slowly, but insistently coming back to life.

Find out more about The Colton School and the Creative Alliance of New Orleans here.

"Lines change every 5 years" from a fortune-teller in Jackson Sqaure.

I think it is fare to say China is taking over the world (the country, not the wrestler). In the midst of this power struggle, China has failed to manage the externalities that come with being the most awesome industry on the planet. Due to pollution and terrible air quality, China’s leading cause of death is cancer and in 2005 China became the leader in sulfur dioxide pollution globally according to a New York Times article in August 2007.

But now, China hopped on the eco-conscious good foot and tripled its goal for wind power capacity! According to the Yahoo News article, our Chinese brothers and sisters want to achieve 100 gigawatts of wind power by 2020. That’s fan-fucken-tastic! I am so proud of China; I could just hold them in my arms right now. If I were to make up a Green Owl points system right now, I’d give 4 out of 5 owls to Ms. China (not the wrestler) Go hard or go home, right China? Hey, I for sure know its not easy being the biggest kid on the playground.

Juliette Commagère is a creator of other worlds.  Her spaced-out orchestral epics are densely layered with analog synthesizers, steel drums, cellos, french horns; these soundscapes anchored by her haunting vocals.  Imagine this music as the soundtrack to a ghost story set in the desert on some faraway planet.

The song below is "Skyscraper," from her debut, Queens Die Proudly.  In this feature from the LA Weekly, music journalist John Payne had this to say about it: "That “Skyscraper,” hasn’t been declared Song of the Year at the Grammys or whatever is just wrong. This piece soars, cleanses, is a case study in perfect pop-song construction, a treatise on form and color. We’re sailing through the clouds: “We’re in, we’re in. Skyscraper.” It’s a place you don’t want to leave."

Los Angelenos: Juliette has a residency at The Echo every Monday in May starting tonight.

SHAKE IT LOOSE / BLONDE ACID CULT / DIR. LANCE DRAKE from LLOYD'S SECRET PARTY on Vimeo.

In the era of synth indie-rock, and mellow alternative bands with animal names, it sure is nice to find some good funk rock. Blonde Acid Cult has been serenading the New York scene for two years now. They are currently in the studio to dish out more funky strings and heavy drums. Check out their video Shake It Loose. Keep a look out for their debut album due sometime this fall. These guys are not only strapping young bucks but they also provide the kind of tunes you could dance to like those acid-tripped hippies in the old Woodstock footage.

Check out Runners and Kick the Funk on their Myspace, is very s'ncie.

I feel like this decaying domestic car industry is similar to a baby repeatedly putting its slow, chubby, industrial-era-stuck hand on the fiery burner over and over again. Yes, Italian car company Fiat, is in the final stages of buying 35% of Chrysler's shares on the grounds that Chrysler make more eco-friendly models and cost cuts. Is it really only NOW that, Chrysler and the U.S. Government are coming to terms with the reality of “greening” the car industry? The original Huffington Post article exposed this like a Mayan secret “if Chrysler is to have a post-bankruptcy future, then building cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles that help us kick our oil dependency has got to be part of it...” Fiat got the nickname "Fix it again Tony" cause at one time they almost went bankrupt themselves.  Well it looks like Tony is here to bail us out.

Making cars a better commodity to the environment should have been the game plan 89589243 years ago (or they could at least pull those dated green concept cars off their dusty red tape shelves.) We shouldn’t have to pull tin teeth to make smarter, more efficient decisions. Man, I sure hope this whole car industry extravaganza is about over; I feel like a lab rat being fed a placebo. On a lighter note, at least the domestic car industry is collaborating with European companies as opposed to out sourcing all the labor, materials and dollars to Mexico. Besides, Fiat has some pretty posh looking rides; they can help give the Forever 21 Chrysler an Armani Exchange makeover. However, I wonder at what price? well.. I'll gladly put mine back in my pants and say thank you Italy.

Tayeb Salih (1929-2009)

The PEN World Voices Conference is in full swing.  PEN brings some the most important international writers to speak every year in New York.  Today, Elias Khoury, Laila Lalami, Bruce Robbins, and Raja Shehadeh discuss the work of Sudanese writer, Tayeb Salih (pictured above).  Find out more on the PEN website.

Thanks to Margot for the tip.