"Tony Robbins punishes followers who fail at his self-help tasks by calling them onstage in front of large crowds and making them drink an unidentified mixture 'designed to have a lasting effect for several hours.'"

"Video and internal documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News reveal that Robbins places 'L' stickers on audience members’ foreheads and then, while the song 'Loser' by Beck plays over the speakers, forces them to down a 'gross shot' whose contents he does not disclose to them.... Robbins’ lawyers denied that the “gross shot” contained laxatives –– only 'pickle juice, apple juice, lemon juice, tomato juice and a dash of tabasco'..."

Buzzfeed reports.

The Dutch man who's asking a court to change his age from 69 to 49 got his inspiration from Tony Robbins.

I really don't think the press should even cover this stupid and basically phony story, and I wouldn't blog it except for the Tony Robbins angle. From "A 69-year-old man asks to be declared 49, claiming age is as fluid as gender" (WaPo):

[Emile] Ratelband’s desire to remake himself is distinctly American, he said, and comes from his training under Tony Robbins, the motivational guru and master of the life hack. He lived and traveled with Robbins for about six months in the late 1980s, he said, and came to believe that, “You have to make your dreams come true from visualization.”

“This is American thinking,” he said. “Why can’t I change my age if I want to? You have to stretch yourself. If you think you can jump one meter, now I want to jump 20. If you earn 100 grand a month, now I want to earn 120 grand."

He drew a comparison to the forces elevating President Trump, arguing that people don’t want to be told how to live or what to believe, and therefore appreciate that the president has cut himself loose from standards of decorum that governed prior presidents.

“He is just himself,” he said. “Trump is the first one who is honest. He shows his emotion on Twitter, saying to everyone, ‘Shut up.’ He’s a new kind of person.”

Ratelband got everyone to pay attention to him, but obviously, he can't be concerned about getting perceived as 49, since he's made his age so conspicuous in this bogus effort to "change" it.

I'm interested in the way foreigners create their own conception of what it means to be "American" — and the subcategory of deriving the idea of "American" from Trump. Ratelband is (purportedly) trying to adopt a different age, but he's also trying to adopt a different nationality. So it's a type of cultural appropriation. But isn't that generally something we Americans like to see — foreigners inspired toward freedom and self-expression and calling that "American"?

I'm thinking of that 2003 Iraq war story (NYT):

In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today.

What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?

''Democracy,'' the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. ''Whiskey. And sexy!''

Another idea for delaying aging.

At last night's open thread, the Coal Café, our beloved commenter Lem got inspired to look for updates on that story from a couple weeks ago about the burned fire walkers:

I was looking for news of the bed of hot coal walkers we had fun with and how they might be "getting over it"... when Google gave me this..

Bed warmer... The term is also commonly used in the United Kingdom and Australia for a temporary sexual partner, or a relationship of necessity.

This is not to be confused with Shunamitism, the practice of sharing a bed, but not necessarily engaging in sexual relations, with a young maiden, in hope that the shared warmth and moisture would delay aging.

Clicking through on Shunamitism, I see that the idea was that "the heat and moisture of the young woman would transfer to the old man and revitalize him." The term, Shunamitism, goes back to King David, who had a young woman from Shunem (named Abishag) brought to his bed to keep him warm. 1Kings 1,1. And: "Among scientific physicians, both Thomas Sydenham (17th century) and Herman Boerhaave (18th century) prescribed shunamitism for their patients." That's quite a prescription, if you can get it.

ADDED: I'm imagining Shunamitism as a New Age front for a prostitution business.

Gallery-goers eat rats at the art show "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch."

And the NYT gives the show 2-pages of glowing description (and warnings that — ooh! — you may be disgusted).

Twenty people, mostly friends of [the artist Laura] Ginn or the gallery owner, [Allegra] LaViola, nibbled on goat cheese bruschetta topped with rat leg tenderloin, and rat-pork terrine encircled with beef fat, prepared by a chef after much trial and error with his proteins. The rats were shipped from a United States Department of Agriculture-approved West Coast processor that supplies pet owners with humanely killed, individually flash-frozen rodents, in classifications ranging from “jumbo” to “fuzzy.” Seventy five rats were skinned and cooked — and broiled and smoked and grilled — for the dinner, and most guests paid $100 each to attend, signing a liability waiver, some not entirely willingly.

“If I see an entire carcass, I might throw up,” said Clifford Owens, a performance artist. Mr. Owens, who had an exhibition at MoMA PS1 this spring, invoked the daredevil spirit of the performance artist Marina Abramovic, to get himself through the evening. “This is about risk,” he said.

It's like a Tony Robbins fire-walking event... for the sophisticated, arty crowd.

“I don’t care about it as art,” [said "artist and video editor" Timothy Hutchings.] “I care about it as something that makes me a more interesting human being.”

So another artist doesn't care about it as art. He cares about it as something that makes him a more interesting human being.

But isn't that what art is all about? Being the artist who is the most interesting human being? I can just imagine what was reeling through the brains of the artists who submitted to Ginn's art performance — and what's still reeling now that there's this drooling write-up in the New York Times. Why her?! Why not me! Look how interesting I am. This is all about me displaying myself as a more interesting human being. It can't be that she played me into her getting the recognition as more interesting.

I don’t care about it as art.

The Tony Robbins fire-walkers who got burned must have slowed down and stopped.

Just keep moving and you won't get hurt. Don't blame Tony Robbins. Blame those losers who didn't do it right.

Thousands participated in the walk, which stretched down 24 lanes, each around eight feet long.

The linked NYT article — "A Self-Improvement Quest That Led to Burned Feet" — doesn't mention the number of people who "reported second- or third-degree burns" until the very end. (The number is: 20 (out of 6,000).) The article stresses the positive:

“It transformed people’s lives in a single night,” said Carolynn Graves, 50, a real estate agent from Toronto, who crossed the coals without injury. “It’s a metaphor for facing your fears and accomplishing your goals.”

Ms. Graves suggested that the people who burned their feet “were out of state,” a term that participants said meant having the proper mental attitude.

Out of state? Great phrase. In my line of work, it's what we say about people who will have to pay much more tuition. The state you need to be in to not get burned is Wisconsin. In this self-confidence cult business, the "state" you need to be in is — what? — really believing that you won't get burned?

The sister of one of the burn victims "said Mr. Robbins had 'worked all night to prepare people' before the walk. If some people were injured, she said, 'it’s not his fault.'" Now, now, let's think about this. People are responsible for themselves. If you got a poor outcome, it's because you didn't do it right. You were given an education, and then it was up to you. Think about the people who did walk across the coals without getting burned. Are you going to say it wasn't really them? It was their teacher that did that? It was Tony Robbins? They didn't walk across those coals? Tony Robbins gets credit for that?

"Tony Robbins event ends in disaster as 21 people are treated for burns after walking on 2,000-degree hot coals."

"Robbins was hosting a four-day gathering called 'Unleash the Power Within.'"

Unleash the stupidity within.

Witnesses say on Thursday, a crowd went to a park where 12 lanes of hot coals were on the grass....

Witness Jonathan Correll says he heard "wails of pain and screams of agony"...

"First one person, then a couple minutes later another one, and there was just a line of people walking on that fire. It was just bizarre, man."

I only have one question: Do you have what it takes to be a regional manager?

And let's go back to 1995:

[I]t should come as no surprise that even President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton invited a trio of self-help gurus to Camp David just before the new year.

Anthony Robbins, the best-selling, self-described "peak performance coach," Marianne Williamson, the prophet of love whose devotees include Oprah Winfrey and Elizabeth Taylor, and Dr. Steven R. Covey, author of one of the most successful books on management ever — "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" — all refuse to divulge the substance of their meeting with the Clintons. Mr. Covey said only that it was "marvelous."

Did the Clintons scamper over hot coals? I agree that would be marvelous.

Pundits quickly speculated about a White House so bereft of ideas it had to seek them in the transcendent. Mrs. Clinton downplayed the meeting, and later complained in a letter to the editor of Esquire, to be published in April, that she was not "tight" with Ms. Williamson, who was merely one of many religious and spiritual advisers invited to meet the Clintons.

Merely one of many purveyors of bullshit that the Clintons consorted with. Noted. Also noted: Steven R. Covey was buried today.