Mike Myers (as The Love Guru) is the root of all evil

Twenty-some years ago, on The Tonight Show (when Johnny was still hosting), comedian Bill Maher did a few minutes of insightful political humor, and then stopped and added this joke: “Ahhh, who am I to think I can change the world? I mean, I’m no folk singer.”

There was more to that joke than a good laugh at uber-serious guys and gals with acoustic guitars who could use a shower.

Contrary to the idea that laughing at someone or something can diminish their/its power, I think that when we laugh at something it lessens our charge about the issue. I think the more we laugh about it the more we dismiss it as unimportant.

Which is why Mike Myers (yes, “Austin Powers” Mike Myers) is the root of all evil.

Mike’s upcoming movie is The Love Guru where he plays an American boy who was raised by gurus in India (similar to being raised by wolves in Alaska, but with better food and more dirt), and then “comes back to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality” as Guru Pitka.

The good news is that his motives are, at least, transparent and honest, unlike many of those whose footsteps he follows.

The better news is that if the movie is half as funny as the material they’ve put out to advertise the movie, it’ll be HYSTERICAL.

And now you might be getting the hint about why, once again, Mike Myers is the root of all evil.

By getting everyone to laugh at the techniques that “gurus” (self-help, spiritual and business) have used for decades to help us become detached from our egos wallets, in the name of some nebulous thing called “growth,” we may become even LESS critical of people who make untenable promises of “personal advancement” with the help of meaningless acronyms (e.g. they say “fear” = false evidence appearing real… but I think should be: “F*%k! ‘ere are rattlesnakes!”) and dopey aphorisms turned into playing cards, screen savers, and needlepoint wall hangings (Like: “Enjoy the journey and not the goal”… something you would only think to tell yourself if you’re having a crappy trip and aren’t near a rest stop, let alone Disney World).

So, even with Guru Pitka’s melodious voice (which is a better Deepak Chopra impression than Deepak Chopra does!), and his more useful teachings (rather than Sanskrit, his mantra is Hungarian: Mariska Hargitay, which, if you repeat it often enough will land you a part in an NBC crime drama), he may help make New Age nonsense seem even more meaningful!

In fact, I’m willing to bet, right now, that after this movie comes out, the average “spiritual” reviewer will completely miss that Myers is skewering the self-help and spiritual biz and, instead, they’ll say things like, “Not only is Mike Myers funny, but he’s teaching the TRUTH!” Non-dual fans will drool over themselves (wait, have we just discovered a new teaching — non-drool-ism?) with the idea that Guru Pitka is introducing Ramana Maharshi’s “Who am I?” teaching to a whole new generation!

There could, though, be a silver-ish lining to the (hopeful-if-hysterical) popularity of The Love Guru. Let me explain:

Back when I would host comedy shows, I would sometimes open the show by doing every “hack” old joke I could think of (e.g. Here’s one that was told in Vaudeville houses and still shows up in comedy clubs: A bear and a rabbit are taking a dump in the woods. The bear asks the rabbit, “Hey, rabbit, do you have trouble with poo sticking to your fur?” “Never,” answers the rabbit. So the bear wipes his butt with the rabbit).

I’d do this to punish the comics who would come on later and who relied on these old jokes rather than writing their own material. They’d tell the joke and instead of a laugh, they’d have the entire audience just staring at them, wondering why the guy was stealing material from the host (full disclosure: I stopped doing this technique because I didn’t want anyone who didn’t understand satire to think *I* was just another hack comic who relied on 80 year-old material).

Well, Guru Pitka seems to be a walking Best Of… Old Trite Spiritual Teaching Stories. He has more “borrowed” material than the Chicken Soup books (which, btw, are ALL borrowed material). If we’re lucky, Pitka/Myers’ telling these stories will force the gang on the self-help circuit to write some new (I’m not too naive to hope for true) stories. But, if the gang proves to be as creative as they have been for 100+ years (did you know that the “teachings” from The Secret came from a book that’s almost 100 years old?), instead we’ll have a gaggle of gurus introducing their stupid stories with, “And as Guru Pitka said in The Love Guru…”

All that said, I can’t wait to see the movie and nothing I said above will stop me from laughing — even at times where I’m the only one, no doubt — and thanks to The Love Guru, my new spiritual practice will be doing prostrations to Justin Timberlake, who is… well, go here to see for yourself.


Comments

8 responses to “Mike Myers (as The Love Guru) is the root of all evil”

  1. Say when! Is this a group movie date?

    Love,
    Stacy

  2. “I think the more we laugh about it the more we dismiss it as unimportant.” Do you suppose that’s why many Hindus are upset with Mr. Myers?

  3. a) My bet is that it’s a VERY SMALL number of Hindu people who are upset about this movie

    b) Some people have a hard time taking a joke

    c) OOOOWWWWW! I think Shiva just kicked me in the nuts!

  4. Most likely, but around here, (Mike’s home town,) it’s big news. Additionally, some American Hindu groups want screenings of the movie halted until changes are made to it so as to not “hurt the feelings” of those in the Hindu or spiritual community.

    Cynically speaking, any publicity is good publicity. I guess Rajan Zed (the apparent ringleader,) knows an opportunity when he sees one.

  5. Okay, that begs this Jay Leno joke that someone told me (so this is at least 3rd hand)

    Did you hear that Madonna is thinking of adopting another baby? Well, she’s looking to adopt a child from India this time. Do you know why?

    So her other children will have tech support.

  6. Ron Grubaugh Avatar
    Ron Grubaugh

    True, “The Science of Getting Rich” is almost a hundred years old, but what of “Science and Health,” (1881)? Better candidate for the beginning of this stuff! Unless, as they say, it actually dates back to antiquity. Gawed, I hope not. Anyhow, I’m just leading up to one those questions (The kind they called “loaded questions” before you discovered them [just having fun]): As we approach an even more significant centenial (the International New Thought Alliance convened in 1914), what I want to know is: When do we get to start calling it “Old Thought”?

  7. Good point, Ron. Given how long ago the baby boomers were born and how they’ve supported all this kind of thinking, I think it would be appropriate to call it the Old Age movement.

    BTW, check out the book Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon. It chronicles perhaps the first compilation of all of what we’ve been calling New Age for the last 150 years.

  8. replying to a very old post, but what the heck

    Last time the Leafs were in the playoffs, with David Gilmour & Roger Waters (hahahah sorry … Doug Gilmour & Wendel Clark) I remember seeing Mike outside the Gardens celebrating after one of the Leafs’ victories.

    Word on the street later, when the movie came out, was one big reason Mike did the movie was to see the Leafs win the Stanley cup within his lifetime.

    And yeah, the movie actually WAS meant to promote chOPRAH … Myers & chOPRAH were friends long before the movie came out.

    http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=chopra+myers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8