ecorazzi.com :: the latest in green gossip

October 7th 2008

The Green Picture: Morgan Spurlock Thanks The Monkey At Animal Sanctuary

Filed under: animals, books, events — parrish @ 7:23 pm

Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, is pictured here speaking at a Thanking The Monkey book signing party this past weekend at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Last month, Ecorazzi spotlighted Thanking The Monkey’s author, Karen Dawn, and most recently chatted it up with Peter Singer at Dawn’s Birthday/World Vegetarian Day party in NYC! Don’t forget to check out Karen’s site along with 11 other favorites on the first edition of Ecorazzi’s Veg Blog Round-Up: News From Around Web!

October 6th 2008

Ecorazzi Celebrates Vegetarian Awareness Month With Famous Author Peter Singer

Filed under: animals, books, ecorazzi exclusive, interviews — parrish @ 1:55 pm

On October 1st, we here at Ecorazzi celebrated World Vegetarian Day – an annual herbivore holiday that officially kicks off Vegetarian Awareness Month. And because we believe in always partying like rock stars, to continue our celebration throughout the month, Ecorazzi will be chatting with some of the world’s most influential vegetarian actors, musicians and writers in a new Vegetarian Awareness Month celebrity interview series. Today we kick off our new feature with words by renowned author Peter Singer.

Peter Singer is a legend in the animal rights world. In 1975, Singer published Animal Liberation – a book widely considered to be the textbook for the animal rights movement. I recently had the chance to chat with the author at Karen Dawn’s Thanking The Moneky book signing/World Vegetarian Party (a full post on that will be coming shortly).

I feel like I’m interviewing a hero. I mean you published Animal Liberation in 1975 and essentially revolutionized the way people think about animals in regards to ethics. How did you get started in this field?

It was a combination of things. I was studying philosophy and I was interested in ethics and interested in ethics in a way that makes a difference to the world. And I happened to meet somebody who was a vegetarian and he was a vegetarian because of his concern about animals — which was pretty unusual then. I mean you had people who were vegetarian because they thought it was good for their health or if they believed in reincarnation, but he just straightforwardly thought that what we do to animals to turn them into meat isn’t right. And I never really thought about that. There wasn’t much discussed at the time. So I put it together with the ethics I was doing and tried to see how you would justify treating animals the way we do, and eventually I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t justify it. And that was a bit of a shock because I was eating meat all my life up to that point. But I thought having realized that, I needed to not only make the change myself, but to get other people to see this. It was obvious this was a major issue that nobody was seeing – we were just blind to it. So that’s why I wrote the book.

Continue reading Ecorazzi’s interview with Peter Singer here…

October 2nd 2008

It’s Official, ELLEN DEGENERES HAS FINALLY GONE VEGAN!

Filed under: animals, events, film-tv, food & drink, television — parrish @ 10:13 am

Ya’ll, I come bearing such news for you this morning! So last night, in celebration of World Vegetarian Day, I spent the evening drinking Drunken Monkey’s and hanging out with some of the coolest kids around at Karen Dawn’s birthday/ book-signing party (stay tuned for a full post about that later today, including great pictures and an exclusive interview with world renowned author Peter Singer).

Anyway, Chloe Jo (Ecorazzi’s new bff) and I were chatting, and she told me that last week at the Proposition 2 benefit in LA, Ellen DeGeneres officially came out as a full-fledged vegan. You guys, I FREAKED OUT! First, because veganism is like the most amazing thing ever and having heavy hitters on our team is so important. And second, because HOW IN THE WOLRD DID I NOT KNOW THAT???!!!!!

Some of you might remember that even before Ellen’s vegan wedding, Ecorazzi predicted that Ellen was mere moments away from taking the veg pledge, and now it looks like she’s finally gone and done it. So what inspired this balls to the wall move? None other than a super awesome book called Skinny Bitch by another one of Ecorazzi’s bff’s, Rory Freedman. If you ask me, Skinny Bitch has totally revolutionized the vegan movement and we all owe Rory a great big standing ovation! Go buy this book right now!

Now I know there’s some drama because Ellen is the new face of Procter & Gamble’ CoverGirl– a horrific company that still tests heavily on animals – but this may not actually be such a bad thing. Just think, if Ellen has the selling power to make the company big bucks, perhaps she might also have the clout to finally convince P&G to ditch their medieval methods of animal abuse and join the ranks of progressive companies who test their products in a more responsible manor. She’s definitely contributed to major political reform before!

So Dear Ellen, on behalf of all the vegans and vegetarians out there, WELCOME TO THE CLUB! I look forward to covering all of the many wonderful things I know you’ll do for the movement. You rock my frigin socks, lady!