It’s Not Goodbye, It’s Iggy

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Dearest SepiaReaders,

I know, it’s been too long. It’s not you, it’s me. This is going to be difficult to tell you, so, um, I hope we can still stay friends…

MTV came calling and I said yes.

I promise that the big huge website and shiny shiny videos had nothing to do with it! It’s not what you think! I’m with a quirky offshoot called MTV Iggy, a website that features interesting videos like this one about Chinlone – the art/dance/sport from Myanmar:

Cool, huh? I’d never heard of it either.

So they asked me to be the site’s Editor (of written things, not video. Would you trust me with anything technical?) and I’ve been rushing through the site, dusting and straightening in anticipating of your visit. (By this I mean I tidied the homepage and threw everything else in the closet.)

Iggy has original music, freewheeling interviews with heavyweights like Fareed Zakaria, celebs like Abhishek Bachchan (seriously, it does!) and John Cho (the new Captain Sulu, but always the Harold to our boy Kumar), a social change initiative to raise awareness about Kashmir, and in the near future, articles, reviews, written interviews and much more.

So please stop by and check it out. Don’t hold back your opinions (as if you ever would!) and tell me what you like, hate, love, loathe, etc. The site is still constantly changing and your feedback would be invaluable. I will still post on Sepia, of course, even about non-Iggy things! But I wanted you to know of this, because even though I have this new boyfriend, you will always be my first love.

17 thoughts on “It’s Not Goodbye, It’s Iggy”

  1. Is it selling your soul to the devil if the payment is getting to help stuff like this get a wider audience?

  2. Wow cicatrix! good for you- I’ve enjoyed your reviews and teh hipness cross- cultural aspect a lot of your post seem to highlight, I’ll miss you here- and will check you out at the new site.

    Chinlone- looks a little capoeira , & anything that involves double dutch has got to be great. cheers

  3. Congrats on the gig, Cicatrix!

    Also, it’s nice to see they found a new home for the kind of content that had been going into MTV Desi and MTV Chi. The site as a whole looks really promising — I like that it seems functional, and not just pretty to look at. The old MTV Desi site had lots of bells and whistles, but not much beneath the hood. This site seems to be rightly going in the opposite direction.

    I liked the Chinlone video, though I did feel that there was maybe a little too much of Greg Hamilton talking.

    And I’m happy about the embeddable videos. It will make it easier for the rest of us at SM to use MTV Iggy’s vids here, instead of always going to YouTube.

  4. Congrats.

    One suggestion, though. The site tags South Asia-related things as Southeast Asia. (Or in the case of the elephants, correctly tags SE. Asia, but misses the South Asia tag, due to the same reason.)

  6. Hey, thanks everyone!

    Chinlone looks so…pretty. Graceful and balletic. But no one wins and the person in the middle is the prince or princess? I don’t know…so then what’s the point? Or is that a super aggro question?

    Anyway, thanks for the Iggy feedback and keep it coming. Please go over there, flip a few pages, kick the tires, and as Amardeep mentioned, see what’s under the hood. I’d love to hear more (yes, you mutineers are my very own focus group. Free invisible twizzlers to the first 20 responses!) and would love to know what you’d like to see covered more, what less, what confused you re site navigation, etc.Try registering and let me know what you think. Is the community aspect over there too overt? Skewing too tweeny? We never tried to gauge the demographics of our Sepia audience (coughthatwasmethencough) so I wonder how young SM readers really skew…

  8. You’ve really never heard of chinlone? It was played everywhere when I went to college ten years ago. Maybe it was a very local pheenom?

    Okay, it wasn’t with a soccer ball, and I’ve never heard of the name “chinlone”. It was called “hacky sack”, and it was played with a tiny cloth beanbag. I’m not the only one who’s heard of hacky sack, am I?

  9. If only the Indian national soccer team played like this with a twist of garam masala.. it would be awesome and more entertaining to watch then a cup of cricket chai…

  10. It was called “hacky sack”, and it was played with a tiny cloth beanbag. I’m not the only one who’s heard of hacky sack, am I?

    We are familiar with this special cultural practice. Usually made up of patchouli oil smelling youth. They also usually partake in the inhalation of a cylindrical glass device with mystery smoke and water between games. Noticed that they also have a strong affliction for garishly colored swirly designs on their clothing.

    On another note Chinlone looks really amazing and it’s parallel is more to a dance than a sport. It’s really a performance and the soloist and group interaction is a apt description to jazz.

  12. Hey Congrats! I totally dig such offbeat videos, so you have new viewer now :). But I am having trouble accessing the website

  15. Rajni, I’m so sorry sweetheart. I promise to stop by more often with special bananas just for you.

    cc, comments like that are why we all love SepiaMutiny. You are an asshole in the best way possible. Come make trouble on Iggy 🙂

    hackysacky, same as above 😉 But back to Chinlone being like jazz – how would different groups compete? I’m still confused about the sport aspect of this.

    zee are you still having trouble? I wish we had Rajni to fix these things…

    By the way, the Desi page is still very much under construction. That “Desis Doin It” tagline is giving me vomitorious shudders every time I see it. Suggestions?

  17. One suggestion, though. The site tags South Asia-related things as Southeast Asia. (Or in the case of the elephants, correctly tags SE. Asia, but misses the South Asia tag, due to the same reason=))