Author Archives: manish

Peter Sellers still outsells actual desis

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Peter Sellers outsold actual desis at the Emmy Awards last night. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, an HBO biopic of the guy who made a career of mocking the desi accent, won three awards. Naveen Andrews was nominated but Lost.

“The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” an HBO movie, won three awards early in the ceremony, including one for Geoffrey Rush as best actor…

“Lost,” which helped vault ABC’s prime-time ratings by fusing elements of the film “Cast Away,” “Survivor,” “The Twilight Zone” and even a dash of “Gilligan’s Island,” had received 12 nominations, including two for supporting actors – Naveen Andrews and Terry O’Quinn. (They lost to [William Shatner, for Boston Legal].) [Link]

Geoffrey Rush is a fine, fine actor, but it’s an interesting contrast. By the way, check out the chunni Barbara Hershey’s sporting. Stand by your man indeed.

Previous posts: one, two, three, four

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T minus five

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MTV Desi has posted a dilatory yet strangely hypnotic video clip of their launch. The fetching Niharika Desai speaks a single line in an Amrikan accent.

0:04: Hard Kaur raps ‘Glassy‘
1:07: Psychedelic Bollywood tabla clip (can you ID the movie?)
2:53: Talvin Singh beat-boxes a tabla tal
3:00: Skinny uncle type says, ‘the boogie-voogie blaster’
3:04: Niharika yells, ‘We’re live!’
3:05: Eerie, screaming glasses man
3:11: A clip from Indian Cowboy, I think
3:31: Running sadhu, naked and in ashes
4:01: Bhangra troupe dances under the Williamsburg Bridge to the MTV theme (reverse fusion, cheeky!)
4:31: Tim Kash says, ‘Our first video of the night’
4:35: Clip of Karmacy’s ‘Blood Brothers’
4:39: M.I.A. massacres the word ‘desi’ (says ‘dessy’ instead of ‘they-see’)

Interspersed are some random Green Day and Madonna filler clips.

As Abhi posted earlier, you can also watch Rabbi’s ‘Bulla Ki Jana’ video. It has a beautiful, washed-out humanist palette and wiggly English supertitles in black marker on clear plastic.

The images would be postcard-trite in a Red Cross ad. But with the handsome Sufi Sikh dressed all in white, the track comes across as spiritual, a folk bhajan with a bass track and synth. It feels less snarky than earnest, less ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (Buggles) than ‘Fragile’ (Sting).

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Weird Al, meet weird Vik

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We asked for just one little thing: stop it with the crappy FOB parodies. But no, you just had to make another one, didn’tcha

This new one by parodists MC Vikram and Ludakrishna is pretty cute: ‘Curry Rice Girl‘ is ‘Hollaback Girl’ as a cry of matrimonial despair (thanks, Anita). This shit is bananas, B-I-O-D-A-T-A!

The sad thing is, this slapstick in-joke is indistinguishable from most ABCD movies on fast forward.

Watch the video. Here’s a backup torrent (you need a BitTorrent downloader: Windows, Mac).

Similar parodies: one, two, three, four

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New blogging software

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Check out my new blog editor, RocketPost. Most of us at Sepia Mutiny use it to write our posts. A blog editor is like a word processor that publishes to your blog. If you’ve ever lost a post because your browser crashed, you should use one.

The one we use uploads photos automatically and checks spelling. It also lets you link to old posts quickly, adds source cites to quotes, links to Google, Wikipedia and Flickr quickly, adds those big, fat pullout quotes and so on. I use it to post to Sepia Mutiny and my personal blog at the same time.

If you’re an active commenter here or have donated to the blog before today, email me and I’ll hook you up with a free copy. Otherwise, it’s totally free if you use Blogger. It also works with Movable Type and WordPress, and TypePad is coming soon. It’s Windows only for now, but we’re looking for a good Mac developer.

This frickin’ thing has been my personal project for a year and a half. It’s my nerd novel, my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the blogosphere. Please check it out and tell all your blogging friends!

P.S. A certain sharp-eyed mutineer spotted it yesterday…

Update: Please post technical questions here so as not to bother the good people of the Mutiny.

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Wah, po’ Maya

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The WaPo harps on our favorite word here at Sepia Mutiny: not M.I.A., ‘exotic.’ Ain’t nothing unusual about Maya’s phenotype (thanks, Turbanhead):

… that hasn’t stopped some critics from dismissing her as “the love child” of Neneh Cherry and Che Guevara and harping on her exotic runway model looks… [Link]

But her aesthetic was also intimately familiar: her small-faced, tousle-haired cutenesss resembles my female Berkeley classmates; the South Indian hip-hop fans at Berkeley are legion. [Link]

Arular is to Maya what Ravi Shankar is to Norah, more or less:

After reading about M.I.A. in the Sri Lankan Times, Arulpragasam sent her a note saying, “I’m very proud of you, but you have to change the name of the album. Dad.” She didn’t. “What can you do?” she asks pointedly. “There’s many things I’m not pleased about that he’s done, so hey. . . . ” [Link]

MTV turns out to be prudish. Who knew? (And uninformed in Sri Lankan cuisine.)

MTV also questioned the subtext of “salt and pepper my mango,” which turned out to be culinary rather than sexual… [Link]

This, from the channel that put ‘Freak-a-Leak’ on heavy rotation:

I need a girl I can freak with, and wanna try shit, and ain’t scared of a big d–
And love to get her p– licked, by another bitch, cuz I ain’t drunk enough ta do dat.
[and so on… Link]

Journalism is going to the dogs. First they quote Nirali, next thing you know they’ll be quoting blogs  (Congrats…)

M.I.A. told the South Asian online magazine Nirali that she “wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing.” [Link]

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Hey Ram, the world is repetitive

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NYT columnist Tom Friedman continues to whip it:

Some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program started in Chennai… some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program called HeyMath, which was started four years ago in Chennai, India, by two young Indian bankers… If you were a parent anywhere in the world and you noticed that Singapore kids, or Indian kids or Chinese kids, were doing really well in math, wouldn’t you like to see the best textbooks… HeyMath… which has been adopted by 35 of Singapore’s 165 schools, also provides an online tutor, based in India, to answer questions from students stuck on homework. [Link]

That’s right: instead of sending your kids to Exeter, you import mean Miss Thomas. I can tell you what’ll cure your innumeracy: six by six multiplication drills for five-year-olds. It’s joy inchoate.

Previous posts: ek, do, teen, cuatro, cinco, catorce

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Desiburg

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My Brooklyn ‘hood is on the water facing Manhattan. Aside from being musician central, Williamsburg is a half-blue collar, half-gentrifying neighborhood with four ethnicities: Polish-stan, Hasidic-stan, Latino-stan and Hipsterville (Diesel denim with red stitching, messenger bag in earth tones, fauxhawk bed-head and a big gay belt buckle). It’s also got a high PQ (poseur quotient.) I swear upon your grandma’s shriveled National Geographics that I’ve seen people sell pink trucker hats by the subway entrance with an airbrushed ‘Bitch’ on the front.

Sometimes you run into desis with pierced eyebrows and mutton-chop sideburns. You know those signs on Disneyland rides, ‘You must be this tall to ride?’ The L train has a sign, ‘You must be this hip to move here.’ I’m totally dragging down the curve as a stealth sinc duppie (single-income-no-colonialism desi-urban-professional). Tonight a thin brown girl in a black sack dress rode a big Huffy with wide handlebars down the sidewalk, the kind of bike you see in pre-WWII photos. We exchanged subtle, curious glances while trying not to let the other intrude on our indie brown singularity.

>> Read the whole thing

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Diplomatic finesse

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What happens when you never have to face an election: you lose your gaffe inhibitor (via Arzan):

‘… if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped’

— Musharraf

“You must understand the environment in Pakistan,” Musharraf added. “This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.” [Link]

Because Mukhtar Mai represents the millions of high-rollin’, Canada-based gang rape queens. Why, I hear the villagers do it for fun these days:

  1. Get gang-raped in the morning
  2. Fax a press release in the afternoon
  3. Profit!

It’s par for course in a legal system which not only does not take crimes against women seriously, it re-victimizes them for their loss of ‘purity.’ But don’t you dare try to fix anything if you live in Pakistan — it may offend Musharraf’s pride. He closes with this chest-thumping chaser:

“Leave the developing world aside; I think we are better than all of them,” Musharraf declared. “Bring the developed world and let us compare Pakistan’s record, under me, a uniformed man, with many of the developed countries. I challenge that we will be better off.” [Link]

Manmohan Singh just met with Musharraf in NYC Tuesday night. One wonders whether Singh had to speak in the grunts and howls of a silverback male.

More at Reality Cafe.

Update: The WaPo has it on tape (via Arzan). Listen here.

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Peekin’ Sandy

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Commenter Angie points us to Sandy Dalal née Sanjiv Agashiwala, a competitive fencer from Penn who got turned on to fashion at his mom’s import-export business and ended up a menswear designer in Manhattan. He’s also qui’ fi’, as the Brits might say, and his light-colored peepers made People’s beauty list in ’98.

Bronx-born Sandy Dalal has followed in the footsteps of other famous northern-borough fashion designers Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren to become one of the hottest men’s wear designers around. Dalal won the 1998 CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for Menswear while still attending the University of Pennsylvania. [Link]

He was also named as one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” in the same year. Sandy Dalal’s clothing can be found in prominent stores like Barney’s, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue… [Link]

Bjork, Beck, Wyclef Jean and members of Duran Duran, Foo Fighters and Third Eye Blind wear his clothing during performances. [Link]

Once brown, always brown:

He is known for using beautiful and luxurious fabrics and for mixing patterns — unusual in a men’s wear line. [Link]

The double standard between male beauty and female — male models and ‘manhunts‘ are not taken seriously:

How does it feel to know you’re known for your face as much as for your clothes?
Dalal: Right now it’s a cool gig where I can feed off the clothes and the clothes can feed off me, and rightfully so…

It seems like you don’t take yourself too seriously, despite the awards and fame. How come?
Dalal: How seriously can you take it? Clothes don’t talk back to you. [Link]

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