Author Archives: manish

‘Applegeeks’

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Applegeeks is an anime-style Web comic drawn by two desi students at University of Maryland, College Park, Mohammad ‘Hawk’ Haque and Ananth Panagariya. They got a shout-out in last week’s Newsweek for a potential book deal:

Haque

Panagariya

As a sign that they’re settling in, some of the parents of these twentysomethings are beginning to see that prestige can be measured in more than M.D.s. “In the end, if you do excel, you’re going to succeed in your field,” [Arvind Panagariya, an economics professor at Columbia University] concedes, referring to his 22-year-old son, whose Web comic Applegeeks is in negotiations to be published as a book. [Link]

It’s lushly drawn with mostly geek humor, but Haque occasionally throws in references to Islam and discrimination:

Mr. Squirrely – The squirrel with mysterious powers and the ability to communicate with Hawk. Possibly a delusion brought on by Hawk’s Ramadan fasting…

Jayce torturing Hawk during Ramadan. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday which calls for fasting. Hawk follows this tradition and during it, Jayce often teases him by eating immense portions of food. Mr. Squirrely’s first appearance is during one of Hawk’s fasts. [Link]

UMD is also the alma mater of Liberty Meadows creator Frank Cho. That’s at least three Asian-American cartoonists from one campus — must be something in the water. But both strips’ obsessions with cartoon vixens is classic geek.

Related post: Smashing icons

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Anyone using Google Desktop?

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If you use Google Desktop or a browser which snapshots pages, could you please paste the last few days of our News tab into an email for me?

I’ve thoroughly b0rked some of the summaries on our News tab while carelessly editing the database by hand. Right now I’ve got only the last couple of pages saved.

The perpetrator will be thoroughly self-abused. Thanks in advance!

Update: Now fully restored using Google Desktop cache (thanks, Ashvin and others).

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A dog’s life

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The good ol’ U.S. of A.: alleviating poverty, one five-star doggie hotel room at a time…

An argument broke out between US security personnel and the management of the [five-star] Le Meridien Hotel in New Delhi on Wednesday over the accommodation of 60 sniffer dogs that are part of President George W Bush’s security entourage. The US Embassy booked 70 rooms in the hotel in the Indian capital, where Bush will travel on Thursday. However, the hotel management was surprised to find that the rooms had been reserved for dogs.

These weren’t just any old pooches, they were decorated officers of the U.S. Secret Service:The hotel management was surprised to find that the rooms had been reserved for dogs

US security personnel accompanying the sniffer dogs were offended when the management told them that dogs were not allowed on the hotel premises, saying that they were “security officers”. The External Affairs Ministry had to intervene and arrange for the rooms to be allotted to the American “officer” dogs. Each “security officer” dog has been provided an air-conditioned room with an American attendant. [Link]

… the newly revamped Le Meridien in New Delhi has some “special guests”… The hotel is playing host to an “important delegation” from the United States — the K9 dog squad. But the word “dog” is never mentioned in front of these elite canines: they are referred to as “officers”… Kennels have been flown in specially for them… The “officers”, who have been decorated for their service, have their own private area in Le Meridien. [Link]

Upon hearing of the K9 unit’s digs, half the population of Bihar attempted to enlist Continue reading →

The worst of ‘Times’

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The NYT, the Economist and several U.S. congressmen have been on a sanctimonious, anti-India tear after the India-U.S. deal for nuclear power generation.

The NYT op/ed committee for Dubya’s South Asia trip

They continue to define a nation of 1.1 billion in terms of the much smaller states of Iran and Pakistan; attempt to turn back the clock 30 years to before India had nukes; reward governments which proliferate nuclear weapons to the world’s most murderous regimes; and hypocritically kowtow to a nuclear-armed, authoritarian China while excoriating democratic India.

It’s just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him… when Mr. Bush agreed to carve out an exception to global nonproliferation rules for India, it should have been obvious that Pakistani opinion would demand the same privileged treatment… [Link]

Fast-forward to Thursday’s nuclear deal with India, in which President Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its nuclear weapons programs and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… This would be a bad idea at any time… Mr. Bush might as well have tied a pretty red bow around his India nuclear deal and mailed it as a gift to Tehran. [Link]

President Bush wants to carve out an exception for India. That’s the worst possible message to send to other countries — Iran comes to mind — that America and its nuclear allies in Europe are trying to keep off the nuclear weapons bandwagon. Already, Pakistani officials are requesting the same deal for their country, although it is a request that is unlikely to be granted. Congress would have to approve this nuclear deal, and it should kill it. [Link]

What has emerged on Capitol Hill is an alliance of conservative Republicans, who are concerned that the deal will encourage Iranian intransigence, and liberal Democrats, who charge that the Bush administration has effectively scrapped the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… “People are worried about the precedent of establishing a full-fledged cooperation with India while we’re wagging our finger at North Korea and Iran”…

“This deal not only lets India amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants, it looks like we made no effort to try to curtail them,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is Santa Claus negotiating. The goal seems to have been to give away as much as possible.” [Link]

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A.k.a. Dummy Awards (updated)

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M. Night Shyamalan had a two-minute-long AmEx ad on the Oscars telecast tonight (watch or download — thanks, Arzan and Sonia). The ad was lots of fun, a riff on Shyamalan’s odd worlds. Manoj Night was all slicked out in necklace, fitted suit and fancy haircut. Ennis Del Mar would approve.

I heard there was a short Ismail Merchant clip in the obituary montage. Sajit adds that Aishwarya Rai’s L’Oreal ad was shown at the end.

Out of the nominees, here are my personal should-have-beens (see also the complete list of winners):

Picture: Munich (winner: Crash)

Director: Steven Spielberg for Munich (winner: Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain)

Actor: Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line (winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote). It’s a travesty that Reese Witherspoon won her Best Actress award for Walk the Line, while Phoenix, the movie’s heart, was jilted for his dark, intense performance.

Yes, Hoffman disappeared entirely inside that role like a good interper, in a way you rarely see any more. But the faults of the rest of the movie bleed over. Capote was so slow and aggressively anti-stim, so sensory isolationist, it literally almost put me to sleep in the theater, slower than watching paint dry. As Anthony Lane wrote about a different film, it had ‘the touch of mummification which wins awards’ and an elegiac tone that was stultifying.

Crash blindly jabbed your emotional buttons. It was a race drama by the guy who wrote Million Dollar Baby, and about as subtle, i.e. not at all. It felt as pointlessly corrosive as downing a bottle of Tabasco sauce, making it upsetting to sit through, every key character spewing racist invective. It felt like reading Usenet: messy, undirected, didn’t go anywhere. You’ve got my time, now make a point.

The movie was way too pat, like feature columnists in small papers in the ‘burbs. Everyone just happened to bump into everyone else in the L.A. urban sprawl. I’ve seen that narrative structure before, but it wasn’t used well here — it was utterly contrived. The carjackers were like scholars. The Latino dude who lived in a ghetto barely had any accent. If you’re going to deal with race, be accurate. This movie veered into Lifetime schmaltz often, as mawkish as much of Bollywood. Continue reading →

Tamil Tigers extorting money from aunties in Toronto

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The Tamil Tigers can somehow afford a parallel government in northern Sri Lanka with a small navy, visa services and traffic tickets:

When you drive through the “border” post into their territory, you have to set your watch back half-an-hour to Tiger time…

During a recent visit, as I drove down a quiet country road, a Tamil Tiger policeman took out his gun… we were hit – with a speeding fine. There aren’t many rebel groups that take traffic violations seriously.

… it is one of the absurdities of the situation in Sri Lanka that you can find yourself debating the finer points of highway etiquette with a group better known for its devastating use of suicide bombers. [Link]

That anecdote actually lays bare the real reason for speeding tickets in every government: revenues. The Tigers get some of theirs by extorting from a community which generally supports their politics. They track which auntie has given money and which hasn’t and send enforcers to their homes in Canada (thanks, Ananthan). It’s their equivalent of taxation:

They apologized when they came knocking on her door one night… the men came sometime before winter began last year, and they asked for a monthly donation of $50 for the “Tamil cause.”

After an exhausting hour of debate, the Sri Lankan-born woman relented and agreed to $30 a month. But when she stopped her payments three months later, the men came back. Now they demanded a one-time payment of $2,000. “They said if I give them the money this time, they’ll stop coming…”

[At the LTTE checkpoint,] her luggage was checked and she was told to write down personal information, including her passport number, if she wanted to travel… into the Tamil Tiger heartland… to visit family…

After they stamped her Tiger papers in Kilinochchi, she says a man at the office talked to her about donations. He knew that she’d refused to donate in Vavuniya, so he told her that he’d sent her information to Canada and someone would be in touch with her after she returned.

That’s why she believes the men who came to her door last year were sent by the LTTE. “They know this information of how many times I refused to give them money and whom I refused,” she says. But she won’t go to the police because she fears for the life of her family both here and back home…

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Bill Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars

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New Internet censorship in Pakistan aimed at the Danish cartoons of Muhammed has inflicted more collateral damage than a wayward JDAM. All Google-hosted blogs have now been banned (thanks, SloganMurugan):

Pakistan telecom authorities have blocked several websites inviting people to draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad… Bloggers in Pakistan became first became aware of the ban on 28 February when they were unable to access a popular blog hosting site, Blogspot. One of the blocked sites is hosted on [Google] Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web journals hosted on the site… They say they have still been able to edit and update their blogs, but not able to read them… [Link]

… the govt. must have ordered local ISP’s to block certain websites. All the major ISP’s in Pakistan are blocking weblogs hosted at blogspot.com. [Link]

Blogger, the editing half, was spared the axe. There’s been no official announcement, although last week Pakistan’s highest court started ordering ISPs to block sites carrying the cartoons:

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the government to block internet sites displaying sacrilegious cartoons and called explanation from authorities concerned as to why these sites had not been blocked earlier… Two petitions were filed… seeking complete blockage of sites showing blasphemous depictions and… seeking registration of cases under blasphemy. [Link]

Any secular democracy’s least-favorite phrase: ‘injures religious sentiments.’ Disheartened Pakistani bloggers are blaming bureaucratic ineptness and going around the problem via proxies. With respect to freedom of speech, Pakistan is not China:

Pakistani bloggers agree the blocking of Blogspot cannot be intentional… [Link]
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Desipina’s not Cablinasian

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For me, watching Seven.11 was one of the theater highlights of 2005. It had the sharpest writing and the funniest set of desi and As-Am in-jokes I’ve seen in ages: custom-fit culture in a railroad apartment. The proprietors have done well for themselves behind the counter, unveiling a bigger show in a bigger theater this year:

This year’s line-up includes a kung-fu hustler, run-away teenagers, convenience store surprise reunions, a futuristic free-for-all for Manhattan, and not one but TWO original pop musicals, one of which leaves you questioning, “Who really did kill Mr. Naidu?”

If you’re anywhere new New York between March 30 and April 16, you have to see the musical farce, last year’s was side-splitting. The show’s creative constraint is a gimmick, but it works:

… Seven.11 Convenience Theatre marks its fourth year with a whole new set of seven plays [of 11 minutes each] all set in a convenience store…

The intense, bald and talented Andrew Guilarte returns from last year’s cast. Looking at the list is like watching a star team shed your favorite players (where have you gone, Joe Debarggio, and Lethia Nall, Kavi Ladnier, Anuvab Pal?). You hope the new faces will once again become sentimental favorites.

Featuring the ever-talented cast of Sturgis Adams, Meetu Chilana, Andrew Guilarte, Sean Krishnan, Stephen Tyrone Williams, John Wu, Alicia Ying

They were completely sold out last year, so buy ahead.

Related posts: Reclaiming Apu, Seven chutney squishies, make it quick

Seven.11 Convenience Theatre (2006), 3/30-4/16/06, Thu-Sat 8 p.m. and Sun 2 p.m.; discussion with cast on Sundays; Kraine Theater, 85 East 4th St., first floor, between Bowery and 3rd Ave., Manhattan; $17 adults, $11 student rush tickets at the door only; buy tickets

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