You know how I like the jazz… Above, a Lahore-based wonder currently going viral (h/t Frederick N., who sent to a list I’m subscribed to). I love the above, as I love the original. What a great synthesis of tabla, sitar, guitar, strings… My favorite parts: the guitar stuff around the two-minute mark, plus the sitar on the main melody. Continue reading
Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment
Spice Coast: America’s Next Great Restaurant?
So writing about reality TV isn’t really my thing, but there’s a show on Sunday nights on NBC that regularly gets my mouth watering. It’s America’s Next Great Restaurant, and it takes 21 people, each with an idea for a fast casual restaurant, and finishes with a winner who gets his/her restaurant opened in three US locations: Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New York. The judges are also the investors in the new restaurant, and provide their input (sometimes ultimatums) as to what they want from each contestant, eliminating one contestant per episode.
They’re down to the top five in tonight’s episode, and one of the remaining contestants is Sudhir Kandula (@sudsnyc), whose brainchild is Spice Coast, featuring – are you ready? – fast casual southern Indian coastal food! Sudhir’s restaurant began the show with the name Tiffin Box (it had me there) but the investors asked him to change it because no one knows what a tiffin box is.
I spoke with Sudhir earlier in the week about the show, the diversity of Indian food, and his idea for a healthy restaurant:
If you’re viewing this from a device that isn’t flash-friendly, here’s the link.
Up to Rushdie’s Standards
The Sugi put me in a literary mood, so when I spotted this on Page Six of my dead-tree edition of the NYP, I had to share it with you:
Salman Rushdie knows his way around the jet set as well as he does the literary world. Now, he’s found a way to fuse both interests by selecting books for guest rooms at Andre Balazs’ Standard Hotel. According to sources, the “Satanic Verses” author is in the process of selecting 10 “American classics,” which will be in Standard rooms during the PEN World Voices Festival April 25 to May 1. The titles, being provided by Housing Works, have yet to be confirmed. We wonder what Rushdie would suggest taking to read in the Boom Boom Room?
What, indeed. I’m not the resident Rushdie-phanatic…I believe that was Manish, but I’m curious about what he’ll select to decorate the rooms of enlighten the patrons of the Standard. Continue reading
Kuzhali Awesome Is the Most Fun Kind of Awesome
Dude, yes, I mean this, and I mean it in a Bill and Ted’s 3 kind of way. Like, totally. Be excellent to each other and READ THIS WRITER, Kuzhali Manickavel. Her writing is like familiar + familiar = delightful strange, and will leave you with the best kind of unsettled in the pit of your stomach.
A long time ago I joined Sepia Mutiny and saw Kuzhali Manickavel’s website (not necessarily in that order, although I think probably). And then I read her blog a lot, and then I laughed and laughed, and sometimes felt like crying, because she is so very funny but in a way that is also sad. And then I became the interim fiction editor of The Michigan Quarterly Review, and got her to give me a fabulous (FABULOUS) story called “The Underground Bird Sanctuary.” And then I got her to e-chat with me for Sepia. Kuzhali Manickavel is the author of a dark, hilarious collection of short fiction called Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings, which you should RUN OUT AND BUY BECAUSE OF IT BEING JUST WIZZOW. I do not use CAPS LOCK or WIZZOW lightly. Please do this in an independent bookstore, if you still live in one of the places on earth that has one. And if you don’t, via the Amazon link (above), which will support the Scoobybunkergang in a teeny tiny way.
The story in MQR begins:
Kumar’s bones were pushing up under his skin like silent hills. His ribs rippled up in hardened waves while his shoulders and wrists stood out in knotted clumps. In the afternoons, I would count Kumar’s bones while he tried to sleep. [continued] Continue reading
With So Much Drama in the DMV
I walked outside and felt abnormally grateful for the traffic clogging my street at lunch time. I needed a cab and there were several, stranded in front of me.
The middle one had a female driver, so I chose her. Once I slammed the door, I was surprised; the interior smelled like auto parts, dust and WD-40– a combination which transported me into the past, to my father’s garage, a place where I learned the difference between a flat and Phillips screwdriver before I figured out the alphabet. I checked my sexism immediately and felt bad for the dissonance I was experiencing at the shock of such a scent combined with a female driver. I knew better than that.
“Thanks for picking me.” She smiled wryly. She was middle-aged and African American, with thick, bouncy curls. Some of her facial expressions reminded me of Loretta Devine, which secretly delighted me. Devine was the best part of one of my favorite seasonal guilty pleasures: “This Christmas“. Stop judging me. I liked it before Chris Brown did that. Oh, you’re judging me because it’s a mediocre film which over-relies on holiday cliches to make its point…sure, I deserve that. Carry on!
“I’m not going to lie,” I began. “I thought it was cool that you were a female cab driver. I don’t usually get those.” I smiled at her.
“Yeah, we’re rare.” She studied me in her rear view mirror.
“Are you Indian?”, she asked.
“My parents are–“
“And so are you!”, she declared, emphatically.
I laughed. My pat answer had been challenged; that usually doesn’t happen. Continue reading
Elmo Goes to Pakistan
“I don’t own a television.” When I let that slip into conversation, most of my friends are aghast. They immediately assume one of two things: a) I am one of those holier-than-thou, live-in-the-moment, anti-media types or b) I’m just a weirdo. It’s probably a combination of both. Maybe someday I’ll see the need for a television, but right now I’m content with my laptop for movies and the occasional show at someone else’s house. But then again, our family has never been the television type. (Insert assumed air of humility and delicate toss of head.) My parents didn’t purchase their first television set until I was about 14, before that I mostly got my pop culture in disjointed snippets. Five minutes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at a neighbor’s house. The occasional pop song at the mall. Our church didn’t allow the ownership of televisions. Too secular. Too much potential for exposure to sex. Gasp!
So unlike most American kids, I didn’t wake up early every Saturday morning and rush to the television to watch my favorite cartoons (at least not until I was 14). All that to say this: I’m not very familiar with the children’s show Sesame Street, which airs in 120 countries in 20 international versions. I did not learn my numbers from the Count, alas. Aside from that cute little rubber ducky song and of course a fascination with Cookie Monster (nom), I wouldn’t know my Bert from my Ernie. Luckily for kids in Pakistan, however, Sesame Street will soon be a reality in a country where education is on the bottom of the governmental to-do list. Forget NYC, these puppets are going to Lahore.
Khan’s Calculus: Education for Everyone
Salman Khan is a hit on YouTube. But it’s not because he’s a movie star shimmying across the screen sans shirt to the sound of music–that’s another Salman Khan. This Salman Khan doesn’t even walk on screen in the videos he makes, which are filmed in his bedroom closet. He prefers to be the voice in the background teaching people about calculus, chemistry, finance and a range of other subjects.
His Khan Academy channel on YouTube has received over 48 million views so far. But when he first started making video tutorials, he had just one viewer in mind. Back then Khan, who doesn’t have a degree in education but does have an MBA and degrees in math and science, was working as a hedge fund analyst in Boston. He made YouTube videos to remotely tutor his cousin in New Orleans in math. Continue reading
Chaal with Baraat
Get up. Get up out of your office chair. Ready? Now get ready to move your butt and shock your cubicle mate. Today’s #MusicMonday comes from Red Baraat and I double dare you to listen to this song without dancing. it’s impossible. And it’s free to download!
This song is just one of many live tracks on an EP the band is dropping very very soon. I’m a big fan of Red Baraat and interviewed Sonny and Sunny after the release of their first album. I’ve never seen them perform before and am itching for them to come tour out to the West Coast. After watching this clip, it’s hard not to want to see them.
Folks in Louisiana,Texas and Canada though are in luck – the band starts their summer tours next month, traversing the dirty South and Canada, aye. Check out their site for the latest tour dates and be sure to visit their bandcamp for the release of their latest live EP.
Baile, baile! Continue reading
Top Chef Masters: Coming Back to Earth
The third season of Top Chef Masters is different and not just because it includes for the first time ever, one–wait, make that two–desi chefs: Floyd Cardoz and Suvir Saran. Instead of having about 20 contestants as in previous years, this season has 12, and pits them against each other in elimination challenges like Restaurant Wars that come straight from the original Top Chef series format. But as usual they are all chefs already at the top in terms of professional success, competing to win money for charities and the title of Top Chef Master.
Cardoz and Saran definitely have what it takes to make it to the finals, and they made a good showing in the first episode. It’s too early to tell which of the remaining 11 chefs will make it to the end, but after the first episode last night it is NOT too early to know that Saran and his quips make for good TV. What did you think? Have you tried their food?
You can watch both chefs introduce themselves below.
A Meandering Welcome to Lawrence Singh, Teen Boxer Extraordinaire
On Sunday night, my right knee gave out. Twice. This was only mildly surprising, since I was born with a bad right knee and I spent a year of college with it in a full leg immobilizer. The problem is, the Sunday before that, my left kneecap moved in a way that it shouldn’t, as I was ascending the stairs to my beloved cathedral while wearing the most glorious suede four-inch platforms.
That might be the single worst circumstance during which to injure your knee. Stairs? Heels? Hell. The pain was excruciating. I never made it past the narthex, which is where I collapsed on the first bench I could find. When the liturgy was over, I limped out of the handicapped exit and proceeded to drive a stick shift to the nearest CVS in Georgetown, where I procured a knee brace to hold my kneecap together.
Oh, the looks I got in that store, people scornfully glaring at me as if I were an idiot, stumbling around in heels when injured. Silly make-an-ass-out-of-you-and-me strangers. I am stubborn and unwise, but not THAT stubborn and unwise. Sheesh. So let’s recap: two Sundays ago, I hurt my left knee, and by the time I made it to urgent care, favoring my feeble right, it was too late– both were busted. And when they gave out this weekend, I knew that my Orthopedist might have underestimated how serious my injuries were. I swear, I have a point, and that point is, I am not very mobile right now.
Forget driving, I can’t walk without a cane. And that means that I am at home. All the time. Often with a boxing writer. And so I marinate in the sweet science, because, well, I have no choice.
I guess there are worse sports to be subjected to, visually. Golf. Bowling. Drawn out games which involve bats and balls– of course, I am talking about vampires and testicles there, I promise. But I’m not that into boxing, despite said boxing writer’s endearing attempts to draw me in. He started (somewhat logically, given my mutinous proclivities) with Amir Khan.
Amir Khan is a British pugilist of Pakistani descent who is referred to as “King Khan”, or the “Pride of Bolton”. Khan is an Olympic medalist, and he’s a big enough deal that he trains with Freddy Roach; in other words, when he runs around, toning that lovely body of his, he might be trotting next to Manny Pacquiao. Perhaps you have heard of him? Anyway, I’ve seen King Khan throw stiff jabs and it barely inspired me to look up from the interwebz. Yay team brown and all, but it’s hard to cheer for someone who is prettier than and weighs less than me. I keed, I keed. It’s hard to cheer because I don’t give a tatti. Continue reading