Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

That Shameless Yoni Nonsense

Posted on by

It’s that time of the year again, and this year the delightful Micropixie has released a charming promo clip. I’ve included the translation below for those that may need a little bit of help.

“Mooni! Hey Mooni! Gadherini! Do you know I’m going to hit you? I’m going to beat you up, dirty girl! Every time I’m calling you and you’re not answering the phone!

And what is this “micro-bicro-bixie-dixie”?! You went San Francisco, you went to cut off my nose in San Francisco?! Don’t you know in San Francisco they have all those gadherini lesbian girls? What is all this lesbian stuff you’re doing, this Yoni Ki Baat “yon-ki-baat”, what is all that? Shameless girl, don’t you have any shame? [ASIDE TO HER HUSBAND: Hey Kaka, you see that girl she’s going to cut off my nose did you hear this girl? She’s opening (her legs)…]. Tell me, you’re not standing on stage with all your clothes taken off are you? Hai, hai! Who on earth will marry you? Who’s going to wed you?! How can you talk this nonsense?! This vageena, vageena-talking about your yoni ki baat gadherini? Hei?! You’re going to stop all this micro-bicro-pixie type stuff! Who will want to marry you? Which boy will marry you? Don’t you have any shame talking about all this dirty, disgusting stuff? As if one could ever talk about these things! Disgusting girl! When we were little we never spoke about this thing. What is this vageena talking-talking all the time? As if a vageena can even say anything, you brainless girl! As if, when you go and piss, you can talk with it! Don’t do all these things! Don’t you cut off my nose! Do you hear me?! Or I’ll give you one big whack. And make sure you phone your aunty soon… shameless girl!” [youtube]

The show was started by the South Asian Sisters here in San Francisco in an effort to bring a South Asian version of the Vagina Monologues to the scene. In it’s seventh season, Yoni Ki Baat has been replicated in cities all across the nation. I had the chance to check out the show in Los Angeles, but am looking forward to the show in San Francisco on March 5th and 6th. If you are in the area, I highly suggest you check out the show – but buy your tickets now, the show sells out every year.

Are any of you planning on being at the show? If so, maybe we can plan a Sepia Mutiny San Francisco meetup before the show…? Do let me know in the comments! Continue reading →

Is Mandvi the new Cosby?

Posted on by

As a Desi child of the 80s, television in our household growing up included news with Peter Jennings, PBS shows and The Cosby Show. Think about it – as an immigrant Bangladeshi family during the First Wave (post-1965), my parents (and their community) were drawn to shows like NOVA and Jacques Cousteau to teach them about the sciences. They counted on Peter Jennings to get the news. It was their connection to assimilating and learning about their place in the world.

And The Cosby Show, well the Cosby family showed us how to be the proper brown American. It was a halal show with none of that kissing-shmissing thing that you’d see on the other television shows, except of course what happened between Cliff and Claire, and in our house my parents would have the remote in hand to change the channel as soon as kissing came on the screen. Seriously. This was how I learned to be an American – affection-less and model minority-ed (kidding, kind of).

Maybe, as Katie Couric suggested, all the Muslim community needs is a sitcom showing the quintessential model minority Muslim family. Just like The Cosby Show. Maybe the The Qu’osby Show. Aasif Mandvi takes a stab at creating a pilot episode and it’s blowing up the air waves on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Allah in the Family
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogThe Daily Show on Facebook

Is that all we need, Katie? A television show to make racist people think that Muslims are less scary? There are two ways to look at this. First, despite all the “post racial narrative” that The Cosby Show put out there, at the end of the day we now have Tyler Perry shows on the CW with minstrel level scripts and C-level comedy. And, oh yeah, racism against Black people still exists 30 years after The Cosby Show first started. Continue reading →

The age at when you learn what’s what

Posted on by

Late last week I received a tip (on our Sepia Mutiny tipline) about an upcoming play in Seattle,Washington. The play, MOTHER IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE, by Taniya Hossain, is being performed by the Repertory Actors Theater and starts this weekend. The tipster Nitya is one of the actors and sent me the full press release with a detailed description: Mother in Another Language – Press Release.pdf (24 KB). Seattle area Mutineers, go check it out, and let us know how it is:

Tickets: Available online at http://www.acttheatre.org/Shows/OnStage/MotherInAnotherLanguage.

Adults: $15 Students: $12 Children 17 & Under: $12 Seniors 65+: $12

Groups (10 or more): $12 per person (available through the Ticket Office only, (206) 292-7676)

But merely informing you about this play is not what this post is actually about at all. Sorry Nitya! You see, on the first pass through her email tip I stopped reading as soon as I saw her name. The name was familiar to me. Nitya and I went to elementary school together in San Jose, CA in the 80s. I didn’t know her too well back then. In fact, I can’t remember a single interaction or conversation I had with her, although surely there were several. But I did remember her name and the fact that she had long braids and an even longer last name. When I mentioned the tip to them, my parents remembered her too! As memory serves, myself, Nitya, and another kid Sanjay (who is now someone I regularly meet up with in Los Angeles) were the only three brown kids in our school year. In the 80s all brown kids knew each other, even when they didn’t know each other. You know? When I replied to her tip and asked her which elementary school she went to, Nitya was as surprised as I was. What a small world! She says she can somewhat remember my 10-year-old face but not well enough to recognize me today. Even though Nitya and I did not really know each other well in elementary school, she indirectly played a part in a defining moment of my life (about which she has no idea…until now). It is a memory so strong I can replay it perfectly in my head 25 years later.

Fifth grade, late one afternoon (I recall that it was late spring and very sunny outside). Our teacher, a grumbly bear of a man, who was a Korean War veteran and had definitely killed enemy, declared that he was pleased with the great progress our class had made that week and decided we could have the 40 minutes until afternoon recess off. This was a surprise because he had a reputation of being the toughest teacher at the school. I once memorized the Gettysburg address in three hours on a Tuesday night because he said it was due Wednesday. He meant the following Wednesday. On this afternoon Mr. P decided we could do whatever we wanted for fun as long as it was inside the class. Some of the girls in the class, the pretty ones who could get away with anything, had an idea. Boys that age are too slow to come up with anything good when put on the spot. The idea these clever girls came up with was to play the Newlywed Game: Elementary School Edition. Amazingly, surprisingly, I was picked to be one of the 3 “husbands.” My wife was a girl named Juliet.

Keep in mind that I was not a popular kid. I was small and nerdy but well liked. You know that sound and feeling you experience when you get a rental car and turn on the radio and it is on full blast on some rap station that the previous renter was listening to and you awkwardly fumble to turn it down before the bass blows out the windows? That’s what my heart sounded like when I was picked to play this game.

Continue reading →

February 11

Posted on by

riot girl small.jpg

I couldn’t have been alone in this, but it was only after the news of Mubarak’s departure that I watched for the first time the video of Asmaa Mahfouz making her appeal for the gathering that became the protest action of January 25. That video, when posted on Facebook, became a rallying cry. As I learned a bit later from this interview with Mahfouz, January 25 was chosen because it is observed as Police Day in Egypt, and she was interested not in honoring the police but in pointing out that they were the arm of oppression. In the video you see this twenty-five-year-old woman speaking with great anguish of the three Egyptian men who had set themselves on fire to protest. It is humbling, and so wonderfully inspiring, to realize that such a tumultuous movement, one that has moved the entire world, could have had such small beginnings. Continue reading →

Hari Gets Special

Posted on by

There are those comedians that play upon their own stupidity to make people laugh at them. And then there are the other comedians, the smart comedians, that can make witty social commentaries on the state of the world, make you think, drop knowledge, and make you laugh really hard. I have got to say that after seeing Hari Kondabolu perform this week with his troupe Laughter Against the Machine, he is definitely of the latter variety. It’s about time the world noticed. Comedy Central has. This Friday at 11pm, Hari Kondabolu has his very own half an hour long special, Comedy Central Presents: Hari Kondabolu. Set your DVR and be prepared to laugh and groan.

I virtually sat down with Hari to ask him a few questions about his forthcoming special, what makes him funny and his tension filled relationship with his brother. (Check out Phillygrrl’s previous interview with Hari here). Read below.

Taz: Are you nervous about what is going to happen on February 11th, 2011 at 11pm?

Hari: HA! You’re making this sound like a catastrophic event that will take place 4 times that night in the various mainland U.S. timezones. Honestly, I think it’ll be fine. I filmed the thing months ago and it’s been edited down to 22 minutes and there’s nothing else I can really do besides hope the edit looks good and captures the spirit the jokes were written in and how they were performed live that night. I’m anticipating that some people will like it, some people won’t and that I’ll definitely be seeing some mean spirited messages on a variety of social media and probably in the comments section of this very blog post. Am I right, brothers and sisters?

T: What is the absolutely funniest thing to you right now? Something that made you laugh so hard you had milk come out of your nose type funny?

H: I’m embarrassed to admit this, but the last thing that made me laugh out loud was how a friend on twitter described the Black Eyed Peas as “Will.i.am, Fergie…Michaelangelo and Raphael.” It was a well-placed Ninja Turtles reference. Seriously, I am ashamed.

T: Do you feel like you need to censor yourself and your comedic material the more famous you become? Because, I don’t know if you realize that, but getting your own Comedy Central special makes you preeeeetty famous. Continue reading →

Sunny Owes You

Posted on by

Who needs a song that says “I love you” when “I Oh You” does the same?

Sunny Ali & The Kid does it again, with a new single that harkens back to the two step slow dance in the high school gym days. A free song download for your heartbroken but mending lover this #MusicMonday.

Bonus: Earlier this week, inspired by the events in Egypt, Sunny released Tahrir Square Dance, a SoundCloud punk beat evoking rioting moshpit sounds. I can’t stop obsessing over the revolution in Egypt, and now I have a soundtrack to go with. Continue reading →

Catch the New Wave of Tamil Film

Posted on by

This weekend marks the beginning of a new film series from 3rd I Films that will tour in certain cities across the U.S. Cruel Cinema: New Directions in Tamil Film opens today at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California (1/30-2/19), and will “travel on to the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC and BAMcinematek in Brooklyn, NY among other venues” according to 3rd I. The series provides an introduction to four new wave Tamil films from the latter half of the 2000s.

The program notes (quoted below) by Lalitha Gopalan and Anuj Vaidya definitely piqued my interest, and so did clips from the featured films, sometimes because and sometimes in spite of the cruelty portrayed. If you caught the wave earlier and saw any of these films, what did you think?  

Continue reading →

Music Monday: Hot or Not?

Posted on by

I find myself immersed these days in finding the perfect tune. There’s just so much Alterna-Desi music out there, it’s hard to narrow it down to just one artist this Monday. So, I won’t. Today you get seven.

First on the line up is Ami Dang. I saw Ami perform this past Saturday night at a warehouse art space in shady part of Oakland as she finished up the tail end of her international tour promoting her debut album Hukam. A Sikh American woman out of Baltimore, Ami takes her classically trained vocals and sitar skills and merges them with electro-ethereal loops and riffs creating oddly familiar yet alien music. You can get her album here, follow her at @amidang and check out her profile in the City Paper.

Ami Dang // Where Nothing Grows from Mark Brown on Vimeo.

Next is my girlcrush Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers. With a name like that, how can you not be intrigued? She is back for a second time, rocking out the harmonium like a bat out of hell on the way to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This NYC based group released their album Teenage and Torture on Jan 18th (available here), and you can download a free track right here. I kind of love the tortured sound of this song. Follow her at @ShilpaRayandHHH.

In the world of comedy, our friend (and previously written about) Rasika Mathur has released her first album The Sari (W)rap. Think of it like an Adam Sandler musical comedy album, but he’s brown, female and can do really good accents. Released in November, her album tackles such hard hitting issues such as backing up your hard drive with Back That Thing Up or the R. Kelly-esque song I’m Goning to Kama Sutra. The video for the single The Threading Rap was just released by Rukus Avenue and if you look closely and you may find a cameo in there. You can download her album off of iTunes. Find her at @rasiras.

Continue reading →

Bronzes at the Chennai Museum

Posted on by

The Government Museum in Chennai has an amazing collection of bronzes from around what is present day Tamil Nadu.

Here are some photos from my visit there last month. Click on any of them for a larger version on Flickr. Despite the sad condition of the displays – dust-covered and poorly lit – the wonder and detail of the craft and work is still easily visible.

This is a Nataraja from Vellore, circa 19th century:

Vellore Nataraja I

Vellore Nataraja III

The hair of other Natarajas I’ve seen until now have resembled the one above: a ring attached to the back of the head out of which locks of hair emerge. This next one, however (my favorite of the lot), has hair that is very much part of Siva’s head. It’s from Melaperamballam in Thanjavur, circa 10th Century AD.

Melaperamballam Nataraja III

Melaperamballam Nataraja I

Continue reading →

Your Customs Is Foreign To Us

Posted on by

for Aseem Chhabra and my fellow travelers

Something Aseem Chhabra said this weekend made me think of this.

Several months ago, I was detained at the Michigan-Canadian border because I had loose, unlabeled spices from Toronto, which the Lords of U.S. Customs did not recognize and needed to submit to agricultural inspection, a request I did not consider unreasonable until I saw how it was to be done. We were removed from our vehicle and did not have even visual contact with our property while they searched it.

(Who will inspect the inspection? They could take something! I said.

They could PLANT something, said someone else.)

As far I could tell, the only person of color in the office where we waited was Barack Obama. I found his picture on the wall comforting.

Our vehicle when we returned to it looked ransacked, but to the best of our knowledge, they took (and planted) nothing. Still, I have learned to prefer the airport. Or the New York border, where my loose Sri Lankan spices flummox no one.

Had a customs experience you loved? Hated? Share below. Continue reading →