Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Sensual Seduction by Noop, not Snoop

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Move over, Papaya…now there’s someone talented. AND cute. Introducing the latest (and easily greatest) brown singing hopeful– UNC’s adorable Anoop Desai, a.k.a. Noop Dawg (I heard Randy loved that). I may actually have to start watching American Idol again. What am I saying, you will watch American Idol and feverishly send in tips or post stories about it to the news tab. I will watch YouTube, where there is aural gorgeousness like this:

I first saw that vid on VH1 blog, which goes on to say:

Simon Cowell may have been turned off by Anoop Desai’s nerdy appearance at his American Idol audition (”you look like you came from a meeting with Bill Gates“), but we have a feeling this guy’s going to be a contender for the top spot after checking out some of his work with the UNC Clef Hangers, an a capella group at the University of North Carolina, where Desai studies Southern Folklore. Watching this guy croon everything from Brian McKnight’s “The Only One For Me” (above) to T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drank,” it’s clear that this nerd is a heartthrob. They’re already shrieking for him at school, so just wait until he gets to Hollywood. Anoop Dogg is hot! Fire! [VH1]

Dear Simon, kindly STFU. A college kid shows up to audition in shorts and you automatically think, “Microsoft”? That doesn’t even make sense. You’re about as worthless as the dozens of “all-look-same”-fools who type, “omg he luks like kal pen!” under his pictures and video clips. Sure he does.

I love that Anoop was the soloist for this song, mostly because I have always loved “The Only One For Me” but hated Brian McKnight; now I can enjoy this joint without hating myself! McKnight made quite the impression on me in 1998, when he played pool with my friend at a DC club, lost, and then sportingly threw the cue stick at the man who pwned his kundi so publicly (incidentally, the friend who humiliated him was also desi).

So, yeah…Sanjaya who? Anoop’s a cutie who sounds like he could make Stupid Simon eat his words. You know, that might actually be worth watching shit-tay American Idol for… Continue reading →

SF Meetup on Friday, February 6 is Cancelled.

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Sorry mutineers. Not enough RSVPs for me to justify driving 250 miles in inclement weather. Lesson for next time? PLEASE RSVP. To the four of you who did, my sincerest thanks and appreciation. I have emailed each of you.

The bad news is, the meetup is cancelled. The good news is, you can always bug Uncle Vinod to host another one…he still lives on this coast. 😉

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UPDATE, FEBRUARY 5, 2009:

I’m bumping this post back up to the top because I need to confirm who is coming/to where/at what time. Doing this is easier than writing a new post…and THEN a reminder post, tomorrow.

There’s a lot of info in the comments below, and I don’t have the time, will, or reliable wifi to paste it all in a new post. Just scroll towards the bottom, where I’ve (hopefully) answered everyone’s questions.

Once you’ve read all that, if you could leave a comment (or send an email*) to indicate whether or not you are coming, that would be super helpful. One Three of you just emailed me for details about tomorrow, so I know he’s they’re in– that makes two four of us, who have RSVP’d. 🙂

If you can make it to Udipi in the Mission at 6:30, let us know! Since our group is smaller this time, I’m excited about actually being able to hear some of you…now who’s in?

*my name at this website dotty com.

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Don’t listen to what’s inside your head

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Earlier this week I was surveying some recently and soon-to-be-released albums as I decided what to load on to my mp3 player. Like many, I enjoy listening to music when I work out and especially when I run, so something upbeat was in order. I checked out the new Common and Lily Allen albums and they seemed worth loading. Then however, I came upon the must have release-of-the-week and used up the rest of my allowance:

Before I go any further I want to be clear that I don’t think that jokes about schizophrenia are appropriate. It is not Sanjaya’s fault that he has to listen to the musical voices inside his head. However, I do blame his manager and the record producers for giving the rest of us a ring-side seat. Manson-like cults could form around the contents of this body of work. The first single (titled “A Quintessential Lullaby”) is a psychedelic journey that blends the line between real and dream:

I mean…the lyrics quite literally blew my mind. Tomorrow morning I am going to write down what “happens when I wake up” while I play a Karsh Kale tune in the background.

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Live-blogging Anil Kapoor on LIVE With Regis and Kelly

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This post really doesn’t require an introduction after THAT title, but I’ll include one anyway, to answer your question(s) (which I’m already receiving via Facebook* and Twitter), preemptively.

Q: Why didn’t you tell us this craziness was going to be on?? Now it’s too late to record it!
A: I didn’t tell you this fustercluck would be airing because I didn’t know anything about it. I have long considered LIVE With Regis and Kelly to be a rather annoying TV program which rarely features anything I’m interested in– and I love the Today Show, so I’m not exactly difficult to please. Since I never watch the show…I had no way to know.

I’m at home, at my Mom’s house, and while I was getting ready to go out, I thought I’d watch the “third hour” of Today; in DC, we get all four hours of the show, so I assumed that it might be on here, as well. When I turned on the television, I heard unfamiliar theme music and mentions of Regis…and just when I was about to turn the set off, I heard, “Anil Kapoor!” being announced. “Oh. Because of Slumdog,” I thought.

Now I had a choice to make. I could do the responsible thing and finish my breakfast so that I would not be late for my full slate of appointments in the city today…or I could frantically pause the show, twitter a rhetorical question about whether I should blog it for SM and make coffee while pondering all of the above. When I returned to my iBook, I had my answer, as delivered by the pleas of several of you to not let this opportunity go by unblogged. Well, so much for making my appointments!

“Our next guest is one of the most successful and popular actors in Indian film history and has been blowing away audiences with his role as a game show host– a role that is near and dear to me– it’s in the hot movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which is nominated now for ten Oscars…now please welcome– Aneel Kapore!”

M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” starts playing and the man walks out. I curse the remote for not being as useful as Comcast’s (never, ever did I think I’d type the words “useful as Comcast” btw) is, back home. I miss the “30 seconds back” button something fierce. I’m already having second thoughts about this. 😉

“Kapore” strides out in a suit and light-colored tie like he’s got tickets to the gun show…and by that I mean that he’s doing the “I am victorious!”-arm-thing. He immediately growls something like, “Hey!” and proceeds to grope Regis via a bear hug which lifts Reeg off the ground. Continue reading →

Devotional Obama

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Here are two Obama tunes to get you humming as you drink your Sunday morning coffee or chai.

We’ve blogged here about Bollywood Obama and I’ve written about the Japanese town of Obama’s boppy theme song “Obama is beautiful world.” Now, a couple of young musicians in Surat–Chirag Thakker, Jayesh Gandhi and Anita Sharma–have welcomed Obama into their hearts with this catchy song that praises our new president.

We have dedicated this song to Obama and uploaded it on Youtube, so that the world could see our attempts to honor him. His down-to-earth personality, faith in Lord Ganesha and great respect for Mahatma Gandhi made us feel that he is very close to us,” said Chirag, adding that they have used names of Lord Ganesha and Gandhi in the song. [full story]

The song has elements of a bhajan (the lyrics have devotionalism), but also features the djembe, which the artists chose to include in honor of Obama’s African heritage! The video is granted, a bit amateur, but it also has subtitles (so that Obama can understand it) and was shot in various parts of Surat, including the banks of the Tapi river and the city’s municipal gardens. Overall, the three artists devoted three months to it from start to finish.

I was going to wrap up this entry, but then found this Punjabi poem by California based poet and singer Pashaura Singh Dhillon. I was moved. But then again, I get weepy pretty easily these days.

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Boy don’t try to front…

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William Dalrymple has a must read book review of Ahmed Rashid’s “Pakistan in Peril Descent into Chaos,” in the New York Review of Books that I should summarize for SM readers. Man Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga has published a short story in The New Yorker this week titled, “The Elephant” that I should also critique. Finally, Foreign Policy magazine has an article about how India scuttled Richard Holbrooke’s potential involvement in the Kashmir conflict that I know would make for a great debate on our site. But honestly, I am just tired of trying to front like I am smart or something. Instead, I just want to blog this trashy clip from my girl Tyra Bank’s show earlier this week. It features a desi guy that now goes by the porn-king sounding name “Shawn Valentino.”

Part 1

Part 2

The first thing I am going to do is to re-do my SM business card now and put a picture of me blogging shirtless on it. I’ve “traveled the world.” I am “open minded.” I just want to “teach other people to be comfortable with themselves,” too! This guy really is a guru. He has convinced me too stop pretending to be something I am not. From here on out its business time all the time.

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No, really, South Asians for Obama

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Someone on my GChat list had an intriguing link included in their status message. I saw “inauguration”, and since that historic event is still very much on my mind, I clicked it. I was led to the Boston Globe’s website, to a feature called “The Big Picture: News Stories in Photographs“.

Yesterday was a historic day. On January 20th, 2009, Barack H. Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America – the first African-American ever to hold the office of U.S. Commander-in-Chief. The event was witnessed by well over one million attendees in chilly Washington D.C., and by many millions more through coverage on television and the Internet. Collected here are photographs of the event, the participants, and some of the witnesses around the world. (48 photos total)

Picture number 38 caught my attention, setting my browndar off before I could even read the caption underneath it (which I’ve quoted, well, underneath it):

Pakistani Christian children.jpg

Pakistani Christian children hold portraits of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama during a prayers ceremony for global peace in Islamabad, Pakistan on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. (AP Photo) [Globe]

At first glance, I didn’t notice the word “Christian”. I just saw “Pakistani children”. I thought I’d just post the picture plus a quick blurb about where I found it, and isn’t it sweet, etc. But for obvious reasons, I started surfing around, and a rambling post was born. Continue reading →

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.”

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Speech Wars.jpg
I woke up at 6:30 am today, after less than three hours of sleep, unsure of what to expect on Inauguration Day. Well, that isn’t entirely accurate– I knew to expect considerable delays in my adopted home city along with, and partly because of a guaranteed transit nightmare. But aside from that, I had some hazy sense that I’d be witnessing something important, something I’d regret missing since I live here.

I’ve never been to an inauguration, despite my decade in D.C. So, I set out on a special Presidential Inauguration bus route, via my special Presidential Inauguration Metro card, which took me to the security perimeter. From there I walked in frigid temperatures to get to the Presidential Inauguration Metro train which would, it turns out, NOT take me to my intended destination.

Due to crowd control concerns, WMATA quickly shut down two train stations while I was underground, in transit, and packed in so tightly with other would-be attendees, that I felt assaulted every time someone moved an elbow. Everyone was aware of a different station which had been closed earlier; they announced it was unexpectedly reopening just as we pulled away from it. Too late. At this point, they had closed the last three stations at which we could have exited and we were well past the stop we needed. I started to worry about logistics as previously cheery train inhabitants cursed under their breath.

I hastily exited the Metro the moment I was able to, and I still ended up on the wrong side of the Capitol building. I had just over an hour to trudge through brutal, 11 degree weather, while attempting to avoid idling charter buses spewing exhaust, forbidding barricades, chaotic Police checkpoints and of course, thousands of people who were alternately shivering in their Uggs or shouting “Woooo! Obama!”.

The only thing I could think about was how I was thisclose to missing the whole point of the day, the whole point of the last two years, and it was all because of my bad luck with Metro. I tried to be mindful and prepare myself for the worst; if I was too late to get through security or move through the sludge of confused people faster than one mile per hour, I could say that I tried. That I had experienced the cold and the crowds and the optimism which was muffled by scarves, earmuffs and gloves. Que sera, sera…

I barely expected to make it to my rooftop viewing party in time for pomp and circumstance. I certainly did not expect to see a copy of Obama’s speech before he delivered it. And I definitely did not expect to be in tears when our new President recognized a faith which I respect, but don’t practice.

One thing at a time.

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Where Obama gets his desi-ness from

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An old college photo of Obama appeared at the NYTimes today. The photo features the man who taught Obama how to cook desi food among other things:

Sohale Siddiqi (also Hal Siddiqi) was the best friend and roommate of Barack Obama while he attended Columbia University in the early 1980s. He is identified as “Sadik” in Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father. Obama describes Saddiqi as “a short, well-built Pakistani” who smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine. Siddiqi was from Karachi, Pakistan and came to America from London on a tourist visa. He overstayed his visa becoming an illegal alien. [1]

Obama first met Siddiqi when he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. Obama was living with a group of Pakistani students when Siddiqi arrived for a visit. Obama transferred to Columbia University and lived off campus with Siddiqi. Siddiqi was not a student and made his living working in restaurants. Together they lived in a drug-ridden slum apartment on 339 East 94th St. Siddiqi go the apartment by lying, saying he had a well paid job. The apartment was furnished by what they could find in the streets.

Obama and Siddiqi would go out together and enjoy the nightlife of New York City. Siddiqi claims Obama stopped using drugs when he arrived at Columbia. Obama eventually moved out when Siddiqi’s partying began to interfere with his studies. [Link]

More on Siddiqi here.

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“…Stick around.”

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The benediction at Barack Hussein Obama’s inauguration was given today by Rev. Joseph Lowery:

Joseph Echols Lowery (born October 6, 1921) is a minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the American civil rights movement.

Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Alabama from 1952 until 1961. His career in the civil rights movement began in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955, Lowery helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997. [Link]

Without a doubt the most striking paragraph of the benediction (the full text of which can be found here) was the following:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. [Link]

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