As luck would have it, while at the frigid ND bunker and prancing around in nothing but her tropical New Orleanian wear, your intrepid guest blogger caught a cold and was forcibly isolated from the other monkeys and community computer for a week. Eeek achoo eeek! Hey, the New Orleanian cold front of 75 degrees and 80% humidity just hit yesterday, and this macaca yearns for a mint julep on her sunny porch.

While mired in the hurricane-force sneezes and sea of wadded-up tissue paper, cable TV overcame me and I fell prey to such eye-searers as As The World Turns, Dr. Phil and America’s Next Top Model. Dear Supreme Geek Council, please do not oust me from your favor for this transgression. Your humble servant was merely … ummmm … getting to know the enemy … yeah, that’s it.

Anchal Joseph of Homestead, FL wishes to go beyond model immigrant; she wants to be a supermodel. This 19-year-old sports flawless dark skin, ass-length hair, blue-tinted contacts and a desire to show her people that dark women can walk that catwalk, too. With tears threatening to evict her fake baby blues, Ms. Anchal informed Tyra Banks, Jay Manuel (a planet in the neighboring galaxy is missing its weirdo) and J. Alexander (and I do not quote), “Where I come from, light skin and light eyes are preferable to dark skin and eyes. I want to show them that I am just as beautiful.” Fair enough. So, why the blue contacts? If you want to win on your looks, where is the need for the prop? Then again, Anchal is the only one out of 36 who doesn’t transform into a vavoom covergirl when adorned with that other crutch – lots of makeup. She looks pretty much her beautiful same. (Aside: Check out this definition for anchal)

Conversely, the only personal features I find appealing are my brown skin and black eyes. My hips could use several circumlocutions of the block and 5’4″ isn’t anything to write Elle about. This isn’t to say that my extended family has risen above the inanity of Anchal’s experiences; in fact, I’ve been on the receiving end of such remarks for 12 more years than her. My dark skin has never bothered me, even when met with reproachful stares from the kuppai that populates my end of the South. To each her own pathology or just another plea for Reality-TV^TM attention?

Speaking of this past week’s TV, was it the NyQuil crooning or did a segment of Chaiyya Chaiyya open a scene of the Smith premiere? Continue reading →

Who said desi accents weren’t sexy? One in particular will keep me glued to the TV every Monday night, starting next Monday on the NBC sci-fi drama Heroes.

Desi-licious

The most heated debate [by critics] centers on “Heroes,” NBC’s bold new drama about everyday people who discover they have extraordinary powers (one can teleport, another can fly, a third is impervious to bodily injury) and ultimately band together to fight evil. (Think “X-Men” meets “Lost.”) Our panelists are deeply divided on this show — they either love it or seem to be disillusioned with the genre. [link]

Looks like with this show, NBC will be finally be able to tap into the ‘sci-fi drama for Gen X’ market that had been previously cornered by the soon to be defunct WB. As for my new television crush with the delicious desi accent — it is Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays the Indian geneticist turned New York cabbie Mohinder Suresh.

A tenured genetics professor at the the University of Madras. His father Chandra was also a professor until he disappeared from India and the accredited academic world years ago after raving about a “global event’ that would change mankind. He thought his answers would be in New York… Chandra was murdered. Mohinder moves to New York to find out why his father was killed. [link]

Boys, you can have your Lakshmi-the-cooking-show-host because us girls will have Ramamurthy-the-geneticist- professor-who-will-solve-the-mystery. The Heroes site has delicious videos online to be sure to get you addicted well in advances of the Sept. 25th premiere. If you are a fan of the intrigue that was behind Lost (first season), or a comic book geek for superhuman abilities, then this show is sure to be your cup of chai. Join me in my new Monday night obsession, as I’m sure other female mutineers across the nation will be sure to do, in a swoon worthy weekly television event.

Continue reading →

There’s now a Hindi-language version of Sesame Street being broadcast on Indian TV, called Galli Galli Sim Sim. It’s filmed in Delhi, and it appears to be the second twenty-seventh adaptation of the Sesame Street idea . And no, I don’t know what the heck Laura Bush is doing there.

After the jump, you’ll find a Youtube link with a clip that I think you’ll enjoy. But first, an introduction to the “muppet” characters on Galli Galli Sim Sim:

*Boombah, a hedonistic lion who believes he is descended from one of India’s historic royal families. Coincidentally, Boombah bares a resemblance to Goleo VI from the 2006 Fifa World Cup, a puppet constructed by The Jim Henson Company.
* Chamki, a schoolgirl dressed in the uniform of an Indian government school
* Googly, Chamki’s best friend, named after the cricket delivery and with a cricket ball-like nose
* Aanchoo, a storyteller who is transported to other places when she sneezes (link)

Any show with a hedonistic lion is all right with me. I also like both “Googly” and “Aanchoo” as character names. Though I don’t think they’ve got anything yet to compete with the name “Snuffleupagus”. Continue reading →

I don’t mean to go all ‘jumping jack‘ on you at such an early date with craptastic image quality and poor sourcing to boot but these circumstances cannot be helped.

Take a long look at the ANTM Cycle 7 contestants and tell me you haven’t been this excited since Cycle 3:

Name: Anchal, Occupation: Sales Clerk, Age: 19, Hometown: Homestead, Fla. [Link]

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Blood pressure normalizing. Continue reading →

The Kumars at No. 42 will be back on BBC America starting this Friday at 9pm ET for its sixth season. Personally, I am looking forward to it because it’s the first time since the show started being broadcast in the U.S. that I actually get the BBC America channel in my cable lineup.

North London’s most famous and eccentric Indian family is back and would like to welcome its U.S. viewers into their home for an all-new season of celebrity chat. Think sitcom meets talk show with a little improv thrown in for good measure!

On the guest list this season are David Hasselhoff, George Hamilton, Elvis Costello, Alice Cooper, Joanna Lumley, Jane Seymour and Zoë Wanamaker. The Kumars have indulged their spoiled son, Sanjeev by installing a state-of-the-art TV studio in their backyard where he attempts to host a talk show. (link)

I’m not sure who some of those people are (brit-celebrities, I presume), but certainly it should be interesting to see what they do with/to David Hasselhoff and Alice Cooper in particular.

Sepia Mutiny (mostly via Manish) has posted on the doings of Sanjeev Bhaskar (OBE), Meera Syal, and company many times, so this is more of a heads-up post than anything new for long-time readers. There are of course innumerable Goodness Gracious Me clips of varying hilarity (GGM was Bhaskar’s earlier gig) available on Youtube. However, despite the ready availability of GGM on the internet, it’s odd that the only sketches from the more recent Kumars at No. 42 one finds online are on the BBC website. (Perhaps the BBC is more vigilant in patrolling its current content than Comedy Central?)

Incidentally, Meera Syal, at age 45, is a new mum, an experience which, she says, leaves her feeling “really knackered.” (She has a 13 year old child from a previous marriage.) Continue reading →

I’ll freely admit it. I enjoy reality TV. The obsession began during summer vacation in 1992 when I would sneak peaks at the first installment of MTVÂ’s The Real World. My mom hated the show (she despised MTV), but I thought the concept of getting to watch Julie, Eric, Kevin, Norm, Becky, Andre, and Heather B, regular people live their daily lives was amazing. To my 13-year old eyes, reality tv was an easily accessible documentary.

Well, the genre has come a long way since then, and has even taken a couple of steps back, but tonight ABC premieres what I like to call network television’s homage to the Real World for people who actually grew up watching The Real World, “One Ocean View.” The show, produced by Real World Producer Jonathan Murray and Joey Carson,

“revolves around a summer share beach house where eleven, attractive, single, career-driven New Yorkers flee Manhattan each Friday to escape the soaring city temperatures for a different kind of heat. One Ocean View is a show about people old enough to have real jobs, issues and baggage, but still young enough to leave all that behind and have a great time. Fun, flings and nights filled with romance heat up as the days grow shorter and the pressure builds to make this a summer to remember”(link.)

More importantly, this show marks the reality tv debut of a couple of semi-professional soccer playing, organic-pizza eating, twin sisters, Radha (l) and Miki (r) Agrawal. From some googling (thanks tvgasm) and their bios, which conveniently read almost the same, we learn that the two were quite popular at Cornell, where they both played soccer and were in the stage version of Cyrano De Bergerac, and quit investment banking to open up an organic pizza parlor in New YorkÂ’s upper east side. Apparently, the pizza parlor, which has been featured on the food network, grew out of MikiÂ’s lactose intolerance. I canÂ’t say the show is going to be good, in fact everything I have read and seen about it indicates quite the opposite, but hey, it canÂ’t be worse than divya and priyaÂ’s sweet sixteen/graduation party. One Ocean View premieres tonight on ABC at 10 pm (EDT). Continue reading →