Category Archives: Video

Natasha is so twee! [Updated]

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I heart Bat For Lashes, which is half-brown. 😉 Like the blog I am currently so addicted to, I have a massive girl-crush on Natasha Khan. This is complicated, and not just because I’m straight; it means that even though I also have ole voice of the beehive on my iPod, I’m totally going to be a bitch to her, since she is also up for a Mercury Prize, and I want my Natasha to win (no, not because she’s desi, because she rules):

Kind of like how Chan Marshall is Cat Power, Natasha Kahn is Bat for Lashes, a British singer/songwriter and visual artist whose album Fur and Gold made the short list for the 2007 Mercury Prize (but will most likely lose to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black). Kahn is beginning to make waves on this side of the pond. She’s touring the U.S. right now with her all-girl live show lineup. [Jezebel]

The line about squash in her bio keeps summoning “The Royal Tenenbaums” to my memory, I’m random like that:

Bat for Lashes is the stage name of Natasha Khan (born 25 October 1979), a Brighton-based songwriter.
Born to a Pakistani father, part of the eminent family of squash-playing Khans, and an English mother, her early childhood was spent travelling the world following her father who trained the Pakistani squash team, summers in Pakistan, and the rest of the time in Hertfordshire[1][2]. She had a strict religious upbringing until her parents separated, when she was eleven years old. [viki]

Her next four Amreekan shows are in Chicago, Minneapolis, SF and LA. Sigh. Why couldn’t she come to Hollywood for ugly people? Oh, and FYI, she is SO not a creepy Lily Allen. That is like, sooo mean.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go cry, which is what I always do after watching this video, but only because it reminds me of my beloved BMX, which got stolen when I was seven. That and those stuffed animal heads haunt my nightmares. Continue reading →

Would Apu let him get away with it?

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Super cute high jinks, brought to you by DJ Drrrty Poonjabi, the BBC and the letter S. 🙂

A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps. The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos…
Shop assistant Sriaram Nagarajan said: “Everyone is amazed by the seagull. For some reason he only takes that one particular kind of crisps.”
The bird first swooped in Aberdeen’s Castlegate earlier this month and made off with the 55p crisps, and is now a regular.

Look, he even shares!

Once outside, the crisps are ripped open and the seagull is joined by other birds.

Clever birdie…

Mr Nagarajan said: “He’s got it down to a fine art. He waits until there are no customers around and I’m standing behind the till, then he raids the place.
“At first I didn’t believe a seagull was capable of stealing crisps. But I saw it with my own eyes and I was surprised. He’s very good at it.
“He’s becoming a bit of a celebrity. Seagulls are usually not that popular but Sam is a star because he’s so funny.”

Happy Friday, Mutineers. Join us next week, when Sam is kidnapped by Britney, and trained to retrieve funyuns and altoids, y’all (for Sean Preston, of course). Continue reading →

I guess we’ve got the blues.

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this whole week has been heavy, can we have some light reading please? has there been any coverage on Ash and Shek? or has their marriage ended in hell? [link]

You are right, it has been a somber sort of week. Sometimes, it’s okay to marinate in that for a bit before we pick ourselves up off the floor and throw out that bottle of whiskey. 😉

Via an anonmyous tipster on the news tab, who wrote:

the finger picking ,the slide, this is a masterful bluesy rendition of an old pathos filled malayalam song

I’ve never heard anything like it (not that I’m conversant with either blues OR Mallu music). Continue reading →

Did he or didn’t he?

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An anonymous tipster alerted us via the News tab to a possible racist/scandalous/nebulous slip of Michael Moore’s tongue. I sat through the entire, excruciating 10+ minute video at Breitbart.tv, only to discover that the controversial part is at the end; the video I posted below features the last eleven seconds of the entire segment and contains the relevant moment.


Link: sevenload.com

Well? What do you think? Racist or immature? Mispronounced or intentionally mangled? Or is this much ado about nothing? Comments on Breitbart were hot, heated and divided about whether or not Michael Moore started to channel Apu. What say you?

Continue reading →

Kumar Wants You to REGISTER

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Meanwhile, that Sunkrish Bala is a slice of adorable, isn’t he? I wouldn’t kick him…off the couch…where we would be demurely seated on opposite sides. And not touching. With vada on the coffee table as our witness. And our parents there, too. Ah, I digress.

But while I’m digressing, you should know that “Notes from the Underbelly“, which SB starred on, was one of my favorite shows of the past season. 🙂 Go on with your bad self, Sunkrish, whose name leaves me puzzled. And let me just say that I heart you more, for trying to help Vinay and others like him. “I’m registered…are you?” should become our new pickup line at the clubs, because I would’ve hurled my digits at THAT, for sure.

I was proud to see several of you get swabbed at the last Subcontinental Drift event. Drives are still happening all over the country.

There is still time– one of you could be the one. Continue reading →

Just when you think you’ve seen it all

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I’m utterly speechless.

One of YouTube’s commentors tries to explain things –

This is a rite of passage in India. It has not fangs and it’s mouth is sewn shut. Also, it has no constricting force so it’s less dangerous then a dog or cat.

… And discussion on urban-mythbusting website snopes.com seems to concur. Any mutineers have insight here? I mean it’s one thing to teach a baby not to fear *this* snake but rue the day he should start fearing all snakes.

Continue reading →

“I’m Registered, Are You?”

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There were several opportunities to join the NMDP’s database today; how many of you got swabbed? Tomorrow, there are drives in Fremont, Torrance and Cerritos– leave a comment and let us know if you went. More drives are planned, all over the country, during the next few weeks. Find more information about that here.

This reminds me of voting; it involves registering and we say we’re going to do it, but then we don’t always follow through. It’s one thing to be aware of Vinay’s situation, quite another to have actually done something about it. Don’t you want to be in the latter camp? 🙂 Continue reading →

Why Does Caste Matter to US?

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I think I found this after reading an email sent out on the ASATA listserv; it asked for participants for a survey on caste and Sikhism. Since I’m interested in both, I decided to take a quick look. The first notes wafted tentatively through my iBook’s wee speakers and I smiled: Van Halen. I knew exactly what kind of video this would be. We used to make ones just like it for JSA‘s Fall and Spring “State”, usually to open the conference. Well, it was either that or we’d blare Public Enemy‘s “Fight the Power“…

After watching it, I was moved, because I felt like so much of it was applicable to all of us, not just Sikhs. Someone Malayalee needs to make one of these, stat, I muttered…and then I realized that they didn’t. Maybe they should just watch this, I thought and that’s when I knew it belonged here, in a space where it would get the attention it rightly deserves.

Ravidasia // Khatri // Jatt // Tarkhan…The labels that divide us are endless. Caste, gender, class, and power tear apart our Qaum, our Gurdwaras, and our Pariwars. How do we overcome? How do we forge unity without silencing voices? [Jakara]

My closest friend in college was a Sikh girl from Fremont, who happened to be Tarkhan. My boyfriend from Freshman through Junior year was Jatt. So were all of his friends. They made fun of her when she wasn’t around and ignored her when she was. This baffled coconut-flavored me. “Why are you so mean to her?” I’d ask him, over and over. “She’s nice.”

“Because she’s…Tarkhan. They’re lower class. And so backwards– didn’t you say her parents tried to get her married when she was 17, that they didn’t even want to send her to college? Who the hell does that?”
“That’s not her fault, why are you taking it out on her?”
“Look, it’s a Sikh thing…it’s probably difficult to understand. Don’t you have a sorority thing to go to?”

::

I’m amazed at how often caste shows up on our comment threads, among second gen kids who should know better. Then I am humbled as I remember that I’m complicit in this too, when I tease my best friend about doing TamBrahm stuff or when I embroider stories from bygone UC Davis days with an extra adjective which probably isn’t necessary:

“Well a lot of students were from the Central Valley or Yuba City…so a good number of the desis I befriended were Jatt Sikh.”

It’s so insidious, the way this need to inform others of where we are in some dated hierarchy persists. Right now, we need to ask ourselves…why? Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Something to Talk About” Edition

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It’s Friday, which means another work week is over and it is time for some flash fiction-fabricating.

Between the last post I wrote, the edifying discussion on hair which spontaneously occurred when we failed to identify a brown model, AGAIN (Sorry, Sree) and the most precious Gmail I’ve received in weeks (which contained this query-via-wideo from a four-year-old) well, The Papaya, he is playing on my mind. One of you messaged me regarding your surprise that I hadn’t voted for Sanjaya, a secret I revealed here, but American Idol has nothing to do with my passion for papaya. I sweat him because he’s so kind and ingenuous, because of his sweet nature.

I’m thinking in particular about Papaya’s last performance (available in the video above), which took him from tears to a tiny bit of triumph when he customized the chorus of Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About” to “other than haaaaaaaair”. That was the moment when my affection for him became solid, when I realized that it wasn’t just idle amusement; he had put up with so much and he was still smiling in his typical, good-natured way. I was amazed, mostly because I’ve never been a fan of this song, but also because he seemed so poised for a teenager. “My hero,” I thought. All those detractors piling on him in addition to the biggest hater of them all—Simon–plus the blatantly racist slant to much of the criticism he received (uh…where were the anti-Italian comments?) equaled humility and niceness, not bitterness or resentment. When I grow up, I want to be a papaya.

::

This week, write about gossip, the blues, papaya, fanjayas or continue the week’s trend and 55 away about hair, ‘pooed, oiled or otherwise. If none of this tickles your knickers, pick your own plot to flash some fiction with, but please play along anyway. I’m sure you have something to talk about, how about packaging it in a mere fifty-five words? Continue reading →