The Rage of Cummings II: Economic Boogaloo*

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At times, it must be done. It simply must.

What is “it”? Honest reflection. Meditation. The potentially uncomfortable exercise of asking difficult questions…questions like…”Is Neel Kashkari a CHUMP?“

Elijah Cummings, breakin’ it down Bodymore-style. A friend of mine whom I had forwarded that clip to told me that Cummings is a genuinely nice guy, which makes it all the more hilarious for him to be the one questioning our boy Neel. Find a previous SM post about the sacrificial lamb Kashkari by our Vinod, here.

(Hmm. I thought the name of the author of that ThinkProgress piece sounded familiar…then I realized it was erstwhile WLPer/reader Satyam, whom I was introduced to by mutineer Harin at the Kal Penn event held in support of our President-elect. 🙂 I love how accomplished and brainy you smurfs mutineers are.) Continue reading →

The Jury Finds Anand Jon Guilty.

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Today, in Los Angeles, Anand Jon was convicted of rape and sexual assault.

A Beverly Hills fashion designer was found guilty today of sexually assaulting seven girls and young women, capping a two-month trial that offered a sordid portrait of the fashion world.
The jury of six men and six women deliberated for seven days before finding Anand Jon Alexander guilty of one count of rape and 15 counts of sexual assault and other charges.
The designer, who goes by the professional name of Anand Jon, sat silently in court wearing a light gray suit and yellow tie as the court clerk announced the jury’s verdicts. Behind him, his sister sobbed as she sat with friends and family in the crowded downtown Los Angeles courtroom. [LAT]

Obviously, the culprit– how I love that especially brown word– saw things differently. A charming snippet of a screen shot from one of his official sites, which clearly explains how Jon sees himself is below:

Anand Jon Home Page.png


Some of you may remember Jon from his memorable stint on the blink-tastic reality program America’s Next Not-Quite-Top Model, the show which elevates women (Eva Panni-ford, I’m looking at your unpleasant kundi) who are too short or too old to succeed in the industry to…mediocre heights. On ANnqTM, Anand was an utter douche to fellow Malayalee Julie Ann Titus during season three. But I digress.

Jon, 34, a rising designer who had dressed socialite Paris Hilton and singer Janet Jackson before his arrest last year, faces possible life imprisonment after a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found him guilty on 16 criminal counts.
The crimes involved lewd acts on a child, rape and sexual battery in assaults between 2001 and 2007 against nine would-be models aged between 14 and 21. He was also convicted of possessing child pornography. [Reuters]

Continue reading →

Great Expectations for Slumdog Millionaire

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The Oscar buzz has already started and it’s only been one day since “Slumdog Millionaire” was released. So far, the new offering from British director Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting fame) has been referred to by The New York Times as a film that “could be the breakthrough work that leads the world to focus on the genre …of Parallel Cinema, a more personal narrative type of film like Mira Nair’s art house hit “Monsoon Wedding.” slumdog2.jpg

And, Roger Ebert predicts the film will win an Best Picture Oscar nomination, calling it “a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time [whose] universal appeal will present the real India to millions of moviegoers for the first time.”

When you read gushing reviews like Ebert’s, you can’t help but walk into the movie hall with high expectations, wondering whether a film can really live up to all the hype. The answer is: Yes.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is being billed as a film about “first love, determination, and realizing your destiny.” Not quite the pitch that you’d expect from a mainstream film about a kid from an Indian slum. This is a film that will surprise viewers who think they’re going in to watch a movie about India’s tremendous poverty and rich-poor gap. It switches swiftly between scenes that take you into an India that is at once poor and wealthy, moral and crime-ridden, developed and undeveloped, hopeful and disappointing. And, though the story is laced with a trace of Bollywood romance, goondas, and some implausability, it is for the most part, as Roger Ebert says, “real.” Add to that a soundtrack by A.R. Rahman and Danny Boyle’s directorial talent for bringing India’s sensory overload and motion to life without the typical exoticism or “oh those poor things” mentality and you have a winner.

More of my review below the fold. Continue reading →

“Dim-Wit”: A.Q. Khan Goes Ballistic on Musharraf

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Thanks to Sepoy over at Chapati Mystery, who translated A.Q. Khan’s first Urdu language column for the Daily Jang. The column has one of the harshest paragraphs on Pervez Musharraf I’ve ever seen in print:

Our bureaucracy and sycophants play a large role in making these false gods into God. Musharraf is F.A. pass (high-school equivalent), a qualification which we use to employ attendants. By a mistaken promotion, he became our commander-in-chief. It nauseated us to see such a dim-wit lecture the highly educated and the experts on economics, education, foreign policy, commerce and industry. And they would bow in front of him and wag their heads and exclaim at his intelligence. The way of an intelligent ruler (or Dictator) is that he doesn’t choose his companions on the basis of their flattery but on the basis of their expertise and their knowledge; he listens to their advice; and gives them all the help for the completion of important projects. There was this rumor going around about Musharraf that he complains to his Army friends, “I am saddened to see that if uneducated people cannot understand my arguments, it is ok, but even educated people cannot follow me.” The reason is obvious. The ability to pull the trigger of a gun and the ability to make an intelligent statement are clearly different. (link)

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did; I found it strangely therapeutic to read. (For those who read Urdu, you can see the original here. Out of curiosity, since I’ve let my beginners’ Urdu slide since last December, what is the Urdu word being translated here as “dim-wit”?)

In the column you’ll also find Khan’s version of the story of how he got involved with communicating information about nuclear weaponry with countries like North Korea (according to this column, his main agenda was acquiring ballistic missile technology; he doesn’t say what he gave North Korea in return…). And he heaps praise on both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.

Just to be clear: A. Q. Khan is not to taken as trustworthy or believable (in case you’ve forgotten who he is, read the primer). But it’s all the same interesting to see him emerge with this stuff now that Musharraf is gone. Continue reading →

Anoop Josan reprazent.

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Anoop.jpeg

I think mutineer Fuerza Dulce said it best when she emailed us this tip:

A brown girl fighting for the world cup? Sweet.

Word!

Hold up, hey–I have to write an entire post? Truly, 20-year old midfielder Anoop Josan is so fantastic that I shouldn’t have to, but FINE. Be that way. Just EXPECT me to paste stuff, why don’t you…

From the official University of Texas, El Paso athletic site:

UTEP junior midfield Anoop Josan has passed through the final roster cuts for Team Canada, and will help her country fight for the championship at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Chile 2008 from Nov. 19-Dec. 7. The placement to the squad will afford Josan the opportunity to showcase her talents on one of the highest stages in the sport.
The native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who is redshirting this year in order to compete at the prestigious event, is no stranger to the international stage. She was a member of the Canadian Olympic Development Team that won the 2007 International Soccer Festival. Furthermore, she has worked out and gained experience at the National Training Center. She also competed at the 2005 adidas cup as a member of the U-18 national team and for the U-17 development team.
“I am so proud of Anoop making the Canadian Under-20 World Cup team,” UTEP head coach Kevin Cross said. “It is a dream come true for her, and she has worked her whole life for this opportunity to represent her country. Not only is she representing Team Canada, but she is also representing the UTEP Soccer program very well.” [UTEP]

Oh, she’s representing all right. GO AJ! <—That would be her nickname. A nickname I think very highly of. Ahem. 😉

I discovered that bit of Anoop Josan-trivia here, where I ganked the rest of this disjointed information:

…both of her parents were born in India… grew up playing volleyball, tennis, soccer… enjoys watching movies… speaks English and Punjabi… [link]

And once she’s done with the wonderful world cup?

Josan will once again take the pitch for the Miners in 2009, and Cross’ charges will certainly be glad to have her back. She has been an instrumental member of the squad since venturing to the Sun City. In 2006 Josan tallied the second-highest single-season assist total (14) in program history on the way to earning freshman All-America honors. Last year, Josan started 18 of 21 matches. She racked up three goals and three assists for nine points.[UTEP]

Random aside #1- Before this story, I had never encountered a girl named Anoop. I like it. I like that it’s different. Unexpected. Well, to me, anyway. Less random aside #2- brown girls who play soccer are teh hawt. Thanks for the tip, FD! Continue reading →

Coming Up Kamala

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kamala_harris.jpg Election Day may have only been seven days ago, but here on the West Coast San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has her eye on 2010.

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, one of Barack Obama’s earliest California backers, announced today that she is running for California attorney general in 2010…She would replace Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, the former Oakland mayor and California governor, who is expected to run for governor in 2010.[latimes]

Harris’ announcement was tempered with one, arguably big, caveat: Should current Attorney General Jerry Brown not run for governor in 2010, she would not pursue that office.

Should Harris not run for Attorney General it is believed that she would readily accept a political appointment as perhaps a deputy attorney general with the U.S. Justice Department. Harris has been a near tireless supporter of President-elect Barack Obama and is believed to be a short list of people Obama is considering for appointments to the federal department.[politickerca]

Kamala Harris is mixed race, thus her current position gives her three firsts — she is the first female District Attorney to be elected in San Francisco; the first African American elected as District Attorney in California; and the first Indian American elected to the position in the United States. If she wins in 2010, she would be breaking even more glass ceilings.

She would be the state’s first female attorney general and the first, in decades, who started out as a courtroom prosecutor.[latimes]

In December 2003, Harris was elected as the first woman District Attorney in San Francisco’s history, and as the first African American woman in California to hold the office. She was overwhelmingly reelected to a second term in November 2007.[politickerca]

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is a breast cancer researcher. Her sister, Maya Harris, is a vice president at the Ford Foundation. Her brother-in-law, D. Anthony West, an attorney at the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster, is among the Californians who could receive an appointment in the Obama administration.[latimes]

Kamala sent out a message to her supporters yesterday including the following…

“Now, I want to take that same energy, innovation and change to the state level. I’ve spent my entire professional life in the trenches as a courtroom prosecutor. And I can tell you from the frontlines, we need tough new ideas for strengthening our criminal justice system in California. As Attorney General, I will fight for all Californians – from distressed homeowners to families whose neighborhoods are under siege. In the coming months, I will detail new ideas on how we can fight street gangs, go after subprime lenders and others responsible for the financial crisis, and fundamentally reform our prison system.”[caprog]

Good luck, Kamala. This is definitely a race that we will be keeping our eye on. Continue reading →

Top Chef is on in less than four hours…

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radhika.png

…and zomg, there’s a brown girl among this season’s contestants! Squeee!

Yes, you read right, someone Desi is competing on one of the most addictive reality shows out there. Her name is Radhika Desai and I’m twitching with excitement, because as of last season, I love that show–despite the number of faux-hawks its contestants sport. Ms. Desai, thankfully, does not have a faux-hawk. Yet. (Stay strong, gf!)

Radhika, a 28-year old Execuitve Chef (at the Between Boutique Café & Lounge) from Chicago, loves the show as much as I do:

Known to friends as “Rad”, Desai is the first Indian-American chef to compete on the show. She’s a hardcore fan of “TC”: “I’ve seen every episode at least three times, if not more,” Desai told Chicago Magazine in October. [metromix]

Bravo makes it easy to be that dedicated. They seem to have all of four shows on at a time, so each episode of that meager roster of programs gets trotted out repeatedly. Por ejemplo, if you miss tonight’s season premier, don’t fret, because it’s on again at 11:15pm…and 1:30am…2:45am…9pm on Thursday…etc. But back to why you should DVR one of those offerings:

Radhika currently works as the Executive Chef at Between Boutique Café & Lounge in Chicago. A first generation Indian American, Radhika was born in Ohio and raised in an eclectic Indian-tradition home. Trained in classic French and Indian cuisine, she has worked alongside notable chef Vikas Khanna and has staged at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. She has traveled the world over learning new techniques and flavor profiles and brings spice and bold flavors to the table combined with grace and restraint. Her favorite dish to prepare is spicy chicken and potato curry with cumin scented rice with clarified butter and mint. She describes her cooking style as globally eclectic with a huge spoonful of love. [BravoTV]

Born in Ohio? I’d call her second-generation, not first, but potato, urulai kizhangu. I’ve often muttered to myself about how a Desi contestant might respond to certain quick-fire challenges or TC assignments, since other chefs have drawn on their respective ethnic backgrounds to create dishes. I cannot WAIT to see if Radhika might get down with some brown. Judging from the menu at tonight’s viewing party at her restaurant, I think we’re in for an interesting season: Continue reading →

Rushdie on Religion and the Imagination

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Last Wednesday night, I had the chance to sit in on a fascinating conversation on “Religion and the Imagination” with Salman Rushdie. The author of Midnight’s Children [soon to be adapted for film by Deepa Mehta], The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and East, West was, of course, the perfect person to launch Columbia University’s newly founded Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life. The Institute’s mission is to “bring together scholars and students in various fields to reflect and respond to the issues brought about by the “resurgence of religion and, with it, religious and cultural intolerance and conflict [that] are emerging as powerful forces in the new century.” Rushdie2.jpg

Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Literature, introduced Rushdie as someone who has been “fighting religious intolerance with humor, proving that we can fight moral seriousness with humor.”

The stage in Columbia’s always inspiring (and very crowded) Low Library Rotunda was set simply with two arm chairs–one for Rushdie, who was was all suited up, and the other for his “interviewer” Gauri Viswanathan, Professor of Religion and Comparative Literature, dressed as always, in a sari. The conversation was an intellectual one peppered with doses of Rushdie’s subtle (and sometimes pointed) humor and the topics of conversation ranged from everything to his relationship with religion and his hopes for robust religious debate to his thoughts on Obama’s win earlier that week.

“We don’t live in a world of drama, dance, and love… We live in a world of death, destruction, and bombs… I’m hoping something happened on Tuesday that will change that,” Rushdie said, referring to the election of Barack Obama. “I have no utopian tendencies. I’m good at seeing what I don’t like. But this week, I do feel optimistic,” Rushdie laughed. “It’s an odd feeling, one I’m not familiar with. The last time I felt like this was after the election of Tony Blair and look what happened!” Rushdie paused as the audience chuckled at his dark skepticism, then added, “ I hope it’s not that way this time. Actually … I don’t think it is.”

More on the evening’s highlights below the fold. Continue reading →

“The imaginary flight has the children captivated.”

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It’s a ritual in my family: every evening at 7pm, we sit down with milky cups of kappi and we watch NBC’s Nightly News. Now that I live 3,000 miles to the right, I’ll be honest, I’m somewhat lazy and so the Bru/Taster’s Choice usually stays in the kitchen cupboards, but thanks to the magic of DVR, I never miss Brian Williams’ slightly nasal take on the day. For that– and a hundred other things, right now– I am grateful.

I cried while watching that segment, on the news. I cried again when I tracked down the clip and embedded it. I was so overcome with the awareness of how different my life has been, as well as by how excited these children were, to take imaginary flights on an old, grounded plane. Remember that? When our lives were just as shaped by what we imagined as by what is? When there was hardly a difference?

I’ve never had the sort of glamorous (or arduous…take your pick) job which requires any sort of air travel so I still like airports and airplanes. I always have. When I was 3.5, and we first moved to the Bay from Southern California, I used to beg my Father to take me to SFO, so I could watch the planes take off. A year later, when I went to India for the second time, I was elated to be on the plane vs. in the car, watching them, from afar. The simple idea of being in the sky thrilled me; the fact that I was transported to another world, one which reduced my parents to crying children themselves, only reinforced my sense of wonder at what an airplane could do.

We all have our individual reminders of how everything is utterly different, post-9/11. Almost all of us are now kindly “invited” to be actors in security theater– but that’s not when I’m hit with the “it’ll never be the same”-realization. I don’t feel that prickly, undeniable sadness when I’m putting my shoes back on after going through security or when I’m forced to remain in my seat for the final 30 minutes before landing at DCA. I feel it when I see the cockpit doors. Continue reading →

Easing Tension Through Music

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The other day I was looking on YouTube for the famous version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” from the old Bollywood film, Purab aur Paschim, to amuse my kid. Instead, I found this:

It’s not just done for comedy, I think (though it is clearly meant to be funny for a South Indian TV audience). Actually, having the same English words applied to the different classical Indian musical styles is an instructive way of seeing the differences in the styles.

(Incidentally, what are the first two styles she uses?) Continue reading →