Igazu

Instead of making mixtapes for a certain girl, I should probably be finishing up some homework and end my quest for this amorphous wonder. Something is seeping its way into my head and I'm trying to grasp and contain it, one soluble mystery at a time.

There are other issues affecting my hazy mindstate as well, some so palpable and determined that I'm taking my time and hastening myself to the great drawing board with great care so as not to gnore them but to ready myself. They'll have their day; now is the time that assertions are prioritized and read with great clarity, then the catharsis of my idealism will be met with the aloof and confident demeanor of a toddler who has broken into his first sprint, not knowing that the edge of the precarious kitchen counter is his destiny.

I peer out on the road and every little flash of light catches my eye. I quickly look at my phone, resting on my pocket, gazing with a dementia and desperation not unlike my daily appearance. Sadly, it's but a figment of the great avenue and each traffic light bounces off glass and automobile till they reach my star crossed eyes with much confusion, on my behalf. She has not called. She will probably never call, why do I care? Who is this benign tumor that has lodged herself in the permanence of my memory, begging to be remembered but so quick to depart? They all say women are the malady of your existence. I don't know how to operate a can opener let alone accept advice from similar sages who handle machinery with a carelessness only known to a professional. They don't know me. What advice can they have for me?

Then I realize. Generalizations are God's way of whispering quietly in your ear, one blue collar prophet to another. My collar may be white but my balls are blue. We have alot in common, and I smile and demand another low calorie beer...

Can't meet God with a beer gut now can I? Wouldn't be prudent.

Like an old friend and into the camera

I always struggle to find an image to headline my posts. Sometimes I don't post at all because I am afraid my artifice isn't working to my advantage. Typically I spend at least 15 minutes entering in some of the most random words on Google Image and usually choose the most ominous or something that would make someone think I'm a good judge of aesthetic criteria or art or something just as chock full of bird shit. Speaking of "artists", have you ever hung out a fucking art show? I can't stand it. Just a bunch of self-conscious douches doing their best to overtly express their dislike. It used to be the opposite; the wannabe-downtown crowd would put on their 'Oh' faces and feign astonishment at every crooked, whimsical, 'lo-fi' piece of codswaullip they laid their eyes on.

I'm not trying to enter the vortex of negativity but isn't that why I want to enter journalism? To pilot my own little boat of shit-heaving further and further into the nebulous, the lucrative career that is slander? I mean, things are always going to suck. You're always going to have some keyboard prophet whose convinced of his demi-god status trying to forcibly insert some of his pseudo revelations down the throat of your early morning, coffee drinking, 9-5ing average schmaverage "convinced of your own inadequacy" self? I'm not so ok with that, but it would be way better than being a chiropractor and learning that my "medicine" might not be as surefire as I may think.

I'm going to Spain supposedly in July. I say supposedly because nothing is confirmed till the money is withdrawn. As of yet, I'm still building the capital necessary to sponsor such an adventure; I look forward to the next few months of second rate piss-anting that I agree to take on. I'm like that guy in Haiku Tunnel, except not fat, white, Jewish, gay, and with a devotion to poor, kitschy (oh my god, I didn't) Havana Joe shirts turned inside out. I might take up a word processing job as well...

Whoa, tangent tangent. Someone hasn't gotten their prescribed dosage of useless banter. Someone told me I over analyze; I was worried they'd say I'm too self conscious. Perhaps if my dad hadn't insisted on watching Woody Allen movies circa his Mia Farrow era when I was in the crib things wouldn't be like this.

He Would Have Understood...

"I don't know what love is and I don't think I do, but if you want to marry me, fine."

Race, much like ontology, is a tiresome exercise that many like myself choose to participate in. Unfortunately, some would find it to their advantage to be made aware of their Achilles tendon and all its prophesy fulfilling capabilities.

Sometimes I feel like black is the new white. Sometimes I feel like rappers are just slave owners incarnate. Chris Rock mentioned this stratification; wealth is not subjective. Hydraulics, spinnahs, and all the gold to fill the Grand Canyon in place of the gap between your toofs is just a cute twist on an old trick.

These blogger characters sure do get defensive, btw. I've noticed an interested recurring trend among these hyperlink nerds; vague authoritarian verbal judo. It's semi-rad. I'm thinking of compiling a set of quotes from these vanguards of nonsense.

I Lub Me Some White Gals

I know, I know. A few paragraphs below I was on some tirade against assimilation or whatever. Whatever is right, bitch. I coughed up 20 bones and bought myself a get-high adventure. I drank NyQuil, ventilated the spinach, and found myself in the unusual position of feeling simultaneously awkward and ecstatic. That's my life--gregarious if not always awkward and ecstatic.

The DVD is definitely worth your hard earned lunch money. Even the menu is entertaining; you find yourself staring at the screen for far too long and Mr.Penn will chide you to make a goddamn decision. The special features include interviews with all the cast members, deleted scenes, commentary, a music video, and some other stuff that you can't possibly expect me to recount to you right now.

I went to a party in the Sunset last year, right before the movie hit the big screen. Alot of the people attending the party were Asian--Indian, too! It's funny how 'Asia' seemingly denotes only those east of Calcutta. The rest of us are nationals. They are continentals. "Ah, it's all the same..."

Everyone at the party agreed that the movie was going to be awesome. Mind you, these weren't your average stoners. These were Stanford graduates, playwrights, and of course, a few stoners, who happened to be of Caucasian descent (we love you anyway!)

When your father actually likes Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock at the same time and is more excited than you when he finds out the stoner epic is available on DVD, that tells you that perhaps it's not so bad after all.

Maybe.

Mayn Dikhana Aap Waris

I just watched The Life Aquatic for the second time. It was a solid C+ movie, which isn't to say it was particularly awful nor particularly capitvating; it was a little too late however. Anderson's movies rely so much on the subtleties involved in creating a categoric specificity that I sometimes find myself lost in nuance as opposed to storyline. The plot and storyline appears at times secondary to environment, high brow humor, top bill casting and outrageous dialogue that manages to quietly find its niche amongst the many underrated comedies of the late 20th century. In this case, critics tend to cite quite the opposite claiming his movies to be nothing more than trite mental masturbation, raving about the legions of hipsters and their ill-advised peers with their 'coolness factor' halos hanging brilliantly above their purposely teathered haircuts and ironic size-too-small tshirts. Who's the bigger scenester?

More importantly; who cares?

Obviously, I fell victim to nuance. In this case, I was more interested in the character of one Waris Ahluwalia aka Vikram Ray, the cameraman aboard Zissou's motley crew. In reality (wherever that may be for a man of such stature), Waris makes his living as a New York socialite, a resident of Chelsea, an member of the upper etchalon of high society that is riding the wave of posterity for all to lust after and idolize. He makes his own line of jewelry I've heard. He's managed to find romance. It's interesting to see an Indian playing an Indian, but not playing it with any self inflicted whimsicality or stereotype. Not unlike his Sardaji compadre Kal Penn (think "Harold and...") or the honorable Ben Kingsley himself, Waris manages to squeeze his lanky frame into one of the more memorable and popular movies of the last 20 years and making his Indian-ness well known. But unlike Penn or Kingsley, Waris shares the dubious honor of actually keeping his own name and not making any attempts to Anglo-cize or tamper with it.

I know--Waris who? So what's my point? Well, for once we get too see Indians playing themselves without shame or discomfort. Aside from a teeny handful of American movies that presented India sans 7-11 jokes or taxi references, the youth of today still see it fitting to ridicule and giggle at all things Desi. The Quik-E mart and the ever vigilant Apu? No problem. Kumars on 42, the BBC segment? Hysterically appalling. It's interesting to see how the star of "Bend It Like Beckham", aka Parminder Nagra was completely overlooked by Hollywood whilst Keira Knightley has been exploding. This is of course due to several differing reasons, I'm sure but it's funny to note that Nagra's first prominent role since BLB in America has been on 'ER' playing....a doctor.

Black America has proven that ol'Willy, what with all his chicken finger licking goodness and maladjusted vernacular, is offenseive, even in jest.

Why can't we Indians do the same?

Evidently, Waris may have attempted something.

The Angry Asian Man fights for us all.

Mayra Hamaysha Kay-Liay Khandaan

(My Forever Family)

Forlorn, uncomfortable, shy, tense; I never felt a part of my classroom as a child. I knew what being 'American' meant but the way it was taught to me made me feel very un-'American'. I rarely went to church. Christmas was an excuse to be greedy and lustful. The first day of school was a horrifying, fruitless experience; every year. I plugged my ear, "Sh...Sh...Sh AWna?" "No...Shona. It's Indian." "What tribe?"

I was embarrased of course. At third grade, girls weren't quite as culturally open as I might have hoped. And then came high school and the inevitable encounter with the uniform meathead. "Whoa, an Indian guy with a fucking skateboard!" "Yeah, go back to Poonjab and show your monkey cousins."

Too small to retaliate. Too flabbergasted to try.

I slowly became proud. I always hated the English, that I remember. Once when I was 7, a screening of Gandhi during dinner got me so riled up, I proceeded to lift my Nerf rapier and my Looney Toons lunchbox and yell inflammatory remarks about all things British; my impromptu Excalibur beneath the fittings of a medieval wooden canvas dangling just past my shins.

I went to temple. I watched Bollywood. I met Indian girls. I ate kichidi and drank Thumbs Up--the embarrasment of occasionally catching myself yearning for a burger and a coke not quite indicative of any dramatic change. Yet I finally felt capable of relying on something so triumphantly un-American, so vastly different yet welcoming and homely. It had been situating itself comfortably right against the deserted space that was currently occupying my conscience.

Then came the Urdu poetry and my dad extrapolating its romantic speech bit by bit, syllable by syllable, even if silently and without gesture. The lionizing of all things Bengali, of all things Goan and Marathi and the memories of the Pink Cities of Rajahstan. The Catholic churches of Kolaba and the Konkani slang, the Parsee girls and the drunk bhuddis with their missing teeth and emphatic cackles. The burn mark on Aya's forehead and the campy banter from Shailesh kaka's mouth.

The time I cut my arm and my cousins all carried me up a 25 story apartment only to rest me on a small, sturdy couch. "You guys pinched me too hard when you lifted me", I said as I bled unknowingly on the pillows. When the rap of my mom's palm came upon my cheek, I was none too surprised.

And so lives lost are never that far away; and for once I feel like a part of something, if only at the saddest time imaginable.

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will
prevent you from seeing the stars-Rabindranath Tagore

O Desconhecido

It is hard to say if this sermon had any effect on our townsfolk. M. Othon, the magistrate, assured Dr. Rieux that he had found the preacher's arguments "absolutely irrefutable." But not everybody took so unqualified a view. To some the sermon simply brought home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unknown crime, to an indeterminate period of punishment. And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house-The Plague

The belly hurts. I deposit. I read Blindness as I squat. The prose is windy, colorful, but never absolute. Rhythmic but not trite. 60 pages deep; we'll see where this goes.

I got a TiVo last week. I tried to participate in their free giveaway but the line was 5 hours deep. I would have been ok with it but the lady was having a fit. The TiVo man sensed my anxiety and handed me a coupon with which to purchase a TiVo at a 100 dollar discount. "Ok, this works." I have yet to see if what they tell me is correct. I'm open to the possibilities. But will it really change my life?
All seasons of Six Feet Under at once can't be good for my new exercise regiment.


Epicly Later'd has all the right angles.


If you didn't already know, you should know by now.