Junot Díaz’s acclaimed novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has been high on my to-read list for a while, but in the meantime I’ve been enjoying his short-story collection Drown, which was published more than a decade earlier. These are spare, slice-of-life stories told in the voice of a young boy named Yunior, and peopled by his family and friends who live in squalid neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic (and later, as immigrants, in New Jersey). Impoverished, dysfunctional families are the norm in this community, as is drug use and sexual promiscuity among 12-year-olds. Youngsters live for the moment, aware at all times that there probably isn’t much to look ahead to: at one point someone likens Yunior and his friends to space shuttles, the majority of which will burn out. (Given that these stories are partly autobiographical, with Yunior a stand-in for the author, it’s safe to say that Díaz himself – now a Pulitzer Prize winner – is one of the shuttles that made it into orbit. More about him here.)
It’s one of those crazy, crazy days. Iran apparently began a test-run of its Russian-built atomic power plant. A plane broke into three parts while attempting to land at Schiphol. There’s rebellion raging in the headquarters of the Bangladesh Rifles. Despite the fact that it’s being conducted by Bengalis and it’s started because of something suitably Marxist like unequal pay, this is not a rebellion of fiery speeches and angsty poetry. There are 14 people dead and there’s been massive gunfire. In Mumbai, the police filed a 10, 000 page chargesheet against Ajmal Kasab and seven other Pakistanis for the November ‘08 attacks in Mumbai. Because a document’s s gravitas is decided by how much it weighs, apparently. The evidence recorded in the chargesheet is believed to prove Pakistan’s involvement in the case and accuses the terrorists of murder. It also books Kasab and his mates, who unleashed a killing and looting frenzy upon South Mumbai, for entering Chhatrapati Shivati Terminus without platform tickets. God is in the details.
The NYT’s pet conservative David Brooks called Jindal’s Obama response ‘a form of nihilism’ and ‘just insane’ for resorting to anti-government boilerplate at a time of crisis and claiming the problem with the Republican Party is that it’s too moderate. From the relative silence over at the Corner, I’d say Jindal’s speech underwhelmed even those in his own party.
But I don’t think his choice of speaking at an eighth-grade level was a mistake. Jindal was attempting to talk past pundits directly to his voters. Yes, he’s bad at faking sincerity in formal speeches — he’s far more focused, intense and engaging with impromptu Q&A. Yes, I despise his attempt to impose creationism upon schoolchildren and disagree with his platform in general. Yes, he came off as nebbish and dorky, a pre-uncle like the star of Married With Children, swimming in a badly-fitting suit and an unfortunate shirt-tie combo. As a policy wonk, he lacks the physicality and charisma of an Obama.
Was he really any worse than Harry Reid, or any number of badly-dressed politicians? These are questions of polish and are easily fixed. Jindal merely needs to bill the GOP $150K for a stylist, better-fitting suits and silk boxers. He is still at the core a bright guy, albeit a snake oil salesman who betrays his own postgraduate education for political power. The focus here needs to be on the emptiness of his policies and political critique rather than this mickey-mouse, TMZ bullshit:
Well, that was interesting: a British-Indian Oscars sweep followed two days later by a biracial president’s speech and a desi governor’s rebuttal-slash-national debut. What’s next, a serious desi American presidential candidate?
Bobby Jindal, who tonight auditioned for Brown Reagan, really isn’t in Barack Obama’s league with prepared oratory or charisma. But this was perhaps the first time all major networks have given a desi American their undivided attention in primetime. And where Obama hesitates and self-censors, Jindal does far better on his feet. A debate between the two might be fascinating.
Saturday night I caught conscious rapper Mandeep Sethi’s set at Rickshaw Stop in SF. He has amazing taste in slower beats, but the party was satisfying. Sethi bounced around in a hoodie and patka like the Sikh Matisyahu, doubling over twitchily like a tantrum in motion. He’s mouthy and aggressive and as a turbaned dude in America has much to say. Sethi was joined by a tall dholi, a Vancouver desi rapper in a Gilligan hat and a tall black Seattleite singing reggae riffs.
Rickshaw Stop is a narrow, deep, womb-like space laid out like the Knitting Factory NYC, lit mostly by body heat. A white dude in dreads, a hair wrap and a Nonstop Bhangra tee toiled at an oil painting behind the sound board; a nearby couple perched on an eponymous rick. A bearded white guy working sound wore with his tee a sparkly chunni. The drinks were strong and cheap; $5 later I had to slow down already.
The crowd was half desi, half not, full of hot, crunchy blondes straight out of Notting Hill in the ’60s. Their spirits were willing but their skills were weak, jerking around like ’50s med students from the desh. Nonstop Bhangra had the Dhol Rhythms bhangra troupe fill in between songs, and the girls — desi Asian white — did fab, willowy bhangra moves I hadn’t yet seen. The bhangra-based vibe was less trance-aggressive than the old Fabrik scene in London but just as high in showmanship. It felt a bit like Avaaz at Galapagos in Brooklyn.
The actress who famously went topless in Havoc lost the plot after seeing the actor who plays a nympho on Skins. He gave her tips on how to wear a sari. At least I wish he had At 0:37.
Angelina Jolie wore a black gown that looked like it had been pulled off one of the H&M racks. Kate Winslet had helmet instead of hair on her head. That may be why she seemed to be tearing up all the time: it wasn’t her feeling emotional every time someone won but her realising the thing sculpted with hairspray atop her head was being telecast to thousands of people all over the world. Mickey Rourke hung a picture of his dead chihuahua around his neck. Sophia Loren looked like a man. Anil Kapoor didn’t get to say anything and he was barely able to do a Roberto Benigni. Sarah Jessica Parker wore the wrong dress. The way that gown held her up, it was obvious that it was meant for the Golden Globes. AR Rahman seemed to lip-sync “O Saaya”, but that was actually the best part of the Best Song performances because “Down to Earth” was off tune and the crowd of dancers wearing hot pink ghagra-cholis were embarrassing. Contrary to rumours, MIA didn’t appear as a hologram from her hospital bed. Heidi Klum wore a “sculpturally folded napkin”, as the Guardian put it. “Slumdog Millionaire” won 8 awards. Basically Oscars 2009 was precisely as boring as everyone had feared it would be: pretty darn boring but significantly more fun than last year’s Oscars.
There are few things more annoying than spending the better part of a day (and a Sunday at that, not that there’s anything special about a Sunday if you’re a freelancer) writing a long review of a book, getting set to post it on the blog and then being told at the last possible minute by Mean Publisher Lady that there’s an embargo on reviews until a few weeks later, because she neglected to inform you about launch dates, exclusive arrangements with international media, etc. So it turns out I’m going to have to wait a while before sharing my thoughts about Aatish Taseer’s Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands. Will post it when I get the green light or when I’m sufficiently drunk to want to get Mean Publisher Lady sued by the international publishers.
Meanwhile things have been slow on the work front for various reasons and there’s a big backlog of books to get through. Among them: Amit Chaudhuri’s The Immortals, Biman Nath’s Nothing is Blue, Rana Dasgupta’s Solo, Indu Sundaresan’s In the Convent of Little Flowers. Too many books, too little time. Through experience I’ve discovered that the thing to do is such a situation is to put all these books aside and instead direct your attention to something you definitely won’t be asked to review – like Noddy and the Magic Rubber. This is what I’ve successfully done, along with reading a randomly selected chapter of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (the one about how the high power distance index in countries like Korea is responsible for gruesome plane crashes because the first officer keeps nodding and smiling politely at the captain when he should be saying “You’ve missed the runway by three miles, you dolt!”).
Precisely 21 hours ago, a blog put up this scanned letter:
The Oscar guys are, of course, vehemently denying the veracity of this document. Their spokesperson Leslie Unger said that no such document ever floats around and that two people in Pricewaterhouse Coopers are still counting the ballots so this can’t be genuine. I’m going to side with Unger but then again, we in India know that PWC isn’t necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed. After all, they were the auditors of Satyam Computer Services and failed to notice “the marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the … accounts”. A marginal gap of about Rs. 30 million.
A.R. Rahman on The Tonight Show means opportunities for not just LA desi dancers, but also Spanish and Arabic vocalists and men on taiko drums. Despite the washed-out sound — this is a highly synthetic song which is hard to do live — the man is a walking full employment act. Even amid the set’s Hollywood-Moroccan exotica, the Rahman track showed off the eclecticism of ‘Jai Ho.’
It’s a little out of season, but here’s a bhangra version of ‘Jingle Bells’ for Nickelodeon India, animated by Nupur Bhargava. Santa as a tubby man with a long beard travels well in Punjab. (thanks, Meharoona)
The party took place in the backyard of the family’s home… in Islamabad’s swank F-8 Sector… the heavily armed guards (AK-47s and shotguns) were not too happy with the behavior of their charges… the guests were treating them with a kind of condescension and even contempt… [we] half-joked that one day a guard was going to snap and mow down the next generation of Pakistan’s leaders… every rich teenage boy in Islam wants to be Slash.
… Sajid & Zeeshan, Pakistan’s best rock duo [live in Peshawar]… ‘Peshawarians are called ‘walnuts’ by other Pakistanis because they are supposedly ‘hard-headed or stupid. When we tour in other Pakistani cities, people actually ask us if we live in mud huts’…
As I moved through the first-class cabin… on the flight from Lahore to Karachi, I walked past four women, all of them in complete purdah, covered from head to toe in black, including gloves. Even their eyes were covered with large, 1970s-era sunglasses. Each woman had a security tag hanging from her veil; they had been inspected and tagged like carry-on luggage… A swirling wind blew up their abayas… All were wearing expensive designer pantsuits… They were ‘munaqqababes’…
Third-place finisher Michael Sarver, a Texan oil rig worker, narrowly eliminated Anoop Desai from American Idol last night with 20K votes out of 24M cast. His performance was karaoke-level at best:
Total nonsense. Anoop Desai had the pipes to place in the top 3, and still is likely to come back in the wildcard show, though that’s no guarantee of making finals.
Junot Díaz’s acclaimed novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has been high on my to-read list for a while, but in the meantime I’ve been enjoying his short-story collection Drown, which was published more than a decade earlier. These are spare, slice-of-life stories told in the voice of a young boy named Yunior, and peopled by his family and friends who live in squalid neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic (and later, as immigrants, in New Jersey). Impoverished, dysfunctional families are the norm in this community, as is drug use and sexual promiscuity among 12-year-olds. Youngsters live for the moment, aware at all times that there probably isn’t much to look ahead to: at one point someone likens Yunior and his friends to space shuttles, the majority of which will burn out. (Given that these stories are partly autobiographical, with Yunior a stand-in for the author, it’s safe to say that Díaz himself – now a Pulitzer Prize winner – is one of the shuttles that made it into orbit. More about him here.)
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At 0:37.
Angelina Jolie wore a black gown that looked like it had been pulled off one of the H&M racks. Kate Winslet had helmet instead of hair on her head. That may be why she seemed to be tearing up all the time: it wasn’t her feeling emotional every time someone won but her realising the thing sculpted with hairspray atop her head was being telecast to thousands of people all over the world. Mickey Rourke hung a picture of his dead chihuahua around his neck. Sophia Loren looked like a man. Anil Kapoor didn’t get to say anything and he was barely able to do a Roberto Benigni. Sarah Jessica Parker wore the wrong dress. The way that gown held her up, it was obvious that it was meant for the Golden Globes. AR Rahman seemed to lip-sync “O Saaya”, but that was actually the best part of the Best Song performances because “Down to Earth” was off tune and the crowd of dancers wearing hot pink ghagra-cholis were embarrassing. Contrary to rumours, MIA didn’t appear as a hologram from her hospital bed. Heidi Klum wore a “sculpturally folded napkin”, as the Guardian put it. “Slumdog Millionaire” won 8 awards. Basically Oscars 2009 was precisely as boring as everyone had feared it would be: pretty darn boring but significantly more fun than last year’s Oscars.
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