GQ has come to India.
The one man who must be seriously thrilled by this is the actor Jeetendra, also known as Bollywood’s Jumping Jack, because 41 years after he teamed a white T shirt with white trousers and white shoes together, it’s still being worn, that too by cool cats like Bollywood darlings Saif […]
Check out this great mashup of ‘Dil Cheez Kya Hai’ with ‘I’m Like a Bird,’ by Digital Cutup Lounge:
Cute clip: Naruto anime dubbed with ‘Tumhi Dekho Na‘ from KANK, made by a Hungarian (?) fan.
The McCain campaign just did its second damage control interview in a row with Katie Couric. Here, John McCain tries to stanch the bleeding after Sarah Palin contradicted him on Pakistan. He claims that a voter’s question is ‘gotcha journalism.’ Palin calls the president of Pakistan ‘Zadari,’ McCain intercepts a question asked directly of her: […]
At first blush, Anita Jain’s tale of trying to get hitched in Delhi sounds like classic chick lit. But Marrying Anita is stocked under travelogue, not self-help, and Jain is no Sophie Kinsella. The book is a surprisingly good read. It’s less a Hindu Portnoy’s Complaint than a memoir of a desi American in modern […]
Ajay Naidu, Heather Burns
While not playing an aggro, proto-gay desi with a grudge against Santa Claus, Ajay Naidu has been dating the same beauty since high school, his fiancée Heather Burns. In the black comedy Choke, Burns’ yuppie control freak hires small-time con man Sam Rockwell to mock-rape her as part of a sexual fantasy. […]
The conservative blog the Corner is a reliable font of stupidity and thinly-disguised racism. But this post stands out (not for racism but for idiocy):
Hiller [a journalist] asked [Bush] to name the new prime minister of India. “The new prime minister of India is — no,” Bush said…
Bush should have switched fields, to Hiller’s […]
An email conversation with a turbaned Sikh friend about the movie Towelhead.
Friend: [Sikh-American group] SALDEF [and Muslim groups were] opposed to the title because it was a slur, whether ironic or not.
Me: They’re reclaiming it, like ‘queer.’
Except that I don’t know anybody who is reclaiming it.
The author is Egyptian and white. The act of […]
Are you there, God? It’s me, Manish. I’ve just seen Towelhead, the most disturbing piece of film since the rape scenes from Irréversible and Bandit Queen. It shows a 13-year-old being raped. It shows Aaron Eckhart’s hand bloody from her broken hymen. It shows her crimson tampon. It shows a used condom. It shows the […]
On Conan O’Brien, Aasif Mandvi talks about going to auditions for ‘Middle Eastern’ men, being expected to wear a turban and ride a magic carpet. Mandi seems a bit tense. Conan mispronounces his name and seems strangely uninterested in his tale. (thanks, Ashvin)
Not ready
Last night, Sarah Palin contradicted John McCain’s position on Pakistan, the one he’s flogged so relentlessly against Barack Obama:
“So we do cross border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan you think?” …
“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should…” [CNN]
Today McCain was forced to disavow […]
One of the prerogatives of being senile before one’s time is that, a bit like cattle with cud, you find yourself savouring things after the shiny-eyed youth have chewed and spit it out. So, about four years after everyone discovered the pleasures of the surreptitious camera phone, I’ve realised that it’s a neat little device […]
Shorter Obama on terrorism:Got that? Good.
Barack Obama repeated over and over at tonight’s presidential debate that the real threat is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That our policy toward Musharraf was unhinged. That seeing everything through the lens of Iraq puts us at risk.
Dubya and John McCain’s fixation on a country uninvolved with Al Qaeda is […]
[This Q&A with Alice Albinia is a companion piece to this earlier post about Empires of the Indus. It should have been more detailed but I discovered after the interview that something had gone wrong with the dictaphone – a scratchy background no…