Congrats to Jenna Bush on getting married to the scion of the Haggar wrinkle-free pantaloon dynasty () and putting her hard-partying days behind her.
Boo to her dad, who had a man-sized limestone cross erected with all the subtlety of a khanda on the rear windshield of a tinted, dropped Honda Civic.
That isn’t a dog whistle […]
One twentysomething desi Internet millionaire throws a catered bash for the homeless for his birthday. Meanwhile his brother and cofounder tries to replace Uday Chopra as reigning Bollywood cheeseball. Click here for the wackness.
He provides nekkid wallpaper downloads, just in case we want ‘em poster-sized. And he calls his bachelor pad the G spot. Stay […]
Received this email today:
The subject line? **JUNK**
My spam filter has surprisingly good taste.
Previously: ‘Five Point Someone’, Beware Indian mass-market fiction
With minimum comment, here are selected sentences from Khalid Mohammed’s review of the film Anamika, in today’s HT:Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s Anamika treats Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) as if it were chewing gum. Chomp, chomp, chomp till i…
Here’s an ad for Konami’s Doko Demo Yoga, a 3D yoga trainer for the Nintendo DS. The ad makes me laugh, because the dulcet, artificially perky tones of J-babes on TV are the exact opposite of becoming comfortable in your yogic skin. They remind me of some salseras from Japan whom I’ve danced with, highly […]
Take this news item from Turkey, about a misplaced character in an SMS sent by a husband to his estranged wife resulting in two gruesome deaths. Of course, a language where the omission of a single dot in a single word can completely change the meaning…
When we’re old and withered, will ‘Come to Me’ be to us what ‘Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai’ was to the parental units?
(a.k.a. Harold and Kumar Go to Chai Castle)
After gorging on kati rolls this weekend, my cousin the orchestra conductor decided he just had to have some masala chai. I vaguely remembered a Midtown chaat house I’d been to once six years ago which began with the letter ‘A.’ We texted GOOGL and settled on Amma […]
Kalpen Modi told a story on Conan O’Brien last night about a drunken brown guy who was angry because everyone now calls him Coo-mahr. Penn pointed out that was better than being called Uh-poo. That was his shout-out, and his exculpation.
Like Letterman with Aishwarya, Conan seemed to treat Penn with kid gloves, not knowing […]
A Meerut shyster hawks a street aphrodisiac, and his patter about the social virtuousness of stiffies on demand is hilarious. In Hindi with subtitles (NSFW).
In case you didn’t see the comment, here’s comedian Tracey Ullman as Padma Perkish selling Indian V1&gra (thanks, shlok):
And here’s her music vid for ‘They Don’t Know.’ The video was an ‘83 hit (seriously) and features a Paul McCartney cameo at the very end:
Inspired by Neale, I went to Anu Garg’s Internet Anagram Server, which also works out to I, Rearrangement Servant, to see what khichdi could be made of famous authors’ names:
Jhumpa Lahiri: a prim jail, huh
Her given name, Nilanjana Lahiri:
a halal rain jinnihi, anal ninja liar
Vikram Chandra: vain, dark charm
Salman Rushdie’s are more voluble:
slushier admanlush adman, […]
You know what goes well with arugula? Steak.
Strolling through my local megagrocery, I noticed the salad dressing aisle has been taken over by questionable vegetarian. Don’t believe me? Check the labels: a third of the dressings are made by Wishbone, named after a bone you wish upon and break after gnawing on a dead chicken. […]
Pope Ratzinger, the most powerfully regressive voice on contraception and religions other than Catholicism, got front-page treatment today:
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton attended an event called the Faith Forum, fumbling around in public about their love for an incarnation. Get a pew, you two.
And India is worse. This is a country where gurus […]
One of the many benefits of buying pirated DVDs from Palika Bazaar is getting to read the typos on the (hurriedly printed) cover jackets. Just noticed the following sentences on my DVD of Jules Dassin’s excellent film noir Night and the City:“Dull-…
Badmash’s latest animated parody agrees that Obama’s race speech was stuck in an old black-or-white frame:
Watch here.
Previously: Jooma chumma de de, Amitabh vs. O’Baba
Every Jhumpa story ever, until the very last:
A professor A surgeon An architect An engineer in Cambridge Lexington Brookline with a Ph.D. master’s from Harvard Yale MIT Cornell Swarthmore Bryn MawrWilliams grapples with Bengaliness in a dreary suburban relationship with a charming white personan arranged-marriage dweeb.
Oh, how I’ve longed for my very own literary feud. Rushdie-Greer, Naipaul-Theroux, Amis-Eagleton sniping from highfalutin’ British papers and lit mags. And now I have one! A bloodthirsty throwdown between British author Nirpal Dhaliwal, Bombay UB contributor AnonAndOn and me. It takes place not in the London Review of Books, but rather in Tehelka and, […]
This well-spelled establishment sits in the Village by 7th Ave. in Manhattan. Many low-end Indian restaurants here are Bangla-owned. Traitors to the good book!
Previously: ‘I’ before ‘e,’ except after ‘c’, Yoda syndrome
[Guitar Hero developer] Harmonix… was so enamored with the “Sitar Hero” parody poster (with Apu playing a 60-button sitar controller) that they asked for 20 copies. [Link]
Please note that Sitar Hero is considerably more difficult than Guitar Hero. And the wah-wah doesn’t come from a pedal. It’s some kid paid in chai and sonf.
Here’s another […]