If you were growing up in the monopolistic shadow of Doordarshan in the early and mid-1980s, Sunday mornings were dull things – or at least it seems in hindsight that they should have been. Actually, there was an hour or so of post-breakfast anticipa…
As you guys predicted, Steven Colbert took credit for Shashi Tharoor’s Parliament win and dialed a random call center employee to gloat. The joke’s on Colbert, but resuscitating Gandhi with that accent is very bud-bud.
Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqqani went on the Daily Show last night. Whenever a Pakistani politician goes on, I get the overwhelming sensation of Stewart being spun quite trivially because he’s out of his depth. He asks some of the right questions, but Haqqani, like Musharraf, dances. He’s less obvious than Zardari, to be sure, but [...]
In the last month, both Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling have started or been offered primo roles on national TV. They’re far from first, of course — Naveen Andrews, Parminder Nagra, Kunal Nayyar, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Vik Sahay and Adhir Kalyan have all played prominent characters (Lost, ER, The Big Bang Theory, Heroes, Chuck and [...]
Watching Mr. Ten Percent go head-to-head with Fatuous McGrizzlybeard in a CNN shallow-off, Jon Stewart observed that the U.S. interest in Pakistan extends only as far as its nukes. And for a second night in a row, he raked its military over the coals for diverting U.S. cash to its eastern front.
Fareed Zakaria was absolutely scathing about the Pakistani army on the Daily Show tonight, saying it’s the only military in the world that needs to be bribed into defending its own country. India is a perfect cold-conflict enemy, he said, just like the USSR was for the U.S.: scary enough to jack up military budgets [...]
And that’s a wrap: Anoop Desai was just voted off American Idol. The original UK show is called Pop Idol, it’s about finding a mainstream pop kid who’s as prepackaged as possible. Many of the contestants are semi-pro already, making money from musicals (Adam Lambert) or putting out albums (Matt Giraud). Desai just had too [...]
Stephen Colbert endorsed Shashi Tharoor last night, taking the Colbert bump subcontinental. Tharoor’s son Kanishk was the guest, he of the vertiginous hairdo. Colbert mentioned he’s a fan of Slumdog Millionaire because it combines police brutality with trivia, and of India for having the world’s largest stockpile of Kumars.
Related post: Literary flop-top
Spanked by voters for being a goody two-shoes even when he sings well, Noop Dogg took no risks this week, choosing his umpteenth ballad: ‘Everything I Do‘ by ringmaster of cheese Bryan Adams. Stylistically, he went prep again in a tie and letterman jacket. The same night, he was up against Adam Glambert wailing ‘Born [...]
Pointy-chinned astronaut Sunny Dub, who ran the first marathon in space, sweetly broke Stephen Colbert’s heart last night. It’s not the space station node that’ll be named after him, votes be damned. It’s the C.O.L.B.E.R.T., the Combined Operative Load-Bearing External Resistive Treadmill. I would’ve held out for the desi dish she got to take aloft: [...]
Here’s S1xE1 of Aziz Ansari’s Office clone, Parks and Recreation. Amy Poehler plays the parks and recreation commissioner in the small town of Pawnee, Indiana. She works for a mayor who’s a parody of anti-government wingnuts. His grand plan is to sell off city parks to private corporations which charge admission, like Joggers Park or [...]
There are at least three No Doubt and Gwen Stefani songs based on her relationship with London-born bassist Tony Ashwin Kanal.
“…all I ever did was look at Tony and pray that God would let me have a baby with him”… Stefani began wearing a bindi in the mid 1990s after attending several family gatherings [with] [...]
This went out today over the IIT-Kharagpur alumni list (thanks, friend-o):
Please vote for Anoop Desai in today’s American Idol program, and Anoop’s father [IIT K Alumnus 1975, Hall 2, Chemical] has given the rational why his son deserves to be the American Idol…
[From his dad:] Some people felt that Anoop lost his cool last week [...]
Puppy Noop
I’ve seen all I want to see of this heavily-padded show — it’s really one hour of singing stretched into four hours of ads — and here’s what we know so far. Anoop Desai is geeky to the core, and the Idol producers worry how to market him. Wholesome, or at least fake-wholesome, sells [...]