an alien in america: railway revival

India is full of enterpreneural ideas these days. A consistently loss-making entity such as the Indian Railways is now making hefty profits. The US can learn from IR, says GE CEO, among other admirers.
But could they please preserve our view?

netflix encounters #2: a classical masterpiece

Recently, I rented The Wire. Loved it. Got effusive about it: "The pacing - breathing itself. The dialogue, Shakesperean in its rhythms - the notes enframed in that pace. The characters, complex and complimentary - the orchestra. A Classical Masterpiece".
Critics (just about the entire NPR cew, for one) and the creators of The Wire compare it to a novel. In which case, it would be in the Classics section. Probably next to the Iliad, Odyssey or the Mahabharata.
As far as popular TV shows go, I can't argue that the classical view is superior to the Romantic one; to even introduce the idea that art is meant to nudge us toward moral improvement and social awareness is to concede to Romantic hope. But for some people, in some places, the classical view is more true, and in such cases, the artist's duty is to show us that these lives are no smaller for that. And it is -- as we always, always seem to forget -- not depressing but strangely exhilarating to see this truth about humanity acknowledged for once. It may not be the only truth, but it's a truth all the same.

kitty kitty bang bang

I would've almost missed this one. Gratuitous violence gives me nightmares - I wish they didn't, since I think I can intellectually argue with myself about the different facets of violence. So, when The Lieutenant of Inishmore began laying at the Curious, and all I heard was cats and humans being blown up, flung about or chopped up, I told myself there was no need to go see on stage what I can't see even on fast-forward.
But I did go (clearly). And saw dead cats, and a live one. Live humans being made dead. Spurts of laughter, spurts of blood.
"Lieutenant" is unapologetically a farce...and knowing Ireland has finally found the peace needed to be once again discovered by tourists allowed the laughter to be raucous. But I laughed the loudest at several critics and audience suggestions at the post-show talk-back of the cats - the dismembered and the intact - being the metaphors for Ireland - and all the accompanying sentimntality. Maybe so, but in a view utterly from the present, wouldn't it be more shocking if one didn't retreat into a metaphor and let it be unapologetically farcical about pet-lovers? Only ever so slightly more deranged than the regular ones. And yes, with Irish accents.

an alien in america: entry 5: the games we play

dubai, mumbai, shanghai. or else, goodbye...

...the joke circulating on my vacation.

an alien in america: entry 4: on parole

6 bags, 2 escorts, 7 flights and 2gb photographs later, I'm back on parole....

A Conversation among Adults

A reminder that an anti-PC converstion need not only be a comedic routine or a self-righteous rant against status-quos...it can be irrevocably gracious, sincere and free of any rancour - academic or otherwise. Regardless of the outcome of these elections, there is something so inspirational, yet pragmatic about Barak Obama. Bravo, and thank you.

(click on picture to start video)

wow?

Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC. The conflation of issues the NPP recognizes is certainlygetting interesting...although I cannot ignore the irony in an American winning the prize for work towards global climate change! It would have been entirely justified to award the IPCC the award by itself given how much global impact the publication of its fourth report had earlier this year, but the inclusion of Al Gore is a potent reminder to the Americans - who still hold most of the trump cards at such talks - by the Nobel committee about who it feels is on the right side of this debate, with the implication that Bush, Gore's political nemesis, being still very much on the wrong side. With Bush thankfully now into the final phase of his disastrous presidency, it can be safely assumed that he has his legacy very much on his mind. Anything that can nudge him towards choosing the right course of action on climate change is welcome - but I suspect forlorn.

As for Gore, I wonder whether this will now persuade him

to go again for the biggest prize of all? Well, the $1.5m Nobel prize fund should help pay for a few hours on the campaign trail, if he does.

I love the BBC readers' forum on this one....10+ pages and counting!

Precious cover, blank book

This weekend's movie accompanying take-out-Chinese, turned out to be a teasingly unsatisfying meal. For all its hip-and-trendiness, Japanimations can be downright vacant. Lavish graphics, cartoon plot. The wonderfully detailed animated Japanese flick "Tekkonkinkreet" is a wonder to look at, even as its increasingly pretentious manga-inspired story line outstays its welcome.

It's set in a crumbling Bladerunner-esque metropolis called Treasure Town, where a childlike (I suppose because he is one) 11-year-old urchin named White and his slightly older friend Black fly through the air - and get caught up in a Yakuza boss' scheme to level the old city and replace it with an amusement park. Save for an avuncular prune, Gramps , the adults who pass through their lives, including a couple of kindly cops and some oddly dressed gang members (they look ready to rumble with droogs), generally pass through without much comment. They offer the children greetings though precious little else, which makes the loneliness that clings to Black and White — illustrated by the expressive use of negative space — all the more poignant and unacceptable.

Beautiful and a touch bewildering, “Tekkonkinkreet” kinks up a fairly familiar story of love and loyalty with a helping of underworld crime action, the usual juvenile agonies and fuzzy philosophy. And more exasperatingly, this well-worn record seems to be stuck on a never ending "replay". The first-time feature director Michael Arias, an American who lives and works in Japan, stuffs a lot of exposition and action into 100 baggy minutes. Amid all the sharp turns, the periodic slicing and dicing, the gangsters and the shifty deals, the old man in the bathhouse and the snake in its lair, it can be tough to pinpoint what precisely Black and White are up to, much less the filmmakers.

Even so, “Tekkonkinkreet” demands to be seen, if only for its beauty. The generally bright palette and overall soft look work a nice contrast to the dark theme, as if the world itself were on the children’s side. The character design of the boys is particularly lovely, almost loving, from the scar slashed across Black’s right eye like a warning to the hat shaped like a bear’s head that White wears, his mischievous, smiling face peeping through the animal’s open mouth. There’s a touch of Saint-Exupéry’s “Little Prince” in these two children, whose adventures and lessons seem plucked right from this book: “To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups. ...” And that, as everyone knows, would be disastrous.

total masti?

India won the first 2020 Cricket World Cup. I am sure this is big news in the subcontinent. Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Dhoni. Imran Nazir and Shahid Afridi. There is a solid defense of the Twenty20 format by Osman Samiuddin from the Pakistani [and Indian, as well] perspective:

About right, too, for the format is one the average Pakistani, fan and player, easily recognises and feels comfortable with. England may have been responsible for institutionalising and selling the concept, but its informal, Asian cousin, played out on streets with apartments as spectators and on grounds with cement pitches and dangerous outfields has long been Pakistan cricket’s lifeline.

This is, then, really the game that desi kids played and play. The tennis ball version [taped ball or not], usually 10 or 12 overs; the hard ball version, 20 or 25 overs; on a cement pitch; front-foot, across the line batting; block hole, yorker bowling; aggressive fielding, running; uptempo and hurried pace. Here is the rub, though. In this version, the goal is to get better, to learn to stay at the crease, to master the art of bowling according to a plan not as a reaction, to learn to keep control of the ball even after you have hit it. The goal, is to play a full game of cricket. There were/are tons of yuvrags, afridis … everyone had to have such players. They were called sloggers. I can't recall any particular pride associated with such a designation.
Admit it. The odds are stacked against the bowler in cricket. The batsman is padded, and has a very thick stick and can catch a break by moving to the non-stricker’s end. The beauty of cricket is to make those odds even out - by pitch, by bowl, by field, by pace. And then ask the bat to rise to the occasion. 2020 makes a mockery of that balance and stacks everything to credit the bat. Smaller boundaries, hampered field placement, and the urge to “measure the distance of the Sixes”.
Sure it is fun comparing Yuvrag’s 6 in six balls performance, to Gibb’s 6 in six balls during WC 2007 and, further back, to Sir Gary Sobers’ 6 in six balls in 1968. But do these batsmen qualify as genus Britannicus, to quote CLR James? Judging from the Test career of Sir Gary Sobers, of course. Will we get a similar chance to judge the young Yuvraj Singh? I have no idea. And I fear that we will not find out. I fear that the 2020 will splinter a team into a perfectly natural division of skill-sets, of specialist sloggers like Shahid Afridi never having to grow beyond what they played in their backyards. How will someone like Shane Warne or Abdul Qadir or Imran Khan emerge out of this format? Nathan Bracken? Pfft. That, in a nutshell, is the reason I remain unenthusiastic about this format.

netflix encounters #1

Through a recommendation, I recently discovered a director.

Here is the first of the films I have seen of Emir Kusturica:

When Father was Away on Business (1985)

The title euphemism of ''When Father Was Away on Business'' refers to a trip taken by the young hero's parent - not a business trip, but a journey to a labor camp. It also indicates the boyish perspective from which the story is seen. This warmly appealing Yugoslav film makes charming use of 6-year-old Malik Malkoc and his outlook without sacrificing a larger and more knowing directorial overview.
While offering a humorous, richly detailed portrait of Malik and his family, Emir Kusturica also outlines the political climate in which the story unfolds. Set mostly in Sarajevo in the early 1950's, the film makes frequent references to the uneasy relationship between Marshal Tito's postwar Yugoslavia and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Stalinist loyalties are continually being put to the test, so that when Malik's father, Mesha makes a sarcastic remark about a political drawing in a newspaper, he risks dire consequences. The fact that Mesha's brother-in-law, a stern, bureaucratic Communist Party official, shares Mesha's interest in the same flirtatious young woman only seals Mesha's fate. He is sent to work in a mine as a result of his vague transgression, and the rest of the family is left to manage on its own.
Kusturica creates a wonderfully vivid sense of the various family members and their life together. Malik's long-suffering mother takes in work as a seamstress and looks after her father and three young sons, while also pining for her absent husband and conveniently forgetting the philandering that helped put him away. One of Malik's brothers is a bookish type who hoards every snippet of film stock he can lay his hands on. Malik himself has a habit of sleepwalking and a remarkable talent for interrupting adult sexual encounters. In one of the film's most affecting sequences, a funny scene that is also terribly sad, Malik goes to extraordinary lengths to keep his parents apart after his mother is finally able to arrange a visit to the mine at which her husband is imprisoned.
The film, which has a broad, expansive narrative style, follows the family through this crisis and back to some sort of equilibrium; in the meantime, it also captures some of Malik's formative experiences, including his first stirrings of love for an amazingly diffident little girl. Kusturica's measured direction is able to weave all these disparate elements together into a gentle, touching film alive with humanity and humor.

an alien in america: entry 3: shopping for world piece[s]

from l-r: saddam hussein, tony blair, kim jong-il, george bush, osama bin-laden





the flip side (osama to the left): war criminals. (these are special edition. especially the ghost saddam)

I am preparing my christmas wish-list to avoid crowds. This is wish list item #1.

http://www.superradtoys.com/elite/
Plastic God’s Axis of Evil is a limited edition boxed set of 5” rotocast collectibles, featuring everyone’s favorite cast of current political icons: Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, Kim Jong-il, George “W” Bush and Osama bin Laden. The dolls have 7 points of articulation and come packed together in a flip open window door box

of KJ's audience....

the newest oldest story...middle class moralities

The Bourgeois-Caress-My-Superego Guide to Happiness: Reflections on the Experience Economy

...which happens to be Harvard endorsed [which guarantees future networking with other happily caressed superegos]: http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=91293

Caffeine-free Diet Coke: Reflections on the Experience Economy

Today's ethics are the ethics of the superego*; no longer circumscribed by moderation. One is encouraged instead, to limitless consumption, because the product consumed is in itself deprived of its "dangerous" constituent. There is an injunction to enjoy, and one is guilty if enjoyment is not desired and subsequently attained.

Decaf. coffee.

Fat free ice-cream.

Caffeine free diet coke.....(chocolate laxative has also been mentioned occasionally, but since I have never encountered it, I shall leave it alone till the fateful day when I do have that pleasure).

and my personal favourite - mass customisation - a product being its own counter ethic. Instead of removing action, one "balances" it with counter-action. Is being good, finally, being less bad?

...I want to begin with Coca-cola. It’s no surprise that Coca-cola was first introduced as a medicine. Its strange taste seems to provide no particular satisfaction. It is not directly pleasing, however, it is as such, as transcending any use–value, like water, beer or wine, which definitely do quench our thirst, that Coke functions as the direct embodiment of "IT", the pure surplue of enjoyment over standard satisfactions. It is the mysterious and elusive X we are all after in our compulsive consumption. The unexpected result of this is not that, since Coke doesn’t satisfy any concrete need we drink it only as supplement, after some other drink has satisfied our substantial need — it is rather this very superfluous character that makes our thirst for Coke all the more insatiable. Coke has the paradoxical quality that the more you drink it, the more you get thirsty. So, when the slogan for Coke was "Coke is it!", we should see in it some ambuigity — it’s "it" precisely insofar as it’s never IT, precisely insofar as every consumption opens up the desire for more. The paradox is thus that Coke is not an ordinary commodity, but a commodity whose very peculiar use–value itself is already a direct embodiment of the auratic, ineffable surplus. This process is brought to its conclusion in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke. We drink a drink for two reasons: for its nutritional value and for its taste. In the case of caffeine–free diet Coke, its nutritional value is suspended and the caffeine as the key ingredient of its taste is also taken away. All that remains is pure semblance, an artificial promise of a substance which never materialized. Is it not that in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke that we almost literally drink nothing in the guise of something? What I am referring to, of course, is Nietzsche’s opposition between "wanting nothing", in the sense of "I do not want anything", and the nihilistic stance of actively wanting the Nothingness itself. Following Nietzsche, Lacan emphasized how, in anorexia, the subject doesn’t simply not eat anything, he rather actively wants to eat the Nothingness itself. The same goes for the famous patient who felt guilty of stealing, although he didn’t effectively steal anything — what he did steal was, again, Nothingness itself. Along the same lines, in the case of caffeine–free diet Coke, we drink Nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property. S. Zizek in "The Superego and the Act", Aug 1999.

*Since the association between super-ego and an injunction to enjoy may seem counter-intuitive at first glance, one needs to keep in mind the radical separation between superego and the ethics of desire. For Lacan, superego is vehicle for such that what appears as a renunciation of pleasure for the sake of duty may be a way to get off, to enjoy.

**Superego is the revenge that capitalizes upon our guilt--that is to say, the price we pay for the guilt we contract by betraying our desire in the name of the Good. Slavoj Zizek in The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verso, 1994), 69.

ps: I should have made links to terms such as "the experience economy", but I shan't. It isn't worth it, enjoyment-wise.

mismatched

"A man can't whistle through clenched teeth but sees clearly through eyes blurred by tears."


American sentences - paul nelson; and
Dylan Sisson's gallery;

mad about mad men

'Smoking, Drinking, Cheating and Selling' that's how The New York Times summated this tv flick. "There were seven deadly sins practiced at the dawn of the 1960s: smoking, drinking, adultery, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and racism."
Can't say the times have changed much. But there is something about the vintage 60's that draws me to it. The men are stoical, suave, politically incorrect, and downright sexist. The women are either 'conflicted' professionals or 'blissful' homemakers. And, its a cut-throat world of an advertising agency in the heart of 60's New York. Nothing really has changed much if one thinks about it. Then what is it?


I still can't justify my obsession with Godfather. And neither can I explain my obsession with (a Michael Corleone), or a Don Draper. I guess I will never know.

60 years young...

Birthday reading for post-partitioners:

• New Yorker thinks that the only thing worth telling about South Asian history is that decade in the 40s and the communal killings. So does NY Times, for that matter.
• Guardian, however, has got the dibs on India.
• BBC thinks it has got Said figured out.
• Outlook's showing off its bookshelf (seriously, Jhumpa Lahiri?).
• But, the best thing I read today was thanks to a "memo". I am fascinated.

2nd coming, 1st viewing

Every once in a while I go to watch live theatre. It has to be so because theatres are not as prolific as cinemas, and they have fewer plays per seasons. And also because it is fairly expensive...well, sort of. $30 per ticket. Of course, that is less than a haircut. Probably which is why one cuts hair occasionally as well. At a lesser frequency than one goes to the theatre.
Anyhow, this weekend was Curious's prelude show to its 10th season. A bit about Curious Theatre - it is housed in a chapel (that is, it used to be a chapel, but most of the curious weren't around for that) and stages plays that would I suppose be WAY-off-Broadway...about 1700miles off. The house is fairly small, in an intimate sort of way, a bit inconvinient with two columns supporting a balcony in the middle of the house, and a fantastic balcony. The plays are at best sharp and remarkably refined, at worst, err...erratic. But in the end, I sort of love this theatre.
Back to the prelude show - Robert Dubac's "Male Intellect: The Second Coming". Multi-talented is what he is, Dubac. Playright and actor in a one-man production; part magician and wholly super-technician. The play began as a familiar banter that goes on between the masculine, and the feminine set inside Robert's head. Through the comfortable chuckling, one could yet detect a purposeful set and precise lighting that allowed Dubac to slip effortlessly between the various shades of characters. He spoke, sang (I think), caricatured and... wrote on a blackboard...and erased from the blackboard, and wrote and erased...each time revealing and hiding the "truth" that he was trying to remember. It was a brilliant prop at so many levels. The second act, though a bit pedantic expanded the domestic into politics, culture and social hypocracy. The theme of the play was the same as so much of what today's political commentary is about - the polarised and the polite - only done differently. And thank goodness for that difference.

Robert Dubac's "Male Intellect: The Second Coming" plays at the Curious Theatre from Aug 4th to Aug 26th, 2007.

an alien in america series: entry 2: language barriers

cet été que j'ai décidé apprendre français...avant qu'il devient illégal.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=89976