Archive for May, 2008
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
incontrivertible proof of cultural decline
From the director of Match Point??? Seriously ???? People are stupid. Full Stop.
Monday, May 26th, 2008
The Gift.
As the day of my departure for a dreaded family reunion/wedding approaches, I’m at a loss concerning what to give the couple as a gift. The groom is a first cousin of mine, but I haven’t seen, or even spoken, to him for a few years. And I’ve never met the bride. So, I can’t really know what they’d like or want. Suggestions? Should I give them money? That’s the SOP in Pakistan, isn’t it? If so, how much?
Monday, May 26th, 2008
Waltz With Bashir
Have you guys heard of this animated documentary? It’s about the Israeli director’s memories of the 1982 war against Lebanon. I’ll admit I heard about it because it premiered at Cannes, but it seems interesting nevertheless. Unfortunately, I don’t know where, or how, to get my hands on it. Will I have to wait for it to actually be released!?
Monday, May 26th, 2008
The Non-Flying Dutchman
I just came across this article in the Financial Times, from April 2006, on Dennis Bergkamp. He was the definitive footballer for me, along with Jürgen Klinsmann, in terms of what I wanted to do on a football pitch — barring his moments of wild anger, of course. Although I only had a few chances to see Klinsmann in action, I feel lucky to have witnessed each of these Bergkamp moments mentioned in the article:
There was his instant flick with back to the goal and then full-circle spin around Nikos Dabizas, of Newcastle United; the loblet that placed Fredrik Ljungberg alone in front of Juventus’s goal; or his outside-of-the-foot strike against Argentina.
For your delight, here is a video (along with some incongruous music) that displays these three moments — the Newcastle goal at 2:04, the Ljungberg assist at 3:26, and the Argentina goal at the end. Here is that last one again, previewed with a goal from Bergkamp’s legendary hat-trick against Leicester City in September 1997 to make the point that it was no fluke.
I think this also sort of explains why I’d sometimes burst into spontaneous laughter or applause while watching football on TV by myself.
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
Hazrat Darymple on Pakistan
Darymple writes about the possibilies of Pakistan in the NY review of books:
As you travel around Pakistan today you can see the effects of the boom everywhere: in vast new shopping malls and smart roadside filling stations, in the cranes of the building sites and the smokestacks of factories, in the expensive new cars jamming the roads and in the ubiquitous cell-phone stores. In 2003 the country had fewer than three million cell phones; today apparently there are 50 million, while car ownership has been increasing at roughly 40 percent a year since 2001. At the same time foreign direct investment has risen from $322 million in 2002 to $3.5 billion in 2006.
Sunday, May 18th, 2008
Playing Classical Cricket?
This article on cricinfo actually does a good job of summarising my discussion with Atomsmasher on the decline of traditional disciplines in the arts. The following paragraph is particularly insightful in drawing out the similarities between classical training in music and cricket.
People frequently say of Indian playback singers that this singer or that was classically trained. It is generally meant as a compliment. Lata Mangeshkar’s virtuosity and longevity were attributed to her classical training. But over time it has become clear that classical training is an optional extra for the successful playback singer because there have been so many who never had any, starting with Kishore Kumar. In the same way, Twenty20 tournaments like the World Cup and the IPL have thrown up players like Yusuf Pathan who have achieved great success and recognition via this upstart form of the game without any sort of track record at the Test level.
What do you guys think about the qualities of say opera. Is a lot of it pretentious and elitist or should I not blind my classist sentiments from appreciating the beauty of the art? I’m inclined to think that its somewhere in between. That while a lot of people are part of the ’scene’ or are patrons of the arts in order to gain social status, i shouldn’t let that cloud my judgement in trying to appreciate art in all its forms.
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
a.p.p.e.a.s.e.
can you say “PWNED!”?
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
From Literacy To Digiracy
What do you say? Are we on the road to dissertations written in txt msg speak?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Mixed race kids have all the fun
More on Japan. This time in the form of a half-japanese, half-iranian (yes I said Iranian) baseball sensation, Yu Darvish.
From Espn’s feature of him,
The full family name is Darvishsefad. Yu’s grandfather was a travel agent in Iran who encouraged Yu’s father to explore the world, partially by finishing his high school education in the United States. Farsad did and went on to college in Florida, where he played soccer — or at least he did until 1979, when Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, kidnapped 52 embassy workers, changed the course of American politics, launched Ted Koppel’s career into orbit and instantly made things rather unpleasant for young Iranians studying in America.
Is it just me or have either of you noticed that mixed race kids are better looking and more athletic than the average single raced kid.
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
No pizza for you, uk
Why indeed? Pizza* here tends to be abysmal, and if you care even half as much as these people do - this discussion (which routinely uses words such as vulgarian to describe people who eat at Pizza Hut) will be absolutely riveting.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2007/05/it_takes_an_expert_pizzaiolo.html
I’ve never been to naples, but i remember a tiny shack called ‘tom and jerry’ in a decidedly unfashionable part of rome that made pizzas that brought torrents of tears to my eyes. Pizza express does that to me too, but for entirely different reasons..
Actually, i think Dominos may be even worse.
*just like good desi bbq