To the God of small things....

Like you know from the past, my weblog is a place where I vent my frustration about the things that don’t matter in life, so as to steal focus from the ones that do ;) So here’s to more whining about the little things in life…

Where in the whole wide world was Max Kellerman?

Why didn’t I know of Max Kellerman’s existence until a few months back?
I was watching the great Max make a case for seat-belt breathalyzers in Volvos and I got to wondering: here’s a guy that’s quick-witted, intelligent, articulate and ---not that I care, but you’ve got to be blind not to notice--- incredibly good looking and yet I hadn’t even heard of him like a few months back. Not to sound pompous, but there are very few newscasters or talk show hosts in America that I haven’t heard or at least heard about. Why do we keep seeing dumb, boring liberals like Alan Colmes and Paul Begala, while the Max Kellermans of the world are hiding behind a boxing glove, quite literally? And then we complain that there are no enterprising liberals out there. On second thoughts, is he liberal? Actually I don’t care, as long as he comes and flaunts his wit and airs his views (or the devil’s as the case may be) and puts the equally lovable Tucker to shame every night :)

To hell with sauces and dressings

Before I landed in this country my greatest fear was that Americans didn’t believe in condiments, and now my greatest fear is that they do!
Tucker Carlson said recently that Fries don’t need ketchup or even salt to be divine…… And I agree (as I do with most of his statements). Americans are such ardent “consumers” that they need to keep adding things to things to make them more attractive. My advice to them: DON’T!
To the food industry --- things I don’t particularly care for:
-- nuts (or strawberries or peanut butter or pretzels, for crying out loud) peeping out ominously from otherwise unadulterated, melt-in-your-mouth, divine chocolate
-- barbecue sauce de-sanctifying the orgasmic effect only medium rare steak can provide
-- marinara soaking EVERYting that dares to be Italian (memo: other than spicy Indian food, tomatoes belong only in salads, so let them just snuggle with the lettuce where they feel at home)


We don’t want fillers!

What’s with these people filling in? I watch Countdown with “Keith Olbermann” for Keith Olbermann! And Meet the Press for Tim Russert. I don’t care for Amy Robach or David Gregory. I know you’re trying to carve a place for yourself in the big league, but showing how NOT to be big league is not the way to do it! And by the way, the program is called the “O’Reilly” Factor for a reason, namely, noone else can claim the title of pompous, self-possessed, know-it-all right winger. It’s not like Dave Barry is asking people to write his columns for him or Bill Maher is employing someone to make us laugh during his summer hiatus. If you’re on vacation, I don’t particularly want to see your show! If you spent some time in front of the screen instead of behind it, you’d know that all news shows talk about the same thing, so I am obviously watching your show cos you are saying it, not cos of what you are saying .. Bottomline: In the singular case that Max Kellerman is filling in for Tucker Carlson, I’ll just wait for you to get back from your vacation, thank you.

If doomsday’s here, we don’t need warnings…

Reminiscent of the US Dept of Homeland Security, Nature’s been raising the threat level --- yellow, orange, red…and the hits just keep on coming. First there was the heat wave in Europe, then the huge tsunami in Asia, the zillion hurricanes in the US and Central America and then of course tornadoes, famines, and wildfires galore. If doomsday is here, whoever is controlling it should just go ahead and blow up the earth, big bang style. Not sit there and give us these innuendoes and hints that keep telling ya, “bring out the hurricane shutters”, “board up the windows“, “don’t venture too close to the sea”, “wear SPF 45 and stay indoors”. If you can’t cope, jus blow up… It wouldn’t be the worst thing for the world, ya know…

India’s kickin’ ass

Don’t get me wrong… though I wouldn’t call myself particularly patriotic (in fact too many Indians would pounce on me if I even tried) I can’t help but feel a certain surge of delight when I see all this focus on our motherland :) In fact, I think most of my criticism of India stems from the fact that I see the Gurcharan Dases and the Vir Sanghvis and I wonder why we bother with the Lalu Yadavs and Mayawatis..Anyway, enough about that – this post is supposed to be about petty things. Now, India’s really making waves! Business Week had this huge double issue asking if India and China were the new world economies; and now, Nature has come up with a review that discusses the great strides in biotechnology in India. *beaming*
Now you’re wondering what my problem is. This: My folks back home have one of those fancy CDMA phones that connects to the pc and acts as a modem ….I live in the richest country in the world and I barely have a phone that can be trusted to record voicemails. And that’s not all: the last time I was in India I waited a couple hours for the google home page to load (google---which is a universal verb now---you cant wait two hours for a verb to happen [think breathe, eat, sleep]). I don’t know if you are as inherently discerning as I am, but it seems like technology is playing a game with me. Not to mention religion. It’s stalking me. I escaped from six years of the BJP and fled to the US – only to have Dubya elected to a second term. I leave India and the Congress promptly – and surprisingly -- rises to the occasion. Why do I miss out on the MM Singhs and Bill Clintons and end up with the W Bushes and Vajpayees of the world :(

Rooting for the wrong dog

Despite the dozens of little coffee shops dotting the streets in quaintly cultured Hoboken or the teeming espresso bars in the rocky town of Fort Collins, I searched out the familiar green circle of Starbucks wherever I went. I paid the extra buck for whipped cream and another three for wireless internet without a thought that a million other places not only didn’t charge you for the perks but also refrained from such allures as exotic looking mugs and coffee makers.

Drinking coffee from a familiar cup is one thing, but when an entire country votes in favor of the candidate they can “relate to” or a huge section of the tennis-loving populace calls an icon like Pete Sampras boring you have problems. You may not identify with a guy that was captain of the debating team at Yale, but you’re not picking a high school buddy, you’re picking someone to sit in the highest office in the nation. As for the supernatural that conceded just one match in 57 matches at Wimbledon in eight straight years, I can think of a hundred adjectives --- and boring is certainly not one of them.

This unconditional devotion to the underdog fascinates me a great deal. I have never rooted for an underdog, except in the case of cricket, where India was long the poorer bet in a match-up against the Aussies or the Windies and patriotism and peer-induced fervor overcame my love of infallibility. My contention is this: we can’t always pick to be winners or losers in real life situations, but we sure can pick our idols :)

Since I believe sport (especially individual sport) is one of the few situations where you can see people’s true personalities in action (somewhat like an unadulterated reality show), I am mainly talking here of sporting underdogs, except for Bush, cos let’s face it, I can never pass up a chance to talk about Dubya; he lends natural fodder for humor even when I am at my funniest worst and if that’s the reason he got elected to a second term, so be it. After all, laughter is an integral part of the American way and Friends, Frasier and Sex and the City signed off earlier that same year leaving people no choice but to turn to politics for humor ;)

Not to be unfair to underdogs, there is of course a very real reason to love players like Andy Roddick who are so incredibly gracious in defeat. The ace-blasting American heartthrob never passes up a chance to shower praise on Federer and has openly declared that Roger is not only the best player ever but also a wonderful human being. In yesterday’s zillionth defeat against Federer, side-stepping his ailing foot (literally), he acknowledged that Roger ‘was already kicking my butt before that’. Lines like 'I threw the kitchen sink at him but he went to the bathroom and got his tub' come easily to Andy and his sense of humor in defeat is sometimes more laudable than Federer’s successes.

But let’s face it, we have also loved the racket-throwing, tear-jerking Ivanisevic, while he took something away from Sampras’ unparalleled victories and cheered for a tantrum-throwing, abuse-hurling McEnroe, in the face of a composed and gracious Borg. Time and time again, the crowds are on the side of the underdog, cheering him on, rooting for every easy point won, every stroke of luck that moves him forward, waging a raucous, albeit, losing battle against the silent invincibility that players like Roger and Pete display.

I was rooting for the Yankees in last year’s playoffs (more because I root for ANYthing New york than any real love for the team; besides, I was fed up of hearing media personnel and politicians alike wonder if this would be the year the ‘curse’ would be lifted). And I noticed increasingly that all of mankind was cheering on the Red Sox against the “evil empire”. Everyone outside of New York, it seemed -- in bars, the work-place and broadcast news -- was unequivocally pro-Sox. Why, I asked a die-hard Red Sox fan. We root for the underdog, it’s un-American not to. That explains the elections, I thought. Of course, some might argue that Kerry was the underdog, the guy trying to overthrow an incumbent and entice a formidable red-state enormity, but once the debates were on, and Bush started his defense with “he forgot Polland” Kerry was the irrefutable topdog. Unfortunately, one that was too smart, too composed and too self-assured for people to “relate” to.

Then again, there are inevitable winners like Lance Armstrong, that boast of a huge fan following. But here, the allegiance is more because lesser mortals can feel a certain sympathy for him due to his struggle with cancer, probably because it makes him more of a human being. I have never heard more support for Sampras than I did during the Australian open where he broke free of his shackles and cried for his coach and friend who was then battling death.

Right from Shakespeare’s As you like it, where we all loved seeing the david-grade Orlando overthrow the goliath-grade Charles, most of us tend to associate a good-over-evil aspect to a contest and root for the player that can induce a certain amount of compassion, even if he is the least likely of winners.

Is the human being’s natural sympathy for the underdog due to a sadistic tendency that craves to see a success story falter (toppling of icons like Martha Stewart and Dan Rather seem to have an ominous element of deep satisfaction), or is it merely that we want to see a human being up there who can display weakness from time to time and tell us that despite our shortcomings, we could be there some day?

Virtually speaking...

After almost two years of my debut as a blogger (thanks to my steadfast, and more importantly, cyber-competent pal, Atool,) that started with a revelation of the domination of the cyberworld in my life, I decided it was time for part II of my virtual reality deliberation.

I still maintain that the best scene in Disclosure is where Tom Sanders enters the virtual representation of his company’s database, and often wonder how it would be to have that option in real life --- plug in different situations in a computer program and look at cause and effect, or better still, experience a wide array of emotions and actions Matrix-style from a wire-entangled pod.

For a predominantly computer phobic person, I am unusually fascinated by the world of simulations, and AS a computer-phobic person I do think my mind does a better job of it.

Since I left my high school days behind me (where my biggest worry was usually along the lines of “Do I begin with the homework or finish reading ‘Doctors’?”), more often than not, my most promising moment of the day has been draping the comforter around me from anywhere between 12 and 3 am, shutting out the real world and getting lost in ‘the beyond’ of beautiful dreams.

You’re constantly hearing people talk about fulfilling their dreams and translating their fantasies into reality. I, for one, want quite a few of my dreams to stay a dream. Isn’t it more fun to dream a dream than live a dream?

Be it Enid Blyton’s “enchanted land” series, landing the A-6 intruder at New York’s Intrepid museum or “Back to the future” at Universal Studios, I’ve been quite happy in my closeted little world of illusions right from somewhere around age six to two decades later.

When it was time for the monthly family movie outing, my sis always wanted the depressingly real 1947-Earth, I wanted Speed where a bus could jump over freeways or Jurassic Park where dinosaurs could roam the earth. My favorite show on TV is the most feel-good and unrealistic of them all--- six Manhattan residents spending 24 hours a day in a coffee shop and still living in fancy apartments. It may not exactly scream “reality” but let’s face it, I wouldn’t sit in front of a celluloid screen if I just wanted to see day-to-day life on the street. My fire-escape allows an unbiased view :)

I don’t know if I’ll ever go on a treasure hunt through ten different countries and I’m pretty sure I won’t ever sell outrageously priced chocolates on the streets of New York, but I got it all by sitting glued to every wheezing breath in the first season of The Amazing Race and one too many acerbic remarks in The Apprentice.

A lot of times I feel more excited about plopping down on my couch and sitting down for a full hour of Real Time or three of a Wimbledon men’s final than about meeting up with a good friend or calling a long lost pal who would guaranty a few laughs.

Is it because anything could go wrong in an I-am-breathing-the-same-air-you-are relationship while the one on the small screen is protected not only by layers of nitrocellulose, but also from the callousness that destiny seems so eager to impose in real life? Is it less complicated and more rewarding to live lives “through our heads”?

Is it a milder (I hope!) version of multiple personality syndrome, where we constantly try to compartmentalize our lives into the “perfect virtual” ones and the “not-so-perfect real” ones?

Do we just want to keep these two worlds strictly apart, instead of trying to find a compromise that may result from an ineffective transposition? Are dreams just a way of overlooking the trials and tribulations of the harsh world out there?

Can we live our entire lives being happy and satisfied in the pristine uncorrupted world upstairs, never bringing them out into the very tainted real one that threatens to throttle them in infancy?

Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg apart, can the virtual ever be real?

To yell or not to yell..

At the ripe old age of 20, I remember bursting into tears trying to convince a group of likewise twenty-somethings why smoking should be allowed in public; it’s funny that while something as trivial as trying to establish the rights of smokers when I hadn’t so much as touched a cigarette my entire life so easily induced the water works, more real problems like being thrown out of the college dorm didn’t so much as dampen an eyelash.

My arguments --- and I have had plenty of them in 26 odd years--- almost always end in vehement shouting or frustrated tears; in either case, I would usually have had the last word (or shriek as the case may be). For as long as I can remember, I have had this compulsive need to convince people to not only see my point of view but also see it as the ‘only’ one. Pretty ironical for a person that does not believe in a little book of laws that claim to know right from wrong.

Something my old roomie and good pal, Vidy has often said to me comes to mind. Her contention is that I am not the “open minded” soul I claim to be. I might be unfazed by gay people making out in public or anarchists smoking in the non-smoking sections of restaurants, but I am certainly more than just a tad disdainful of those that don’t eat meat because of religious reasons, those that don’t know what NAFTA stands for, painstakingly carb-conscious people, fanatical environmentalists (painstakingly and fanatical being the operative words) and teetotalers. And while I would go all out to applaud the woman that holds her own in an argument, is fairly well-informed about world affairs and puts career before men, I could never for the life of me respect a girl that depends on a guy to earn her daily bread or fix her car. And the list of people I scorn, of course, is endless, leaving me insulated in my own little world of libertarian, agnostic, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-marijuana, fast-car-loving, euthanasia-touting esotericism. Okay, that’s too much evidence for me to wink at; I am close-minded -- only on the opposite side of the spectrum. And the big difference would be that because I don’t advocate that the world be ruled according to my interests, I allow the far-right-extremist as full a life as I allow myself.

I have never been one to shy away from the fact that I can be a formidable human being ----so I admit that the tears and the shouting and the scorn are certainly a thing of character, but I also like to shift blame wherever possible --- and what I am increasingly coming to realize is that it is a “viewpoint” thing as well. In other words a set of human beings that share a certain viewpoint seem to have a very similar way of expressing it.

Yeah, if you’re thinking this is just another one of my million posts about me, me, me, you’re wrong (though you would have been right the rest of the million times minus one). I may look at the world through my little keyhole, but I try to look out at as much as possible through it :)

If you have made a careful observation (or sat in front of broadcast news 24/7 for a week), you would agree with my theory: the person that says a big corporate giant should be protected from needless taxes almost always screams it, while the one that says the poor man on the street should be fed almost always says it quietly. I don’t know if something as outrageous as protecting the rights of the rich, mean, immoral man in the penthouse suite of a skyscraper falls to decibels for conviction and feeding the bedraggled individual on the sidewalk is basic human instinct, but there’s got to be a deeper meaning.

Hawkeyejo, my floating friend in cyberspace gleaned this piece of information from the worldly wise web, which, among other things, notes, “libertoids (are) every bit as closed-minded, zealous, and ideologically blinkered as the religious conservatives whom so many of them dislike”

If you have ever watched a libertarian like Jonathan Hoening on a show like The Cost of Freedom and almost reached out to touch the intensity of his beliefs, you’ll agree with the above assessment. While I belong to that subset of libertoids that go about life airing their inconsequential opinions to anyone that would care to listen, I have noted with some surprise, bordering on awe, that my democratic, liberal friends are usually content to make their point and then grant a benevolent “sure” to my obviously opposing views (and believe me, I need much more than “sure”). Same reason why a left-winger like Alan Colmes sits and quietly takes the mentally deranged Sean Hannity’s cloistered opinions. Or that the democratic camp boasts of a solitary Dean or Moore while the Republican camp is filled with hannities, o’reillies, coulters and limbaughs.

The reason democrats are so incredibly passive as politicians (think Kerry), talk show hosts and human beings is that they are progressive and open to “all points of view” (which unfortunately include such diverse sounds as Ann Coulter’s whining and Bono’s musical lyrics). The republicans on the other hand are meant to be crass and insulated, which in celluloid terms, translates as hanging on to a viewpoint and repeatedly saying, “you are wrong”.

Breaking it down, the Republican’s world-view is a keyhole, the libertarian’s world-view is himself and the democrat’s world-view is the entire world (they are now looking to add Mercury, Venus, Mars and that behemoth, Jupiter). Thus the democrat’s dilemma is not a new phenomenon but the inherent crisis associated with the proverbial cat on the wall.

My two-pence: stick to the black or white and scream your heart out…..venture into the grays and prepare yourself for a lifetime of no yelling….

Uncle Sam’s broken promise

After driving my parents insane with worry for twenty-three years with my impulsive dare-devil antics, I spent my first few months in this country roaming the streets of New york city till long after midnight ---simply because I could!

After four years of trying to understand the nuances and enjoying the benefits of this newfound personal freedom, my mind still does a little jig when the temperature is a soaring 90 degrees and I can walk out in a comfortable pair of shorts and T-shirt without being penalized for my choice of clothes or point out to my boss why he is wrong without having my paycheck delayed. Only now I take it with a pinch of salt, knowing that while the US is a land where you can, for the most part, do whatever the hell you please, it is more because the ACLU can plead your case than because a majority of Americans agree with what you do.

The ACLU and my favorite Real Time host are my two remaining hopes for America to live up to what I saw from my rose-tinted glasses through Warner Brothers and Penguin books in tenth grade and decided that this was the place to be. I think I have mentioned Bill Maher on my blog about 25 times in 2 months. But he’s the only one I can see and hear who seems to be protesting in any effective way, this country’s going to the gutters and the least I can do is “spread the gospel” (with due apologies to the heretic at my choice of words).

The thing about Maher is you end up admiring him for his views, his philosophy, his guts and yet the reason you love him is cos he makes you laugh so uproariously while putting them “out there”. The man can talk continuously for an hour and a half---without a commercial break--- make you laugh for about 99% of the time and still convey more wisdom than anyone else ever has on television.

While I was on the verge of insanity with Bill being on his awfully long hiatus, he came up with his HBO special. I am swiss, is what he called it; it’s so Bill, cos God forbid, he doesn’t belong here in this land of religiously fanatical people who spend hours lamenting about a piece of stone outside the Alabama State Judicial building, a couple words in the pledge of allegiance or voters who decide elections based on “men kissing men” as Bill himself puts it.

But thank my lucky stars he is. Thanks to him, I know at least a tiny little part of America is what I expected it to be, what I dreamed it to be, what I fantasized it to be. No offense, I love this country and I know I get more here than I could ever dream of in India or in any other country in the world; it’s just that I am only getting half of what I had bargained for. My life is unaffected; I am as yet neither gay nor in need of an abortion or suffering from a life threatening illness that would need stem cell research at its heights, but even looking at all of it from the outside makes me really, really mad.

Hearing Bill talk about all the things that bug him about this country and its policies struck a kind of familiar chord in the back of my mind. Naah, I am not trying to weasel into that league up, up above where Maher belongs, where I have as yet not been able to admit any other human being.

But I have sat at a bar, at a round table or on a couch with a half dozen Indians time and time again and tried to tell them what I think is wrong with India and its belief system and been treated to looks of absolute incredulity and open-mouthed shock. I am an out and out liberal at heart; I don’t have a problem with gay marriage, I don’t believe in religion (of any kind) and I certainly don’t believe that some kid should be brought into this world and made to suffer because you thought it was a crime to kill it when it was in the womb. I would even go as far as legislating marijuana, euthanasia and suicide if I were given a choice. I really, in the true sense of the word do not believe in a right or wrong, and I think that ANYthing in this world can be justified as long as you want it enough and it does not “physically” affect anyone else. Yeah, I don’t understand the concept of laws being made based on “emotional” damage because they can’t be measured. If you’re writing it on paper and putting it in a file folder that can be touched, make sure what goes in it is tangible as well. This emotional garbage is the root of problems like capital punishment and the fight against euthanasia. Besides, anything can cause emotional damage---from playing the music too loudly to statutory rape. What I cannot understand is that after nearly four million years of evolution, I am still in the minority. How long is it going to take the most powerful country in the world to believe that a chemical reaction that can be reproduced in a test tube is more convincing than an unknown entity building the sun, the moon, the earth and Adam and Eve in seven magical days?

While Americans still battle with the idea of gay marriage it has been happening in at least five countries without inhibition and while you can lose a job here for smoking marijuana, in the Netherlands it might well be soda. In the land of the free, presidents would not get impeached for having extramarital affairs and players would not be penalized for trying to build up their muscles.

So when Bill says emphatically “don’t legislate your tastes” or that “religion is a neurological disorder” it is tempting to speculate how different this country could have been if it were not tainted by the lofty, impractical ideals that religion imposes. Let’s face it, as wonderfully as only Maher can put it, America is being ruled by a book that says man lived up to 400 years and that you are to be put to death if you worked on a Sunday.

Since all the other ingredients are already in place, would it be too hard to put religion on a back seat and rule the country on the principles of reason rather than faith, thus putting me back on track with the “Kane and Abel” and “All the president’s men” that I idolized as a teenager?

[I HAVE to mention this ---I’m tempted to pledge allegiance to Switzerland since my two biggest living heros are now Swiss---Bill of course, and the only other human being I have mentioned more times on my weblog :)---and oh, the chocolates and cheese wouldn't hurt...]