Location, location, location...

“There is so much more to do in cyberspace than there is in the real world,” was my excuse to get out of the routine Friday evening happy hour at work. Despite my need for indulgence in some alcohol, finger-food and frivolous conversation at the end of a work week, my pretext was not totally unexpected on account of Bill Maher’s first reappearance post-vacation, not to mention the loner instincts that kicked in after I glanced at my ever-increasing pile of must-reads this morning. What was unexpected was my Jewish American (more American, less Jewish) co-worker’s repartee, “The question is which one is the real world.”

Needless to say that he is one of the few co-workers I have discussed Atlas Shrugged with at great length and whom I wouldn’t hesitate to go up to with a psycho-philosophical question in the middle of a work day without the fear of being received with an incredulous, open-mouthed stare. Even so, it took me by a certain degree of surprise.

With most people, conversation only goes as deep as that hail-mary 50-yard pass on a football field or cars buried in 2 feet of snow during a blizzard. For those that go through Lord of the Rings and Ayn Rand as required reading in high school, they seem to have an inexplicable fear of profound expression. I do somehow manage to get that kind of camaraderie from like-minded Indians, despite being a global citizen for the most part (by that, I mean, I can get just as excited by a perfectly tender piece of filet mignon as I can about pongal-vadai soaked in just the right amount of spicy sambhar, and could hold fanatical Hinduism to as much fault as I would Christianity).

But a few days ago, when I jumped up to high-five a fellow-hillbilly from the mountain state of Colorado on the simultaneous intoning of the best beer in the world – Fat tire for the uninitiated -- I realized jus how important geography can be. We then proceeded to wax nostalgic about the delightful crunch under our feet owing to the crisp white blanket so exclusive to Colorado-an blizzards, visibly bewildering the New Yorkers around us. That was the hard part -- cos while the Jack-Daniels-loving northeasterners might find it somewhere in their hearts to forgive you for your allegiance to unheard-of new Belgium brewery, they’re never going to be convinced that a winter that records an average daily temperature of 30°F could be tolerable, much less divine.

Since Colorado brings back some beautiful memories (graduation, sun-soaked summers, a bunch of incredibly amazing friends, bouldering on the foothills of the rockies, stables with white picket fences & camping amid the snow-capped mountains) needless to say, I was not thinking merely of shimmering dark brown ale or fresh flakes of snow. For a person that takes great pride in being able to suspend herself in cyberspace to make up for lack of profound conversation in real life, it came as a shock that geographical familiarity happens to matter a great deal!

Thanks to my fascination for that elusive mental wavelength match-up, to me, there is nothing that quite compares to finding a fellow Dan Brown enthusiast, someone that is as irreparably infected by the writing bug as I am, one that looks beyond the specious cyber hacker at the Baudrillard and Simulacra undertones in The Matrix, or a fellow human being that understands just why I had to skip a delightful night on the town to laugh at Maher’s New Rules.

However, sometimes there is nothing better than to sit down and have a hearty Wasn’t-that-café-on-Mulberry-Street-almost-divine? conversation with someone that has trod the same sand that you have, be it a decade in the past, a month ago or just some fleeting moments before.

Reason why I have spent many an hour swapping stories about those mystic tombs at the Lodhi Gardens in Delhi, the calm serenity of the Bay of Bengal on the fringes of Chennai’s Besant Nagar, the dangerously life-sapping (or life-giving as the case may be) crowds at Mumbai’s Victoria terminal, the Starbucks by the shimmering Hudson at Jersey’s Newport and that quaint little art shop in the quaint little town of Boulder, Colorado, only with the people that would truly understand – those that have been there, and done that.

The ones I call my ‘place-peers’ :)

When life looks on from the backseat...

I woke up this morning to a ghastly sight – no, not the snow-flakes blanketing my window pane (turning up the heat takes care of that), not the icy wedge that sent me skating on the fire escape (friction from some very brown rust stalls the fall), but snow on my celluloid screen!!!!! Yes, the screen I wake up to every Sunday morning in anticipation of a full two hours of some appetizing political chow-chow.

Chris Matthews followed by Meet the Press is, to me, as mandatory a Sunday morning ritual, as say, brushing my teeth is a daily one. So, nothing is going to take me away from my pot of coffee, the recliner and little Russ at 10:30 am on the last day of the week – a phone call, the fire alarm or a sleeping friend on the couch (had one woken up about a month ago -- he’s still thankful for Tim Russert’s unusually low tones for a newscaster).

So, obviously I was hopping mad at this reporter bundled up in wool and fleece, babbling on about the 12 inches all over Philadelphia. Memo: If I can see it out the window, it’s not news!!!! And why on earth is that more important than the question of whether McCain is ahead of Hillary in the polls?

. .
O


No sooner had that thought entered my mind than I began to evaluate my priorities. For regular human beings it is probably important to know how long the blizzard was going to last, if the buses and trolleys were still in service, if the airport was shut down, how many inches it was going to be or if they can get in to work tomorrow.

Ever since college where I spent more time hunched over The Hindu (not the religion) than applying a muddy face-mask, I have prided myself on having the “right” priorities in life. Unfortunately, those right priorities also mean sticking a post-it on the TV or computer to remind me to turn off the heater (you’d think the sweltering heat would be sufficient indication, but that could just as easily be the infuriating Ken Mehlman).

I spent about one unsuccessful hour explaining to a friend just how smart and funny Bill Maher was (while on the subject, why on earth are they re-running I’m Swiss under a different name, and why on earth am I watching it again?) at the end of which he said, “What is the point of criticizing Bush when there is nothing he can do about it?”
My immediate repartee, of course, was it was the same point as a Bruce Springstein concert or a broadway show. Art for the sake of art. Comedy for the sake of comedy. But then I began to wonder...

I spend exactly 30% of my life doing something I don’t necessarily believe is going anywhere – scientific research for the uninitiated, where I marvel at the working of the human heart but don’t necessarily think I can plug a hole in it to save a life. I am awestruck at the job already done and that is satisfying enough. On a typical day (one that does not involve B&N or a bar), I spend the rest watching political debates on TV, a bunch of New Yorkers hover around in a coffee shop or 200-pounders wrestle over a football.

I often forget to pay my phone bill, I always do my taxes on the midnight of the 14th of April, some important cant-live-without-them gadgets are still amiss in the apartment and I always seem to run out of detergent. But not to worry -- Roger Federer won the Australian Open, I have exactly half a dozen varieties of cheese in the fridge, my stack of Atlantics lies unscathed in the cabinet, my huge collection of Friends DVDs occupies a coveted spot on the AV rack and the one life-saving feature that is always available is HBO on demand.

Little wonder then that I decided to evaluate my priorities – I ain’t changing any of them just yet, but they make for a good post ;) So, I am just beginning to question if watching a sitcom is indeed more important than taking the phone call that says you’ve got to pay the bill that allows you to watch it in the first place.

As for my Sunday morning, CNN – my fallback news channel – saved the day, cos at least Blitzer still thought Iran was more important than the blitz [God bless 70°-Atlanta for being oblivious to the havoc that only snow can cause ;)]

Nonetheless, it’s brought me to an important conclusion: when Maher and Clinton become the bills more important to your life than the ominous one from Amex, boy, have you got trouble. But can’t worry about that just now. There’s a weblog I gotta tend to ;)

Oh, for the love of God!!!

I wish sometimes people could step out of the world and take a look at it from the outside. Really! It would make a great comic routine and they can have a nice hearty laugh. And hopefully come to their senses. I betcha it would beat Friends and Seinfeld and the Simpsons put together.

What the f*** is this whole uproar over a buncha fr****** cartoons!!!

Read the following objectively and tell me it doesn’t make a good story line: A Danish paper publishes some innocuous cartoons of Muhammad. There’s a whole series of riots where people kill people. Then a group of Muslim radicals release obscene cartoons of the prophet to add fuel to the fire!! And now, a paper in Iran plans to retaliate by publishing cartoons of the holocaust.

I don’t know about you, but I think the silver lining is that radical muslim clerics actually broke their shackles enough to publish obscene cartoons of Muhammad. They must be getting progressive! (I do acknowledge that the rest of humankind may not share my enthusiasm at this latest development).

In any case, as a religion outsider, I am looking at all of this and having one helluva good laugh (except for the loss of human life because if there is one thing I will never understand it is the ease with which people trade an existing, real human being for a non-existent, fantastical entity that someone made up for the heck of it).

And this is not the first televised parody in the name of religion.

I remember watching with a great deal of amusement people staging an all-night vigil to protest the removal of the ten commandments from the Alabama state judicial building a couple years ago. First, my bewilderment was directed at folks that think a piece of rock is worth losing precious sleep over. But secondly, who the hell cares if a loony judge wants to display religion in the lobby of a courthouse? Inside, you swear on the bible for crying out loud! If you don’t care for religion, let it just sit there as a piece of art. The only thing that whole episode achieved was kindle among the religion-soaked masses, a reverent respect for the man – yeah, Roy and his Rock are quite a phenomenon now, and he’s running for Governor. And no points for guessing who’ll win in the logic-blinded state of Alabama. So, the secular radical liberals have basically taken a judge whose sole purpose was to bang his gavel from time to time and put him on the legislative playing field, where he can do some real damage. Just what America needs. Another religion-obsessed, blind politician.

Another comic character in this ever-intriguing field is Mike Newdow, who spent millions of hours and hundreds of dollars filing lawsuits just so his daughter would not have to hear a thousand other kids say “under god”. I am equally amused at both ends of the spectrum. Much as I am awestruck by atheistic, radical elites like Newdow, I have to say that protesting it so vehemently is almost just as asinine as being fanatically obsessed with it. I mean, if you don’t believe in it, don’t say it! [Or better still, get a slot on national tv and say a lot about it (vive la Maher :))]

Then the whole furor over The Da Vinci Code. Easily, in my opinion the most fascinating book ever written (the only thing that comes close to beating it is Dan Brown’s own irreverent prequel to it). But no, these religious fanatics can’t take a well-written piece of literature. Who the hell cares if the facts have been researched and spun through a polygraph and who the hell cares if Christ had a wife or a son or maybe a whole family in Alabama (take a moment and think what this could do for your party – not just a family but generations of Christ’s descendants, who could campaign for a half-witted republican to come to power so they can hear him say “God bless America” on tv!!!)

Trey Parker and Matt Stone had it right all along -- taking what people do in the name of religion and moral-values and putting it on celluloid, with a splash of added color is more hilarious than anything a humor writer could dream up. I’m surprised they even have to try so hard. I can just laugh at it in its crude human form, though, for the record, I do love the bright yellow hair and perfectly round faces :)

Update

Found this on another blog, quoted from Metafilter, and thought I'd re-quote it cos I couldn't say it better:

Religion, all religion, needs to be mocked in a free society, for the embarrassment it is. Religion deserves freedom, but it doesn't deserve "respect", quite the opposite. And the more [backward] and insane the adherents of any religion are, the more they demand that unbelievers have to respect their tiresome [idiotic] beliefs, the more those beliefs deserve to be mocked. This [isn't just] for Muslims, the more Jerry Falwell, George Bush, etc. demand we all pay lip service to their ugly superstitions, the more necessary it becomes that South Park and Kevin Smith and Andres Serrano and Marilyn Manson and Richard Dawkins, etc, etc, step up their campaigns to mock and denigrate these outdated beliefs.

The Steelers steal the show...

Quite literally, it seemed, what with a game riddled with stealth plays...

I’d almost given up on the Steelers till the last few minutes of the first half, when my NFL hero finally turned it all around at 3rd and 28 with a beautifully orchestrated pass to his favorite receiver followed by a slightly unbelievable (albeit phenomenal) dive for a much-needed TD.

If things had gone the Seahawks’ way in the first fifteen minutes (especially the disputed Jackson touchdown catch) we might have seen a very different game. But even that doesn’t validate Matt’s decision to run the ball at under a minute left in the first half and some 40 yards to go, especially since he seemed to have no problems connecting (Big Ben was the one having trouble in the area, thanks to the awesome Seahawks defense). Apparently there was some miscommunication between him and Holmgren, but hell, even I know that calls for a throw!

Come second half, and Big Ben found his feet and incredibly it seemed, his penchant for the pass play. There’s nothing to take away from the fact that Roethlisberger always, always manages to deliver on the big plays, be it find a receiver, set up a shotgun or run for a first down. Not to mention the phenomenal Hines Ward who never seems to miss. The Bettis bus rolled on as well, not running outta gas, till the very end (the cheeriest player in the NFL shall be sorely missed :(). I don’t remember seeing much of the Porter-Polamalu defense, but they did deliver where it mattered. Like Holmgren himself said, Seattle was but a foot shy of a TD thrice in the first half. The Pittsburgh defense must have done something right.

The most incredible part of the game has got to be the gadget plays! Ben made it all look so easy, I’m wondering why they’re not done more often! The reverse pass from Randal El to Hines Ward was heart-stopping, quite literally. And Willie-the-fast-Parker’s record-breaking touchdown run, where I coulda sworn Roethlisberger was all set to throw, which put the Steelers quite unequivocally on top.

But only until Herndon’s interception in the 3rd quarter, it seemed, followed by the direly needed Stevens’ TD. And the 4th quarter saw the birds on an awesome journey from their 5 yard line all the way to the Steelers’ 1, and would have been too, but for that controversial call. Gotta give it to the relentless Seattle Offense – Hasselbeck, Alexander and the oh-so-unstoppable Jackson.

The Hawks did their job and did it well, but the Steelers played dangerous (the recurrent surfacing of Ben’s fondness for rushing excepted) and boy, were the risks worth it...

21-10 to be precise :)