Ashwin Sood

I just found out that Sarah McLachlan (my favorite singer) is married to brown drummer Ashwin Sood. How cool is that!

Pet Shop Boys

Went to the Pet Shop Boys concert last Thursday with a friend. I thought I should catch them before they get too old to tour. Boy, was I in for an interesting show!

It was very flamboyant. Very. I now know how to say "How are you doing?" to a Pet Shop Boys fan, - "Are you fabulous?". There were pink spot lights, and backup singers that doubled as backup dancers! And of all the concerts that I've ever been to, this was the first that had an intermission. I guess the boys had to retouch their makeup.

The audience was having a really good time throughout. After the intermission I had a gay couple that were all over each other and little over me. It was that crowded. And smoking second hand pot just added to the whole experience.

All in all, it was a night I can't easily forget. Loved their classic hits "It's a Sin" and "Go West". Not really familiar with their other hits or their newer releases, but I enjoyed what I went to see the concert for.

Lonelygirl15

The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t: "After months of intrigue, the identities of Web video star lonelygirl15 and her producers have been revealed."



Times have changed.

In yet another 'Blair Witch Project' strategy, a YouTube user called loneygirl15 started posting what seemed to be personal video diary postings. She gathered thousands of fans and millions of hits.

Gone are the days when users were gullible enough to believe every word they read (or video they see) on the Internet. When they started suspecting this beautiful yet geeky girl was too good to be true, they dug around, traced the IP address of the source email address and found out that it was all an elaborate marketing stunt of some LA filmmakers. She was revealed to be an actress hired to break the hearts of geeks, all in the name of marketing an upcoming movie.

Another elaborate prank dismantled. Phew!

Sex Blog

'I don't write to titillate. I censor like crazy to make my blogs less erotic'

Some people have more success with their blogs than others. The sex diary of a London post-modern feminist blogger gets her a six figure book deal but loses her privacy.

So this sex liberal decides to write her sexual experiences explicitly and anonymously on her blog. Her intent was never to write erotica apparently, but I guess a need to pour out her psychoanalytic thought process about her sexual appetite, technique and men in general.

Despite the ultra-conservative background I come from, where nobody talks about sex, ever, (except in crude humor), I have been able to learn that the average woman I have known supposedly does not think about sex all that much. It's not as important to women. It is men that are dirty and last about 7 seconds. We've heard all this before. But now, in this 'Sex and the City' Samantha Jones generation, having a healthy (or obsessive) sexual appetite, satisfying it and telling the whole world (at least anonymously) is considered 'third wave feministic' (*)? Really?

*(I know the "women entering work force, women's education, abortion, sexual freedom is considered the first wave of feminism. No idea what the second wave of feminism was, just quoting from the Guardian article.)

Feminism on the front-page again. I guess the feminist movement in London has reached a new milestone when this sex blogger is not being vilified more than the attention she receives in media. She has an ardent reader base that does not only consist of perverted men. Plus a publishing company is willing to put money (six figures I repeat) on it.

Here in the U.S., I was a little surprised that the conservative Christian pro-lifers actually lost their campaign against making Plan-B over the counter. At least they were able to push it behind the counter, but I still consider it a loss. (This is after the same conservative base vehemently being able to ban gay marriage not so long ago.) I guess that is a success for feminists / pro-choicers in a big way.

At least in this aspect, I was further surprised to hear about India staying ahead of the game. Forget about India being uncomfortable with sex in the open, the Hindu radicals won't let Deepa Mehta shoot a movie, Water, that depicts them in a harsh light (she had to shoot it in Sri Lanka I think), but there is a Plan B already. I guess the Ministry of Health was able to sell the idea based on practicality or perhaps even this is serving the male-dominated society in some twisted way. Nevertheless, women have more choice in India already and that's something.

Feminism on the front-page again, and changing the world.

Corinne Bailey Rae

Went to Corinne Bailey Rae's concert last night at The Loft. She is awesome. Her voice and her smile is so mesmerizing. And she has an English accent. She looked like a goddess up there. Wow! She wasn't too much like Norah Jones, she had a little bit more rock to her music. Apart from the songs from her self-titled debut released album, she did a Led Zeppelin song as well.

The opening act Gran Bel Fisher was pretty decent. The duo's songs almost tempted me to buy their cd.

The second act was some guy from Brooklyn called himself Kevin Devine. He sucked. People were just short of booing him off stage.

We aren't all the same

We aren't all the same: "Some of you may consider it good news that the top three finalists in the the Geography Bee, hosted by the great Alex Trebek himself, were Indian American. I do not. Some of you may also think fondly on the fact that the last four contestants in last year's Spelling Bee were also Indian American. I do not. "

This is a hilarious post but does have some truth to it. The stereotype of Indian has always been vastly misrepresented in the United States over the decades. Perhaps gone are the days when we were all thought to be riding elephants and had inborn talents of snake charming. But now we are thought of as too intelligent than the rest of the crowd and only interested in the smart jobs (IT, Doctors, etc). For the most part, it's probably a good thing if you are actually interested in these fields when you are picking a career. These prejudices can work for you. But it's a huge disadvantage for those interested in the arts or any other faculty. I agree that we have to do anything and everything we can to educate the masses. We are a diverse group as any other ethnic group.

You already know of the vast majority of us who are in IT or are Doctors. We also ...

• write prize winning fiction.
• write prize winning non-fiction.
• cheat when writing.
• host morning TV shows.
• make blockbuster movies.
• solicit minors for sex (Marvin Lakhan).

And the rest of the one and half million who aren't in the news are really just average. Nothing special about us at all.

Mira Nair

I attended a talk by Mira Nair last Sunday at Emory University. The hall was packed with desis (as usual). She gave an autobiographical lecture about how she traveled the path down her film career. I was so very impressed. She was one great lady. Born in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, she traveled to Calcutta for her initial inspiration and then onwards to Delhi University and then to Harvard. She rejected an admission to Cambridge University because she admits she has a chip on her shoulder against the British. And even today, she turned down the next project for Harry Potter series because the idea of spending 3 years in Britain did not appeal to her. Apparently, she chooses movies by asking herself a simple question. "Can someone else do this movie?". If there is, then she wouldn't do it. She wants to take on projects where only she can contribute a unique perspective.

During the question and answer session, a finance student asked about her financial model for her projects. Usually she says that she likes to fund her own money and rather not deal with a single source of funds, since in that case she might have to compromise or even lose "the final cut" of her movie. She usually approaches multiple distributors to fund part of her project, so that she still retain most of the creative control over it. Very intelligent.

The ordeal that she went through during her first major movie 'Salaam Bombay' was impressive.

I haven't seen many of her films. Should try to. The ones I've seen are

• Vanity Fair, 2004
• 11'09"01 - September 11 (segment India), 2002
• Monsoon Wedding, 2001
• Salaam Bombay!, 1988