Parisienne Walkways

Listening to Gary Moore is always a painfully sweet experience. There's something about his tender guitar that wrings the remaining whimper from the coldest heart. I always think of him as that quintessential American guy, (although he was Irish but such is our perception of anything Western because the Russians don't speak the same marketing and advertising language, do they), whose love for his music and unwariness when it comes to women makes him instantly idol-worthy. That essential loneliness which most musicians and writers possess shines through in a lot of his album covers. 'Shines' because the most gorgeous work comes from solitude, other people are usually messes you don't need although they are great fodder for the work. No, I couldn't be more cynical but age does that to you. Still, who doesn't have a soft spot for men who are vulnerable to life?
After the Paris horror, my playlist which already included Parisienne Walkways, was on replay.
Gary died in a hotel room but I hope he knows, somewhere, that people still listen to his heartbreaking riffs and feel uplifted for no discernible reason. In other words, we've Still Got the Blues for you, babe.

All things righteous. Not.

When the lunatic fringe raises its head, the rest of us want to pull ours in, like turtles. Can anything really explain Bangalore locals attacking a foreign tourist who had Hindu goddesses tattooed on his body? I can't. The Australian boy who was harangued and detained and then made to write a letter of apology for (and this covers just about everything) "hurting religious sentiments" fled the city the next day, and who can blame him. I would, too, if I could. In fact, I would have about 15 years ago exactly when I visualised which way my life would blow if I continued to live in India but that's another story. With the Australian you can imagine him now wanting to laser the whole thing off while telling anyone who will listen for the rest of his life what a bunch of nutjobs Indians are.
If you think it was low-level fanatics who took umbrage, just run through Facebook and you will find the so-called educated masses also raising a call to arms. For what, though? When you tattoo something on your body it's because you LIKE what it symbolises. You want to live your life on what the image or words mean. Um, how do you not get that.
The lesson I've learned from this is not be be righteous which my father always warned me about and which I, like any self-respecting offspring, cordially ignored. No longer. It's a dangerous path, to think you have standards that somehow trumps everybody else's.
I shall now get back to watching porn which I started doing after the Indian government tried to ban it recently. Great fun, and the plot lines are to die for. Who knew.

The End

The Emmys this year, well, I just drew a line in the sand. Adam Sandberg was not funny, spin it any way you like. And he was nervous, the kiss of death for any host. Even Ellen hosting the Oscars has been Awkwardsville. Jimmy Fallon's sidekick Steve Higgins on The Tonight Show? Cringeworthy. For a country like America which is best at marketing, there are some blind spots when it comes to dealing with celebrities who they take for granted must be good because why else are they famous? Sometimes, their time has come and gone, that's why. Even the marvellous Ricky Gervais fell flat in his few minutes onstage which only means that it happens to the best of us. Even if some individuals point this out, the tidal wave of voices raised against them would make anyone subside into the wallpaper. (To be strong in a sea of crazies takes some doing, believe me.) When I found myself switching channels every time an acceptance speech was about to begin, I knew it was the end of watching award shows. When I heard about Viola Davis the next day, I knew I was right.
Stop. Stop making it about colour, I beg you. Fight for getting your roles but don't make your win a triumph for the colour of your skin. When you do that, it takes away from your talent which is what you were fighting for in the first place, right?
It's come to a point where you find Indians everywhere on TV and you're wondering if they're pandering to their subcontinent viewers and the prominent Indian community in the West. It's become about numbers. When once they were doing this by putting one gay character in with the cast, it's now Black/Asian/gay. Wrong on so many levels it just makes me depressed.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, by the way, but you can fight for equality till the world ends, but you will never get it. There will always be bias based on colour, creed and gender. Clues: "I can't breathe", 'Muslim' promotion code for a $25 discount on guns, Shoshana Roberts. It will never go away. It might ease here and there but it will never go away. The gay community has grown stronger over the years in every sector if not every country but YouTube still features teenagers weeping trying to tell their parents who they want to sleep with.
Why will it never go away? The answer isn't far to seek; people are dumb.

The next time I saw Paris....

The last time I saw Paris I was 18 years old. Life was a mystery I looked forward to with stars in my eyes – no wonder I couldn’t see shit. This time, Paris was just as beautiful and still represented the kind of ideal that I was never destined to have: the likelihood of seeing beauty just while walking the streets, whether it was people or architecture; the chance to see a Venetian-inspired art installation at Tokio Palais; having drinks by the Seine, on a boat; watching a rock concert with bands I had only read about. Yes, some metros spelled like pee, homeless huddled in Gap doorways in the still of the night, and you felt like a deer in headlights because of the colour of your skin, although not as often as people warned, but it is the real world. My country is like a figment of Kafka’s imagination. How grateful I am to fate’s tender mercies that I can experience something else every so often.

Just a street sign

Graffiti or as I like to call it Art

Just a street, with the Sacre-Coeur

Just an apartment block

Just a cafe

True Heart

There are some TV shows which make you sit at the edge of your armchair until every episode ends, and then want to leap from it and go running to get all the feels (a word I have grown to love almost as much as ‘on point’) out of your system. I love it almost as much as I loved Breaking Bad. What do I get high on with True Detective 2? It’s the theme song, the characters, the broken lives, the hard loving, the few words in the still of the night that have the weight of a wrecking ball. Vince Vaughn is the face of the series, (who knew he had this in him?), although Colin Farrell is the overriding talent.

I can feel my heart slowing down just thinking of the finale tomorrow night. Omigod. You know what this means, right? Here we go, embracing the void again.

Billie the Kid blows away the competition

The finale of MasterChef Australia Season 7 was unique. You had a contestant in 23-yr-old Billie McKay who was extraordinary in the way she could read a recipe, compartmentalize it in her head in such a way that she knew she would have to save one hour of the unprecedented five-hour time allowed for a Heston Blumenthal recipe, and showed she had enough of a heart in that machine-like execution of a dish to turn around and try to calm Georgia Barnes at the same time.

This, by the way, is also the difference between MasterChef Australia and MasterChef US. The Australians in the show have always distinguished themselves as friendly, ambitious without being competitive, and supremely talented. No one quite knows how talented the Americans are because it’s buried under an avalanche of malice, temper and self-obsession. It could be marketing but it doesn’t do the country’s national reputation any good whatsoever.

But what was unforgettable in the Australian winner was the way she kept an iron control throughout the months of competition - until the moment when she tried to blow that damn sugar bubble for 45 minutes (of the one hour she had allotted herself). Still, she brought herself back from the brink and nailed that b*&%h. It was such a tour de force, something we had never seen before. And that was what led to another first in MC history – the on-the-spot offer of a job from the great Heston himself, at The Fat Duck no less.

While I have never envied anyone’s happiness, I am almost mired in envy thinking how lucky you have to be to own your passion and have the rest of your life like an open road in front of you. All you have to do is walk down it, stopping to smell the bloody roses on the way. Anyone who says it’s only talent and hard work and not luck is seven kinds of idiot.

I am now off to grapple with that other b*&#h: Karma.

Under the Sea....

From Pinterest, my daily dose of Style

And then some

R&R

You'd think people who travel would wax and wane about the historic monuments, the food, the shopping and the hotels they stayed in. Coming from the Third World, I am always speechless with awe when I take public transport on roads without potholes, see cobblestoned streets that are clean, with dustbins everywhere, and can sit on a pavement cafe and drink my coffee exactly the way I like it. I enjoy everything from the politeness of boutique staff who do not pounce on me the minute I enter and then hover, to enjoying a McDonald's that actually has beef burgers. And yes, I'm not ashamed to say I think Big Macs hit the spot where love resides. I have fun at the supermarkets where you get produce that look like they didn't die yesterday and are part of the Walking Dead cast today, including all the candy that's so good it's bad for you. I am grateful to even temporarily be part of a crowd that the government works to make comfortable, for the most part, hell any part at all.
So here are some things that made me smile recently, and it wasn't my usual rictus.
As you can see, I don't ask for much.

A weakness

Fira, Santorini

Warming radiators, ultimate luxury

Greek honey that tasted like toffee, to swirl with yoghurt 

Fira square

A rainy day, Athens-style

Cute packaging

Seriously? An Angry Birds table at a burger place in Athens

Streets, Athens

Ruby Woo, where are you?

Rude shock while watching Discovery: Saw a couple of women archaeologists who looked like they had just been unearthed themselves. Would a touch of lipstick have hurt? A few lashings of mascara? An Ed Hardy Tee perhaps? What, they have more to think about, like the WORLD, than make-up? You must be thinking about some other world, not the one we live in.

Oscars and unfair things

The Oscars this year was unexpected. There was real emotion in the air, not the fake chatter that often mimics the profession the show celebrates. There was Patricia Arquette asking for equal pay, and Meryl Streep shouting Yes! from the front row. There was Inarritu pleading for decent behavior towards immigrants from a country OF immigrants. There was Graham Moore winning for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Imitation Game”, saying:

“Alan Turing never got to stand on a stage like this and look out at all of these disconcertingly attractive faces. And I do. And that’s the most unfair thing I think I’ve ever heard. So in this brief time here, what I want to use it to do is to say this: When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself, because I felt weird and I felt different, and I felt like (I) did not belong. And now I’m standing here, and so I would like this moment to be for that kid who’s out there who feels weird or feels different or feels she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes you do. I promise you do.”

In a world filled with unfair things, this moment of honesty was not just moving but highlighted the most absurd facet of human civilization, this ostrich-in-the-sand outlook about an issue that has been around since the dawn of our benighted species, is still apparent in nature and is nobody’s business but that of the parties concerned, except when there’s paedophilia or something involved. You see, those who don’t rail against gay love can at the same time be activists against real evil. Didn’t know that, did you.

This weird problem with homosexuality will one day go the way of the Berlin Wall but until then, people will die, not just be ostracized and bullied and sneered at, and for nothing but other people’s perceptions.

Anti-Racism seems another lost cause if it is still being fought against in, of all places, America. It seems so basic but even in a country which is so good at PR that many still believe it stands for justice, in a country like this, racism is endemic in 2015. So when Common and John Legend sang ‘Glory’, we all wept. (Aside, for Mr Inarritu: Yes, in a country of immigrants, other immigrants should be made welcome, but this is only true if you are a White immigrant, Aryan white.)

You can’t even argue about why racism makes no sense; religion makes no sense but who has ever won an argument over it with the faithful?

What was shocking, in terms of Oscar glory or lack thereof, was Michael Keaton losing Best Actor to Eddy Redmayne, (marvelous I grant you but hasn’t Daniel Day-Lewis already been there, done that?). He didn’t leave a trail of stars which will never reappear the way Keaton did in “Birdman”. But you know, a world filled with unfair things…..

Now onto what really mattered, the dresses. Yeah, sorry, this is the most one-sided, unfair thing of all because men are just boring in matters sartorial.

BEST-DRESSED

Jennifer Lopez in Elie Saab, looking like a statuette herself in those golden hues with accompanying blushing tones.

Scarlett Johansson in Versace, with green stones around her neck that looked ocean-gathered and a hairstyle that hinted at wild, wild child.

Jennifer Aniston wearing Versace that was so simple and elegant and perfect for her because it glowed and showcased a real woman’s body, which really is what Aniston is all about, realness. This is a woman who is so warm that she saturates everything around her, even hugging Emma Stone in gleeful abandon. Can’t imagine another actress on the Red Carpet doing something like that.

Gwyneth Paltrow, who consciously coupled with Ralph&Russo and looked pretty-out-of-orbit-in-a-good-way in pink.

Lady Gaga’s performance (and interaction with What-a-Dame Julie Andrews) was the talk of the town, rightfully so, (um, I thought she was a performer not a singer), but dear me, that Alaia dress. Like someone had dropped miles of heavy material in a corner of the room which then took on a life form. About as bad as the curtain Chloe Moritz wore and the origami wrapped around Viola Davis. Tut tut.

But the last two words on my mind are simply: Ed Norton. What a way to play; his “Birdman” piece was virtuoso. Also, I would date him.

Birdman Rising

Every so often, a movie will come along that works like a magic sequence for its once-forgotten star, and for the unique message it carries. It happened last with Mickey Rourke in ‘The Wrestler’. The same Mickey who made films that went into the archives they were so damn good; ‘A Prayer for the Dying’, ‘9 ½ Weeks’, ‘Wild Orchid’, even ‘Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man’. And yet, circumstances and bad judgement stuttered his career until Darren Aronofsky came along.

Michael Keaton found Alejandro González Iñárritu in the same serendipitous way. ‘Birdman’ isn’t without its flaws, but the claws it rakes through your heart is what you will take away with you, and it will throb dully for years to come.

The movie is about a forgotten movie star who is trying to make a mark in theatre. His cast is made up of a young, arrogant Brando type whose talent and hubris battle for supremacy, actresses who are struggling for a foothold in both his and the audience’s memory, and a daughter and wife who still love him despite his self-obsession. What makes ‘Birdman’ a movie that people are talking about is how cleverly this cast plays its parts. Ed Norton is sublime. He’s always been the kind of actor who looks like a dreamy poet but who can bring a coldness out and place it before your frightened eyes in an instant. While you tremble, not knowing what will come next, he can either soothe your fluttering pulses or crush your hopes. ‘Birdman’ is better than ‘Fight Club’ and ‘The Hulk’ in displaying Norton’s powers, you hate and love him in equal measure and no one displays narcissism better than he does. An actor playing an actor is about as difficult a thing as you can imagine, and if it wasn’t for the blazing meteor that’s Keaton, you would remember no one else, even with the towering Naomi Watts and Emma Stone around.

It’s Keaton’s baby, though. As Riggan, he is broken, angry, bewildered but will not give up, so will either be Sisyphus or a phoenix rising. Riggan is aware of the importance of marketing, so understands how to play his part, both personal and professional, but self-doubt is his real exacting mistress, one who whispers in the dead of night, “Honey, your best days are behind you, only I’m here, now.”

It’s not that Riggan doesn’t see what the world is and what he has become, but his vanity, that oh-so-crucial part for those whose lives revolve around being someone else and believing they can do that better than the next guy, is both crippling and well-founded, an uncomfortable pairing at the best of times.

A clever one is when Riggan’s daughter Sam (Stone) shows him the power of social media and life as a reality show (which is the real enemy of actors and celebs and ordinary Joes; talk about losing the plot when it comes to figuring out what actually matters in your daily grind and what is a circus), more relevant today than it was when Keaton was making his mark with ‘Batman’ and ‘Beetlejuice’.

So what is the flaw in Iñárritu’s genius? It’s subjective. I loathe open endings. For God’s sake, isn’t my life’s open ending bad enough? I don’t want to be subjected to it in the movies. The last scene of ‘Birdman’ is maddening. What really happened? and damn your metaphors.

But I would still encourage everyone to see it. Its genius is that this is not just a movie with a tragi-comic story well told, but an expose on human frailty and its hardcore steel twin, the visual emotional mirror to our actual twisted DNA. I think this is what makes our species ultimately a thing to admire. It’s ‘Birdman’ that makes you believe we possess it.