It's all grey

I know we're almost as Americanised as our parents always foretold we would be (in the most sepulchral tones) but the latest ad on TV for 'Grey's Anatomy' is going one step too far.

Full disclosure: I loathe 'Grey's Anatomy'. The cast of doctors are the most unpleasant, self-obsessed, neurotic individuals I would never get my ill body close to. And they seem to be the same in real life. I don't know about you but I remember poor Isaiah Washington being fired from the show because he got into a fight on set with the gay-in-real-life actor whose name I don't recall but who always looked like he had just spied a pile of dung in the corner of the room. Anyway, poor Isaiah got canned because he yelled 'Faggot!' apparently. Oh boo-hoo. Dude should have just grown a pair and yelled back “Black!'. But no, American studios not only have to do the politically correct thing they have to be seen doing the politically correct thing. So out Isaiah went. But not before everyone from Patrick Dempsey to Katherine Heigl took sides against him, publicly naturellement.

Meredith Grey meanwhile never stopped whining. (You need to see Ellen Pompeo's 'Punk'd' episode to be fearful of your life if you ever done her wrong, btw.) Grey's so-called friendship with Yang is the kind of double-edged sword we would only want to emulate if we had a death wish. This is the role model for Indians in the workplace. 

The TV ad has a woman whining about her colleague, and best friend, being taken to Paris. 'Should I tell my boss her CV is fake?' she wonders, before delivering the punchline: 'What would Meredith do?' Then you have a guy whining about the work he has piled up on his desk on a Friday night while his boss gets to go home. Should he quit, he wonders. 'What would Meredith do?'

Sweet suffering Christ. With friends and employees like this we might as well go strand ourselves on a desert island with a pile of good books because the human species seems to be devolving rapidly. Jealous over a friend's good fortune to the extent that you would destroy her career? Complaining because you have to do what you're getting paid to do? What next? Taking cues from a TV show to chart your sorry life?

The Mayan prediction for December 2012 can't come soon enough. 

Of course the truth is we're already dead. We just don't know it.

Quote of the Week

Bangalore Police keep you on hold when you make an emergency call. When finally asked what the hell they mean by it, the immortal answer: “We aren't Vodofone to answer immediately. We're very busy.'

Best Book Title of the Week

Heil the Dumbness

There's ignorance, abject ignorance, and this....

I would like to think the owner is simply ignorant, mistaking this for the religious symbol. Either that or there is a Nazi enclave in my neighbourhood and I need to head for the hills.

No A-Ha moment for Oprah in India

Oprah's Next Chapter: India captured for posterity by TLC and Discovery is simply stunning. In all the wrong ways. Take the moment when she walks, (or staggers, her weight has become impossible for her to handle in more ways than one), through a Bombay slum, holding on to people with both hands, and acting as though she has never in her life seen a one-room home. In fact, going by her rather incredible (as in hard to believe) dialogue, it's as though she has just gingerly stepped out of a spaceship and onto an alien planet. Where no woman has gone before, as is the perennial Oprah motif, of course.

Now before going further let me just say I am an Oprah believer. She has a great deal of charm and empathy. She is also still innocent in many ways; she gasps when meeting celebs and genuinely enjoys giving away her money and her time to people and causes she believes in. Unfortunately, she also believes it's all given her a certain moral authority that no one will dare question. She doesn't know Indians.

Ever since her two-episode show aired this week, the dark faces have been asking dark questions. Did she really wonder if Bombay slum-dwellers had microwaves? Or looked for a shower head in the shack where people bathed? Could she possibly have lifted her foot and measured the width of a man's dwelling which he shared with his wife and three children, then gone on to ask them if they were happy? Could she honestly have listened with a straight face while Dee-pack (is he related to Tupac?) Chopra blathered on about whatever it is he blathers on about? Perhaps how to be spiritually connected to God within and without by scratching our left ankles with our right toes or whatever?

*****

Aside: 

*Surely anyone who believes in God (and marriage) is simply not evolved enough? Maybe anyone who does should try and hide it so the rest of us don't know that they are simply not evolved enough?

*She can't say Deepak but we can say Oprah?

*Are there showerheads in African shacks?

*****

Oprah then visited some random rich person's house where she *gasp* ate with her hands, and moved on to the 'party of the year' (in her own words) which Bollywood tantalisingly attended, giving viewers peekaboos of themselves while Oprah's cameraman acted like marathon man.

She visited the Bachchans and the Taj Mahal (one and the same to her by the sound of it, larger-than-life and looking down at us lesser mortals. Perhaps the Taj was more accessible; the Bachchans wouldn't even let Oprah's camera crew past their hallowed doors). And both took about five seconds of screen time where she told us nothing and we learned nothing. Who is this and what have they done with Oprah, in other words.

Everywhere she went, she was treated like a visiting dignitary. I like Oprah but I don't mistake her for Obama.

She then ended it all by telling us something we didn't know: “India is a paradox.”

Here is a list of adjectives her researcher/advisor should read up on:

Inexplicable

Maddening

Lawless

Gorgeous

Green

Overwhelming

Changeless

Rich

Real

Raw.

I hope Oprah's next chapter is....from 'Shantaram'. Author Gregory David Roberts, her host during the slumwalk, at least had something to say about this giant, unwieldy, mesmerising country of ours.

See, that's another three words she could have used.

Reading room as lair

Racism rules OK

Is there anything more grotesque than the Australia ads with Indians telling other Indians what a fantastic, gorgeous, wonderful, egalitarian and fun-loving country they live in? They are hoping, no doubt, that we Pakis (aka all brown people) ignore the regular racist attacks our countrymen undergo there year after year and spend our money to increase their wealth. Yes, the ads only surfaced after the attacks were too numerous to ignore.

And btw, there is something more grotesque: the American Tourister ads with their 'surviving a city' theme, as in “Survive Istanbul, Survive the world”.

The AT honchos adspeak ran thus: “Through this new communication we are aiming to drive home the message of American Tourister as ‘the tough international luggage’.”

Really? The message we got was that Americans, yawn, still think they are kings of the heap. 

Come to think of it, that they are.

Crime & Punishment

Reading about the arrest of a Frenchman in India on suspicion of the most appalling crime was enough to make my breakfast come up. You would think a man accused of allegedly raping his 3-yr-old daughter would be enough of a slice of the Apocalypse, but there is something worse: Bangalore policemen giving him the benefit of the doubt not because there was only circumstantial evidence, but because they could not imagine a father raping his daughter, they said. The circumstantial evidence, according to hospital reports, is that the toddler was raped from various orifices. And that's not allegedly.

The father is now saying the mother is trying to frame him. I see. And she would no doubt have raped her own child using some implement or another to get back at him for reasons unknown? Yes, perhaps Bangalore policemen can find some credibility in that scenario because, you see, the guilty party would then be a woman.

In America, paedophiles are killed in prison, proving that serial killers are ok but child molestors are not. We are not that advanced in India. Here, the father above was merely slapped by a passer-by as he was being taken to jail.

I was watching a rerun of Luther, the cop drama on BBC Entertainment, and when they shoot this piece of excrement trying to pose as a human being I was seriously upset. Come on, where's the justice in that? A quick death in response to horrific acts based on, in this fictional case, greed?

No, no, no.

I am against the death penalty because there are many people who need to suffer slowly, painfully and just as remorselessly as the deeds they commit, a little every day so they don't get used to it. (If there's one law we should all adhere to it is the Law of Diminishing Returns, don't you agree?) They need to have everything they care for systematically removed so the horror they undergo seeps into them on a spiritual level, too. Then, they need to have done to them exactly what they did to someone else, and I mean exactly.

For sub-humans who rape or murder or abuse children, there needs to be a whole other punishment to fit the crime.

Saw, Bought, Love..Zara

Who needs a finishing school?

I have been on the fence about Kristen Stewart. I've always thought she was a good actress; it's not her fault that "Twilight" has had some of the worst directors that escaped a good whipping at the confessional, as my adored fictional character Ignatius Reilly would say.
But what about her ditzy persona in real life, dropping awards, wearing Converse onstage and sharply inhaling through her teeth when she has nothing to say, which is often? Yes, bloody annoying. I know she wants us to think she's a free spirit and all, but it gets old real fast. And did she really ask Taylor Lautner or Chris Hemsworth to come up for a snog while accepting her Best Kiss award? Eeeek.
At the MTV Movie Awards 2012 a few days ago, it was all I could do to stop myself from hurling my four-inch stilletto at the TV screen. Especially as I had just watched Jen Aniston who is cool without trying accept her Dirtbag award with grace and humour, and Emma Stone accept her Trailblazer award with sincerity and heartfelt emotion.
I think Stewart's new movie "On The Road" will at least finally make or break her reputation as a serious actress, though. That should be fun.
Urgent hint to Stewart's stylist: I know the politically incorrect "just raped" look was all the rage once upon a time but this was a "I forgot my hairbrush" look....oops, forgot she was a free spirit. Silly moi.
Meanwhile, Russell Brand and Charlie Sheen were just embarrassing and Michael Fassbender needs to understand timing; you cannot loll on the floor for so long that people wonder what to do with you. Dear o dear.
Best timing? Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale.
Best dressed? Charlize Theron and Elizabeth Banks.
He-got-even-cooler award? Johnny D with a guitar in his hot little hands.
Please-restart-your-medication award? Steven Tyler for lauding the movie Edward "Scissorhand" before giving Johnny his Generation accolade. I ask you.
*Kristen Stewart update: Wow. Don't know about her acting chops but she certainly has no moral chops. Her rep has been blown in the wind, and the world being what it is, no one will ever forget this 'out damn'd spot' moment of hers. After seeing the pictures where she and her 41-yr-old "fling" act as if they've been stuck in different monasteries for a year, one can feel, mingled with the contempt, a certain nausea. What a sad species we are.

Tender graces

This might not seem like much to you, but I firmly believe it shifts the scales between life as it was meant to be lived and, well, Not.......

If a guest room is without a little table for luggage, or a restaurant is without a footstool for your handbag (and you need to fish out your bejewelled hook and fix it to the table)...really, can civilisation devolve any further? At least I got one out of two recently so we must thank the good Lord for his tender mercies.

You red-eyed Lothaire you...

Lothaire is one of the best books from the Cole stable. It's all in the lead character. He's invincible and mean - and hilarious, the rarest of rare combinations. Blend uncompromising strength with humour and you've found the daring duo that will slay all female hearts.
Example: As a wailing female ghoul slashes at his face, Lothaire says "Didn't I know you when you were pretty?" She shrieks. Then he adds contemplatively, "Didn't I do you when you were pretty?" She shrieks some more before fleeing. He says, Yeah, thought so.
His Lothaire-speak, his intensity, his E-vil (shades of Mike Myers) is just delicious.
I just love Cole's penchant for drama, the fight between good and not-so-good, the searing chemistry between her couples which blends nicely with a meeting of minds from which the dialogue flows and crackles and refreshes.
S'all good.
Now to wait for a week and then read it again...