An alternative solution to the problems in the Middle East

Recent violence in the Middle East got me thinking about what could be a long term solution, and I think I’ve come up with a solution that could actually work. Here’s how it would work:

1. The US would create a new state called Israel: take a chunk out of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming – these states are vast areas of nothingness to begin with so it’s unlikely that they would miss anything.
2. The Israeli population would move to this new state and with the influx of Israeli technology and financing, there would be a boom in the mid-west. This boom would have a cascading effect on the US economy by creating new jobs and helping reduce the trade and budget deficit.
3. The Palestinians would move in to erstwhile Israel and not have to live in refugee camps anymore.
4. The whole arrangement would be underwritten by one basic premise: There would be no more killing. If the Palestinians or other Arab-Islamofascist groups took another life, the US would drop an H-bomb in the Middle East and turn the place into a giant parking lot. Deterrence works – look at what happened during the Cold War.

See…everybody wins! Israelis live in peace, Palestinians live in peace, the US economy get’s a giant boost, and Americans get jobs. I’m a f***ing genius!! Where’s my Nobel Prize??

EZPass rules!

I have officially embraced my suburban dark side and have got myself an EZPass. It cuts down travel time to New York by at least 30 minutes if not more when there are back ups at the tolls. EZPass rules! Here comes the Bridge and Tunnel invasion!

Now if I can only figure out a way to beat the beltway traffic getting out of DC…maybe I should ask Igor to build me a car with a jet engine…hmmmm…

P.S.1 and Banc Cafe

This Saturday I went to the P.S.1’s Warm Up dance party (held summer long from July to early September on Saturday’s at MoMA’s P.S.1 location). I love day time raves – the music, light and dancing creates an amazing atmosphere that’s hard to find in most clubs. P.S.1 was, simply put, awesome this weekend. Thank the Gods for creating dance music!

Later on Saturday night, the usual suspects decided to meet at a local bar called Banc Café (30th and 3rd) for a drink as we were all tired and didn’t think we were up for going to a club after the rave. As it turns out, Citi was due to for a Werewolf night, and we ended up commandeering the DJ booth and setting up a Citi’s Greatest Hits extravaganza. As the shots flowed, the bar turned into a club very quickly. What was supposed to be an early night, ended at 4.30 in the morning. Why didn’t that surprise anybody?

The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

I’ve always been a fan of Bible stories. I don’t know if this is the result of thirteen years of Catholic school or the fact that they’re actually pretty darn good stories if you think about them. Anyroad, I just started reading Christopher Moore’s “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal”, and I must say its one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in many years. The book is an irreverent take on the traditional Bible stories along with some “fill in the gaps” stories from the perspective of the narrator, Biff, who as the title states is Christ’s childhood pal. The book is a riot and has had me in splits from the first page. If you liked Shashi Tharoor’s “The Great Indian Novel”, you’ll love The Gospel According to Biff. The structure of both novels is similar – take a historical book viewed as THE religious text by millions, and add generous amounts of humor. Even if you’re not fully up to speed on your Christianity, there’s plenty in this book to love. I’d put this book on anyone’s must read lists (and if you haven’t read The Great Indian Novel, make sure you read that too!).

Two great movies

As we settle into life in the burbs, Moosh and I have started engaging in the most suburban of traditions – renting a movie and staying in on Saturday nights. Now before you start making fun of us, consider this – the closest club is a 30 minute drive away, and given the stupid DUI laws they have in this country, there’s no way one can go out and have a good time if you live in the burbs. Unless you decide to have a DD (Designated Driver) – which is essentially a game of tag adult’s play – you’re out of luck. Being the DD is the same as one of your friends coming over and tapping you on the shoulder and saying “You’re it - you have the privilege of ferrying us around town while we get pissed”. So you’re left with the only option of driving out to your nearest Hollywood or Blockbuster Video, trying to find a half decent DVD to watch, and stopping by to pick up a tub of ice cream and beer on the way back home. Normally, given the appalling collection of movies big box video stores actually have, this sort of Saturday night excitement ends with both of us falling asleep in front of the telly after consuming copious amounts of ice cream and beer, and wondering why we rented the movie we were watching.

Not this Saturday though. This weekend, we rented “V for Vendetta” and “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story”. I loved “V for Vendetta”, the story leaving me with a sense of de ja vu – some of the dialogue seemed to be a mix of the Bush’s speeches mixed with Hitler’s. I thought Natalie Portman did a pretty fab job too. “Tristram Shandy” was an altogether different movie. Directed by Michael Winterbottom (the same guy who did 24 Hour Party People), this adaptation of the 18th century classic left me in splits. Steve Coogan was hilarious. This is British humor at its best. If you haven’t seen either flick, what are you waiting for? Go grab the DVDs and watch them. I may live in the burbs, but trust me – these are truly great movies you shouldn’t miss.

What no transistor radio??!!

Someone I know recently had a vasectomy that didn’t quite go according to plan and had a lengthy convalescence. The poor sod’s wife decided that this would be a good time to tell the whole world about the snip, snip, snip procedure his meat and two veg had undergone – I still haven’t, for the love of God, figured out what was she thinking. On the plus side, the poor bugger showed tremendous patience and good humor by keeping a stiff upper lip throughout the whole ordeal of public scrutiny and mirth, even though there remained doubts whether something in his downstairs department would ever be stiff again in the future.

I tried to bring some levity into the situation by asking him if he had at least got a transistor radio out of it (History Lesson: Between 1976 and 1977, the Indian government deemed in it's infinite wisdom to perform vasectomy operations on men in poor communities as a novel method of population control. These, quite literally, poor buggers were given a transistor radio in exchange for giving up their ability to produce children. Welcome to the developing world). Needless to say I got in trouble for that joke, which brings me to my main message for today: Guys, if you’re going to have a vasectomy, at least make sure you get a transistor radio out of it!

Rents and Sickboy

I ran into Sickboy for the first time in 1994. Not surprisingly, the misfits that we were in school, we soon became friends. I started calling him Sickboy soon after we saw Trainspotting in 1996 given that he was a pervy little bugger. Sickboy well and truly is capable of anything…he once went out with two sisters for nearly 6 months before either found out…and the older one wanted to continue shagging him even after she found out, so he was more than happy to oblige her…he also had the habit of driving around town at two in the afternoon while getting shagged, said it did wonders for his digestion after lunch …the list of strange Sickboy tales go on and on. The fact that he doesn’t live by Victorian era BS morality makes me love him even more. Sickboy calls me Rents which was somehow apt since I’d just cleaned up my act right before we saw the movie (for those that haven’t seen Trainspotting, the character Rents is trying to kick his heroin addiction).

Sickboy is now a very well respected journalist and writes editorials and sports columns about the most boring of games – cricket. While the sport seems to send a nation of a billion people into a tizzy (that’s India if you haven’t figured it out by now), it never quite appealed to my pleb side and I always thought people who played it were tossers. Sickboy somehow managed to make a career out of it. Mad props to him for being able to do that.

So if you cats ever bump into him, stay a while and have a drink with him. Trust me you’ll get quite a few laughs out of the encounter.

Pyaare

People have asked me why I call him that. I call him Pyaare because that’s exactly what he is to me – beloved. Now before you accuse me of going gay cowboy on you, let me reaffirm that neither Pyaare nor I are gay (though Pyaare can be decidedly metro sexual in his wardrobe), but there is a bond between us that can only be described as love. The same applies to Jaan-e-man. I don’t know what it was that brought the three of us together, but my life as whole is just that bit better because of them.

I fear Pyaare will be leaving New York soon. While I wish him well in his professional life, deep down I really don’t want him to go. The Bombay crew still reunites every 3-4 weeks in New York, but that’s going to be a little hard to do if he’s in London now isn’t it? I keep my fingers crossed that he might be able to swing his new gig AND be able to stay in New York.

I live in the burbs

I confess I live in the burbs. I have never lived in the burbs before, and still can’t believe I’ve moved to the burbs. My neighbors are called Jack and Jill (and no they didn’t go up the hill – I’ve already asked them that). They have 4 dogs, 4 cats and 3 kids (I have a feeling they tried to have a fourth kid but something didn’t go according to plan). I have a lawn that I mow once a week. Every time I look at the lawn mower I feel like offing myself. Imagine the headlines – Man commits suicide at the thought of having to mow a lawn! That’d be one to send the shrinks into a tizzy. They’d have to start asking their patients – So exactly how do you feel about mowing the lawn? Do you resent your lawn mower? Do you feel like killing your neighbor because their lawn looks nice and green, and yours looks dead and brown?

I always wanted a house, but the housing market is such that if you want a house, you pretty much have to move to the burbs (unless you’re loaded which I’m not). Now that I have a house, I must say that “house” ownership really isn’t all that it’s trumped out to be. Don’t confuse “house” ownership with “home” ownership – home ownership is awesome, and I think everyone should own the place where they sleep at night. Amitabh fans will know what I mean – just see “Roti, Kapda, Makaan”. “House” ownership just has a whole bunch of additional headaches that a flat in the city didn’t have.

Driving in America

America is probably the only country in the world where driving is considered to be a right and not a privilege. Even an idiot can get a drivers license and a car (if their credit is good enough). Americans are some of the worst drivers in the world. They drive below the speed limit in the passing lane, eat and do their make up while driving, slow down to a crawl if it starts raining, change lanes without looking.... the list goes on and on. Now I'm not part of the anti-SUV brigade, but I really find it surprising that more often than not its people of physically small dimensions who end up driving (probably a gross generalization but I'm sticking with it). Just because you drive an SUV won't make you any safer nor will it compensate for you being short changed in the downstairs department. Here's my advice to Americans: Get a smaller car, and drive the tits off of it. Do a track day and take a driving school. It's much more fun driving a smaller car on the limit than a big SUV. And if you want to go from point A to point B, don't drive, take the bloody bus!

SKP vs. SKB

Pyaare and Jaan-e-man laugh at my Shaadi Ke Pehle (SKP) and Shaadi Ke Baad (SKB) comments. SKP and SKB are my observations on married life in general, stuff that no one ever tells you. At one time I suspected a sinister conspiracy on the part of married guys to get unmarried men to hitched – sort of a grown up “Psych, I gotcha!” I’m still not convinced there isn’t one, albeit on a subconscious level.

Some common SKB things that no one tells you about:

1. Decision making is now joint decision making, which is a nice way of saying “Just do what your wife says you ignorant twit”.
2. A couple of years after you get married you seem to misplace your libido. You know its there somewhere, probably somewhere safe, but you can’t find it when you need it. Sad things is when you do find it, your wife has gone to sleep.
3. You become the “old man at the club” (mad props to Chris Rock for his hilarious monologue). You still like the music, but everyone else is having way more fun than you are – and is probably wondering what the hell you’re doing at club in the first place.
4. You gain some serious weight – at least 25 pounds. And you go grey. I’m not a health freak by any measure, but it is irritating having to replace your wardrobe periodically because of an ever increasing girth. And to those who say you don’t have to replace your wardrobe, just exercise, I have this to say – do I look like a masochist to you? Why on earth would I want to do that? I like greasy food that’s high on fat and salt. You wish to rob me if one of life’s few pleasures? Eff that….

There will be more SKB comments to come. Stay tuned…

Fire N Ice

Fire N Ice along with 1900s led the Bombay club revolution. As with most good clubs, Fire N Ice was shut down in a drug bust (Kids – don’t buy your blow at the club, its way too expensive!! Get it on the street!!). While it was open, it was an awesome club with a good music and more importantly space.

I met Moosh for the first time on July 15 outside Fire N Ice. I didn’t know it then, but a year later I would marry her.

Juhu Centaur

The Centaur hotel chain was owned by Air India, hence the name. It represented commie nationalism at its worst – a government owned and operated hotel, with terrible service, badly maintained, but probably at the best location in the city. The Centaur hotel chain was later auctioned off (amid a ton of corruption, but that’s another story).

So if the hotel was terrible, why did we go to the Juhu Centaur so often? There are three reasons – their chicken burger actually tasted pretty good when you were pissed drunk at 4 in the morning; it was close to Avalon, one of the sleaziest clubs in Bombay, where we inevitably ended our club crawl as all the other places had shut; and probably because we didn’t know any better.

The Juhu Centaur is now the JW Marriott – one of the blingest and best run hotels in Bombay now, but sadly it seems to have lost some of its old greasy spoon charm.