TRUMP-THING WICKED THIS WAY COMES....



Here're some images of Chicago's new Trump International Hotel and Tower, captured by the CacaCam on Friday. It's meant to usurp the Sears Tower as America's tallest building. Condos start at $470,000 and top out at $9 million. At last -- affordable housing in a building that will put Chicago back on the map....

LIFE IN THE BIG CITY

It is freezing cold here.

Yet both air conditioners are still in the windows, letting in more cold air.

In the past few years the landlord has sent his workers to remove them (so that he could save on heating costs of course).

But not this year.

I can't do it myself because of my bad back. Plus one of them is just too damn heavy.

I can't call anyone because everyone I know either has a bad back or is estranged from me or both.

Maybe I can hold out all winter.

After all, layers are in this year.

HERE, KITTY KITTY


According to Anthony Lane's New Yorker review of Casino Royale, the new James Bond is a bit asexual*:

"Poor fellow. If Pussy Galore showed up, he'd pour her a saucer of milk."





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*Perhaps he's a yogi.

CACA'S AVATA'



This Windian, urban-dwelling version of Durga is usually depicted with just two arms and is surrounded by flames representing the pain of everyday existence. The lightening signifies the potential for enlightenment. This form of the Goddess is the embodiment of anger turned inward (Depression) and she often underestimates her own power. Yet she still manages, ultimately, to vanquish the enemies whose bones litter the ground. Her vehicle is either a horse or a cat -- depending on her mood. Both vehicles are advocating for a big bowl of ladoo to be added to the mix.

CACA'S NEW TEACHER BIO*


Caca began studying yoga in Tibet with Yogeswarar Rama Mohana Brahmacharya in the 1920's. After spending the next two decades meditating in a cave, she began teaching in 1941. Her students have included David and Andy Williams, George Michael, Stephen Hawking, Indra Devi, Maria Callas, Steve McQueen, Kamil Ataturk and Georg Fuerstein, to name just a few.

She's been making annual trips to Mysore to study with her beloved guruji, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, since 1943 and has completed all 11 series of the ashtanga vinyasa system -- including the five secret ones they never discuss with westerners. She holds advanced degrees in anatomy, psychology, physical therapy and Eastern Studies and is fluent in English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Farsi and Gibberish. She's held lucrative intensives, retreats and teacher training programs on six of the seven continents and has scaled Everest in her bare feet.



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*Ever notice how many yoga teachers pad their resumes? Satya, my arse.

THE OTHER COOL THING ABOUT "THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA"





...was that both Zola and Dreyfus sported pince-nez.

Whenever I see them or hear that word, well, it's like when they say c---sucker on Deadwood -- x 1,000.

Apparently you can still buy them (it?), too.

25 YEARS.... OR LESS


I learnt a few things while going through my grandfather's photo album at my brother's house yesterday.

My grandmother (mother's side) was born 100 years ago today (she died in 1991).

Her husband died at the age of 67, in 1965.

My mother (their daughter) also died at the age of 67.

Her sister killed herself when she was in her 30's.

I suppose that means I should get around to writing that novel sooner rather than later.


***


Recently in class a student did the finger-wag at me. You know, the gesture where they lift their index finger and curl it towards them a few times as if to say, "Come over here, slave-bitch. NOW!"

I always hated that gesture when I was a waitress, and often interpreted it as a signal to disappear into the bathroom.

But I came over anyway.

"What would you like?" I asked, taking out my notepad.


***


Yesterday's baby shower was very empowering.

First there was the open bar; after a few drinks we all got into a very deep discussion about politics, architecture and morality.

Everyone was dressed very sexily I may add.

But my miniskirt was still the shortest.

La Leche League gave a breastfeeding demostration, and recommended that the new mother breastfeed for at least five years. Then they handed out baby dolls to everyone and had us try it.

Then Planned Parenthood led us through a breast self-exam.

After the presents were opened, we loaded our plates at the vegan buffet and toasted Nancy Pelosi. Kneeling men massaged our feet while we came up with a plan for resurrecting the Equal Rights Amendment.

Then the band started, and we danced like crazy people at a Cramps concert.

Needless to say, I'm now a huge fan of the baby shower -- and can't wait to have one of my own.

"WITHOUT HATRED OR FEAR"


I stayed in last night and watched the 1937 multi award-winning The Life of Emile Zola. We briefly studied The Dreyfus Affair in college but none of it really stuck; French people, army politics, anti-Semitism, railroading, corruption, J'accuse...! -- why was Prof. Moodie so obsessed with this Franco-crap?

If he'd only shown us the film, instead of making us read some dry academic account of it.

It stars the brilliant Paul Muni as the muckraking French writer who'd written many bestsellers and become rich, corpulent and -- according to his friend Paul Cezanne, who subsequently ditched him -- complacent.... That is, until the wife of the wrongly convicted Jewish French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus convinced him to take up his case. Zola turned his back on his good name and fancy lifestyle and became a pariah for taking on the glorious French Army. In his dotage he realized he was more interested in satya, or truth, than consuming the most tender lobster.

Two things stand out.

-Before testifying in court, witnesses held up their right hand and were asked, "Do you swear to tell the truth without hatred or fear?" No mention of god.

-After acquittal, the government brought Capt. Dreyfus back from his South American prison and made him a knight of the Legion of Honor. At the ceremony, the general (?) pinned a medal on his chest........and then kissed him on each cheek.

We could learn from that, I think.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
more details, from Wikipedia:

The Dreyfus Affair was one of the most important scandals of the French Third Republic, if not the most important.

The Affair deeply divided the country into Dreyfusards (those supporting Dreyfus) and anti-Dreyfusards (those against).

Generally speaking, royalists, conservatives and the Catholic Church (the "right wing") were antidreyfusards while socialists, republicans and anticlericalists (the "left wing") were dreyfusards, though there were exceptions.

The Dreyfus Affair could not have happened in a country wholly antisemitic, nor in a country devoid of antisemitism. Indeed, Alfred Dreyfus, openly Jewish, had been admitted to the most selective military schools in the country, and had been commissionned into a sensitive position; this was, at the time, unheard of in several other European countries, where policies of discrimination were often in place.

JASTI DOO-DOO

The March grand opening of the brand-new, Flordia branch of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute will feature a two week workshop with Guruji, Sharath and Saraswati. It's in Islamoralda, the sportfishing capital of the world... which means it'll be affordable and accessible to all. From the AYRI website:

"My beloved students,

"For the last 30 years I have been visiting the United States to spread my teachings. With great pleasure, I am proud to announce the opening of my new yoga center in Florida.

"I would like to invite each and every one of you to join myself, my daughter Saraswathi and my grandson Sharath for the grand opening party on March 24th, followed by a 2-week workshop. This will be our only visit to the United States in 2007. I look forward to seeing you there!

"Love, Guruji"

Islamorada, FL
First week (5 days): March 25, 26, 27, 28, 29
Second week (5 days): April 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 (April 2nd moon day holiday)
7:00AM Led Primary Series
Fees: 5-day workshop $200, single class $50
Workshop students are invited to the opening party on March 24
Registration opens November 15

NOT QUITE RIGHT IN THE HEAD

I was really enjoying reading Jonathon Franzen's book of essays, "How to Be Alone."

Until it fell into the bathtub, that is.

Oops.

And it's a library book, too.

When/if it ever dries I'll post a picture.

In the meantime, here's a excerpt from Franzen's 1995 essay "First City," on why NYC is more like a European metropolis than an American one:

"Hiking is what I do for fun in Manhattan on windy days or after sundown, when the diesel fumes lift. I'm a recreational walker, and in the last few years I've noticed something odd when I've hit the sidewalks of suburban St. Louis and suburban Colorado: a not negligible percentage of the men speeding by me in theri cars or sport-utility vehicles (it's always men) feel moved to yell obscenities at me. It's hard to know why they do this. The only things unusual about me are that I'm not driving and that I'm not wearing teal and purple or a backward baseball cap. My guess is that they yell at me simply because I'm a stranger, and from the perspective of their glassed-in vehicles I have no more human reality than the coach on their TV screens who has elected to punt on fourth and short.

"I've been yelled at in New York, too, but only by deinstitutionalized psychotics, and then only in the midst of fellow subway riders who sympathized with me...."


***


Last night was the first installment of Paul Grilley's yoga and anatomy workshop, and I was singled out not once but twice for the, uh, uniqueness of my body; first, for my amazing hyperextending arms. And then for the lack of mobility in my neck: when I tilt my head back it goes 45 degrees max. Then Mr. Grilley pointed out a woman at the other side of the room; her head goes back THREE TIMES as much as mine.

THREE TIMES.

No wonder my backbends suck.

THIS IS NOT A PLEDGE DRIVE...

...for NPR, and I promise not to write about them again for some time.

But they did do a rather good piece on negative campaign ads earlier this week. Apparently not only are the Democrats back -- but also irony (and not just on the Daily Show, either).

"All Things Considered" asked two of the genre's top voiceover actors to twist around some nursery rhymes to sound like negative campaign ads. As with the Rumsfeld verse, seeing is good, but hearing is believing.

A sample:

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. He said he could put himself together again. But after wasting thousands of our tax dollars, all the King's horses and all the King's men, he failed us. Humpty Dumpty. Wrong on wall sitting.”




I never did like that one anyway.

BYE-BYE, C---SUCKER LAUREATE

Morning Edition ran an uncharacteristically jocular piece today about the unintentionally brilliant poetry of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The warmonger has recited so many poems in fact that Slate has posted them in two parts: volume one and volume two. Of course there's also a book and a CD of songs that kind of suck. While seeing is good, hearing is believing. A sampling:


The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing




A Confession

Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

Interview with The New York Times
May 16, 2001




On NATO

You may think it's something
I ought to know,
But I happen not to.
That's life.
(July 9, 2003)

PLEBISCITE II: JUST LIKE CHRISTMAS

From today's Chicago Tribune:

"The two sides were holding placards and screaming at one another behind police tape while county workers carried in voting materials."



The hottest race here is the one for Cook County Board President. It's soclose in fact that we still don't know who the winner is the day after the election.

A bit of background: Cook County has a $3 million budget and myriad patronage opportunities and hence is like a magnet for some of our more cunning politicos. Last year around primary time then-president John Stroger, an African American Machine-supported Democrat, became very ill and had to step down. Somehow though he got his son on the ballot in his stead. Very third world. Very Evita Perone. Meanwhile interim board president Bobbie Steele (a female, African American Democrat) found proof positive of widespread corruption under Stroger's watch. Not that there's anything wrong with that here in the Windy City.

The current race between 43-year-old Democrat Todd Stroger and Tony Peraica, a Croatian-American Republican, was soclose that when I went to sleep last night it was 55 to 45 in favor of Stroger, with many precincts still to be counted. The votes were split along racial and suburban/city lines ouf course

What I didn't know was that at around 1 AM things got so out of hand that Peraica and supporters actually got into taxis and stormed the County Clerk's office -- which is headed by David Orr, a white, liberal, squeakly clean Democrat.

What prompted them were some election shenanigans that had taken place two hours earlier. According to the Sun-Times, "Orr emerged from his office to say 'hooligans' were trying to break into boxes with election cartridges inside.

"'Drunks or whoever, they were trying to block people from bringing them up,'Orr said. 'And the freight elevator was broken'

"Still, Orr said the integrity of the election hadn't been compromised.

"'Media cameras captured boxes being ripped open by unknown people, and others lying over the boxes to protect them. One man was arrested for allegedly damaging the elevator.'"

Once the Peraica people got there, "a Stroger campaign volunteer was seen briefly wedging himself into the revolving door. Eventually, most supporters were allowed in, and Peraica and six supporters met with Orr, along with seven Stroger supporters.

"'I smell a rat here,' Peraica said, citing $60 million in upgrades county taxpayers funded to improve voting equipment since a similar debacle in the March primary.

"Peraica's venomous response was a stark contrast to Stroger's reaction. Stroger, a Democrat, giggled as he told supporters he was going to bed for the night and would wake up today 'just like Christmas' and celebrate."

Sometimes, this is the best city ever.

PLEBISCITE

I finally dragged my arse over to the yellow-y high school and voted. I loathe going because of the gauntlet of bouncer-type ward cretins who verbally assault you (they would call it electioneering) on the way to the polling place. But school had just let out and everyone was under 20 years of age. Each and every high school girl on the north side, by the way, has a short black parka that skims the waist (the better to show off the arse) and is topped by a fake fur-trimmed hood.

Sitting behind the counter inside was the Walkin' Man (a spindly gent who walks around the neighborhood year round and reminds me of an older Martin Sheen, only with uneven legs rather than arms). A middle-aged black woman with a Betty Boop voice showed me how to use the giant, game show-size ballots we're now using instead of the old human scale hanging-chad punch cards.

As I blacked in my choices, the salsa and circus music blaring from the adjacent auditorium competed for aural supremacy against the shrill, fake-sweet voice of a mom who was far more interested in socializing her todder than questions such as whether the state should ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons: "Who's a good girl? Are you a good girl? GOOOOOOOOOOOOD GIRL!!" vs "Da-da, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA..."

In the end the circus music won out. It always does.

Apart from the usual races there were at least 50 judges to deal with. For some reason the general public in Illinois must decide whether or not to retain judges. Like we have a clue. It's like letting retards, er, the mentally impaired, do god's job for a day. Luckily I had printed out a list of losers and keepers supplied to me via Dexter. But I nearly lost my eyesight squinting at the long list of names in the dim light. As I voted I realized that my usual strategy -- when in doubt, keep the women and minorities and toss out The Man -- was completely wrongheaded. Oops.

We also got to decide whether the state should pull the troops out of Iraq -- that was a hard one -- and if it should raise the minimum wage to six-dollars-and-change. There was no place to write in a higher amount.

But I did write in a felon for sherrif.

NO BOLLYWOOD FOR YOU!

I went to see the Bollywood film Umrao Jaan at the Des Plaines Cinema last night, after learning Friday night that I can review it for the Backwards R if I can get it in first thing Monday. I drove to the hinderlands instead of cycling downtown to 600 N. Mich because it was windy and freezing and late and I'd just had a veryintense massage and couldn't deal with the wind and cold.

I was famished when I arrived at the rundown suburban theatre. I'd just ordered popcorn from the handsome (Abishek Bachchan-meets-my-ex, Devdutt) counter-guy-cum-projectionist when I noticed a pile of warm samosas sitting near my right elbow. I ordered some of those instead and took a seat front and center.

But there were technical problems that peaked twenty minutes into the period epic -- a remake of a 1981 film that takes place in 19th century Lucknow. Just as the 12-year-old girl who grows up to be Aishwarya Rai was bedding down for her first night at the brothel, the audio got very loud and disappeared -- and then so did the image. Wow , I thought, What an understated rape scene.

But the picture never came back; apparantly the projector was hungry too, and had eaten the film. After some time the lights came up and everyone made for the doors. Entire families were there, including infants with black spots on their cheeks to ward off the evil eye and western-dressing Indian hipster tweens. I was the lone Windian. About a third of the crowd went over to see Don but having seen it I opted for the refund and drove back home.

An hour round-trip for nothing, and money lost on top of it. But at least I'd gotten to eat those samosas.

A Chicago Moment

SoHo Mac Store, originally uploaded by satya cacananda.

A CHICAGO MOMENT

We were checking our e-mail at the SoHo Apple Store a la Bob Eisen.* Yes, it's free, but apparently you can catch a lot of germs by checking your e-mail there. I had the hand sanitizer on me and wasn't worried. Besides, I'd just taken the two-hour class at Dharma Mittra's followed by massive amounts of greens at Temple in the Village chased down by dark chocolate nonpareils. I was in New York City. It was sunny. My feet didn't hurt. I felt good.

School had let out and the two-story behemoth was wall-to-wall with geniuses, nincompoops and all the rest. Most were male (as were most of the students in Dharma Mittra's class. What's up with this? Oh who cares -- I likes it!).

And then there it was -- an e-mail from a fitness coordinator desperate for a sub for a Wed. 7-8:15 AM Yoga Basics class. So desperate in fact she was willing to pay time-and-a-half. I thought, "Well, I'm flying in Tuesday night and I have to teach at 9AM anyway... My practice will be f---ed either way....Why not?". So I agreed to do it.



***

Cut to the Wednesday morning 7-8:15 AM Basics class. It's 7:30. The sun streams in. Fourteen people are on their backs, not putting their hands on their thighs in supta padangustasana -- despite the protestations of the teacher, who says, in desperation, "If your hand is not on your thigh, take a moment and examine why it's not there." Suddenly, seven hands shoot onto seven thighs. And she didn't even have to say, "And now ask yourself why this would not apply to you."

But at 8AM 11 people get up, put on their shoes, collect their mats, and walk out of class -- without doing savasana. Not hiding her shock, the teacher tells them that their minds will be restless for the remainder of the day if they don't do savasana (corpse pose). An empty threat. Instead of listening they head even more quickly towards the door.

Was it something I said? she wonders. Or is there a new type of silent fire alarm that only the affluent can hear?

Desperate, she asks, over the confusion and din of the mass exodus, "DOES THIS CLASS END AT 8 OR 8:15? BECAUSE THEY TOLD ME IT WAS 8:15.

One of the remaing three students (probably a stay-at-home mom) says, "Oh no, everyone always leaves at 8. The other instructors have all given up and just stop the class at that time."

"Well. No one told me," she says, miffed. "Maybe they should put it on the schedule that way."

Nonetheless the determined instructor sticks it out til the bitter end....

....and winds up being late for her 9AM lesson.



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*Bob is both smart and frugal, and knows how to make the most out of that which can be had for free. We all stand to learn a lot from him.

SoHo Mac Store II

SoHo Mac Store, originally uploaded by satya cacananda.

The stairway to free concerts during the CMJ conference.

A NEW YORK MOMENT


We were having tea and toast at the Soho home PSG, the Glasgow-born writer and director of musical theater. The sun was streaming in through the window, the conversation was animated, and the tea, as usual, was exquisite. At a one point PSG was asked if there were any good shows to see in NYC, either on or off Broadway.

He fetched the day's wrinkled newspaper from the couch and returned to the table. Standing, he noisily paged through it until he found the entertainment section. He scanned it a moment and then pulled his head back. He jabbed his finger at the paper with each word and declared, in his thick Scottish accent:

"Shite, shite, shite and shite."

Apparently the only good theater in town was being performed off-off-off (and off) Broadway -- for a very exclusive audience indeed.

And I have video of it.

TWENTY IS THE NEW FIFTEEN...

...when it comes to the cost of a drop-in yoga class in New York City.

On Saturday night I met the ashtanga teacher Vanessa at the home of MisGrace, and on Sunday I checked out her Mysore class at Shiva Shala in Patti Perez's exquisite East Village loft space. It was strange not going to Eddie Stern. But my back is still out and I didn't want to push it and I think V. knew that. It was a lovely practice.

Afterwards I met Cousin Marlene and her husband Alan for Chinese food and schmying in Times Square -- where I was treated to witty conversation, lots of memories and one of the best steamed vegetable plates of my life. Al dente indeed.

On Monday and Tuesday I went to Dharma Mittra's noon yoga class. Can I just say what a treat it is to practice at such a reasonable hour? And even though my last class with Dharma in NYC was in 1999, my name was still in thir computer. Scary.

The class was more packed this time around and sprinkled with good-looking, superbendy young people. Yet there was none of that competitive yogascene BS in the air. In fact I think I was the only one in Lululemon togs -- which is a good thing since I sweated buckets and their products really do seem to wick away moisture.

Dharma's vinyasa sequence is beyond intense; there is so much repitition where you go deeper into the pose each time. Instead of downward dog you can do tons of pinca mayurasanas (forearm balances) and you're allowed to do difficult variations of just about every pose; some of the students could jump effortlessly from handstand-splits right into Hanumanasana (sitting splits). (Yet later on, after we were encouraged to do "whatever poses you want" for ten minutes -- something that I've introduced in a few of my classes and which often causes confusion -- a bendy handsome French gent asked me for tips on getting into dwi pada sirsasana (balancing on your sitting bones while both legs are behind the head). I was floored. But as Dharma said in his Chicago workshop last year, "When you see someone doing a pose, don't think 'That is them.' Instead think, 'That is me.'"

This time he said, "Keep your eyes open. Look around at the other students. You may learn something." Which I did.

I found myself not able to do things I take for granted, and doing poses I'd never tried before. Dharma showed me new ways to do advanced versions of a couple of poses -- including King Pigeon -- that I've only been halfheartedly trying to do. And one of his students showed me how to kick into pinca mayurasana (forearm balance) with my legs together. It was the yogic-mind blow I've been yearning for, and it helped me go from I'm in a rut I'm in a rut I'm in a rut to Anything is possible.

On Tuesday morning I was sore as hell from Monday's practice and headachy from indulging in the migraine cocktail of red wine and dark chocolate with friends the previous night, and did not want to go to class. I was so loath to go that I showed up three minutes late. But they let me in anyway, and I practiced on my thin orange travel mat, and the sequence built off what we'd done the previous day. Soon I had no pain and no headache and no thoughts of the past or future.

Later on I felt cleansed, and spoke Spanish with the Ecuadorian driver on the way to the airport. Somehow I made it onto an earlier flight which was uneventful despite Mercury being in Retrograde. To get home I took the El (subway) to the bus and the ride was so lovely....the driver pulled right up to the curb at each stop so that the passengers could step easily onto the sidewalk without having to leap or step into the gutter. So as I was getting off I told him so and thanked him.

If only this feeling would last.

HI! GOODNIGHT!


At the Annie Leibovitz exhibit at the Brooklyn Art Museum they screen a video about how the show came together. They interview everyone from Arnold to Whoopie, and they all talk about the importance of family and how Leibovitz depicts family in her photos and her own family and how close she is to them and they are to her and how there were so many of them in her family and how great it is now that she has her own (three) kids.

There was also some talk about how hard it is to be a single parent.

Then they showed Leibovitz in her studio, sorting through mountains of photographs. Working hard. At one point her nanny comes in with the twins.

"Hi," Leibovitz says to them, bending down.

"Bye" she says, less than a minute later.

It was one of the finest movie moments of the year, hands down.

Yet no one else laughed.

WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?

On Thursday two runners came to the 6AM yoga class. Both were quite young. They said they were sore from doing the Chicago Marathon on Sunday but that their ailments did not include shin splints.

One gave up after the first half hour.

The second one made it almost to the end.

DON V. THE DEPARTED

It was one of those weekends.

Plans to see Hollywoodland were scrapped at the last minute last Friday night. The next morning I drove my arse to the Paul Dallaghan workshop in the suburbs and accidentally went to the old studio and got so lost finding the new one that by the time I got there that I was so late I turned around and went home (where I did a two-hour yoga practice). That night SportMarty and I went to see the Departed. But the only seats left by the time I finally got there were in the second row, all the way to the right... at a theater where the screen is already on a weird angle. After watching for two minutes our necks hurt so badly we stormed the lobby and exchanged our tickets for Little Miss Sunshine, which I wanted to hate but could not. (Does anyone else think that Greg Kinnear is simply a slightly upscale William H. Macy)? Afterwards we went in the front door of the nearby Mexican restaurant, saw there was not a single open chair, walked all the way through to the rear room, which was also full, and kept going right out the back door.

On Thursday things fared better when a group of us went to see our friend the actress Lily Mojekwu in the play Another Part of the House. It dealt with the two things that scare men most; women's emotions and sexuality. Perhaps that explains why the lone male in our group fell asleep. It was based on a play by the Spanish writer Garcia Lorca, who hailed from Andalucia and was a contemporary of Louis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. But apparently he took it personally when they called their famous surrealist film collaboration Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), and they fell out. But it was the fascists that killed him in the end.

SportMarty and I tried again to see The Departed on Saturday and this time we met with success. But Jack Nicholson made his irritating "Here's Johnny" look so often I wanted to go up there and smack him. Marky Mark was brilliant as the crazy detective with all the good lines. Afterwards we had an animated discussion about the film over margaritas and comida at the Mexican place -- where we scored the best seat. We were so loud in fact we attracted the attention of the guy at the next table, who grabbed us on our way out and began a new spirited discussion of the film while his girlfriend silently sipped her drink and looked down at the floor.

This afternoon I played hooky and went to see the remake of the Bollywood classic Don. Shahrukh Khan is no Amitabh Bachchan (who played the dual role in the original, 1978 version) and I went in with a wrinkled nose and arms folded over my chest. There were four of us at the brand-new theatre, which is in the heart of the city's Gold Coast neighobrhood, in the middle of the Mag Mile -- aka the toniest part of the city, at 600 N. Michigan. Another major Bollywood release, Jaan-E-Maan is also playing there. (Yet apparently that's not enough to warrant capsule reviews in the city's free independent weekly).

Like The Departed this was a mobster movie with crooked cops and slippery informants and twists and turns and foot chases and carefully-choreographed cell phone exchanges and plot problems galore and a bizarro plot bomb dropped at the very end. Don however had better music (think James Bond on the crack) and costumes and special effects and dancing and, uh, a moral center. It took place primarily in Malaysia -- which is a lot more appealing than Boston. And in Bollywood movies the mobsters enjoy the fruits of their illicit lifestyle; unlike the slob Jack Nicholson with his stubble and spittle and dive bars and grody cronies and crappy little hideouts, SKR and his well-dressed ilk shaved regularly and lived it up in highrises and on the beach -- and also got up off their arses and danced from time to time. Plus their molls did more than stand by and prescribe drugs and wring their hands.

I wanted to hate SKR's Don but I couldn't. His range is limited but he's just so charming. Plus whenever you got sick of him, in walked the handsomest man in the world -- Arjun Rampal. Once his character started limping and carrying a cane I was a goner.

MAYOR FOR LIFE...?

The enterprising muckrakers at the scrappy Chicago Sun-Times just kicked the conservative Chicago Tribune's corpulant ass with an astonishing piece of investigative reporting. Writers Tim Novak and Art Golab show that some 20 percent of patronage workers* have been "injured" on the job and filed disability claims with the city -- which pays to settle out of its own (i.e.; OUR) pocket.

"The city has spent more than $38.9 million to resolve 1,719 claims filed by those patronage workers during the last two decades. Another 708 claims are pending. Some with pending cases have been off work for years, disappearing even from the city payroll, as if they were ghosts -- but still, in most cases, getting 75 percent of their salary while on "duty disability."

The story is accompanied by a photo of a city truck driver bending over and doing lawn work -- while on paid leave for injuring his back after falling out of his truck for the third time during his decade on the job.

Perhaps this, combined with the myriad other scandals rocking his administration, means that Mayor Daley II's 17-year reign is about to end.

Nah.

The sheep that populate the Windy City would never permit it.







*patronage worker = a relative of a politician or a local who has done political favors for someone in power and has been rewarded with a cushy job for which they possess little or no qualifications.

IS IT JUST ME


Or is this not-so-vaguely obscene?







And is this not Michael Jackson?




For those keeping score: both snaps were taken on Clark Street; the first is across the street from Wrigley Field (where Steve Davis ran into Bob Mould in the head after a 1984 Husker Du show at the Metro. Don't worry; Bob behaved himself) and the second in the heart of bourgeois Lincoln Park.

NOTE TO SELF

When a new student mentions that the only type of yoga they have done is Bikram (hot yoga), one must remember to impose upon them that Caca subscribes to the Judith Laster school of savasana (ie, longer is better) rather than the Bikram version (a minute or two is enough).

In other words, It ain't over til Caca rings the bell / your bladder is about to burst (whichever comes first).

That way they won't get up ten minutes before the class ends and make the floors creak and wake everyone up and then apologize later at Pockets.

Oops.

Mea culpa, that one.

But not when it happened last Saturday in an ashtanga primary series class one subbed.

They should know better.

'SNO DREAM

This morning I was having a fabulous dream where I was slaying rattlesnakes and trying to come up with an antivenum serum. Then I realized I was dreaming. The thought, If this is a dream then you've probably overslept entered my mind and I began to paw my way to consciousness, much like a dog paddling in water towards shore and just about as slow.

Sure enough, when the eyes finally came unstuck the alarm clock said 6:10. Which meant that my first class had already started. WIthout me.

Oops.

I stumbled out of bed, called the health club and asked them to tell the students I'd be in at 6:30, and to warm up until I got there.

When I arrived they were there on their mats, doing yoga.

Without a teacher.

Some were doing vinyasas. One woman was in the classical version of Ardha Chandrasana (the standing side stretch) and another was on her back doing a hip opener. The rest were a blur.

Of course they all were all sneaking looks at the two massive mirrors that span the room.

Still, they were doing yoga on their own.

And well on their way to developing a home practice.

Which would be the half-full part of the equation.

And this on a day when, after the second class, it snowed like crazy while I drove my oversleeping arse to class number three in the integrated suburban enclave of Oak Park -- the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway .

Hemingway left Oak Park at 18 and never looked back, famously dismissing it as "broad lawns and narrow minds."

Nonetheless the moms there are tough, and do all their vinyasas without complaint.

And one suspects they won't end up offing themselves while "cleaning their shotgun(s)".*


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*Many members of Hemingway's immediate family also committed suicide, including his father, Clarence Hemingway, and his siblings Ursula and Leicester.....Hemingway donated his entire Cuban estate to Fidel Castro. He is interred in the Ketchum Cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho. The local public elementary school there is named in his honor. In 1996, his granddaughter, actress Margaux Hemingway, would take her own life; she is interred in the same cemetery. (From All Experts)

THE NEW MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

The BBC just did a story on the disappearances, torture, murder and intimidation that occur daily in Iraq. They say an average of 60 tortured and murtilated bodies are found each day in and around Baghdad; the Shiites are doing it to the Sunnis who live in mixed areas, and the Sunnis are doing it to the Shiites who live in mixed areas. Those who don't leave receive notes telling them to move out or they will be tortured and killed, too. Since February some 300,000 people have been displaced as they flee to areas where others of their ilk are in the majority. The news people keep invoking "sectarian" violence. The Sunday New York Times carried a long cover story about teens whose lives have been derailed by the violence; they can't go to school or leave the country and stay home barricaded inside all day. Former friends of different sects no longer trust each other. Everyone knows someone who's been killed. But no one can get a visa to get out

One can't help but think of India after Partition, when the British handed over power in 1947 without having much of a security plan once the two new states of primarily Hindu India and primarily Muslim Pakistan were created at Midnight. A estimated one million people were killed as Hindus and Sikhs headed towards India and Muslims fled north to Pakistan. It was a massive disaster and the repercussions continue today when "communual" violence flares up.

It's Post-Colonialism 101: When the colonial powers leave, the groups that lived side-by-side and had a common enemy in their overlords go at each others throats in a bid for power.

Of course you can substitute "dictator" or "puppet" or "despot" for "colonial powers" and the same thing happens.

You'd think the geniuses who decided to invade Iraq -- and who went to far better schools than I did -- would have studied these things and taken them into account when they removed ol' Saddam and tried to install "democracy."

Because the next move, of course, is for the winner to take over the nation's natural resources.

Which in thise case would be the oil reserves.

Oops.

BLOGGING IS A FORM OF PROCRASTINATION WHICH IS A FORM OF RESISTANCE

Miss Grace recommended I read the book The War of Art in order to get over my writer's block.

Apparently it's working. You can view an excerpt here.

Since I'm "working" there's been no time to fool around uploading photos from last weekend's college reunion and radio station takeover. Or to write, in excruciating detail, about My Yoga Practice and Everything About the World that Bothers Me.

Nothing like a flashback weekend and a kick in the pants from the peers to remind one of what's important.



***


Tonight is Falguni's Dandiya concert-cum-dance-party -- in the northwest suburban shithole they call Schaumburg -- where they put on outfits and do the Gujarati dance with the sticks. Dare I go?

A more apt question might be: Will anyone dare go with me?

THE HAIR SHIRT (REUNION PT. I)

Reunion weekend was an amazing experience and not just because I had a massive sinus/nerves/PMS-fueled headache the entire time. First, we spent Friday night with our classmates at the official cocktail party and later on at The Lantern (the only place to get a beer and a burger in the mostly-dry Enchanted Forest). That's where some of our more Greek-oriented peers declined to join us at our long table that included people from a variety of social groups (radio, eurotrash, potheads-cum-lawyers/government policy analysts, general GDI's, and truly nice people like Page who maneuvered freely between all groups). They found it necessary to move to a different room, and poor Dr. Bob (another nice person who was able to negotiate a variety of groups) was caught in the middle. Twenty-year-old habits die hard.

On Saturday our alternative Homecoming schedule included a long and leisurely breakfast at the Deerpath Inn followed by an optional trip to the candy store Sweets, which is no longer owned by Mr. Dick (where o where do they get off charging $10/pound for mediocre chocolate?), and the takeover of the campus radio station. Especially after watching old videos, listening to old radio shows and looking at old pictures on Saturday night, one could not help but be flooded with memories of how easy things used to be, how much free time we had, and how we were indulged by the adminstration (You want to be on the radio? Go ahead! You want to write a smart-assy little column for the newspaper? We won't censor you! You can't decide on a major? Make up your own! You want to be in a band that plays original three-chord postpunk ditties about US intervention in central America and students named Elizabeth DeNoma, or covers songs like "Damaged Goods" and changes the lyrics from Bowie's "Sufragette City" to "Calumet City?" Go for it! You want to protest Apartheid? The president of the college will come out and watch, but be careful because you may be pelted with garbage by the strivers in the Alpha Chi fraternity. You want to take the campus van to a Cure concert in a dangerous neighborhood? Here are the keys! You want Naked Raygun to play in Commons? Here's some money! You want T-Bone Burnett to host the Ra Weekend talent show? Here's some more money! You want to try to kill yourself by taking too much aspirin? Go right ahead -- but do it too many times and we may just have to kick you off campus for a semester).

At one point JT pointed out the obvious: how ill-equipped we were to handle that first year out of college. It was the middle of the reign of Reagan and the worst year ever for college graduates as far as job prospects were concerned. Expensive liberal arts educations were considered a joke, and we shared dark $600/month apartments and went to graduate school in order to put off reality for as long as possible or landed menial jobs at places like Mrs. Field's Cookies and Guadalaharry's restaurant and Crate & Barrel.

Some of us of course quit grad school once twice three times before figuring out what we wanted to do nearly a decade later. And we're still not happy, are we....

And one couldn't help but think what it would have been like for us if there had been blogs and The Internets and podcasting and Pro Tools and digital video cameras and iMovie. Instead we struggled with trying to find outlets for the crap we wrote on our Tandy 1000's (or gave up altogether) and worked in (expensive) film or tried to land gigs for our little analog bands or begged for DJ gigs that paid $30 a night or signed up to learn how to use the bulky 3/4 -inch video equipment at the public access station.

Maybe it wasn't that bad after all. But still.... We didn't even have air conditioners or cable TV or computers in our dorm rooms. We waited hours to use the pay phone in the basement so we could call Ma Bell to hook up the telephones in our rooms. We had to wait hours in front of College Hall on registration day so we could sign up for the classes we needed to graduate. We had go to the library if we wanted to use a computer and composed most of our papers on TYPEWRITERS, for cryin' out loud. MySpace my ass -- we had to attend actual parties and "video dances" in order to meet people....

And we walked miles in the snow in order to do it.

FLOGGING A LIFELESS STEED: ONE POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR THE (MILD) TENSION AT THIS WEEKEND'S REUNION

Below you will find the parody song that inspired a group of pledges from the Phi Pi Epsilon fraternity to surround and humiliate me in front of everyone in the dining hall (symbolic rape, anyone?) and the Brotherhood purpose unit to attempt to attack me at a video dance party in Commmons (fortunately I was tipped off) and some members acting on their own to chase and throw things at some of my friends from the radio station. This shitty little ditty polarized the campus for a few weeks. Twenty years later, both fraternties are defunct. New ones have taken their place of course. It was nonetheless heartening to hear the radio station's music director ask, "What's Brotherhood?"

Some more background: The "purpose units" at our small (1200) liberal arts campus consisted of groups that lived together -- such as the Black United and Concerned Students and International House -- as well as fraternities and sororities. Until this point they'd had prime housing set aside for them. But each year there were more new Greek units (it was the Reagan years after all), and assistant Dean Steve Watter (he didn't last long) came up with a new plan to make room draw more equitable. In other words, purpose units had to draw numbers along with everyone else. The Greeks were outraged, and circulated petitions. A group of big male frat-jocks brought these petitions door-to-door to my all-girls' dorm, and stood over us as they waited for us to sign. Which wouldn't have been that big a deal, except for the fact that they also happened to be carrying baseball bats. Intimidating? Oh, maybe just a little.....




from the 2/18/86 Stentor
The Poison Pen Creates a New Shuffle
(sung to the tune of The Superbowl Shuffle)
By Satya Cacananda


Chorus
We are the frats and sororities too
Creatin' a social life just for you
We like to have the parties for which you've helped pay
If they take away our housing we'll soon go 'way
It's pledge season so watch out during meals
We'll be singing our songs and sayin' our spiels
But we're not worried 'bout Szabo* trouble
They can't make us do the purpose unit shuffle

Asst. Dean of Students Steve Watter
This is Steve, and it's no wonder
I may have made a big housing blunder
The Greeks're mad at me, you know it's true
But I'm just doin' what I was told to do
Change the system and move them around
Put 'em on South* in one compound
But I'm not here to feathers ruffle
I just came to do the purpose unit shuffle

Greek Heads
We're the heads of the Greeks, big and bold
Do what we say our our alumni will withhold
We don't wanna mess with the status quo
Drawin' with the rest would really blow
Some of the units really do good stuff
So we enlisted their aid when things got rough
Please don't try to burst our bubble
They can't make us do the purpose unit shuffle

Independents
Our social life is not the issue here
We know how to have fun without your beer
Just leave us alone and quit wrecking our meals
with your stupid petitions and your pledging ordeals
Some of the units actully have a purpose
Those are not the ones that bother us
So get out of our faces, on the double
We don't wanna hear about the purpose unit shuffle


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*South Campus was home to gnarley dorms that featured Cabrini Green-inspired architecture

**Szabo is the dining hall where everyone ate together. Well, where everyone ate with their own little cliques....just as they did Friday night at The Lantern.

OOPS! WRONG STEREOTYPE

This weekend marks my 20th college reunion.

It takes place on the small liberal arts campus that was dividied -- polarized if you will -- after my satiric rewrite of the Bears' 1985 hit "The Superbowl Shuffle" appeared in the campus newspaper and aired on the campus radio station.

The song addressed the college's questioning of its longstanding practice of giving its best student housing to the "purpose units" -- a euphemism for fraternities and sororites.

My friends from the radio station and I were harassed. It got so bad the adminstration had to call a campus-wide "town meeting" and I faced my victimizers in "court."

Suffice to say that I bought a locking gas cap for my car (which was keyed) and didn't go anywhere without an imposing male escort.

In the end the purpose units got their way; nothing changed, and my lead harasser was given a seat on the Board of Trustees.

So why am I going?

Tonight we plan an informal coup of the radio station (today's students tend to be a bit on the docile side).

And tomorrow there will be an offiical visit at 12:30PM central time. You can listen here.

CASTE SYSTEM? WHAT CASTE SYSTEM?


In order to help eradicate the caste system, some states in India have been paying up to $1100 to upper caste people who marry members of the two lowest castes. The state of Gujarat is at the high end, while West Bengal pays a measly $45.* They don't say whether they get paid to marry Untouchables/Dalits/Harijans, which are thought to be so polluted they are casteless.

Now, legislators want to make the reward $1100 througout the world's largest democracy. Although it would cover just two months at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, this is a significant amount of money for most Indians and is meant to help the happy couple set up a house.

Apparently the marriage is reward enough for the lower castes, who still experience widespread discrimination.

The hope is that if enough people mixed it up, the idea of caste would eventually disappear.

More here.

Perhaps the world's loudest democracy should follow suit and admit that racism is still a problem in America -- call a spade a spade as it were -- and do the same for interracial couples (straight, gay or otherwise) who decide to tie the knot.

If enough people mixed it up, perhaps our conception of race would eventually disappear.

Of course we'd find other ways to discriminate against people.

Like, say, class, age and gender....





*Todays Fun Fact: Over half of the 250,000 Indians living in the Chicago hail from the western state of Gujarat -- which seems to experience more than its fair share of natural disasters, sectarian violence and goverment duplicity in the latter. They got out while the gettin' was good.

IN WE GOD TRUSTS

It's not often that one experiences a minor epiphany while reading the New York Times magazine on a late Sunday afternoon, but it happened. It was a story about an oversize poor black child who was raised by wolves in Memphis (ie, his parents were useless or nonexistent). Due to the work of some good Samaritans this gigantic boy was admitted to a small private Christian high school. He was woefully behind, having attended scores of schools. He'd been flunked a couple of times and had been passed the rest of the time so that he would go away and become someone else's problem. He also lacked social skills and rarely spoke; up to that point life had simply been about survival.

After the first year at this high school he narrowly escaped flunking and was allowed to join the football team. Not because he could play, but because he was big and it was a largely white school and if nothing else he would scare the shit out of the other teams.

I didn't finish the story but apparently this kid is now some famous college player and all of the pro teams want him and there will be a bidding war or some such thing. That's why they wrote the article.

When this kid enrolled in the Christian high school he was homeless -- living on people's floors and wearing the same pair of shorts every day. He couldn't afford to eat at the cafeteria. But somehow he made it to school. He showed up.

At some point a wealthy white born-again couple whose daughter was a classmate saw him walking out in the cold in those shorts and asked where he was going. He said he was on his way to basketball practice. After more questions they learnt that he was going not because he was on the team but because the gym was heated. Their hearts went out to him. They took him in. Soon they began to treat him like a member of the family.

(I remember wishing for a similar rescue many, many, many times during my formative years. Not by Christians, though. More like Starsky and Hutch or Colonel Hogan.... which is quite sick when you think about it).

The journalist who wrote the story had amazing access -- one wonders how he gained his subjects' trust -- and there is a certain, well, exploitative feel to to the piece. Which of course induces the reader to devour it.

He managed to get incredible quotes. At one point he wanted to know why this rich couple -- who owned 60 fast food restaurants -- was so generous with their wealth.

The wife's answer actually made me stop reading and start thinking.

And I'm not even Christian.

She said:

"God gives people money to see how [they're] going to handle it."


And all this time I thought it was so you could withhold it from your offspring and give it all to your already-wealthy second wife.


Really, though, just about any noun could be substituted for "money" and it would still make sense:

"God gives people stiff bodies to see how they're going to handle it."

"God gives people felonies to see how they're going to handle it."

"God gives people talent to see how they're going to handle it."

"God gives people cod liver oil to see how they're going to handle it."

And so on.



The full article is here.

COINCIDENCE?


There is a new moon today.

There's also a solar eclipse (visible in South America and Western Africa).

Tonight is the autumnal equinox -- known by the pagans as the fake holiday Mabon.

Tonight is also the start of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year)-- a time of self-examination and repentance that leads to Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement (a time of fasting and intensive prayer).

The Muslim holiday of Ramadan -- a time of fasting, praying, contemplation and giving thanks to god -- begins tomorrow.

Tomorrow is also the start of the Hindu Festival of Navatri ("nine nights of Durga"), a harvest festival in which thanks is given to the goddess - and which ends ten nights later with Dussehra (in which the ten faces of evil are destroyed).

And in this primarily Christian nation we have....... nada.

Caca is sick as a dog so she's celebrating by subbing out / canceling her classes and spending her day panting and trying not to throw up between suffering through TV shows like the yoga program Inhale, "Mad About You" (hey, she's really sick!), "Roseanne," Simple Living TV and what has to be the best reality TV series ever -- Breaking up With Shannen Doherty.

God I hope things improve fairly quickly....

A DAY WITHOUT ME: BROCCOLI IS THE NEW SPINACH

First we had a day without Mexicans.

They didn't go to work, and everyone noticed their absence.

They even made a movie about it.

And now we've gone AN ENTIRE WEEK without spinach due to the e-Coli outbreak.

A WEEK!

No spinach in the Bam-Bam's pocket at Pockets; now it looks pal and wan.

Same for the already-mediocre tofu-veggie nori rolls at Trader Joe's.

No spinach in my usually-fabulous salads, which also look a bit pasty.

Gridlife couldn't order his favorite Greek omelette yesterday at the Cult, where it's made with Phil's free-range eggs, and had to settle on broccoli-and-cheddar.

Even Dorian Black stopped from going to Dona Torta for their wonderful veggie burrito because spinach is the primary ingredient. And he's not even anaemic.

Today I found myself looking for something -- ANYTHING -- green to add to my salads and comparing the nutritional value of French green beans and broccoli; for the record the latter has far more nutrients.

It's a rather sad substitute but it'll have to do.

One can't help but wonder what's next, though --

A month without Scrunchies?

WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT DISTEMPER SHOT?
CACA VS THE VET




I took my feline companion Mr. Kirby Q-Tie to the vet today for his annual checkup. Prior to that his day had been going quite well.

He made cute little "Air! Air!" sounds when they weighed him and poked and prodded at him. Very cute and not the usual "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!!-she-starves-and-tortures-me-please-adopt-me" sounds he makes when he stands in front of the neighbor's door and begs for chicken.

When the vet asked about any problems, I mentioned his chronic rodent ulcers, which appear during allergy season and consist of sores that make the side of his mouth curl up so that he looks like, well, a rodent (see photo above).

I told them he'd had some sores a few weeks ago but they had gone away. The vet took a look and said,

"Yes, they seem to be going away."

Then he looked at Kirby's chart and said the sores seemed to be coming back and we should give him a shot of cortisone since we already had him there.

I was silent for a minute or two. I nearly went along with it. Why argue and get labeled a bad pet owner?

Instead I said,

"Didn't you just say the sores seem to be going away?"

Uh, yes. But this will make sure they don't come back.

"I'd rather wait and see. If they're going away I'd prefer not to keep shooting him up with stuff (especially stuff that costs around $40 a pop!)."

He backed off and said we could wait, and showed me the receding sores, and asked if I use plastic dishes (I don't) and said that there's an oral cortisone pill that's easier to control and that I could give him myself.

I felt like I'd nearly allowed myself to be played.

And by a vet no less.

It wasn't until later that I realized that I should have just requested the d*mn prescription and had it filled elsewhere.

Like, say, Canada.

WHAT'S YOUR CRACK?


Sportmarty and I rode bikes to the Music Box Theatre last night to see Half Nelson, which is about a (chaste) relationship that develops between a 13-year-old girl and her crackhead teacher after she discovers him nearly ODing in the girl's locker room. The poor teacher is on the pipe, it seems, because his parents are ex-hippies who drink a lot and the world is a scary, unfair place. Nonetheless he is hot. Whatever. I like films about miserable single people who live alone, addiction or no.

They kept drinking red wine in the movie, and like a minkey I immediately wanted some, too.

We sat behind SM's ex wife. After the movie I learnt that she just got rid of a slow old Raleigh bike. Later, as we unlocked our rides, I found out that she is also a speed freak who favors a fast silver ten-speed. She says it doesn't hurt her back or neck because she sits up higher by gripping the top part of the drop-bars - where there aren't any brake levers. She says she has enough time to get to the brakes (on the lower part) if necessary. Hmmmm.

As SM and I walked down busy Southport Avenue, which is home to four blocks of fake pubs, mediocre restaurants, frivolous boutiques, empty ice cream shops and so much sidewalk seating that we could barely navigate between that and the drunken Cubs fans and other perfumed white people swarming the area, we talked about the movie and TV shows like Deadwood and Rescue Me. Apparently SM showed his foreign ladyfriend a couple of episodes of the latter, and she got hooked immediately -- and spent the next few days watching all the episodes back to back.

"That's her crack," I said.

Turns out she's into red wine, too.

Then I started to think about what my crack is.

In no particular order:

-Procrastination
-Yoga
-The Internet
-The Caffeine
-Corn Chips -- the saltier the better
-Reading everything from package labels to inane blogs
-Writing everything from a media column to an inane blog
-Deadwood
-Corn Chips
-Self-Sabotage
-Listening to the radio, from Wake up with Whoopie (rarely a good idea) to Opie and Anthony (one of them does a spot-on Howard Stern) to public radio's Living on Earth (a riveting show that the local station sandbags by airing it Saturdays at 6AM
-The Walgreen's discount aisle (reading glasses with case for $5! Lifelike singing bird for $1.49! Carabiner flashlight for 29 cents! 10 bags of herbal tea for 50 cents! A lighted fountain for $1.49!)
-Corn Chips (it's gotten so bad I'm using salted shelled edamame as methadone)
-Bicycles (I have six: my mother's 1940's Schwinn Cadillac -- the heaviest bicycle ever made -- 1970's his-and-her Schwinn five-speeds [a Suburban and a Collegiate]; a Monster Fat [Fat City Cycle] mountain bike with Biopace II chain from the 1980's; the slow, ugly-but-comfortable new Raleigh; and the beloved 1970's Cinelli racer, which is sadly out of commission at the moment)
-Ogling other bicycles, and comparing them to mine as well as all the other bikes in the vicinity. (I tend to salivate when I see Marins or classic bikes with fenders, bells and generator lights.....hmmm -- maybe this one is more porn-y than crack-y).
-Mysore

So much for those yogic ideals of sense-control and non-attachment.

Now, what's your crack?

INDIA TRIVA


I'm in the middle of watching a three-hour PBS documentary about the Nehru-Gandhi* dynasty in India. It's quite good; they interviewed EVERYONE.

Anyway, at one point a daughter of Lord Montbatten (the British viceroy under whom India became independent) talks about the time her family and Jawaharlal Nehru's were staying in a palace (?) in Simla, just before independence. Apparently she was given a message to bring to Nehru, who went on to become India's first prime minster (but is probably better known among today's young hipsters for popularizing the Nehru jacket). Anyway he said, impatiently, "Come in! Come in!" She opened the door and was flabbergasted to find that he was in headstand. "We proceeded to have an rather long conversation with him in a headstand the entire time." She had a very posh accent. They all did (Gandhi, Nehru and Jinna were all lawyers).





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*Indira Nehru married a man named Gandhi and that's how she got the name. He was no relation to the white-clad thread-spinning father of nonviolent resistance

SNATCH!





Spot the continuity problem and win a prize!

NIM CHIMSKY, HENRY CHINASKI

When I went to India in May I downgraded my phone/cable/internet package to the cheapest one I could get without having to return the equipment. Since returning I've maintained the status quo -- meaning there's no HBO, Sundance, Showtime or BBC America; using the Internet is akin to tapping out messages on a telegraph,; and I must pay for each and every long-distance telephone call. But it's worth it. Why? Because it saves me $100 per month. In a year that's nearly $1200 which is nearly a plane ticket to India.

The savings means, of course, that I can splurge a little bit elsewhere -- especially since I've been borrowing India documentaries from the library (Did you know that between 273 BC and 232 BC. the Maurya gained control of most of what is now India, plus Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan -- and that after winning a war against the Kalinga in which 110,000 were killed, King Ashoka-the-Great put down his arms, embraced his Buddhism and implemented a ton of social reforms that included protecting animals, promoting vegetariansim and treating his subjects as equals regardless of their religion, politics and caste? Or that freedom fighter and Pakistani prime minster Mohammad Ali Jinna was cornered into demanding a separate Muslim state? Or that in addition to meaning "Land of the Pure" in Urdu, the name "Pakistan" is an acronym for its states, including Punjab, North-West Frontier (Afghania) Province, Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan? Or that "No Full Stops in India" author Mark Tully loves trains, was born in Calcutta and speaks fluent Hindi/Urdu? Or that the rickshaws in Pakistan are white, and their trucks are even more elaborately decorated than the ones in India? The things you can learn by going to the library....).

Anyway I've been saving a bit of money, so today I couldn't stand it any more and joined Netflix.

Yes, I should become a member at local independent film and video gem (and former employer) Facets. And I will. One day. When I have more $$$.

So there I was, re-joining Netflix.

When they asked my birth year and gender I answered "1900" and "male."

This must have confused the computer. When I was deciding what to put in my queue (Raang de Basanti, Friends with Money, Lovely and Amazing, Grey Gardens, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Earth (1947) -- all of which are huge hits among the hundredsomething male set) -- the thing kept making recommendations.

Some of them made sense.

Others, of course, did not (no, I do not wish to see "Grizzly Man" or "Murderball" or "Earth vs. the Flying Saucer" or "Rocky" in Hindi -- even if I am 106).

But I scrolled down to the bottom of the last list of suggestions anyway.

And there I saw the weirdest heading of all:

"Also starring Noam Chomsky"

It was something that had never occurred to me -- that the famed MIT professor emeritus of linguistics, author and social critic is also something of a swaggering leading man.

LIke Patrick Swayze in his City of Joy days.

Or Matt Dillon, nowadays -- only older.

And taller.

And smarter (although Dillon is no idiot).

Makes you think, doesn't it?





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For the record, the movies "starring" Chomsky could also serve as titles for his prog-metal albums and / or books about chess strategy:

Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause
Noam Chomsky: Distorted Morality
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky: Imperial Grand Strategy

Sonu at the Auditorium Theatre

simply sonu, originally uploaded by bindifry.

Here's Bindi's pic from Sonu's concert here on Saturday (see 9/10 post). He used to look clean-cut and now his hair is shaggy and he doesn't shave and tries to be a bad-ass... but still he has that amazing voice. The term "incongruous" comes to mind.

This is also the case with dandiya singer Falguni Pathak, whom I discovered just today. The MTV Immie Award winner sings like a helium-tinged angel but sports short-short hair and dresses in men's clothes. Look out, kd lang. You can hear Falguni's songs for free here.

John Hancock Center

John Hancock Center, originally uploaded by satya cacananda.

This is the pic that wouldn't post yesterday; the John Hancock Center at noon on foggy, rainy 9/11//06, as viewed from LaSalle Street.

Ha -- that old "if mother says no, ask father" adage holds true for the tech-world: If effing Blogger says no to posting a photo, ask your new friend Flickr.

9/11 POST: LIFE INSIDE THE 'COCK, POST-9/11

There was a mildly riveting story on the radio this morning about a woman who lives in the John Hancock Center, which at the moment is the world's largest residential skyscraper. (It also houses commercial enterprises such as The Cheesecake Factory and happens to be for sale, if you're interested). And the 'Cock is right here in Chicago. At least we excel at something -- even if it is being home to two of the world's tallest potential terrorist targets.

I guess that makes us a world class city (a local obsession in this chip-on-its-big-shoulders cowtown).

Anyway.... apparently this woman went through with a planned C-section on 9/11/01. She ended up having to bribe her babysitter $2,000 to stay with her other child on the 84th floor of the 'Cock; no one wanted to be in a high-rise that day -- even serfs.

Although one suspects that savvy nanny could have held out for more.

It's also curious that the woman didn't find it necessary to evacuate her child from downtown. Recently-fired shock jock Mancow Muller boasts here about how he bit the bullet and stayed on the air and continued broadcasting even though his building had been evacuated.

God know you need a shock jock in times of crisis.

Anyway... apparently very few people moved out of the 'Cock after 9/11. It's its own community, according to the people who live there; when they see other residents in the restaurant, they say hello. Sometimes, when they're sick, a neighbor will bring soup. Wow. Imagine: people of the same socioeconomic status being civil to each other.

So.... this woman's child was born 9/11/01, and she says that despite everything they would never leave the 'Cock. They love it there, what with the feeling of community and all.

(My friend and I visited Garry Meier in his apartment there in the early 80's. I remember low ceilings and plush carpet and a dark, cramped feeling. But perhaps my memory is starting to fail).

This woman's child, now five, marks its birthday each year on 9/11. But they can't throw the party on her actual birthday. Nope, the woman has to plan the celebration for a different day -- because no one will let their kid come over to their famous residential high-rise on the anniversary of The Day America Lost its Innocence.

Apparently the bourgeoisie have a clue, too.

Perhaps they're not a bunch of 'Cock suckers after all.



***


This morning when I came to class (which was sparsely attended) Jammu told me that today also marks the 100th anniversary of Gandhiji's first act of civil disobedience in Johannesburg, South Africa. (When he was told to move from the first class carriage of a train to third class because he was "colored," the barrister refused to budge -- and was thrown off the train, lugggage and all).

You don't hear ol' Bush talking about that, though, do you?


***

Today is also Gurui's daughter Saraswati's birthday. She's 65.

You don't hear Bush talking about that much, either.

LIKE A COUPLA MILD WINDIANS...

...Bindifry and I met downtown last night at the 'luxe India House restaurant. We ordered a couple of exquisite-but-expensive North Indian thalis (they were $17 or Rs 800; in Mysore they cost between 35 cents and $1.30). We were wearing bindis of course; Bindi had on a smokin' Indian top that matched her glasses and I wore my black-and-red sequined out-of-control salwaar dress ("Looking very nice tonight Madam"). After eating far too much we took the El ten blocks south to the Louis Sullivan-designed Auditorium Theatre, where I saw Frank Zappa back in '87.... or was it '88? He was ranting about censorship, as was Jello Biafra -- whom I saw the same week. (So was I, as a board member of the Illinois Coalition Against Censorship). Anyway, The Auditorium is an acoustically perfect architectural masterpiece that for some reason has been allowed to remain standing. The sight-lines are great and the seats are comfortable and it's one of the best places to see a show, hands down.

We were there to see superstar Bollywood playback singer Sonu Nigam -- as were all the other Salwaar and sari-wearing women and Hindu men in dress shirts and boys in baseball caps and Sikh men in turbans. As I wrote in this week's Reader:

"The songs in Bollywood musicals are usually recorded by faceless playback singers and lip-synched by actors. But 33-year-old playback singer Sonu Nigam is a face: he's released his own pop albums, acted in movies, and hosted shows on TV and radio. He's known for matching his baritone to a variety of actors and moods; recent hits include the melancholy duets "Mere Haath Mein" ("When My Hand Is in Yours") from Fanaa and "Tumhi Dekho Na" ("See It Yourself") from Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Earlier this year the "Elvis of India" shocked his fans by announcing that he's cutting back on his workload to improve his hit-to-miss ratio--he says only about a dozen of the 300 sound-track songs he's recorded in the past two years have become hits. Last month he self-released a patriotic song, "Yeh Rashtra Prem Ki Bhavana" ("This Land Is a Place of Love"), and he'll record an album he's called "a little more than just semiclassical" after he wraps up a ten-city U.S. tour. His glitzy stage show features singers Sowmya Raoh and his father, Agam Nigam, and 16 musicians and dancers."

Sonu did not disappoint.

The diminutive 33-year old showman with the amazing voice worked the crowd like a Bono-Boss-Elvis dynamo, dancing and gesturing and playing to the upper rafters as much as to the folks right in front of him. There was bhangra and ballads and even one really irritating schmaltzy song that reminded me of Bronski Beat. He also sang the female parts to some of his songs. It really kicked ass -- and how could it not, given that he had FOUR percussionists on stage. The eight dancers (two of which had bellies!) wore some *really* strange costumes but were amazing anyway. At one point Sonu removed his black-and-silver-jacket to reveal a low-cut, almost-feminine black-and-silver sequined tank top.

His massive hit list includes:

Fanaa - Mere Haath Me
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna - Tumhi Dekho Na
Krish - Koi Tumsa Nahi.n
Krish - Pyaar Ki Ek Kahani
Fanaa - Dekho Na
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham - Suraj Hua Maddham
Kal Ho Na Ho - Kal Ho Na Ho (Title Song)
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna - Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham - You Are My Sonia
Salaam Namaste - Tu Jahaa.n



Like a master showman he stopped here and there to talk to the audience. At one point he told a long story in Hindi that was punctuated by joke-singing and had the audience in stitches. I figured he was poking fun at his early singing career, before he found his "voice" (apparently he used to sound a lot like Rafi). Bindi thinks he was talking about the acts he saw when he hosted Indian Idol. We could both be wrong of course; it could have been a flashback.

After two hours we'd made it halfway through the show and were too tired to stick around for the second half (the life of a yoga teacher and all that). By the end of the first half they had people waving their arms to the ballads, with blinking cell phones in their hands. You read it here first: cell phones are the new lighters.

It made me wonder what it must have been like to see Elvis at his peak.

Afterwards we drove towards Lake Shore Drive and past Buckingham Fountain, which was quite spectacular and still going strong (they usually threaten to shut it off right after Labor Day). As we drove north we passed fireworks at Navy Pier, and at one point the moon came out from behind the clouds and made an appearance over the lake.

And for a few moments at least the Windy City was a good place to be.



__________________________________________________________________________________

PS

I tried to post Bindi's photos of the show but that CSer Blogger wouldn't let me. Click here to see 'em.

SCENE FROM A 90'S RELATIONSHIT


A naked couple is on a bed in a room with peeling walls. The floor is strewn with books and clothes, and other items are jammed into plastic milk crates. There's a boombox playing Metallica next to the bed, which has mismatched sheets. The man pumps away on top of the woman for several minutes. Neither makes a sound. The man looks at the clock, stops pumping, and then looks down at the woman.

MAN: Are you about finished? I've got things to do.

'TAIN'T


Today's factoid:
You can either read books or have a clean house.
Or you can have neither.
But you certainly cannot have both
unless there are servants and/or a small inheritance.



I just finished blowing through Frank McCourt's trio of memoirs (Angela's Ashes, 'Tis and Teacher Man), and boy is my house a mess. Come to think of it, I'm a little depressed, too. . I must follow the lead of Ernesto and remember that one must get organized if one is to pull out of a tropical depression and become a proper hurricane.

But I digress.

The McCourt books are engaging to say the least. And they're irresistible if you're procrastinating on something distasteful.

His first book reads as if it HAD to be written. The followups feel like they required a certain amount of effort.

But not so much effort that McCourt and his editors were able to remove all the inaccuracies and anachronisms.

On the left inner book jacket for 'Tis it says the charming Irishman with the strange manner of his father returned to the US in 1953. On the right inner book jacket it says the writer with black teeth and two eyes like piss holes in the snow returned in 1949. Well, which is it? And who missed this obvious discrepancy -- and do they still have a job?

I bet it was a man.

Near the beginning of 'Tis, McCourt writes about his first landlady, a Scandinavian who is always bemoaning the loss of her late husband. Apparently he had been ill for some time but it was the TV that killed him. Huh? In 1949? Or was it 53? Hello! Either way, TV sets weren't easily available in America until the mid to late-1950's. But McCourt implies that the man has been dead for awhile. Oops

And then he writes about his early teaching experiences, and how he had his night-school students write about their typical day. One of them, a single mother with two (or was it three?) jobs wrote about exercising to her Jane Fonda tape before going to work... in the late 1960's or 1970's. One can't help but wonder how she got ahold of the tape -- let alone the VCR -- when it hadn't yet been made, since it was released in 1980.*

When one reads Mr. McCourt and comes across these discrepancies she can't help but wonder how much of his truth has been invented, and what his brothers think of his prose, and why he gets the Pulitzer while that BSer with the broken teeth James Frey gets a kick in the arse.

Perhaps because he's so charming.

One can't help but also think that she is way too bogged down in the facts, and that she should toss aside her journalistic training and get to work.

That's what McCourt would tell his creative writing students to do.

Perhaps she could start with the screenplay she and Gridlife are trying not very hard to finish.




LABOR DAY PARTY SCENE:

Caca - (stumbling over) Hey, what's up.

Maura - We were just talking about how the writing is going.

Caca - Oh! How is your book going, Maura?

Maura - (gesturing her drink towards Caca and Gridlife) Not my writing -- yours.

Gridlife - I was just telling her how I got out the script and worked on it Thursday night.

Caca - Oh. Yeah. (rolling eyes). We're working really, really hard on it.

Maura - What are you working on? What is it?

Gridlife - Mallory Loathes Me

Maura - (without missing a beat) Isn't that the same script you were working on last year?

Caca and Gridlife (nodding sheepishly) - Uh. Yeah.

Maura - Oh.

Caca - Actually, I think we started it TWO years ago.

Maura - So what's taking so long?

Caca - Uh, we're just really, really busy.

Gridlife - I'm going to get another drink. You want anything?

Caca - I'll go with you.



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*Ms. Jane Fonda, who is not a procrastinator, is heading up an all-female talk radio network thingy with fellow feminist Gloria Steinem; for more go here.

SHE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO IT



Summer, that is.

Everyone is lamenting the end of the season like it's the end of their youth, bemoaning back-to-school and cool evenings and acting like it's time to stop slacking off and get back to business and they can't believe it's already over it was so short and we had all that rain in June after all, and I never did get to go swimming have that BBQ go to Wisconsin and so on.

Not Caca, who has no time for summer and the requisite heat, humidity, insects and proliferation of the insane and stupid on the streets. As Cam often said, "The warm weather brings out the crazies."

And everyone else, too.

Nonetheless Caca took some summer snaps during an end-of-the-day lakefront ride home from the downtown-health-club-that-cannot-get-its-act-together, when the light was hitting the buildings and lifguards and everything else just-so. She then spent many hours uploading them for your enjoyment.




This is the North Avenue boathouse, which was there when Caca's father was a kid (it was rehabbed a few years ago, but it always looked like a big ol' boat). He used to ride the streetcar in from his northwest side neighborhood in the 1940's. Caca used to change clothes in boathouse bathroom back in the early 90's, when she and her triathlon partner would do early-morning mile-long training swims between North Avenue Beach and Oak Street Beach. One had to be very careful while changing, because the stall walls were sometimes smeared with fresh feces.





Cam always bemoaned the fact that the city of Chicago ruined the lakefront by putting in Lake Shore Drive. She was right of course. But at least they also put in the lakefront bike path, which one and all -- walkers, strollers, joggers, rollerbladers, bicyclists, people in wheelchairs, visiting suburbanites who think it's their own private driveway -- use during the summer. For some reason many bike racers still find it necessary to don their satin jockey outfits and do their high-speed training rides, their mouths shaped like mail-slots, on high-traffic weekend afternoons. Perhaps they find it challenging to dodge everyone else using the path. There are many accidents during the warm weather and occasionally they're fatal.





Lake Michigan is to the east of the city and the sun sets in the west, making for some stunning light as the sun goes down... which the photographer nearly failed to capture here. That thing in the distance is probably a water intake crib. A homeless man once pointed out there and asked us what those things were. When he heard they were cribs, he scratched his head and said, "CREE-ibs? People live out there?"



Yes, we should charge visitors admission just like the suburbs and small towns that dot the lakefront charge us to use their beaches. But no, we don't. And yes, the woman on the right is wearing a sari and walking a few paces behind her male compaion.