Diversion from David Copperfield

Mad about MAD

I first came across MAD Magazine in Poona, India while in the 5th grade
and a lot of my views regarding the USA were inadvertently shaped on
what was in those pages. Surprise, surprise - I moved to the States at
the age of 26 and discovered that all those parodies of people and places
were not that far from the truth.....here's the latest MAD cover with
the usual timely take on current events. In this case it's the recent
appearance of Sara Palin as the nominee for America's Vice-President in
the upcoming elections:




For those not interested enough to know about this latest media darling,
it might help to know that she is a former Miss Alaska runner-up and
current Governor of that state who has raised 5 children, two of them
adopted, one of them from an orphanage in Bangladesh run by
Mother Theresa.

Ms. Palin calls herself a 'Hockey Mom', loves hunting, fishing, was nicknamed
'Sarah 'Barracuda' by her teammates on the High School Basketball team and
raised tons of money for Alaska so I'm sure John McCain will see some good
returns on his gamble.

On another note, imagine my good fortune to have Dick De Bartolo, the writing
genius (for over 40 years) behind so many great MAD issues, chatting with me
from the back of my Limo in New York ! I was so effusive with my feelings that he
took off the MAD pin from his famous baseball hat and gave it to me, along with
the latest issue of MAD with a personal autographed message. How can I
not be a MAD fan for life ?

Check out a really MAD fan site here

Major Hurricane Survival Tip

It's almost three years to the day since Katrina swept through
New Orleans and that city has just survived another catastrophe.
Now that Gustav has been downgraded to a Cat 2 and spared the folks
of New Orleans we are now getting ready to handle Hanna, the next
named storm currently moving at 80 mph. But Hanna has someone
named Ike on her tail as I just found out a minute ago....

I was looking for related survival tips when I remembered this pic I'd
bookmarked and wanted to delete, but not before sharing it here:
A proven, scientific way to be prepared for the worst and not die
of thirst. Urine luck, Indian-style !



All previous Hurricane-related posts
http://virtualpoona.blogspot.com/search?q=katrina

Snoop Goes Bollywood in Singh is Kinng

No, I haven't lost it or given in to the ubiquitous Bollywood mash-ups
a.k.a. Masalas being churned out in the media. Even tho' The Big 'B'
and his son and daughter-in-law were accompanied by a spectacular crew
of dancers and other Bollywood celebs here in Houston recently
while on a world tour.

Elsewhere, Aug. 22 was the date for the opening of another blockbuster
which I never heard of but now will probably remember forever because
this one has Rapper/Hip-Hop King Snoop Dogg teamed up with
Akshay Kumar for the title track which was composed by U.K Bhangra
band RDB. And because my sister who lives in Long Beach, CA says the
Dogg may be seen walkin' his dog on the beach some evenings since that's
his 'hood. Anyway it seems here Snoop wants to show who's really da King
and turns out that Singh is ' Kinng ' most of the time. Maybe that's why
he's allowed to use more than one 'n' in 'King'. Or maybe it's a nod to the
Dogg who uses 2Gs to spell his moniker, a common practice among artists
in this field. I don't knnoww. Sharing this should make me feel more hip but
so far I'm not feelin' it. I am more than amused though, that this flick has its
own wiki and was filmed in Australia for the most part - since 'Singh' here
refers to an Australian mob boss. Really.

Raj Bhavsar. Tanned, Gets Bronzed

India can barely be mentioned in passing when it comes to the Olympics,
so when a story like this comes along I know it helps alleviate the
deflated egos of the self-styled biggest 'threat to China's World Dominance'.

Raj Bhavsar is that one in a million Indian-American, a gymnast who
successfully Bronzed at Beijing 2008 to put Houston, Texas and the
USA in the news once again. His very athletic Indian father Joe married
Kenyan-Indian Surekha, who attributes her husband's passion for Rowing
in this quote :

‘‘It is all due to my husband and his sporting background,’’
she says, adding, ‘‘He was keen that his sons shouldn’t be
typical Asian nerds but be good in sports too.’’

The last-minute alternate for Golden Gymnast Paul Hamm (who has
a hand injury) saw his road back to confidence complete after being left
out from the team for Athens 2004. As he turns 28 in September, he rightly
deserves the attention and praise he's getting. After you've watched the
YouTube video below,

go beyond the tan of his Gujarati heritage and deep into his mindset with this
Salon.com article

More from Beijing Olympics 2008 at Myxer

Preview Matt Damon on YouTube for One.Org

Mail from David Lane :

Dear Fred,

I hope you like it.

http://www.one.org/voices?id=484-3378371-Qmn2Mjx&t=1

For more than a year, ONE members have been trailing the presidential
candidates asking them to go on the record with their plans to combat
global poverty. Now we're taking our message to the airways with this
major new TV ad. The ad features Matt Damon with different Americans'
voices - among them Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain and Mayor Bloomberg.

Watch for it on TV and across the Internet starting Sunday, August 24th,
but add your voice and share the online video with your friends now.

After, you can learn more about this ad and movement here.

Thanks

David Lane, ONE.org

The Pepsi Boys

Aside from the fact that some of the laborers pictured here are underage, the other
thing that's astonishing is how they have to adhere to such low standards of quality
and cleanliness. I got these pics as an e-mail forward and the Getty watermarks make
them quite believable. When abroad, drink more Pepsi, folks. Then go get sick !

Roosevelt Residence Gets Meera's Anglo-Indian Touch

You know that old saying, "Behind every great man there's a great woman".
In this case, there was a great man sitting behind the woman in their classroom
at the Cathedral and John Connon school, Mumbai. He's an Indian, Vikram
Gandhi and she's Meera Teresa (Agarwal) Gandhi,

daughter of Irish mother Ellen Mary McCarthy and an Indian father,
Admiral Perbodh Nath Agarwal. That would make her an Anglo-Indian by birth.
The best of two worlds, Indian and Anglo-Saxon.

Now take these two out of out of their Indian upbringing, educate him at Harvard
and her at Boston U., and what you get is Credit Suisse's NY-based Managing
Director and Global Head of their Financial Institutions Group, right alongside
Meera the Humanitarian, Diplomat, Businesswoman, Socialite, Mother of three
and on and on....this lady seems to have plenty of time to be Superwoman not
only in the States but all over the globe. The best of two worlds, Indian and
Anglo-Saxon now gets globalized.

Like the Roosevelts, another power couple before them, these two often play
host to the famous, the wealthy and the power brokers of the world...and do it
in the same building as the Roosevelts. Yes, they purchased the famed Roosevelt
Residence on Manhattan's upper-crusty Upper East Side

for over $4 million, renovated it and now it's up for sale, for close
to $20 million as of Dec. 2007 ! According to her personal website, Meera
'knows every nut, bolt and screw' in the famed residence since she personally
oversaw the entire renovation and redecoration project. Being an avid collector
of Indian Art but highly aware of the society she has evolved into she has given
the place an unique ambiance that you cannot find elsewhere. One of the girls'
rooms has a roomful of assorted percussion instruments, the other girl has her
guitars and amps strewn all over while the son indulges himself in the
World Wrestling Federation and everything in between.

I caught an interview of Meera Gandhi on Pan Desi Prime Time via ColorsTV
but you can view direct YouTube coverage here.

If you want to learn more about the Eleanor Roosevelt Mansion -or buy it-
just visit Brown Harris Stevens Properties and tell them I sent you. I promise
I won't make a cent off the sale :-)

Isaac Hayes and Me. Really !

Imagine the man who made the long black leather jacket famous decades
before 'The Matrix', a musician, actor and towering presence in the world
of Blaxploitation films like 'Shaft'. A 'bad mutha' in my book ever since
I met him one day in the mid-'90s. The late Isaac Hayes.

Now imagine me, driving the streets of New York City with this man in the
back seat of my car (okay, my Limo) and I have the radio set to 'zero' volume
and he still recognizes the song as one of Al Green's. I wait outside on Greenwich
Street for hours as he records some tracks for his new album and then
when he emerges in the evening he introduces me to an additional passenger,
a statuesque Nubian- princess-looking type who is rather nice and friendly to me
and obviously in awe of The Man in the long black jacket. After all, she is
accompanying a legend while in the process of acquiring legendary status herself.
I drive them to the center of Times Square, the heart of NYC and I'm holding that
black jacket for this man, handing him a bottle of water to sip in between takes for
a magazine photoshoot he's doing with the long-legged lady, whom I get to stand
with and make small remarks about the weather (cold). She's 6' plus with the heels
so I literally look up to her from my 5'6'' frame. Throngs of passers- by are busy
taking their own NYC pics and doing their own thing and a few shout out in typical
New Yorker seen-it-all fashion, "Hey Isaac!" "You The Man!" "What's up, my Brother?!"

That was a day and a night to remember because that man was the late Isaac Hayes
and his leather jacket, and the lady posing behind him was Supermodel Roshumba,


most remembered for her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition cover.

I was treated in a friendly and respectful manner by these two and that's what I
took away at the end of a totally awesome day as a Limo driver in New York city.
That and the theme music from Shaft....

Getting Impatient Now

I have tried unsuccessfully for weeks to get into the Dashboard to create new posts and am always faced with a white page with no options to upload anything except type words. I know that Google somehow managed to get thousands of Blogs marked as 'Spam', deleted and then reinstated them. Looks like I'm stuck in between.
I can view my Blog and so can you but the missing functionality is beginning to get to me.
I suppose I'll be back to announce the sad demise of this Blog and the birth of the Son of Virtual Poona. One of these days....