May 03
While making my weekend jaunt around my neighbourhood, I encountered a herd of well-dressed young men and women. “Sophisticated lot,” I thought to myself, observing them meandering towards various eateries for lunch. Upon closer inspection, however, I found that the suits were a little too loose, the skirts a little too high, and their demeanors a little too naïve. Was this merely a flock of poorly dressed youths? Nay, this was the local incarnation of that global exercise in futility, Model United Nations.
(If you have no idea what this is, Google it, do your research and come back. For the more enlightened readers, carry on.)
Now Prashant might wholeheartedly disagree with me (he was once a delegate, many moons ago) but I find the entire idea of MUN to be a right crock of steaming bullshit. Who in their right minds would want to model themselves after that inept bureaucratic behemoth?
(Truth be told, Prashant assures me that the only reason people actually attend this play-politicking is that insatiable urge that everyone gets every now and then: to get laid).
I suppose that these naïve children would say that they participate because it gives them a chance to experience international politics. Do these kids actually learn anything by spending months preparing for 3 to 4 days of playing dress up? No they don’t. You don’t learn anything by pretending to be world leaders.
If you want to learn something real, travel to Jakarta, Johannesburg, Singapore, Mexico City or Colombo. If you want to “feel” international, you experience it first-hand, not by reciting rehashed arguments of how countries need to do this and that.
Harvard University recently suffered poorly in a review of its undergraduate curriculum, where study abroad programs received a less than positive grade. We lament about the lack of understanding our students have of the world. We instead should stop bitching and start sending them overseas, for at least 6 months. In that short period of time, I assure you that their eyes will be opened a hundredfold.
Who am I to say that this is the utmost education that anyone growing up can?
Anyone who’s lived overseas can answer that question. A global nomad, that’s who.
May 01
If you feel the need to feign a vibrato, you may as well become a professional air guitarist.
Unfortunately, this was a nuance amongst many others that was lost on the hopelessly pretentious members of a band named ‘Moonraker’ tonight. I guess I should have put two and two together when I noticed that both the Boston Globe and Boston Herald presented positive reviews of them. Nevertheless, I suspended my disbelief and forked out the cover charge to go see this supposedly ‘hip’ show.
The opening act, ‘The So & So’s’ performed a melange of pandering commercial ballads and cliche ‘angry girl music’. At least they were honest about it. For that sole reason, their set attracted a sizable crowd of vapid overgrown teenie-boppers.
But then ‘Moonraker’ took the stage and the mass exodus began. I have never seen, to date, so many people walk out in the middle of a set as I did tonight. They had good reason to do so.
By combining the worst of Portishead vocals, mediocre prog-rock keyboard fills and generic electronic cheese, this hapless quintet created an utterly insipid and uninspiring sonic aura. The female vocals were exhaustingly invariant and the guitar sounded like a token overdub thrown in for no good reason. I was bored to tears.
Note to self: In future, be more diligent in your research before going to a show.
Apr 26
Writing late at night is the best feeling ever. Emerging from a drug induced stupor, you grasp at those last vestiges of inspiration, compelling you to quickly enunciate your thoughts on the flickering screen of your computer. My inspiration comes from a variety of sources; the magazine I was reading, Pat Methany playing in the background; the usual hubbub that happens in my house on a rainy Sunday evening.
What sparked me to electronically scribble down these thoughts was my somewhat hazy recollection of a TV5 (French channel) News broadcast. Perhaps I had stumbled across the “International” section of the show (my French comprehension is, admittedly, shaky), but for the full 10 minutes that I watched, both stories tackled international issues. AIDS and disease in Africa and the recent explosion in North Korea. Presenting the facts of the story, some analysis and some shocking footage (emaciated children and a town leveled are pretty intense images), the French program did justice to the notion that things out there are damn right scary.
It’s fitting then when I switch on CNN earlier today, that I witness a completely different approach to news. Now I was greeted with tales of human courage, of the Michael Jackson trial, of the latest on the Atkins Diet. People often have an image of an ignorant American population, unaware of world events. A sample of this “leading” news network clearly lends credence to that claim.
But I’m not saying that American airwaves are filled with shlock. OK, let me rephrase that: What little space set aside for quality programming produces an excellent array of information and entertainment. If I wanted to watch a documentary on the life of some ancient Egyptian high priest, I could.
Eventually what you have is choice (and a wide range for that matter). We are free to select either a mind-numbing piece of garbage or an intellectually stimulating broadcast. When watching the dregs of TV-shows, a sense of guilty pleasure washes over us, as we are both intrigued and revolted by whatever is enacted on our boob-tubes. When the latest live telecast of the 9/11 Commission is on every news channel, we are gripped with an intense desire to seek out the truth.
Who knows what the next generation of television programming bring us? Our children? Our children’s children?
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