36

Thirty-six years of the good life. One birthday workout from hell:

36 clean and jerks (52lb KB, 18 each arm)

36 burpees

36 V-ups

36 mountain climbers

36 pushups (standard)

36 snatches (18 each arm)

36 Persian pushups

36 situps (standard)

36 Hindu squats, hopping

France is considering banning the use of Blackberries by ministers and other key government personnel because they might constitute a "threat to national security." Specifically, because Blackberry messages go through servers based in the United States, the fear is that the U.S. National Security Agency will intercept sensitive French communiques and get access to classified information. According to Le Monde,

“The risks of interception are real […] It is economic war,” Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, said.

Two points:

• It's true. Blackberries are a threat to French national security. However, so are lepers, monkeys with rocks, any 12 members of the Sailor Moon fan club and the rather impressive turd I shat out last night.
• No country is waging "economic war" on France. For that to happen, France would need to actually have a viable economy worth sabotaging, and French labor unions have seen to it that this isn't the case.

Movie Review: Namesake

Often, a movie comes to be identified with the immigrant experience of a specified ethnicity, but turns out to be accessible to any recent U.S. immigrant. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and “Namesake” are two such movies. Change the ethnicity, change the food and the outward trappings of tradition, ritual and custom, and the story would still contain those common elements of culture clash, and of a first generation American seeking his or her self identity and striving to reconcile the old with the new.

“Wedding” went for the easy laugh and the easy tears – stocking its story with characters so one-dimensional that they were nearly caricatures and fabricating a clichéd story complete with a stock Hollywood happy ending. The movie was the Greek equivalent of the various Ivy League college application essays turned in by straight-A Asian-American high school seniors pontificating ad nauseum about the difficulties of bridging the gap between two cultures. From the very beginning, you knew exactly where the story was going to go. I could have left the room, and just by looking at my watch, told you what was happening in the story. “It’s been 20 minutes. The main character is currently seeking to break a minor traditional boundary and it’s going to lead to her meeting the Love Interest. In 15 more minutes, despite her efforts to keep the budding romance a secret, the cat will begin to get out of the bag.”

On the other hand, “Namesake” features subtlety, charm, and realism – and becomes all the more poignant and humorous as a result. Based on the highly acclaimed eponymous novel, “Namesake” does things so correctly that you only wish that it had come before “Wedding” so that the director and writers of the latter film could have taken notes. The only “typical” and “predictable” element comes when Gogol/Nikhil, as played by Kal Penn (aka Kalpen Modi) of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” lights up a doobie and has to attend a family function while stoned out of his mind. And you think, “It’s Kumar! Of course he has to take a hit!” (It’s sort of like watching “Bulletproof Monk,” in which a Tibetan Buddhist monk engages in John Woo-style two-handed gunplay – why? Simply because the monk is being played by Chow Yun Fat, and Chow Yun Fat must have guns.)

But I digress. The story in Namesake could have been my own, even though I’m Chinese and not Bengali, and the conflicts within have been shared by any number of first-generation Americans of non-white ethnicity—particularly those of Asian descent. But the way they’re brought to screen emphasize that you don’t have to hit the audience over the head with a mallet to communicate a point or an emotion.

This is seen in just about every scene involving Ashima Ganguli (played by the stunningly and sublimely excellent Tabu). When Ashima meets her intended as a young girl, we understand that she is nervous with just a few camera shots – one of her changing clothes beforehand, another as her future in-law asks her a simple question with no easy answer and she disarms them with an unarguable, quietly witty reply. Or when she looks out the window with little outward emotion while waiting for her young adult son to call as he promised – and of course, as all young men, he forgets. You understand, in a few seconds, the accepted hurt, forgiven before it can ever be asked or voiced.

Tabu is matched by the rest of the cast. Gogol’s journey as he tries to find the right balance between the Indian and American influences in his thinking, behavior and sense of self aren’t shown with glaringly colorful displays of histrionics. When he inadvertently hurts one of his parents, he’s aware of himself and tempers his behavior quite admirably. It’s just that both of his parents are old enough and perceptive enough to see—but not understand—the struggle inside of him.

There are no real, absolute villains. Gogol’s loutish, racist white classmates in one scene in the next scene four years later have learned better—celebrating high school graduation with Gogol by sharing an aforementioned joint. What better way to show the quintessential learning experience required of every true Asian American—finding a way to turn a bigot into a friend?

The whole movie is filled with scenes of such deftness, and I won’t ruin the revelatory experience of watching them by describing them here, except to note that the scenes in which Gogol dates a lovely, sweet white girl (played by Jacinda Barrett) are excellent. Each time poor Maxine was in the presence of the Ganguli parents, I cringed and winced at each well-intentioned, disastrous gaffe, and relived the experience of introducing one of my ex-girlfriends to my own parents. It’s interesting to note that, on screen and in real life, it seems far easier for an Asian American to get along with the parents of a white significant other that it is for the significant other to get along with the Asian-Am parents.

I especially liked the ending. Not a “happy ending,” but a “contented beginning.” There is a little bit of the bittersweet in how the film concludes, but even though you know that you’re about to stand up and leave the theater or turn the lights back on in your living room, you realize that Gogol’s about to finally start living completely on his own terms, as his own man. There’s no “… and they lived happily ever after” – but the possibility looms on the horizon.

My Honor Has Been Besmirched

... and somebody's gonna pay for this vicious lie ...

Sorry, Tony -- and everyone else ...

As Tony Bennett turned 80, the many fetes and ceremonies honoring his contributions to American music have given me an opportunity to revisit his body of work. Years ago, when I was first discovering the great American standards, it was through Frank Sinatra. A book celebrating ol’ Blue Eyes’ ring-a-ding-ding lifestyle and his unique take on what it means to be a man, combined with my fully developed interest in jazz (and the revelation that most great jazz musicians list Sinatra as their favorite vocalist) led to a detailed exploration of his music. (Frank Sinatra represents both the best and the worst of the American male archetype.)

With this Sinatra focus, I soon explored other singers of repute: Dean Martin, Sammy, Perry Como … and Tony Bennett. With my fixation on all thing Frank, however, Tony could not help but to compare badly. Not because he was an inferior musician (I recognized in hindsight) but because his style was so very, very different than Frank’s. Frank’s singing is either dark, moody and soulful, or cocky, swinging and just a little dangerous. It’s a reflection of what he himself called his “24-carat manic depressive” personality. Tony, however, is a lot smoother, lyrical, elegiac. Where Frank is swinging and strutting, Tony exudes a warm, happy relaxed summer day. When Frank is dark and moody and deep in his cups, Tony is nostalgic, reminiscent and maybe just a little be melancholic.

While deep in my Sinatra phase, I declared that Tony Bennett was “shit” and that, “I have more talent in my fingernail than he has in his entire body.”

I know better, of course. But that the full realization of how wrong I was has led me to review a list of other things about which I was not just a little off-base, but completely, totally and catastrophically mistaken. Painful though it may be, here are some actual quotes, uttered before or after one big gaffe or another:

• “Of course I know how to wrap explosion-proof potstickers. I’m Chinese, this is a Chinese dish, it’s genetically hardwired into my system!”
• “You’re right, your sister’s fast asleep. If we’re quiet and make it a quicky, she’ll never hear us!”
• “You’re right, I don’t hear your dad downstairs. He must have stepped out …” (same girl as above)
• “Chinatown is this way! Trust me, I can find any large concentration of my own people instinctively.”
• "I'm telling you--Charlize Theron wants me!"
  
• “This karaoke bar looks suspiciously like a brothel. But let’s have a round of beers before we leave …”
• “Sure, I can punch through this window!”
• “We can drink Jameson with her no problem … sure she can drink, but she’s five shots ahead of us …”
• “No, we don’t need ice for our sore pussies!” (two hours later)
• “Of course handsome George Clooney doesn’t mind if we hang out near his house …”

And of course, the quote everyone’s uttered at one time or another: “Sure, I can have another drink!”

Conspiracy Theory

Quite a few recent studies have shown that – hey – that low carb, high fat diets really do work better than the fat-free high carb ones. And I’ve been puzzled about why the food industry and medical establishment keeps refusing to admit that they’ve been wrong all these years. I’ve come up with a government conspiracy, which might confirm that I'm crazy:

I contend that it is in the government’s best interest – in several ways – to keep the general population eating a high carb diet. Here's why.

First

Several studies have found that a low-fat, low-protein, high carb diet lowers testosterone levels, especially in men. Testosterone causes aggressive tendencies and muscle development, and the government wants to keep the population compliant, non-threatening, weak, tired and easy to control.

Corollary

It is also in the government’s interest to keep us fat. Fat people can’t mount a real revolution – they’d get too tired five minutes into it.

Two

Carbohydrates – grains and sugars – are cheap. If people decided to spend more on meat and vegetables, they’d have less to spend on products that have higher profit margins, like consumer electronics and silly-looking clothes they don’t need. Also, they’d have less to spend on processed foods. (Incidentally, modern processed foods are generally about starches and sugars – so if we started eating fewer carbs, the processed food industry would be hit pretty hard.)

Three

This one’s tricky, but this is the really good one, so follow along closely: Our agricultural capacity – particularly thanks to not-so-good technologies such as chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizers – is far greater than we Americans actually need. (U.S. farms grow more grains and sugar than we could ever possibly consume. That’s why they’re so cheap in the marketplace.) (By the way, some studies have also shown that pesticide-treated food tends to be harder to metabolize – it makes you fatter. Another good thing, in the government’s eyes!)

Now, you might think that this means that farms would become unprofitable and farmers would give up the farming business in favor of something lucrative. Unfortunately, farms are profitable, because the U.S. government delivers billions in farm subsidies every year. The farm lobby is powerful enough to squash any attempts to rectify this. Why is the farm lobby so powerful? Because it’s not a bunch of small-time farmers lobbying Congress: most farms are owned by one of a few major billion-dollar conglomerates – the American family farm is so rare these days it’s almost a myth.

Anyway, farm subsidies keep agribusiness corporations profitable and also result in our farms constantly producing too much food. If we started eating less grains and sugars, we’d literally run out of space to store all the surplus, these corporations would see their profits fall, and the government would have to pay even more subsidies to keep them in business. There’s already all this grain. Somebody has to eat it!

Why don’t we just let agricultural profits fall? Because we can’t picture farms run by corporation. We still think that if a farm goes under, some poor farmer and his family will go homeless and starve. All the agricultural lobby has to do is trot out some old advertising copy about how farmers toil away, at the mercy of the elements, to keep us from starving – and we get weepy eyed.

Four

All right, you say. If we have so much surplus grain, let’s ship it to hungry countries and feed the starving in, say, Africa. We could sell it for a few pennies or even give it away! Why don’t we do this? Because we like them to starve. A poor, starving nation is a nation that can’t ever become strong enough to become a threat to us. Or mount any kind of effective protest when we march in and strip them of their natural resources.

We also keep our surpluses in store as a foreign policy weapon. In the event that some starving country looks like it might develop the means to feed itself, we can swoop in, sell our surpluses at such cheap prices it forces native farmers out of business. Once their farms have been shut down, we cut off the grain supply. Then everyone starves, the country becomes/stays easy to control and … well, the cycle repeats.

Conclusion

So anyway, that’s what would happen if the government encouraged us to eat fewer carbs and more meats and vegetables. Multibillion-dollar corporations would go out of business, and many Congressmen would thus lose their jobs. Other starving countries might have a chance of pulling themselves out of poverty and getting out from under our control. And our own population would grow the backbone necessary to confront and question our government about all the other stupid and/or immoral things it does.

Family Unity

So President Bush was in Mexico last week, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized U.S. immigration policies, and by extension, Bush -- even though Bush has actually attempted to liberalize immigration laws but been stymied by his own party. But forget your views on immigration (illegal and otherwise) and U.S.-Mexico border patrol for a second. The part of the story (as seen in the Washington Post) that startled me was this:

During U.S. President George W. Bush´s visit to Mexico last week, Calderón said he has relatives "working in vegetable fields" and restaurants in the United States. "They probably handle what you eat," he said.

In the interview Friday, Calderón said between "five and 20" of his relatives have migrated and that he does not know their current immigration statuses or whether they entered legally. The relatives include "cousins, uncles and in-laws," he said.

Let me get this straight: You, Felipe Calderon -- the president of your country, and therefore one of the most powerful men of Mexico -- have relatives who are doing so poorly that they're reduced to leaving their homes and travelling to the U.S. to work as miserably paid vegetable washers? And you don't even know if they immigrated legally or if they had to smuggle themselves over like so much chattel?

I haven't made up my mind about changing the laws governing how we treat illegal immigrants. But it seems to me that Calderon doesn't have a leg to stand on, morally. I mean, by his own admission, his relatives are so impoverished they had to leave the country to find work -- and he did nothing to help them. I'm not saying that he had to make them his top Cabinet officials, but surely he has a friend who'll give them a job as a waiter or a secretary or something???

Things are so bad for them, that they have to leave the country -- and Calderon cared so little about their fate that he didn't even bother to see if they had a ride to get there or if they'd have to hike their asses across hundreds of miles of desert, and he didn't have the decency to see where they ended up?

Damn, that's cold, man,