The Samosa of Life

Okay.

So obviously Adam will blog about our Day-o-India (i.e., Jaan-E-Day, Curry-Day, etc.) and will most likely do a more serviceable job -- I'm sorry I haven't mastered (or attempted really) the use of video clips on these things. I guess its really his domain anyway: as he did have a part in turning the seed of an idea for a feature film that was JANE-E-MAN and turning it into the 3.5 hours extravaganza of east-meets-west unironic pastiche that has graced Bollywood, nay Hollywood, nay the world this weekend.

So I won't tell you about the blocks of Hindi that went unsubtitled, making the plot almost unfollowable. I won't tell you about the fact then when they did subtitle, they subtitled the ENGLISH and that the subtitles were perversely, and inexplicably, wrong. While it may be hard to translate karmatic themes or certain concepts of eastern theory and culture, what leads someone to subtitle the number "27" when the character clearly said, in English, "twenty-five?" I won't tell you about the Space Odyssey bookends or about the 7 dwarves (a la Snow White)
that appear during one of the dance numbers, for no narrative reason I may add (although appealing to narrative is somehow besides the point I feel). And I especially won't tell you how hard it was choosing my favorite between songs whose refrains went from the confusingly mistranslated ("the heart is ignorant of patience") to the unintentionally re-contexualizing mistranslated ("give your consent. He is great. He's a dude. Give your consent!").

I'll leave that to Adam, who by the way, is great as the idling PA in the Brooklyn Bridge Park scene. Bravo, Mr. Freelander.

Nothing makes me feel more culturally insensitive than hanging out with my "liberal" white Jewish friends.

But it was definitely the highlight of my weekend. The British girl of good first date fame turned out to be a bad second date, so that kind of depressed Sunday's overall yields. I thought she was into me too, and I thought she was interesting but I totally misread that book -- but I guess you can't always know what's inside. The samosa of life can be spicy or bland, but either way you have to dig in to know. Anyway, Josh did bring home a bag full o'apples from his day in the country, so it did salvage Sunday evening (paired with the most fortunate October broadcasting schedule: I watched Halloween, Scream, Poltergeist 1 and 3, and The Puppet Master: Toulon's Revenge -- which stars Corey Feldman, FYI -- on Sunday alone).

Before the Indian Movie, I was on the roof of 236 Bergen Street with Matt Baer, Adam, and Aaron smoking and we saw a brick with a string tied to it, leading off the roof. Aaron hauled the line in, it could have been anything. A Treasure Chest suspended above Bergen Street? A giant dream catcher? A land mine? None of the above: It was an artificial owl with the noose around its "neck" (do owls have necks?).

I did a google search for fake owl and got this. I figure you can't go wrong with girls in bikinis, maybe it will up my readership. Anyway it was a good source of Baer-Orenstein comedy, climaxing at "HOOOOOOOOOOOO will weep for me???"

Good Saturday, then,

Matt