I started a new blog related to my jewelry making obsession. It’s only worthy of posting here because I often attempt imitations of Indian jewelry.
More posts coming soon. I swear. (edit: here, I mean, duh)
Bhangra shows up in the most unlikely places
June 23, 2010 at 7:30 pm (Links, Videos)
Tags: Backyardigans, Bhangra
Bhangra, a traditional Punjabi form of music/dance apparently shows up everywhere. Like children’s TV shows:
Apparently every Backyardigans episode features music in a particular style, and it was Bhangra once. (I hear that there was a “Bollywood” episode as well, but I can’t find any of the songs from it on Youtube.
Anyway, I think this is really cool. (HT: Sepia Mutiny) And now I feel bad for always dismissing the Backyardigans as a stupid kid’s show. Clearly it’s so much more. I love the little animals dancing like that. SO CUTE!
Another interesting thing is the Bhangra Masters app that’s supposed to teach you how to do Bhangra dance steps.
Here’s one of their screenshots:
It almost makes me want to be one of them high-tech mobile devices so I can use it.
And check out the robot Bhangra. Can I get a WHHHHAAAAATTTT?????
(Oh, and apologies for disappearing off the face of the earth. It happens to the best of us)
Happy Birthday (to me!)
June 10, 2010 at 10:07 pm (Birthdays)
Tags: bollywood cake, desi food
Yeah, it’s my birthday today. Which meant going out with my mom and grabbing lunch at a little Indian restaurant. It was buffet style and even though everything was labeled I’m not sure what all I had. Some kind of lentil soup (dhal something) and tandoori chicken (which was pretty dry and definitely not the best part) and some kind of chick peas, and a couple different chicken dishes as well as a really sweet carrot dish which was apparently dessert (or that’s what the label said). Oh yeah, and naan. Which I guess is like pita bread . . . only tasty. Most of the dishes were very spicy and there were a few unfamiliar flavors (I told my mom some of it tasted more like potpourri than real food) but over all it was very delicious and I definitely want to try more Indian food another day. The incredible thing was how filling it was. I felt like I’d only sampled a little, but I was very full.
I also decorated my own birthday cake, which was nearly a disaster, but not quite. Mom and I made fondant for the first time, and it wasn’t quite as neat as I’d hoped it would be, but we had lots of fondant left over, so I scrapped my original plain of painting the cake and made cutouts instead. It was paisley, because that was the best idea for an easy “Indian” cake I could come up with.
As you can see I did paint it some (gel food coloring with a few drops of vodka mixed in to help the moisture evaporate), but I’d planned originally to paint the entire pattern. Oh well, another time.
Definitely not a professional job, but it was a fun little experiment for sure. Have you got any brilliant ideas for a Bollywood cake?
Happy Birthday, Sonam!
June 9, 2010 at 11:10 pm (Actors, Birthdays)
Tags: Aamir Khan, Amrish Puri, Anupam Kher, Kajol, Om Puri, Rahul Khanna, Saif Ali Khan, Salman Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, SRK
Today is Sonam Kapoor’s birthday– she turns 25. This makes me feel kind of weird, because I don’t think that on this blog we have posted about the birthday of anyone that close to me in age.
Sometimes I think about what Bollywood will be like in 20 years. I like to think Anupam Kher will still be playing the disgruntled father (maybe it will have to be the disgruntled grandfather), but I can’t believe the Puri brothers will still be making a living out of being angry.
Perhaps Rahul Khanna will have acted in two or three more films, and posted one million clever and witty Tweets. And Shahid Kapoor, who seems well on his way to looking like an actual adult (!!!), will have acted in at least 20 more films (none of which can ever measure up to Jab We Met) and written three million embarrassingly bad Tweets. Poor Shahid, we love you!
Aamir Khan will be considering whether he could play a student in second standard. SRK will be promoting Aryan’s new film (oh, I can’t tell you how much I want Aryan to be an actor… it would be like SRK never dying. Okay. Enough creepy now). Saif will be 65 going on 80, or maybe he will have found a new stylist. I hope so! Salman will be so buff his arms stick straight out, but we will still ooh over him.
Kajol will still be the most beautiful woman in the world, of course.
I didn’t say much about young stars… because I’m still stuck on the “old” (okay, not-as-recent) ones. KKHH and K3G, to me, will always be the height of fashion. :)
What are your predictions?
Prince of Persia (yeah, you know it’s not really Hollywood
June 8, 2010 at 10:50 pm (Films, Reviews)
Tags: Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley, Jake Gyllenhaal, non-Bollywood, Prince of Persia
Okay, I did not go to this movie expecting to be impressed. A movie based on a video game, starring Jake Gyllenhaal called Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time made by the same people that made Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh, yeah, I think to myself, This is going to be good. NOT.
But once the movie began, I began to think again.
At first it was just the costuming that made me warm up. There were some great costumes (but 
mostly on the men; they persisted in dressing Tamina in white even though I was longing for some nice bright colors), and there was Sir Ben Kingsley and we highly approve of him (ever wondered why he looks so exotic? The fact that his birth name is Krishna should clue you in), and he looks pretty good in a fancy sherwani, I’ll have you know. Read the rest of this entry »
Han
Sarah
