How to cover the fashions at the Oscars

The popularity of the fashions at the Oscars prompted ABC to completely revamp its red carpet coverage this year. Showcasing patent-pending American ingenuity, it copied the best elements of other unrelated shows and created a hybridized approach. In an inspired move, it roped in its favorite Monday night football commentator, an instant Internet pollster from its national news channel and an underpaid fashion expert from one of its makeover shows, to cover the fashions at the Oscars.

As each nominee appeared on the red-carpet, the football commentator highlighted various areas of their dresses and bodies with his ‘electronic chalk marker’. For example, the viewer’s attention was drawn towards the loose fit in the bust region of an actress by drawing two circles in the area of interest. Also, as Oprah walked in, free-hand arcs were drawn in the waist region to highlight the bursting seams of her dress. Oprah later claimed that the camera had added at least ten pounds to her image and that there were at least ten cameras on her at that instant.

The Internet pollster provided instant poll results on the popularity of various dresses. The belle of the ball, Million Dollar Baby - Hillary Swank, who appeared in a stunning, back-baring, Prussian blue number, received a high 9.6 while Oprah dismissed her own low rating by complaining that many of her fans didn’t really watch Oscars… because she wasn’t really an actress and also because she had no fans. Many viewers were consequently left wondering what exactly she was doing on the red carpet.

Earlier in the day, Oprah had been spotted effortlessly fawning and selflessly ingratiating herself with every actor and actress on the red carpet (because she really wanted every nominee to win an Oscar) and hence received more screen-time than the nominees themselves. Finding herself next to a television crew on the red carpet, she deftly drew attention to herself by exclaiming, “What a dress! What a back! What a body! What low fat-to-muscle ratio! What lats! What pecs…”, though it wasn’t clear whether she was trying to suck up to Hilary Swank or Jamie Fox.

The fashion expert had a busy day. He began by repeatedly thanking God “for making Hilary Swank wear that dress” and readily claimed that she deserved an Oscar for the dress itself. He then quickly identified the important emerging fashion trends - the color blue, wavy Grecian hairdos, million dollar bling-blings and back baring ensembles and remarked that unlike the previous year, pregnancy wear no longer seemed to be in vogue. Among other comments, he said that Penelope Cruz’s giant peach bowed dress made her look like a prom-going-teenager from the eighties and that Vanessa Bauche’s hairdo made her look like a bingo-playing-grandma from the same decade. Rene Zellweger, thanks to her red camouflage outfit on the red carpet, escaped the commentator’s uncompromising scrutiny.

Even as the fashion expert concluded that the men hadn’t experimented too much and stuck to their black Tuxedos and well-polished black shoes, Sean P Diddy Combs (it wasn’t immediately clear who had invited him) ambushed a reporter and revealed to him that he had personally dressed Chris Rock. Seeing the shocked expression on the reporter’s face, he clarified that he had only designed the outfit and that Chris had actually worn the dress by himself. P. Diddy, who spends all his day coining new nick names for himself, said that he had taken time off his busy schedule and turned designer to “bridge the gap between men’s and women’s fashion”. ”It is not fair that women get to wear all the bling-bling”, he stated and declared his intent to start a new bling-rich watch line for men. To further substantiate his intent, he showed the reporter a brand new “Rollex” watch that he had smuggled himself and discreetly offered to sell it to the reporter for a small sum. Before leaving, as an up-and-coming designer he outlined his vision for men’s fashion at the next year’s Oscar show and predicted that “deep v-necks and very low and open backs” would be a big hit with men too.

Rebel star Johnny Depp maintained his image of being a fashion outlaw by appearing in neo-pirate-wear replete with a goatee and golden teeth. Because Johnny doesn’t play the same character twice and because he had already acted in one pirate movie, there was much speculation regarding the golden teeth. Some claimed that he had been signed up as the next Austin Powers, and in keeping with the integrity and the preparation that he brings to all of his characters, he had just not brushed or flossed in weeks. But, since Johnny was anyway a notorious introvert, there was general relief that he would at least mercifully keep his mouth shut.

Later in the night, visibly pleased with the success of their Oscar fashions coverage, the producer said that they would try harder to copy random elements from other shows to improve the presentation the next year. Off the camera but still on the microphone, he told a reporter that negotiations were on with Simon from the American Idol to be a commentator who would occasionally heckle the actresses by calling them drag queens. He also revealed that rotating 360 degree before-and-after the makeup images of all actresses and actors and strategically placed miniature cameras for close-up bust visions were some of the other enhancements already under consideration.

Original or virginal

Cult of authenticity

Vikram Chandra's rhetoric is not convincing, though he had his share of words. A few points:
There are three kinds of people here: First, the Indian English authors abroad who are clearly Mukherjee's target. Second, Indian English writers living in Indian urbana, like Chandra. And finally, the U.R. Ananthamurthy's and Bendre's (sorry, unfamiliar with vernacular literature outside Karnataka).

While Chandra tries to makes a case that the Indian authors in urban Indian settings are as isolated from true-India i.e. Bommanahalli's and Chapra Jilla's, he barely addresses the original question -- Are these authors truly the socio-cultural emissaries of India or are they their own ambassadors? Currently it seems like these authors are serving the following people at best -- themselves (I am inclined to repeat this thrice -- no seriously, if anything, some of them have dextrously carved out a large piece of the global literature pie) and the NRI crowd that wants a Gurinder Chadha-esque depiction of India so they are not viewed as just another immigrant community von third world -- please, definitely not with India's rich maharaja culture!

A major issue with Indian English authors has been ignored by the article: the English itself. While everyone knows how pervasive English is in Indian societies, it is completely a different language than one spoken in Britain or the US. The profound influences of the colonial usages combined with vernacular turns of phrases make it a language like nothing the Western world has heard. Read the blogs written by current IITians IITian blog links and it is clear that this dialect is thriving and evolving in all sections of society. Hardly any Indian English author has tried to capture this, save, perhaps, Desani and his Hatterr (that was in the 40's though!). Indian authors in English grow up on a wealth of Western literature and the styles are often imitative and in someone else's language. Any writer makes a commitment to a style and, more often than not, Indian writers make that commitment to one that is alien to even urban Indians.

Going back to the mainstay of Chandra's argument, on a very practical level, Indian authors sitting even in South Bombay are clearly more in touch with Indian happenings than ones in NY and London. A truly good writer, while smoking his cigars with socialites by night, clearly, cannot miss the walk down the street or the occasional drive down to interior Maharashtra. In a nutshell, he is literally much closer! Readers will associate with the difference between visiting their hometowns once or twice a year from abroad to living in their hometowns. For the same reason that people take vacations, the interface the country offers you is simply different when you are an NRI. Moreover, the writings of NRI's cut off from India for a decade speak for themselves -- dated, retrograde and, at best, nostalgic. Case in point: Rushdie's musings on Sonia Gandhi post-election.

There's no doubt that the thought that haunts you by the end of the article is, in fact, Mukherjee's point about koel's and tamarind trees. That is what the mediocre ones are doing for western audiences anyway. As for the celebrated literateurs, their literary contributions are far more important than their socio-cultural representation of India.

Hubris of the Chatteratti

Check out this article --- Cervantes vs Einstein

I have heard/read this type of argument more times than I care to remember - Schopenhauer, anybody ? ("Science can get along with talent but art requires genius")

So these humanities types think they're better than us math/science types. You know, just because they have a way with words. You know, because they can talk. And write newspaper articles to put down things they don't understand.

You know,.... where would we be without art ? Ans : We would die. Simon Jerkins-or-whatever claims he wouldn't be able to live without Quixote. Sad bloke! Sadder still that he has never felt the thrill of creative scientific work.

So if Einstein hadn't come along someone else would have constructed his theories ? Sure, but the same argument holds for Cervantes too. Of course it is unlikely that Quixote would be re-created verbatim but (as long as we're being pedantic) the same thing holds for Einstein's papers.

If only this Jerkins would take the time to understand math (just like we **bleeps** took the time to understand Cervantes) ... you know, at least so he can form an informed opinion about their relative importance or indeed decide if such a comparison is possible or meaningful or worthwhile.

Remind me to write sometime about another pituitary case - William "poets are the natural legislators of mankind" Wordsworth.

I'm feeling not-so-lucky

Recently, a week back, I added a piece of javascript code to the blog template, to function as a "stealth mode blog patrol". I was curious to see who was visiting the blog, from where, how often and in other irrelevant surveillance related statistics.

One of the things logged by this code is the exact "search terms" (all used at Google) that lead a user to one of the entries in this blog. So, fellow (ex-)poseurs and voyeurs, here are the top four (why four? because the blog had only four hits from Google) search terms that led unsuspecting surfers to our shores.

At number 4 - Psychological Narcosis
At number 3 - "Village Schoolmaster" "Oliver Goldsmith"
( For those in the audience keeping count, that's two hits to my blog entry and zero to the rest!)
At number 2 - Konkona Koko
And the number 1 search term at Google that led users to our blog is (drum roll please) - Tushy Massage Explain!

With its current price of $180 a share, something tells me that the Google stock is soon going to be a cause for acute pain in the tushy for all its shareholders. And then of course, we'll get more hits!

ps: No, I don't have time to kill and yes, you can skip this without any loss of continuity. I just thought that there should be some tool out there to do this kind of dynamic visualization tracing user's paths as they surf the web. It decidedly serves no purpose. Even then -

The web is an ocean of information. Scattered across this ocean are websites of varying pagerank. Web sites like Google and Yahoo (with pagerank = 1) are at the center of this ocean. As you move away from the center, you find web sites of lesser pagerank. And at the very periphery are websites with zero pagerank like this blog. Google, with its whirling index server farms and search query processors is like a giant inverse-whirlpool at the very center of this ocean not sucking in but spewing out visiting surfers in all directions to distant shores they've never been to. Now, if only someone could animate this thing and link it up live to Google webservers...