Red, White and Brown Nosed

For a man that makes his living off stereotypes, Russell Peters does not notice the dichotomy of assaulting the media for using stereotypes for furthering agendas and propagandas. But for those people that like intelligent humor, be it the wit and sarcasm of Yes, Minister, or… the wit and sarcasm of George Carlin, you will instantly notice the fallacy of Peters’ chosen words. He is a part of the media. But unfortunately his ignorance is shown by his inability to take part of the blame, or it just shows his hypocrisy.

In his “new” act, “Red, White and Brown”, Russell Peters claims to have found himself a new voice; retiring old jokes. As usual, his act is confused as he shuttles between his identity of a North American and his “cheap” accented brown identity, and in that we can take solace, that Russell Peters is Indian, not just genetically, but even culturally.¹ He is a true hypocrite; One that would do Mother India proud.

Russell Peters is a cult comedian, like George Lopez, or Dane Cook, mediocre comedians targeting fringe audiences and cults that they have cultivated. Perhaps with respect to the specifics of the jokes Peters is “fresh” but considering the subject matter remains the same as his earlier acts (same jokes about Indian cheapness, about Chinese accents, about Italian machismo…). And while there is some humor to be found even in repetition, it can only go so far. If Red, White and Brown weren’t advertised as a “new act”, perhaps this would be a good extension of his earlier acts… and amusing². However, this blatant attempt to beguile audiences or just his ignorance as to what constitutes a “new act” takes out some of the fun of watching a mediocre comedian.

After all, it doesn’t hurt if you are eating an egg salad sandwich, knowing that it is an egg salad sandwich and nothing more. But when you are served an egg salad sandwich, all while you were expecting smoked salmon, then it is just disingenuous; and you have every right to take it as an insult to your intelligence. After all, you just paid for something more!

P.S. I watched it on YouTube; “The new home of piracy”.

NB:

1. Peter’s attempts to make the distinction between his genetically derived Indian-ness, such as his skin color, his physical attributes versus Indian personality traits (which he claims not to have) is a large part of the act as he discusses his trip to India. It is only laughable that he does not notice how he undermines his own point!


2. Notice the distinction between amusing and funny. A good knock-knock joke is funny. Repeating a good joke over and over again, is at best… amusing.

Pissing In The Wind

Holy Coca Co(w)la. The Colas are doomed!

India is the land of useless regulation. We are world leaders in double standards and NO standards. A blog I visit, recently had a post about how Indian products make unsubstantiated claims, which in first world countries would be unacceptable. But in the land of hindutva¹, hypocrisy and lack of regulation make a perfect couple and no valentine's day for them either.

So what is the connection between colas and Indian hypocrisy? Not the pesticide thing… I really don't care about that. So if the pesticide scandal and the prospect of impending fatality are not big enough to bring a multinational corporation down, then what is? Piss. Yes, urine, and not just any urine, the blessed and holy piddle emanating from the saviors of the world, beef. This wee-wee is being branded by none other than the saviors of bharat mata, the RSS. As if the great Indian rope trick, images of free roaming elephants and dung laden streets weren't bad enough for urban India, now this.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are "doctors" and "scientists" that claim "research" on cow urine therapy has been performed to demonstrate its effectiveness.

"Our Aim is...

Our main aim and objective is to prevent and cure most of the diseases by applying a totally natural and highly effective new concept. We will be pround if we will be able to give some Relief to this world. We are trying to follow the path of serving humanity shown by God. We are trying to make this therapy much more simple and feasible."

In the face of this fundamentalist ignorance, I quote the words of my Goan brothers², "Aamcha Feni aamka jai, tujha mut tu pee" (roughly translated: "We want our feni, you drink your piss").

But before I end this post, I have a few questions. Will golden showers stop being a fetish in India and be part of the rejuvenation regiment? I guess you don't have to worry about taking a whiz in a pool anymore.

1. Hindutva isn't the only one I think is guilty of this hypocrisy, for the record.

2. I have never found any record of anyone having said this. As far as I know, the only person that has ever used this phrase is my uncle, Vijay Bijur. Therefore I attribute this to him.

His "story" goes like this. The slogan was raised by the goans during the prohibition era of Morarji Desai, who claimed that the reason of his good health was that he drank his own piss. As far as I know, this is a fabrication of his brilliant mind.

An Idiot for the idiot box!

Television for a few years now (perhaps even a decade) has shown us why it has earned the name, Idiot Box. It probably has something to do with the fact that it makes idiots out of us. So well is this fact documented that a movie Idiocracy was made to predict our future, as witty satire. But it did achieve another feat, aside from the one already mentioned. It proved how much they can dumb down television (which includes movies for me) for mass consumption, if there ever was a doubt with Spartans, the Scary Movie series, Disaster Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie…

But then television loves to prove to us how fucked up our society really is, be it a “wardrobe malfunction” (read nipple slip) at the super bowl, or a “celebrity malfunction”. I am sure I could spend another 15 minutes and find a few more, but this isn’t the point of today’s post.

This post is dedicated to the cinematic abyss that is Indian television. And no, I won’t be taking potshots at our “saas-bahu”¹ soap operas, even though I am tempted. It would be far too easy. I will however let the funniest words ever to be uttered on television speak for itself.

Talking about this incident, a friend commented, "Indian television was just lame before this incident, now it is American".

I won’t ruin the fun for those of you that haven’t already seen or heard of this abomination and will let you watch the video and make up your own mind. I don’t think a rational human being will need much prodding. All I want to know is what able minded individual thinks the guy deserves it? And to those that have to ask what I think, I say, he didn’t hit her hard enough.

Side note: It is imperative to indicate that the genre of satire is not defined by these sorry box office excuses for cinema. There happen to be classics like Yes Minister, The Family Guy, just to drop a few names.