Monty Python: Almost the Truth

I have been in a Monty Python-induced state of silliness nirvana over  the last few days. IFC is showing a 6-part documentary, Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut), on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the six guys getting together to create some of the funniest, most  irreverent and of course, the most parroted comedy sketches of all time.

There is always a danger of such documentaries to turn into a fluff idolating piece. However, this series (so far) has not shied away from some of the controversies  among the group members. Part three had interview footage of Chapman where he talks openly about his coming out and his troubles with alcohol and how that affected his relationship with the other members.

But on the whole, the documentary offers some delightful insights; tracing the evolution of the group, from the social background of each member, through their Oxbridge revue experiences (or comic-book writing at Occidental College in the case of Terry Gilliam), early work on the Frost Report and how Monty Python’s Flying Circus came into being, quite by chance.  The best bits are when they talk about how some of the most iconic sketches came about, e.g  the Lumberjack Song, which was apparently thought up in just 20 minutes at the end of a day only so that they could segue from the Barber Sketch.

Later episodes cover the tumultuous  making  of the Holy Grail, and the famous interview of Cleese and Palin with Malcolm Muggeridge in response to the religious backlash against their supposed blasphemous depiction of Christ in Life of Brian. There are also tributes by current British comedians, actors and writers and other who have been influenced by the Pythons (including some interesting snippets with Sanjeev Bhaskar – of The Kumar’s at No 42 fame – who talks about how his desi parents really disapproved of him watching a show where men dressed up as women, till they learn that all these actors went to Oxford and Cambridge).

In short, a must watch for any Python fan.

And of course, the post cannot be complete without linking- so here goes the Philosopher’s song, well suited to singing at the top of your voice after downing a few pints.

Speaking of a few pints, before they sang it during their Hollywood Bowl show, Eric Idle quipped:

We find your American beer like making love in a canoe. It’s f$%king close to water.

Shoddy journalism by Sagarika Ghose on Global Warming

Last night on her Twitter account, Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose posted the following:

Is even the science of climate change dodgy? is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us? who says the climate’s changing for the worse?

I am not sure where to begin parsing the statement, which displays either a stunning naivete or a sly dishonesty  calculated to get people charged up. Either way, it is quite appalling.

Actually, what is really appalling is the way she then goes about trying to prove her point.

Considering she works for CNN-IBN, which must to their disposal have at least one computer connected to this technology called the internet, where there exists these sites called Google and Bing that can be used to quickly search any topic. Not to mention that she must have at her disposal some sort of a research team, or the ability to get in touch with the relevant specialists for researching.

But what does she do when called for evidence of her statement? She retweets from some other guy offering up Bjorn Lomborg, the thoroughly discredited Danish academic as her source for anti-climate change (e.g see this, this or this).

If you are going to argue such a controversial issue, it pays not to be lazy – not to mention incredibly lame – enough as to cite Lomborg as your anti-climate change source! Heck, she could have even gone the Dubner-Levitt pathway given it has been on the news so much recently!  This is just stupendously shoddy journalism.

I have no problems with Ghose formulating a question for a proper debate – after all it is a supposedly free country with freedom of speech (though one of her contemporaries at least, has some sort of a problem with the definition of free speech, but we will let that go for now). However, it is inexcusable that she goes forth and makes statements that could be proven to be laughably false with the most perfunctory research.

Could it be that she is simply indulging in cheap sensationalism to improve ratings of her news channel? Quite possible given that she framed her question in the context of India’s role in reducing green house emissions, and whether

we [are] about to retard our industrial development because of america’s demands that we cut carbon emissions? (link)

Trying to whip up a bit of nationalist pride and sentiments against the US does no harm to ratings.  Statements such as, “Interesting point raised last night: our problem is poverty, not climate. lets first get rich, then we can go green.” are lame but sure to be a hit with the masses. Even then, it is  rather sad what she does to a complex discourse.

Consider that most die-hard skeptics now agree that climate change is real, and there is even a major consensus regarding the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. But how to solve the issue is however a highly charged debate involving as it does socio-economics and politics of a wide variety of country. For Ghose to reduce such complexity to levels stooped by the likes of Fox News and cronies is an incredible low.

(Thanks to Sakshi for many of the links)

update: Found this link with an incredible amount of resources to satisfy anyone’s climate change questions. I am not asking Ghose or anyone to absolutely agree with everything said here, but at least the person should argue on some intellectual basis.

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1. On these lines, it is quite unfortunate that TV journalism in India has been reduced to screeching hosts and overexcited, juvenile on-site reporter.s Ghose is married to Rajdeep Sardesai, whose histrionics during the Mumbai bombings were rightly criticized. Much has also been said about the media’s culpability during the 26/11 siege of Mumbai.

2. On a lighter note, Ghose’s naive question “ is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us?” reminds me of Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman trying to argue that global warming is of no concern because carbon-dioxide is natural and causes no harm!!

FCB: Gourmet 50’s Cocktails – Frangipani

Not sure if it is related to their upcoming demise, but Gourmet magazine online is doing a feature where they publish their 20 favorite cocktails of each decade, starting from the ’40s. They are upto the 90s now.

Simply gazing at the wonderful photos are probably worth the time by itself, but it is wonderful stuff for any cocktail connoisseur and additionally, a good lesson for aspiring mixologists.

Being Gourmet magazine, they also obviously get their preparations right:  Martini is  to be stirred (not shaken), the vermouth is ‘to taste’ (and they stress this fact) with nary a mention of vodka. We can but only appreciate.

All the other cocktails similarly exude class and style  – no tropical forests hanging out of brightly colored, over-sweetened drinks calling for 10 different liquors!

So suitably inspired, I have got it into my head now, of trying out all the cocktail recipes posted on the site and then blogging about it!. Of course, given my record in such matters, ‘all’ might be rather stretching it. But this is alcohol we are talking about – so I will give it a fair go.

I wanted to start with a drink I’ve never had before and settled upon this rum-based recipe from the 50s: Frangipani. A combination of being intrigued by the name and the fact that it used gold rum, which I have rarely tried before, and Maraschino liqueur, which I wanted to try out for a while, made me go this one.

Image from Gourment

I had this theory that there might be some sort of  Sanskrit roots to the word Frangipani (pani = water and all that), but as far as I can find out, Frangipani refers to a tropical flower (and a few other stuff). How that relates to the cocktail, I have no idea and the web is sparse on details.  The only other mention of it as a cocktail has a very different recipe. As Gourmet put it, the drink  is a variation of the Hemmingway daiquiri:

A cynical cocktailian might look at this as a dumbed-down Hemingway Daiquiri (or Papa Doble, as it’s sometimes called), but substituting more grapefruit juice for the lime and the sugar actually results in a very different drink. Look for Luxardo’s maraschino liqueur.

This is how I made it, based off the Gourment recipe :

• 1 part Golden Rum (I used the Dominican brand Ron Matusalem)
• 1 part Pineapple Juice
• 3 dashes Maraschino Liqueur (Luxardo, as suggested in the recipe, I was lucky enough to find it at BevMo)

Give it a few nice hard shakes jig in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain into a pre-chilled martini glass.  The toughest part of making this drink was getting the Maraschino Liqueur right: three dashes mean dashes – pour a bit too much and the drink is overwhelmed by the honey-almond taste of the liqueur.

In terms of taste, it is indeed a very different drink from the Hemmingway Daiquiri – and much sweeter as expected with the pineapple juice. I also  thought that the juice and the Maraschino liqueur hid the taste of the rum (but then perhaps I need to get myself a better quality or a  more aged rum).  Overall, even though I don’t like my alcohol too sweet,  I can picture myself drinking this while relaxing outdoors on a weekend afternoon. The drink could be a a nice after-dinner cleanser as well.

As such, I also made my own version of the drink by increasing the portion of run to 1.5 parts and then adding a dash of lime juice (in the form of clarified Key lime) to have a bit of balance.

Not looking quite as tempting as the image from the magazine; Photography skills still needs work

Not a bad start really. Cheers.

Beating the funk…

What a weirdly depressing Friday morning!

I should be thinking end of the week, cocktails/ good beer, good food etc. But here I am on a perfectly sunny San Diego day – one of those mornings that make this city such a fabulous place to live – deep in an inexplicable funk. Gah…

A good experimental result (or two) would be the best way to crawl out of the hole.

But the heart desires something else – a a crazy combination of simple pleasures …..

…a mellow Ghulam Ali ghazal

…re-watching Life of Brian

…a specific Anjan Dutta song – Niye Jaa (wonder where this sprang from?)

…curling up with a nice book…a Scottish noir perhaps – one from my current favorites in light reading – Ian Rankin…

…sip of Islay

……

Ok- back to work, or something.

Whoosh….

….where the fugg did that year go ?

We much prefer the Ha-ja-ba-ra-la world, where age cycles between 10 and 40 (see the clip below for reference, relevant scene comes on at 4:20).

(apologies to non-Bengali speaking crowd who will forever be denied of Sukumar Ray’s comic genius, sorry !!).

My faith in humanity….

….and its future is currently at an all-time low. As the Dictator pointed out, such faith should be pretty much non-existent in a world which consists of Twitters and Rediff message boards. But this article in The Telegraph that tries to create equal arguments for evolution and creationism, plunges moi into epic despair.

However, there is some comic value in this. Just read the comments section, especially a long, ‘reasoned’ post by one “Matt Klemp September 10, 2009 at 01:32 PM”. Just to wet your appetite:

Thirdly, whilst i am a part of the most devout christian movement in history, i fully accept that no mere human being can or ever will know for certainty whether there is a god or not until he (God) taps one on the shoulder and says well done. Do you understand? both religion/god and scientific/evolution is pure theory!!! Never has it been fact. Like the majority of court cases one must digest the available data and and make the most probable conclusion.

The whole comment reproduced below the fold, it’s just too awesome and deserves a wider read.

The Cheese Shop

Apropos of nothing in particular, but a dose of humor on a dreary Tuesday morning (which is actually like a Monday morning this week due to the long-weekend), presenting the cheese skit:

Apparently, 42 cheeses were mentioned in the original skit – coincidence ?

FCB: Givin’ Martini a Bad Name…

A sincere request to lovers of alcohol everywhere…to stop appending the name ‘Martini’ at the end of any random fruity, colorful liquor concoction.

Even otherwise erudite bloggers are at it, tweeting about something called Mango Martini ! As far as I can see, it is just a variation of the SATC-popularized cocktail Cosmopolitan, with mango juice replacing the cranberry. Nothing against anyone liking it (although, personally I think it is a bit of  a waste of Triple-sec trying to pair its sweet-orange taste to the mango juice, the latter is just awesome on its own). But a ‘martini’, it ain’t, so someone should at least come up with an alternative name.

Nitin also RTs someone suggesting another abomination, The Espresso Martini, as a drink that ‘rejuvinates…like nothing else’.   The drink is  pretty much a shot of espresso added to a slight variation of the  White Russian theme, so yeah – stop calling it a martini !!!   As for the drink itself, I guess to each his own – but mixing coffee and alcohol is usually not my cup of tea (I do, however, on occasion don’t mind a well made Irish Coffee); you are sitting on the precipice of starting to drink the nightclub-sustaining Vodka/Redbull mixes. Besides, why add coffee when the recipe already calls for substantial coffee liqueur  (1.5 parts Kahlua) ? I’d rather go with a simple Black/White Russian. Finally, coffee flavor-based cocktails are supposed to be desert drinks, so not sure of the rejuvenating aspect either. I would suggest going for a Mint Julep, Caipirinha, or a Collins if you are going for ‘refreshing’, and pretty much a shot of any strong liquor – perhaps a bourbon/whiskey – if rejuvenation of the soul is required.

(Semi-regular posting of cocktail recipes for FCB will happen sometime in the future – or not. Life is logistically pretty messy now, and it is much easier here  in the US to step out on a Friday evening and enjoy cheap but well-made cocktails! And in  great company )

Bad advices – celebrity edition….

As if the hysteria over the H1N1 swine-flu is not enough, now we have a celebrity providing bad advice on preventing the flu.  Via Twitter no less.

Actress Gul Panag wrote today:

There’s a “preventive” homeopathic medicine for Swine flue (sic) – INFLUENZUM,available at all homeopathic chemists.Prevention is better than cure (link)

No shit ! And so when do I get to give advice on how the director should frame her next shot. Because, you know – I have dabbled in amateur theater. (Btw, the medicine is not called INFLUENZUM – it is influenzinum)

Although Gul hasn’t gone off on the deep end like her American counterparts, Jenny McCarthy or Jim Carrey and their anti-vaccination idiocy, it is still bad advice.

To set the records straight, a homeopathic treatment is no prevention against the flu.  Notwithstanding the tall claims on websites such as this  which state:

Influenzinum is made each year from the influenza vaccination shot. Here’s how it is made, and how we have made it for years. It is in the HPUS (Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States).We take the shot itself and place it in 9 parts water and succuss (25 thumps)- the result is 1x – We then take that 1x, put in 9 parts alcohol and succuss it again and make a 2x (& a 1c). The 3x or 2c are then made separately – 1:9 (x) or 1:99 (c).We continue in this manner up to 30x and 30c (by hand and from the 30c on to the 200c using the Helios potentizing machine). (Joe Lillard,WHP)

Apart from the alcohol, I am not sure there is much palliative in this prescription. By the time, the dilution takes place, you will be lucky to catch any strain of the original virus to boost your immunity. Prevention of flu, as it were, can be through a combination of  keeping  your hands and face clean,  and avoiding infected people. The latter, even in a low density populations is difficult without shutting yourself completely from the world. Even taking the flu vaccine every year is no guarantee against the infection during the season since new viral strains can easily appear. For the H1N1 particularly, even though a vaccine has been developed, not much is yet known about its efficacy.  Hence the so-called Influenzium treatment – even if effective against other flu – would be useless for H1N1.

Overall, the best option is to remain safe and pretty much hope for the best. And yeah – get the shot if available. There aren’t any easy alternatives.

Unfortunately, I suppose this kind of quackery will be very popular in India – especially where you have countless millions brainwashed by one Baba Ramdev, who among other things, proposes cure for homosexuality through yogas. (And yes, according to him, swine-flu can be prevented through yogas too.)

The scary part is that people may take such advice to heed and have an elevated sense of safety. Does not help the individual or the community.

Friday Cocktail Blogging: The Manhattan

I blogged about the Manhattan before, but lately I have developed a renewed affection for this drink.  (Also, in that earlier blog, the drink was more of an after-thought – wanted to expand on it a bit).

This renewal of affection came about  possibly during the trip to Boston earlier this year, when fellow connoisseur BH led me to this wonderful watering-hole in a Cambridge alleyway. Over the stretch of a Friday evening, the extremely sympathetic barman treated us [1] to an array of Manhattan variations, the names of which I fail to recollect, but various other New York city subdivisions were involved.The variations mostly involved using different kinds of whiskey, bitters and vermouth (well duh!).

The other reason is the discovery of Gentleman Jack, a double charcoal filtered, extremely mellow Tennesee whiskey that seems ideally suited for this drink .

Note that the kind of Manhattan you prefer, like Martinis, is a personal choice: the type of whiskey, on the rocks or straight up, dry or sweet and cherry or not. etc are some of the options one is faced with.  Couple of ground rules though. First, the obvious – never use expensive whiskey like single barrel bournbons, or single malt scotch. Second,  even if you partake a cherry – don’t add the syrup – the drink will be too sweet. For the rest, go by your own taste.

The Manhattan hasn’t yet replaced the dry Martini as the pre-dinner drink of choice, but it is running close. This is the way I prefer it now, especially on summer evening after work:

• 2 parts Gentleman Jack
• 1/2 part Dry vermouth
• 1/2 part Lillet
• Dash of Blood Orange Bitters (or Angostura)

Shake in a cocktail mixer with lots of ice and strain into a pre-chilled cocktail glass.  Optional cherry garnishing (best way to do this: add the cherry – sans the syrup – to the bottom of the glass and pour the drink over it).

As you can see, I prefer straight up. Unlike the Martini, where on the rocks is a definite no, a Manhattan is okay over ice. However, I recommend that you use ice a bit more fine than usual for this.

Cheers.

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[1]: No, we paid for the drink, but the barman possessed that ideal quality so severely lacking in many of the profession: anticipating our next drink -both in terms of when we needed one next, and what we would enjoy. In a Friday-evening crowd, that is a fine

Easing back….

So there is a small matter of absence for three months from blogging. I could have just brushed it under the carpet and resumed posting as if the last post was just yesterday. But I am going to trot out the usual lame excuses anyway, if only to get out of the rut of lack of blogging:

One, a move of hemispherical and continental proportions: Around mid-June, we bid farewell to the two years of fun-times in Ozland and returned to the USofA. In fact, moved to one of my favorite cities here. The move itself was quite blog-worthy, involving as it did, flying the longest commercial route in existence (eighteen hours and change non-stop) followed by separate 6-hour and 9-hour road-trips, still followed by another 8 eight hours of flight before reaching the final destination!

Two, change of jobs: but of course that had to happen along with/because of change in continents. It was somewhat of a chicken and egg – I wanted to come back and did because I got a job, and because I got a job I had to come back, or something (okay, so not much of a conundrum). Anyway, the bigger news I guess is the nature of the job – which is a major shift in what I had been doing for the last few years, having switched from academia to the euphemistic ‘dark side’. Perhaps more on this later.

Three, Twitter. Okay – so this is the lamest of all. Not totally blaming it on Twitter, but I find myself nowadays increasingly unable to break through the shackle of 140 characters. When I started blogging (as in both reading and writing blogs) many years ago, I realized that I was gradually losing the ability to read any reports longer than two three paragraphs ie the typical blog post. If a piece of news or comment was not wrapped up in that space, the mind would start wandering. Hopefully, Twitter won’t induce a far greater attention deficiency syndrome.

Anyhow, this here is the first step. The Dictator’s recent return to longer posts is bit of an inspiration as well. If any of the regulars are still around, look forward to more ranting and irrelevant posts pretty soon.

Twitter killed the blogger ?

Not that I was very persevering at it, but the advent of Twitter seems to have cut into my already dismal state of blogging. Most off-the-cuff remarks I might have considered putting into a blog [1], I now find myself finishing in 140 characters or less. An example would be the early morning (by Australian time) Champions League final game between Barca and Man U. that Barca won through some superb midfield play, which in other circumstances,  I might have devoted a paragraph or three, I Twittered (Tweeted? Twat ?) about.

For lazy bums such as myself, 140 characters or less is just too tempting; get the rush of sharing your  (half-formed) thoughts with the world out of the way quickly – thoughtful analysis and introspection be dammed.

Then there are other advantages: you have a list of people who follow you on Twitter, and with judicious calculations of whether they are online (or will be) or a  knowledge of their interest, you know you will attract their attention to your Tweet (Twit?). With blogs, it has recently become a crap-shoot: your RSS feeds (wow, that sounds so 2005-6ish!) could be on the subscription list of hundreds (mine isn’t), but most people, I suspect, dont bother reading beyond the first 140 characters anyway. However, this could be a problem with Twitter too: there are those insanes that ‘follow’ hundreds and thousands, and I have no idea if they actually read a quarter of them. But at least you are assurred of being skimmed over by a few, versus the neglect of all.

On balance however, I am not a big fan of Twitter. So call me old-fashioned and stuck in the Web2.0 age, but here goes some reasons:

First, I have noticed that the overall productivity of quite a few of my favorite bloggers has declined since the advent of widespread Twitter usage. This is a personal loss – I do get their Twitter updates, but often it gets lost under a mountain of trivial stuff. Blogs – I can read at leisure. Twitter – early mornings, I cannot be bothered beyond the 5th, or the 2nd if I haven’t had my coffee yet. So I assume I am missing out on the richness of much rants, fisks, and other such goodies.

Second, the tendency of many Twitters (Twats? Tweeters ?) to go on a self-absorbed chronicling of their everyday mundane activities is often disgusting, not to mention boring as hell (ok, so that was the third soy-latte-chai you had today morning, now get over it and be a man by ordering a triple-shot Venti or whatever abomination).

Finally, while Twitter can be put to good use in quick dissemination of information (e.g during the Mumbai blast) – or for interesting updates on the go with iPhones  (e.g. a  few droll observations by the ever reliable gawker from a suburban pub tonite) etc., the total misuse or worse, cluelessness, of the platform by many is absolutely irritating. A well known blogger and journalist I was following for a while suffered from the worst case of verbal  diarrhoea I have had the misfortune of reading – his opinion seemed to be that the 140 characters limit was a simple inconvenience, easily abrogated by breaking up a blog-sized posting  (never pithy to begin with) into 30-40 Twitters!! I exaggerate of course, but not by much.

So unfollow these people you miserable Luddite twat, I hear the cry goes. Rest assured, my Twitter following is kept at the bare minimum: I think I follow a little more than 30 people (!) – four of them are celebrities, or people who I consider celebrities (Stephen Colbert, Kal Penn, Mindy Kaling and Samit Basu), a few were reciprocal followers (I have stopped this now, unless I know the person) and why they wanted to follow me in the first place I don’t know, a couple are institutional Twitters (e.g NIH, CDC) and I plan to expand into this soon, and the rest are people whom I used to follow on their blogs, some I have met personally as well.

As such, I don’t think that Twitter is a very bad thing, but hope it will be put to better use.

Anyhow, there ends a not very brief rant. And now, excuse me while I link this to an Twitter update

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[1]: Even on a good week, less than 50% of putative blog posts actually get past the drafts stage.