Have a nice Trip!

An apparently regular scene in Tokyo’s rush hours…

I had read about it before but I couldn’t really believe it.

Kai wants a popsickie

So cute...

Jeanne Cherhal - Voilà

Listen to this song “Voila” by French singer “Jeanne Charhal”. Right at the end, it becomes surprisingly Iranian in tune. It’s quite interesting.

Joe Camel is Back!

Does anybody here remember that law, prohibiting any sort of public advertisement for tobacco, the strict and non-negotiable ban that nearly canceled one of Montreal’s most renowned events, Canadian formula one Grand-Prix?

Open any newspaper this week, from “Mirror” to “Ici”, “Hours” to “Voir”, and you’d be shocked by colorful, full pages ads for cigarettes, almost every other page!

Voila! They are back, stronger than before! Apparently, their powerful lobbies have succeeded to buy politicians while convincing the media, not to make a fuss about the whole issue!

Now, I have to admit that I am not an ardent opponent of cigarette advertisements, per say. To be honest, I would have to go with the natural selection if somebody is unable to resist a colorful picture of a box with an image of a cancerous lunge on it!

I am not even against smoking! If somebody wants to jeopardize his/her health and hence help the world’s overpopulation crisis, I do believe that the person should be left alone to do so, as long as the physical damage is solely confined to the person and the burden on the healthcare system is also being appropriately compensated by taxation on cigarettes.

What I am very much concerned about is, this apparent reversal of the law might be just a little entrée before the main course: abandonment of the prohibition on smoking in public places, the delicious fruit of more than three decades of active campaigning against tobacco companies.

Let’s stay vigilant about the subject while making some noise about it. One of these days, the “no smoking” signs might be expelled from public places, as quietly as the ads got re-invited to the pages of our newspapers.

Mike Huckabee and the glorification of Ten Commandments

Today, as the former priest and the presidential desperately-trying–to-remain hopeful, Mike Huckabee, was addressing late Jerry Farwell’s congregation in Virginia (perhaps one of the most narrow-minded and backward group of people on the planet), he pointed out an interesting issue about the relationship between law, morality and the good old ten commandments and reassured everybody that his stupidity has not been confined solely to denying evolution!

This phenomenal outcome of the American conservatism has clearly declared that all the moral laws we need can be found in Ten Commandments and the rest, is just complications we have created to pass around these eternally sufficient rules.

Since most of the people who repeat the word “commandments” have the faintest idea about what they actually are, let’s review these ancient divine rules that are supposed to keep our path illuminated till the end of time:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God.
3. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
4. Honor your Father and Mother.
5. You shall not murder.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife

Voila, these are the famous Ten Commandments.

Now note that based on this blatantly tribal and primitively archaic document, while we’re honoring our parents, not humping our neighbors' wives and not putting "Marduk" before "Jehovah", we are still allowed to do whatever we like to anybody who is not our neighbor! In fact, the horrendous massacring, raping and pillaging of non-Israelites, devotedly executed by the followers of Moses and enthusiastically described in the holy Bible itself (with a touch of sadism), attest to this reality.

Even if Christians intend to expand the meaning of the word “Neighbor” to the whole population of the planet (that I’m sure a good number of them are willing to do so), Ten Commandments still severely deficient of some fundamentals of human rights.

Let’s remember that a misogynist, bigot, slave owner, child abuser who destroys the environment and kills helpless animals for fun, is still firmly within the divinely marked path of Ten Commandments, as long as he is careful enough about the usage of the word God!

So dear Mr. Huckabee, if you really do put “remembering Sabbath” ahead of women and children’s protection laws, you’re not even fit to prepare the shopping list for a Picnic let alone becoming president of the United States and I’m truly sorry that in this day and age, uttering such outrageous nonsense is not inducing the appropriate outrage!

Though I do hope it’s just because that nobody takes you and your followers seriously these days...not anymore.

Panoramic view from the interior of Airbus A380, First class seat.

Bunch of Iranians in exile, who can’t locate their beloved country on a world map!

And somehow, we think we're the brightest people on earth!

Way to go guys...

Don't vote for Hilary!

Snowball is a Rockin' to the Back Street Boys Cockatoo!!

This funny parrot made my day! It is priceless!

Obviously, I was only interested in the artistic aspects of this picture!

Robert Scheer Debates Ralph Nader

A fascinating debate between Robert Scheer, one of the boldest journalists of our time and the famous Ralph Nader.

Scheer, holding a more practical stance, while admiring Nader for the brilliant thinker and social critic that he is, criticizing him for weakening the eventual democratic candidate by making the decision of participating in the presidential election , whereas Nader, defends his decision and argues why it is vital to run as presidential candidate despite the almost non-existent chance to win.

Whenever I’m down and I need a huge and spontaneous boost, there’s one website that cheers me up, every single time. This amazing little website is called “Cute Overload” and in fact, it’s a data base of cute animal’s pictures and videos.

So, if you’re an animal lover, keep the link handy. Believe me, you’ll never regret.

Here is an example:

Oh God…how cute is this?!!!

Robert Scheer’s mature, humane and astute political analysis, is one of the delightful voices of today’s media.

Listen to this week’s “Left, Right and Center” and enjoy the wise man’s marvelous comments and remarks.

Clive James

This is an excerpt from one of the world finest journalists, Clive James's interview with PBS’s Bill Moyer. I extremely recommend his latest book, Cultural Amnesia. It is a fascinating read indeed:

“In Vienna especially, because the universities weren’t fully open, the Jewish intellectuals were forced into the cafés and tended to develop a language which we are still speaking now, which is the language of the normal conversational rhythm about profound things. They took the initiative away from the academy, and in my view, it should be always taken away from the academy. I have a lot of respects for academics but academic language should not drive the conversation. The conversation should be driven from journalism. What we do in journalism is not incidental to culture but basic to it and it was demonstrated by the Jewish intellectuals in Vienna cafés. They learnt to write the article, the feuilleton, which is the whole basis of the modern culture.

I don’t believe that knowledge and understanding and wisdom are the property of a class at all. I believe they’re generally democratic things. It doesn’t mean that everyone will understand but anyone can.

It’s still my mission in life to write in a way that anyone who can read will realize that I’m talking about something. My enemy is the elevated language. When I use the word academic in a pejorative sense I mean that the language that puts a distance between the fact being talked about and any possible comprehension. That’s the enemy.

There’s a connection between writing and talking which I like to maintain, for that very reason. It’s a political stance. My political stance is that learning and humanism should not be shut off from the people. That unless you can present these things in a way that can be understood, you’re losing. The idea that you can retreat to some sort of enclave where only you and your fellow qualify people. Incidentally, this idea was rife in the early twentieth century among right wing intellectuals. T.S Elliot for example and all his friends believed that only a few people were qualified for culture. I don’t believe that. I believe even though it might be a minority, anybody can be qualified.”

McDonald with truffles!

Once, there was an adorable German movie called “Bella Martha”. A simple romantic comedy/drama, which was anything but conventional. After all, when one combines romance, cuisine and good cinematography, it would be really inappropriate for the critical mind to function critically!

Although apart from "Departed" and that TV series "Office", I don’t have any recollection of a good American remake of anything whatsoever (and I’m absolutely certain that a good number of people would even question those only examples I represented), I went to the theatre to watch “No Reservation”; the Hollywood remake of the German movie; with the minimum expectation and mostly to observe the possible socio-cultural gap between these two versions. But man! is it possible to watch this shit without every brain cell of yours would cordially wish to exchange its position with a rectum cell of a dying old man, even with one, badly damaged by hemorrhoid!

Though they even repeated a good portion of the dialogues, it was kind of masochistically amusing to see how seriously you can degrade a movie, just by Hollywoodizing it! Meaning, stripping it away from any profundity, injecting some disgraceful, tasteless humor and sentimental crap and removing almost all the subtleties, nuances and sophistication that the original version was so rich of.

In fact, there’s a command in Photoshop that does exactly what writer and director of this movie have achieved to do and it is called “Flatten Layers!”

Back to the movie, apart from the disgustingly superficial additional scenes and story lines, even those scenes which were supposed to be the exact replicate, were nothing but some hollow, flat and badly-made versions of a thoughtful and delicious masterpiece.

Where one could even cry for Martha quite frequently, I seriously doubt that anyone would feel any sympathy for her generic version, “Kate” (or whatever the hell the untalented goddess, "Catherine Zetha Jones" was pathetically trying to portray). Replace the adorable “Lina” with the annoying, smart-mouth "Zoe" and the charming “Mario” with Mr. so-full-of-himself and voila, you’ll have the tasteless, bland, crime-against-cinema, “No Reservation”.

Just as an amuses-bouche, in the German version, Martha lives in a one bedroom apartment (as any normal single person who’s not a CEO would do) and expectedly, when she is forced to take care of her niece, she offers her room to the little girl and start sleeping on the couch. I really could not understand why a single woman in Manhattan should have an extra room, fully furnished!! Maybe because the rents in downtown New York are so affordable that it is crazy not to have some spare rooms! ha?!

And by the way, an Italian chef with a lively soul who hums Italian songs when he cooks is absolutely adorable. An American who plays loud Pavarotti in a busy kitchen in Manhattan and screams horrendously with it, is not!!! Just two minutes of "Aaron Eckhart" is convincing enough to beg Kate to smash his face with a hot, heavy cast-iron saucepan, at least two thousand times until he shuts the hell up forever!!! And maybe that’s how the director and the adaptive screen writer deserve to be treated as well!

Final word, unless one wants to make the same painful socio-cultural experiment, I seriously recommend avoiding this movie at any cost and instead, I absolutely suggest renting the fantastic original German version. After all, reading subtitles for two hours is better than letting your intellect to be insulted for the same amount of time, isn’t it?

A hilarious “Reservoir Dogs” moment from the hilarious BBC comedy series, “Coupling”

iRAQ!

Now that you reduced the poor country to rubble, is it too much too ask to at least, pronounce its name correctly?!

It’s not an Apple product for God’s sake! it is a country that should be called Iraq! “E-raq”! It should be pronounced, not like ipod, not like iphone, but more like E-mail!

And by the way, the same rule applies to her eastern neighbor and the next in line for “the operation liberty and democracy”, Iran!

So, for next time you want to say Iraq, let me give you a hint. Shift your mind slowly from the word iTune to some other words like “Ignorance”, “Irresponsible", “Inexcusable” or “Irreversible”!

You never know, maybe it helps!

The Miracle of Plastic Shoes

I was about to forgive the Flip-flops for the disaster they were; only out of respect to the shear number of beautiful feet- and their corresponding legs- they carried through out these past couple of years; that suddenly another catastrophe of taste hit the market…Plastic shoes!

I’m still trying to digest the ingenuity of the marketing gurus who forced women all around the globe to match their carefully picked clothes with those blue and green rubber crap which less than a year ago, according to Bill Maher, “Only pre-schoolers and mental patients would wear!”

But on the other hand, what should we wear considering the kind of music we listen to, the sort of movie we watch, the taste of food we eat and the style of houses we inhabit?!

I mean, character-less apartments with windows facing some concrete walls, McDonald’s double cheeseburger, Hip-hop so called music and Transformers and pirate of Caribbean as entertainments! What could have possibly come next?! Well, Plastic shoes…maybe!

2 Days in Paris

An American guy walks around Paris with his lover who happens to be an activist-type intellectual French girl. The girl is played by Julie Delpy and guess what?! She owns a chubby cat!

You might say: “I’ve seen this film before”. But no, you’d be wrong. The movie is not Before sunset and to my big surprise -and despite those general similarities- it is fundamentally different!

2 Days in Paris , written and directed - and played, and edited and co-produced and on and on and on - by Julie Delpy, is the story of a couple -Marion (Julie Delpy) and Jack (Adam Goldberg whom if you’re a big fan of Friends, you might recall him as Chandler’s freak roommate, Eddie!- who decide to finish up their trip to Venice by staying in Paris for two days, on their way back home to New York.

2 Days in Paris is cleverly hilarious. Characters are well-created and well-acted and awfully real (Well, what would you expect?! Her parents in the movie are her real parents) and while sometime they’re not as charming as you would expect- occasionally to the point of being disgustingly annoying (depends on your tolerance for eccentricity) they’re, most of the time, quite adorable and almost always preciously unique.

The cinematography is ingenious and from time-to-time, even kind of cute (especially the flashback scenes to Marion’s childhood) besides, she has skillfully managed to incorporate the profession of the girl and the obsession of the guy, photography, as well as the mood of the characters, into the visual texture of movie. Even more, it deliberately conveys the mood of a family video, recorded by a camcorder and thus perfectly compliments the title.

Comparing it to Before Sunset – which seems like an almost inevitable temptation – 2 days in Paris is a rather realistic portrayal of a relationship and of a city, to the dream-like mood of before sunset (and its prequel, Before Sunrise). Adam Goldberg - unlike the always cute, always adorable Ethan Hawke – is a germ-freak, grumpy, jealous nagger and Julie Delpy, is a flirtatious, slightly sluttish and rather self-centered character that you would well expect from that free-spirited Celine to be in the real life!

The relationship itself is not a fairytale-type love-at-first-sight either. Instead, two people who are far from perfect and trying – and believe me, trying really hard – to get through some serious rough patches in their relationship.

The strictly realistic soul of this film even stretches to the portrayal of the city. Here, Paris is not the calm and beautiful city of love where all her citizens are well-dressed, energetic and are holding hands in cute cafés but a crowded metropolitan – though one of the most stunning one in the world- with some real people among which, you could bump up to almost anybody, from total freaks to real idiots and racists.

This Paris, and particularly if you don’t know French, can be intimidating, unfriendly and tremendously far from the glittering reflection of Notre-dame sur la Seine!

I admire Julie Delpy for having the originality and the courage of ridiculing, so brusquely in fact, the stereotype of stupid American versus civilized French. While she is not defending Americans at all, she repeatedly demonstrates to those who still hold the fictional perception of Parisians that ordinary citizens of Paris could be as – if not more - bigot, stupid, misogynist and vulgar as any ordinary American.

Finally, 2 days in Paris, is a solid, witty and impressively stylish movie that makes you laugh quite frequently and makes you ponder almost as frequent, if not more. It’s a movie to enjoy and to watch over and over again. Well done Julie.

Praying…The gravest delusion of all

Though the idea of praying, to be a virtue on top of being effective, has been constantly injected to our poor brains, do we have any activity in the world, more egoistic and megalomaniacal than praying?!

Let’s, for the sake of the argument, assume that God does exist. He (or she) is at least, relatively fair and mildly just and besides, just for the sake of the argument, this hypothetical God has enough time and interest to listen to your pray.

Aren’t you expecting the same God, who, as you’re praying, doesn’t care about thousands of people being savagely killed, brutally tortured and viciously raped, all over the world, aren’t you expecting the very same God to actually care about your relatively trivial demand?!

Aren’t we implicitly, at least, implying that “I know God doesn’t give a shit about thousands of innocent children, dying from hunger or diseases as preventable as diarrhea, as we pray, but he will surely understand how important this interview is for me!”?! or, “I know that she didn’t find appropriate to intervene to save millions of innocents from being murdered in death camps and Gulags, but she will definitely buckle the laws of probability to give me a Full-house! after all, I am so freaking special, am I not?!”

Seriously guys, if God had a waiting room accompanied with a shred of decency and you were in that room, giving yourself any number below one billion or something; unless you were or one of your beloved was suffering from a horrendous terminal disease; one should eventually conclude that you would either suffer from an advanced case of acute megalomania, or you shouldn't have the slightest clue about what the hell is going on in the world and the fact that millions of others share the condition with you wouldn’t make it any less contemptible.

Next time you decided begging your God, just imagine for a second: if you were God, how high the priority of what you’re going ask could have been to you. If you still believe that you deserve to be heard immediately, well, go ahead then!