The ‘Graphic Bangalore’ theme of this week’s Time Out Bengaluru has showcased one of my cartoons among the “Funnies” along with a teeny self-portrait and a bio. . . . → Read More: My Mutalik cartoons in Time Out Bengaluru
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Ask your councillors where the parks have gone, and they will point proudly to a software park within ten minutes’ drive. Car parks, they promise, will follow. But a park by any other name doesn’t feel as green. . . . → Read More: City Zen – A park by any other name As man and best friend clash, no one is sure who’s the underdog. Dog-haters growl genocide, arguing that there are too many mutts for comfort. On the other hand, the overzealous Assisi-tants of St Francis whimper that every dog needs a home, never mind that some of us can’t afford the nutritional equivalent of a pack of bow-wow chow. Wait, aren’t we wagging the dog here? . . . → Read More: City Zen – For the love of dog! Walking a fine tightrope between the live and studio sounds, and maintaining continuity with the previous album, Fandango! became a watershed record in ZZ Top’s career. Bands with a big stage sound often betray themselves when they enter the studio but ZZ Top had figured their way around that. Fandango! also coincided with a time when the band’s trademark beards started to appear. . . . → Read More: Before the beards – ZZ Top’s Fandango! Crime writer Anthony Bruno, chronicling Sinatra’s links with the mob, writes of how the crooner found a godfather in New Jersey gangster Willie Moretti after his stint with the quartet Hoboken Four ended. Impressed with Sinatra’s talent, he gave him a break to sing at his casinos. Sinatra, Bruno writes, could “talk” the lyric as if he was speaking directly to his listeners, and this made him a heartthrob of the teenage female fans known as “bobbysoxers”. Sinatra was still making hits with James when he got his next big break in 1940 with the “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing”, trombonist and bandleader Tommy Dorsey. Formerly of the Dorsey Brothers, the temperamental perfectionist had sacked brother Jimmy and renamed his band to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. Dorsey, aware that his band did not have a classical jazz sound, invited Sinatra to infuse the missing element of swing. . . . → Read More: Don’t shoot the trombonist – how Sinatra got even with Dorsey As with precocious artists who need an unsolicited rush of celebrity to launch them from pedestrian fame to glittering stardom, Taylor Swift’s ratings shot up after her acceptance speech at the 2009 Video Music Awards was rudely interrupted. Rapper Kanye West, not known for good manners, stormed the stage halfway through her limelight moment saying that Beyonce deserved the award instead. Though Beyonce later invited Swift on stage to finish her acceptance speech, the incident made West the laughing stock of the entertainment circuit and even the White House (Obama reportedly called him a jackass). It also made Swift palatable to the media. The 14 songs on Speak Now aim mischievous arrows at her exes by smartly stepping clear of lyrical clichés. Swift has said that her relationships offer copious grist for songwriting. “Better than Revenge” has her snarling cattily at a girl who stole her boyfriend. The line “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with” in “Dear John” is rumoured to be a swipe at John Mayer, on whose recent album Swift sang two lines. Those apart, there are fine touches in “Back to December”, “Speak Now” and “Haunted”. . . . → Read More: Taylor Swift – three times lucky Excerpt from the second of my cartoon strip/ columns for @iJanaagraha, a Bangalore civic awareness website, on the challenges of being a morning walker in the age of footpath invasion: For the better part of two decades my dad has been a compulsive morning walker. Before he retired, he’d hit the road at 5:45. To maintain that daily routine in our city’s too-good-to-leave-bed climes, you must be driven by desperation or determination. Maybe both. My dad had a better reason: it was the only time he had the footpath to himself. . . . → Read More: The morning walker’s nightmare I’m curious about how a wall becomes a magnet for micturition. Back when Sulabh complexes and Nirmala Bengaluru toilets were figments of fantasy, public toilets were fortresses of glazed tiles guarded by cows and dogs and hidden behind foothills of garbage and other fragrant surprises. Forget about pay-and-use, most people wouldn’t accept payment to use them. They preferred to commit the deed at a safe distance. In time, the toilet’s circle of influence extended a good fifty feet from the inner sanctum. These communal relief zones also performed another important function – olfactory land marking. . . . → Read More: City Zen – Regret the incontinence – why we pee where we shouldn’t Canadian indie art-rock band Arcade Fire tells patient, involved stories. Their music is artistic, layered and rich in instrumentation. Live, they flaunt the jigsaw bits that comprise the mosaic of their orchestral sound, performing with an ensemble of medieval museum showpieces like hurdy-gurdies and glockenspiels. . . . → Read More: Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ – Chart attack! Corruption – that quick and dirty practice of allowing money to change hands to get things done in a hurry – inhabits our lives so pervasively. And what’s all the fuss about white and black money? Anyone who has received a crisp 1000-rupee note for no lawful reason will tell you it is a pleasant, peachy pink. Well, sometimes it doesn’t involve money at all. Enterprising government servants will accept your contribution in kind, perhaps even kindness. . . . → Read More: What would we do without it? |
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