Thomas Kinkade

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Sanjiv

The richest painter in the world died yesterday, April 6th, 2012. He was young too – only 54. When you’ve crossed a Rubicon or two, you look at ages like that and swallow hard.  His wife Nanette apparently said it was natural causes, and there’s no reason to doubt her. There’s nothing so natural as getting your switch flicked out of the blue by the big man these days. Getting plucked out of thin fucking air.

I met him once, almost exactly 10 years ago. It was a story for the Times magazine. Kinkade was already the most collected painter in America and was turning over half a billion a year at the time in revenue – he’d managed to parlay a somewhat hokey art style into a massive brand. When I met him, he had a line of furniture, haberdashery, garden goods, mousepads… He even had Kinkade houses. He was a one-stop shop. An astonishing success story, and at the very top of his game, making fortunes. But the art world couldn’t stand him. They hated his brazen commercialism, his mass appeal, the consistency of his product (they were loathe to call Kinkade’s work “art”).

So I pitched it, and the Times said yes, great, top idea. Just like that. This was back in the days when they still had budgets enough to send you on a short haul flight, and stick you in a hotel maybe – a vestige of the magazine life of yore that would soon be ravaged by the internet and the recession.  We made a trip of it, me and the Mrs. We flew into San Jose, picked up a rental and met a couple there, friends of the artist, who we could follow back to Thomas’ enormous ranch. I remember they wore matching outfits – matching red, white and blue sweaters and pale blue jeans. We weren’t in the city anymore.

Kinkade was an interesting character. He had the confidence and swagger of a wealthy man, combined with the eagerness of a true believer. Christ, he said, was his inspiration; his art was a vehicle for the Good News. And yet, he was defensive – about his faith, his art. He had the indignation of a country boy who’d been denied entry to the club. He’d been shunned by the gatekeepers of the New York art world, and it had left a wound that even his colossal commercial success couldn’t heal.

As a journalist, you’re naturally supplicant to your subjects – it’s them you’re interested in, their enviable lives of achievement, while you’re just a cog in the delivery system. So when they die, these people, and the cog persists, you wonder – about how suddenly people disappear and what’s left of them when they’re gone. You wonder what it is we’re meant to be chasing. Dennis Hopper was another one. And David Hans Schmidt, the troubled “pornbroker” who hanged himself. And every time, it always turns me back to the article, that day our arcs intersected.

I remember that trip to his ranch. The horses he kept. The daffodil picture he was painting that day. It would have that same idyllic look to it, the twee bucolic fairyland that his critics so loathed, but that he painted hundreds, if not thousands of times. Thomas Kinkade was always consciously reaching for a kind perfection, a heaven on earth, a place to escape to. And now, his escape is complete.

The Times never ran my piece in the end for some reason – probably “not sexy enough” or “too American”. So no one has read it. And it’s a decade out of date. But I’ve decided to publish it in my archive all the same, as another tiny addition to his vast legacy.

Rest in peace Thomas Kinkade.

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Bombay Driver

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Sanjiv

Bombay Taxis

[This is an old feature I wrote for Quintessentially Magazine in 2009. They never sent me a copy of the mag, and it's not on their website either, so I thought, why not make it a blog? It's about 2000 words, so it's not bite size exactly. And it's not about finding the sunshine in LA either. But who cares? It's from another land, another life. A brief blast of the Bomb Bomb.)

“Hallo Sir! I am Das!” The call came every morning. It was my first week into a new job in Bombay – I was staying at the Taj hotel there – and the office had booked me a driver to take me to work in the mornings.

But Das wasn’t working out. He didn’t speak a lick of English (beyond the five words above) and he was never on time. So the next week they sent Philip whose English was fluent and timekeeping exemplary. But Philip would flap when there were traffic jams, which was always, and when he flapped, I would ask him to calm down, and that made him flap even more.

Then one morning, a new voice on the phone. Breathless, excited. “Hallo Sir! I am in Ready Position!”

It was Rohit, a shambles of a man in his thirties who wore grubby clothes, spoke comedy English and had an inexplicable enthusiasm for his job. I liked to picture him crouched down on the hotel forecourt, under starter’s orders, waiting for the pistol to go off. And the reality wasn’t far off – he’d see me come through the lobby and spring into action, rushing to open the door for me, his eyes bright with excitement. He seemed to find driving a joy, and tooted his horn like a maniac. But best of all, he wore a little blue Fez hat with gold tassels. ‘Ready Position’ was hired.

I’d never had a driver before coming to India. And I hadn’t planned on having one while I was in Los Angeles packing my bags. But once I emerged from Bombay airport, there was never any question that I would need one. If you’re not familiar with Indian traffic, imagine a world in which all order has perished and the lords of mayhem rule the earth. It’s not traffic so much as man and beast in a headlong charge, as though the bridge were collapsing behind them and a cash prize was waiting at the other end. Cars come within brushing distance, jostling along like corpuscles in an artery, creating bottlenecks and somehow wiggling through. Every risk is taken, every horn is tooted, and everyone has forgotten to take their meds.

So that was one reason. The other reason for hiring a driver was because I could, for the first time in my life. I would have hired Ready Position even if Indian traffic was as sane as Switzerland. ‘Chauffeur’ might sound all ritzy and French, but in Indian everyone’s got one. Well, not everyone, but you don’t have to be Lakshmi Mittal. You don’t even need a nice car. I had a Honda Civic, and even then, the car payment was more than the driver’s salary – which was all of $250. That’s the great thing about India – you don’t have to be anybody to be somebody.

This sudden availability of staff drives some expats a bit loopy. One French woman advised me in all seriousness to buy my driver a uniform with my initials embroidered on the breast pocket. ‘It makes them proud, you know?’ She also insisted that I get my money’s worth. ‘These drivers, they just sit around all day. Tell him to pick up your drycleaning!’

At the time, I was appalled. I couldn’t possibly treat Ready Position as some sort of errand boy. He was my chauffeur. He wore a Fez. But those were the early days when I was still adjusting to this new person in my car and my life.

In Los Angeles, I’d thought of my car as a sanctuary, a wonderful place to be alone. I’d take a drive to clear my thoughts, listen to some music and percolate. Perhaps talk to myself like a crazy person. The open road as therapy. But now, there was this other guy, whom I scarcely knew, and he was always there. I’d lost my sanctuary, and I wasn’t sure what I’d gained in its place. Was Ready Position a friend, now? I’d hired him because he seemed happy and bonkers and he wore a Fez. But then I ended up spending more alone time with him than anyone else. It’s oddly intimate, the relationship between a driver and his boss. We went everywhere together – obviously – and that meant several hours every day, going to and from work, then off to some bar afterwards, or a friend’s house, or the shops. He saw me in all kinds of moods – happy, tired, irritable, drunk, wistful, scatterbrained. And I hadn’t bargained on a relative stranger suddenly knowing quite so much about me. I felt naked.

Bombay Market

At first, I tried to level things out and find out about him too. Perhaps in time, I’d be able to visit his home as he’d visited mine. I didn’t want to be one of those snooty back seat executives who just rustled their newspapers and barked orders. I would close the gap and forge a proper bond with Ready Position – stop calling him Ready Position for one thing.

But that didn’t go over so well. We would be chatting away happily enough – Tarzan Hindi meets Tarzan English – but he’d tell me that his home was ‘very far distance’, and he had to travel two hours to pick me up in the morning, too far to take me, by all accounts. When I suggested that I might sit up the front with him, he squirmed. The front of the car was his domain, his office. He kept his things on the front seat – his little notebook to log mileage, his Fez. And when we were out at the shops, it felt wrong to just leave him behind while I popped into Starbucks for a frappuccino. So I’d invite him in – tell him to park and join me. But he looked uncomfortable.

‘Price is too much, sir,’ he said.

‘Rohit, relax, I’m paying.’

‘No sir. Better I stay. In ready position.’

Ultimately, it was he who suggested that he pick up my dry cleaning for me. ‘Why you come sir? I will bring um… this thing and you can enjoy!’ I didn’t take much persuading. And soon enough, he became precisely the Man Friday that the French woman had told me about. While I was at work, he’d be off buying lightbulbs or picking up take-out or taking the dogs to the vet – any of a hundred different errands. And he seemed perfectly happy to do all this. I’d thank him and tip him, and he’d say, ‘No sir, this is my duty!’ But he always took the money. Maybe this was what he’d wanted all along, the tips. Or maybe he just liked driving about town on his own, listening to music, clearing his thoughts. The car was his sanctuary now.

We settled into a rhythm, one in which a certain distance had been established between the front and back seats. We didn’t chat quite so much, but that was OK – he’d leave me in peace to read my paper, and I’d leave him to swelter out in the sun rather than join me for a milkshake. And all was well in the world. This was a dynamic that he was familiar with, and the car became a restful place to be. Months went by in which I never experienced road rage or found myself fretting over a map, or had to take the car in for a servicing. I got some reading done. I made some calls. I had a drink whenever I felt like it. Such is life in the back seat. And I forgot where the dry cleaners were, or how much lightbulbs cost. Ready Position did all that. I was unburdened.

It no longer felt awkward to have this mute witness to my every mood sitting in the car with me. While at first, my wife and I would be careful not to bicker in the car – ‘not in front of the driver!’ – we soon eased into our usual squabbling. I’d happily tell Ready Position to drive gently so that I could attempt a snooze. He had become that silent presence in our lives, a role that staff play for their masters. They only participate when called upon. They judge not, they are there to serve. And I have to say, I can see the appeal.

But then the niggles began to gnaw. The back seat can be an awfully boring place after a while. You just can’t properly enjoy a car unless you’re driving it. I never understood the Indians I met who’d tell me excitedly about their brand new car, but then only ever sit in the back. I’d always enjoyed driving back in LA – engaging with the machine, pushing the pedals and fiddling with all the buttons and switches. I liked the feeling of control and purpose, and still do. You’re a man of action in the front; in the back, you’re emasculated, your limbs are idle and you depend on others. And dependence can be crippling. When Ready Position took a week off for a wedding, we didn’t just lose a driver, we lost all these different people at once – the lunch delivery, the laundry pick up and all the rest of it. We were hopeless, stranded. This is the byproduct of staff – they infantilize you.

Push came to shove when spring turned to summer and the heat was like murder. I was fine, up in my air conditioned office all day, but Ready Position was out by the car, in the beating sun, and come the afternoon, he’d be sweating like a soul man – Rorschach sweat maps on his chest and sopping underarms. And the whiff wasn’t your ordinary locker room funk, but something far more acrid and deadly – a choking ammonia stench, thick with spices. It made the bile rise and the eyes water. They could have used Ready Position’s armpits to quell riots.

What to do? Either I opened the windows and let the heat in, which was a separate punishment all its own, or I closed them and sealed myself in a box of weapons-grade stink. My Indian friends were unequivocal – ‘buy him some deodorant! Tell him it’s summer and everyone has to use it now. You’re the boss!’

Well, something had to be done. I could barely breathe in there. So I broached the subject one afternoon, when the odor was ripe and clinging. ‘The car isn’t fresh anymore, Rohit,’ I said, sniffing conspicuously, trying not to gag. And I handed him some Right Guard spray-on, which he assured me that he would use. But nothing changed – I later discovered that he was using it to spray the mats and the seats. So the next time, I actually demonstrated how to use the stuff. And he looked embarrassed. ‘Sir, every day, I am bath,’ he said. ‘Five am, I am bath, sir.’

About three weeks later, he found another job. He said it was near where he lived, so there would be no more two hour commutes. But I think I know the real reason. And I still feel awful about it. Then a year after that, I moved back to America, where I drive myself about as I did before – back in the front seat, engaging with the machine.

But I often think of my former chauffeur. And not just because I could do with his help – who doesn’t miss their Man Friday? – but because Ready Position showed me something about India, something important. It remains one of my most cherished memories from my time there.

Barely a week after Ready Position left, I found myself out of a job. A crushing blow. And as we languished at home, my wife and I, confused and hurt by what had happened, there was a knock at the door. It was Ready Position. He looked devastated for some reason. My first thought was that he’d lost his job, and wanted to come back. I was bracing myself to tell him my own news.

‘Sir, I am bad feeling,’ he said. ‘You are good person.’ And he burst into tears, properly crumpled up. Through the sobs, he said that he’d heard from his driver friends that I’d lost my job and I might have to leave India. And he felt so bad about it that when his boss took a few days leave, he came up on the bus to see me. He wasn’t my driver anymore, but he would be happy to drive me around if I needed, free of charge. Anything I needed.

‘I am here for you, sir,’ he said. ‘In ready position.’

Bombay At Dusk

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Confessions

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Sanjiv

I’m not going to pretend. It’s neglect, guilty as charged. If my blog was a baby, Child Protection would have me up on charges: “you didn’t change the poor thing for months.” And it’s true. Months have passed in which I moved apartment, to a whole new part of LA, did a bunch of readings, worked in Vegas, San Francisco and New York and met celebrities and all sorts—months in which there was plenty to blog about, if I wanted.

And yet, here I am, slouching through the door, the deadbeat dad, a guilty shrugger who can’t even look his own home page in the eye anymore. I’m not proud. Scrape away the smirk and it’s all shame underneath, I promise you. I just couldn’t face that relic of a post about the grocery stores anymore. It was a rebuke, a nagging shrew on the landing. What time do you call this? Where have you been anyway?

I won’t bore you with excuses, though there are plenty whirling about right now, like shreds of paper at a landfill. All I can think about is the encouragement and advice I received when this blog was about to launch. Those kind souls who said, “that’s great Sanj”, “it’s your shop-window” and “it’s so important for journalists to get out there…” There’s a summoning of hopes that takes place around the dying embers of December, a way of rinsing out the regrets of the year just gone, and convincing ourselves once more that new years are in fact new beginnings. That’s where this blog was born, in late 2010, out of a seasonal surge of big hearted, sunny-smiled si se puede.

I’m told that at this point in life, I mustn’t chastise myself for such lapses. It’s better to, if not embrace them, then at least forgive. Because this is shared dirt. None of us sinners stand alone. We begin things with exuberance only to falter and fill with doubts:  “What is this blog even about? What’s the point of it? Who cares?” And as the voices clamor, the confidence crumbles and the serpents of self-loathing start to slither.

I don’t pretend to understand these things. I’m just sharing. But what I do know is that sharing is easier now that I have confessed. I feel that I can tell you all kinds of secrets now. And perhaps I will. I also know that this blog is not a shop window, really. Shop windows have displays. They’re tainted by marketing. They long only to be admired. This blog is different. It’s not a representation, it’s the thing itself. If you can’t see a man’s innards, then what’s the point?

I have a treadmill in the garage, I call it my ongoing dust-gathering experiment. But tomorrow, I’m going to get on that thing, you watch. It’s late December and, just like last year, I can feel the animal currents, the primitive emotions, pull me again towards that hopeful horizon where change is possible and I am the architect. So what if it wanes? We all buckle over eventually. For now, I’m surfing this wave right through the champagne crest of the 31st and into next year, 2012—the Mayan Year Of The Blog.

More soon

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Them Apples

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Sanjiv

You move country and your brain changes. What’s new and startling at first becomes quickly familiar—the jolt gets muffled—as new memories are banked, new synapses built and new grooves etched over the old. But ever since I moved to LA a decade ago, so help me, one of those jolts has stayed with me. It won’t die, it’s too primal. I’m talking about when you’re in a grocery store and it hits you: Sweet Jesus, the plenty. It’ll make you go blind.

The first time I moved to the plenty was from England, where the local Tescos was more human in scale, more head height and conceivable. The bounty of America knocked me sideways. Over eight years, I grew more and more accustomed—complacent is another word. And then we moved to India, where food shopping, or “marketing”, is a cramped scrum of dirt and barging in a sweatbox, a fight for the last scabbed potato in the bucket. It’s such a savage business out there that they leave it to the staff, a matter for the slaves. So to return from that to LA is all the more extreme. A visceral experience. Giddy.

Shopping Aisle distorted, sanjivb.com

I could rhapsodise about them all – a bog standard Ralphs on Crenshaw would do – but since we’re doing this, let’s wander the palaces. And by palaces, I mean places like Wholefoods on 3rd , for instance, that organic wonderland of gluten-free yoga girls with their mats rolled up under their arms. Or – and this is my current favorite, the Everest of the genre – the gay Pavilions on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Bo Derek shops. It’s so huge it messes with your perspective, like the Grand Canyon. And there’s something profound about engaging with such a vision of abundance. Lately, a trip to Pavilions has been less about shopping as epiphany.

Some days, in the afternoons, when the traffic is light, it’s as empty as a dream. I can turn a corner and see no one—it’s just me, my cart and this vast eatable landscape. Great cliffs of apples to my left, their dimples catching the tube light, and on my right, the waxy slopes of Lemon and Orange, with their bright bobbled crests, behind which in the distance, you can see a diverse province of onions, ranges of white, red, yellow and sweet Hawaiian. Up ahead is a misty forest of sprinkled greens and shoots and trees. I like to go rambling in those hills, alert for cougars as always, marvelling at the new species like broccolini and pluots.

We know that architects construct these citadels of plenty to best exploit our natural impulses and patterns. They put the candy near the checkout for a reason. They have explored decision fatigue, our preferences for lighting, aroma, aisle width and shelf height. We become lab rats in these places. But we also know that our brains physically and chemically adapt to the environments we create. So the patterns converge, brain and blueprint. It’s not unreasonable to think that the more time we spend in these superstores, the more the grooves and channels of our brains will conform to supermarket aisles.

But there are anxieties to all this. The anxiety of choice is one—the 47 varieties of all things. Another is the creeping erasure of our primal relationship with food, any hunting or farming instincts we once had. And then the extravagance. The dwarfing scale. The staggering, obscene abundance. All these imports, from Fiji, Peru, Switzerland and every other place, all arranged perfectly, so the labels turn to face you and everything gleams and winks, even the floors.

I come to Pavilions and I’m gobsmacked, I marvel and gasp,  but ultimately I feel diminished, even humiliated. Amid all this perfection, I notice my bed hair, pot belly and grubby T-shirt. What self-respect I manage to leave the house with is whittled—Pavilions reduces me to a gaping ape with a pushcart, witnessing some lavish performance I neither requested nor can quite comprehend. I become a boy king, squirming at all the fuss that has been made just for me. Because I can’t fathom the trillion processes that it took to create this. All I know for sure is that I am not worthy – how could I be? No emperor in history has seen such casual abundance on the scale of the Boystown Pavilions—Caesar would weep at this shit and Alexander would kneel and pray.

They ought to airlift Darfurian refugees into the sheer pornography of the produce section, just so they can see us Angelenos, us sunbaked Americans in our stonewash and our Juicy couture, with our fat rolls and Lakers shirts, how we shuffle through the aisles, grunt and grab, and get pissed off if we forget the olives, because now we’ve got to all the way back, and it’s fucking miles.

I reach the checkout, blinking and ashamed. Pavilions is a reminder of just how fortunate and spoiled we are—the ingratest generation, full of urges and wants, who earned nothing and received everything. Present a savage with perfection and he just might recoil.

Posted in Change, Happiness, Home, India, Los Angeles, Politics, poverty | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Secrets & Wives @ Skylight Books

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Sanjiv

Clips from the launch of “Secrets & Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy” on Vimeo.

So the launch was fun. A while ago now but still. (I’m a bit of a slowtard with Windows Movie Maker).

And it was a minor miracle how the whole thing came together.

The phone went and suddenly I had all of three weeks to fill a trendy book store full of people and give some kind of speech. So I did what any rational adult would do in those circumstances. I shat my pants.

I don’t have a vast number of friends, as I’ve mentioned before—I’m not one of those “connectors” or “hubs” or “likeable people”—and the prospect of public speaking just makes me reach for the Depends.

But it all worked out. It takes a village to launch a book it seems. A village with a wife in it, to be precise. Because my wife has friends, plenty of them and they’re all lovely charming people who understand the importance of milestones and showing up to stuff. So they came, they laughed and bought a shit load of books. They asked questions and drank wine, and when a mad woman with knockers down to her navel threatened to disrupt things by answering her phone in the middle of my speech, the redoubtable Rebecca Field pulled her to one side and—if Adam Lamb is to be believed—slapped her about a bit.

Look at these fine people. I mean seriously.

Secrets & Wives book launch

If you go to Los Feliz, buy a book at Skylight. Independent bookstores are the last remnants of civilization and they need your support. And if you fancy a drink afterwards, check out Vinoteca around the corner. Ceviche! That’s where we went after the event to get trolleyed on Pinot Noir.

There’s a podcast of the speech here. And there’ll be updates about future events on the book’s facebook page.

Posted in Books, Change, Happiness, Journalism, Los Angeles, Polygamy, Secrets & Wives, Vanity, Work | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Promo Sapiens

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Sanjiv

Sanjiv Bhattacharya at launch event of his book Secrets & Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy

The theory is that writers write all day, untainted by grubby commerce, while the publicity sell-sell stuff is handled by the merchant wing of the book trade.

This theory is garbage.

To publish a book is to realize—as though it weren’t already plain—that the dirt of commerce sullies us all. There’s no high ground to reach for, the tsunami is already here. You think you became a proper writer with a book and all, but instead, you stopped writing, there’s no time, you’re in the promotion department now. And worst of all, you’re promoting yourself.

But there was never any choice. Wiser heads took you aside and sat you down said, “Mr Writer, listen up. No one cares about your silly little book, all they care about is buzz and sales and numbers. So just get out there and sell the thing—have a bath, cut your hair and go from door to social media door selling your precious baby like a two dollar whore. Because that’s what you are now, a book hooker, a street corner chapter hustler, you’ll flash your foreword at them and let them rummage through your contents, but the epilogue, honey, that’s extra. You got bills. They multiplying. Why should a publicist do your dirty work for you? This is the me-me-me generation, not the he-he-he.”

So life changes. I’ve drunk from the chalice of social Me-dia  and tweeted and twatted and wrote countless Me-mails to total strangers in Manhattan, the gatekeepers of all things, the masters of my universe. I’ve tiptoed down that razor’s edge between apology and pleading, then between pleading and confidence, and then between confidence and arrogance. These digital interfaces help. If you’re going to accost a stranger with a trumpet solo, do it online. I did this, I did that, I’m Totally Amazing Look At Me. I’ve got to the stage now I can hand cards out without dying inside. I’ve filled out comment forms on the Contact Us parts of websites. I’ve pitched, I’ve bitched. I’m cheap—$16.95 and I’ll sign it for you too. Me sign you long time.

Don’t be hating. Pity the poor QVC book slut who has lost all shame. Throw a bone to the word whore, selling nouns by the pound and practicing his lines in front of the mirror like a freak.

Here’s some things I do now that I never did before:

I comment on stories in African newspapers. I get involved in African issues. I set up a Google Alert for the words “polygamy” and “Mormon” so that I can add comments to the blogs or news postings, and inject a link to my site. Quite often there are articles about Muslim polygamy in Jakarta, or African polygamy in Uganda. I don’t care. Whores don’t discriminate. They have Amazon in Uganda, right?

I comment till the early hours. Before I was happy just to watch, but now I need more. Voyeurism’s not enough, I’m getting in the tub, people, see if I don’t. I’ve waded into that Republican cesspool, the Wall Street Journal, fists swinging like that muppet on the drums. I’ve dropped some snark and pithy into HuffPO, Truthdig, ABCNews, CNN. And I get into comment spats. I’m one of those people. I’ll see some snarky comeback from some virtual douche and it’s on, Me vs the Petit Doucheoisie until my food’s cold, the sky has turned dark and it’s three in the fucking morning.

I get anxiety now that I’m not on television. Seriously. This is how whores suffer. Their jaws ache, their knees get chafed and they wonder why CNN isn’t calling. I’m not going to be happy until Anderson Cooper himself calls to say, “Sanchez, can I call you that? We’re going to have a hundred experts spouting on about polygamy, it’s going to be polygapalooza, so why not join them, come and bask in the glow of my snowy white hair and get that sprinkle of fame dust into the bargain?”

But the call never comes. Mormons are on Newsweek, the Tony awards, they’re running for President and the phone doesn’t ring. The Sister Wives family wants to decriminalize polygamy, Warren Jeffs is flaming out all over ABC, CBS, HLN, MSNBC and my phone just sits there like an idiot. And I’m thinking—why can’t I be on TV? I’m a polygamy expert! Me me me me me!

OK I’m off to change out my Whitestrips. Promo Sapiens is well and truly out of his cave.

Posted in Blogging, Books, Change, Journalism, Los Angeles, Polygamy, Secrets & Wives, Vanity, Work | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Sanjiv

Every year seems more apocalyptic than the last. It’s like a rule. Twenty-eleven looked innocuous at first, an interstitial sort of number, with no particular ring, not beloved of Nostradamus or the Mayans or anyone really. And yet we’ve had Haiti, Fukushima, that Harold Camping and his Rapture blah, and now the debt ceiling fiasco which according to the Nonstop News threatens to return the world to a state only Cormac McCarthy has dared to dream.

But that’s OK. We’re used to a spot of doom out here on the left coast. They thought Carmageddon would finish us off, the closure of a freeway, but we barely noticed. We scoffed. We cocked a snook. We’re so close to The End in LA—aka The Precipice aka The Fucking Brink—that they named the place “angels”. Except it’s Spanish so you pronounce it Los An-hell-es, with Hades right there at its heart.

Drop me in the water. Wash me down.

But so much for what looms. Best to focus on the positive, that’s what people say. According to Darwin, we’re optimists by nature, it’s in our code. Optimistic savages and only the hopeful survive. So here’s a spoonful of sugar. (But just one—too much sugar will kill you. That’s another thing people say).

Sluts, Dury, Detroit and Legal Weed

Mayer Hawthorne’s new single, a sort of Steely Dan slash Curtis number, a nodder, a bopper, a proper lifter upper. It’s a salute to Detroit, as it scrapes back from its own private apocalypse. “It’s gonna take a long time. It’s gonna take it but we’ll make it one day.”

You know when dogs poop or pee and start kicking dirt with their little hind legs? That’s joy right there. Some say they’re trying to spread their scent all around, others that they’re trying to bury their mess. But I don’t buy it. Because they always miss—they’re always about a foot to the left, kicking irrelevant dirt around like it’s the most fun anyone could have. I say they’re just happy— they take a shit and do a little dance, a little James Brown I Feel Good. And why the fuck not?

The Weiner scandal. It’s old I know, but I miss it already. What a beautiful thing to live in a time where scandals are name appropriate. If only this happened more often. Speaker Boner would be out the door. Congressman Dick Neal from Massachusetts would do well to avoid Rep. Cummings from Maryland. I’m not sure what happens with Senator Sam Brownback, but it sounds filthy. And as for Senator Rimjob from Kentucky…

The annihliation of Rick Santorum by Dan Savage was a thing of beauty. And so easy. This breakdown by Rotten.com tells the story. Evidently, all you need to do to keep someone out of the White House is redefine his name as something gross and get everyone to Google it. So let’s get moving. Let’s turn Pawlenty into smegma and Romney into spunkbutter. It’d make the New Hampshire primaries worth watching.

Masturbation is a cure for restless leg syndrome. Also restless cock syndrome. Also boredom. Presumably this means you can get a prescription for porn.

Weed is legal now in Connecticut, so all those Rastafarians with glaucoma who go to Yale can—wait, hold it in, long as you can… OK now—breathe a sigh of relief. Clearly this is a landmark ruling. I asked one such Ivy League rasta about it the other day and he said, “lissen bredda, dem pussy klaat Connecticut legislature nuff vex me up. Dem a galang lakka seh repeated clinical studies have demonstrated inna sexy body gyal big up all yoot.” Which is good advice, even if you’re not vegetarian.

Nancy Pelosi. Yes, I know. But this is what it’s come to. Obama  just volunteered to do what Bush could only fantasize about—to shred the safety net, sell out the elderly and the handicapped and turn America into Africa where flies crawl into the mouths of dying orphan babies and nobody cares.  He even bragged that by dropping his pants  and bending over for his “colleagues in the House”, he was being a grown-up and “getting things done”. This time would be different he said. This time he would ask for lube.  Meanwhile Eric Cantor’s telling the world: “Lube is off the table. Astroglide is a job-killer which America can’t afford at this time.”

In the face of this heist, the only prominent Democrat with the stones to say “hell no” was Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats are such damp invertebrates that their cojones are in the custody of an old harridan named Nancy. Good on her.

Anonymous—that faceless army of hacker renegades and revolutionaries are sticking up for the little guy when no one else could give two shits. They’ve been on a rampage this year and remain our best hope to unsettle the powerful, the desiccated lizards in charge. And I salute them. Go on Anonymous, invade the rich and bully them. Vandalize their pages. Rape their hard drives and publish their emails. Murdoch needn’t be the only magnate brought low by hacking.

The way FOX news people squirm around the whole News Corp stink is a joy. For years these lockstep propagandists have pretended to be a news organization, and here we have a giant news story breaking on both sides of the Atlantic, and they’re like MC Hammer—they can’t touch it. We report, they decide to look the other way. Contrast this with the way that NPR’s David Folkenflik covered the debates about NPR funding back when the Repugs were blaming Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me for the ballooning deficit. One of these organizations is a national treasure.

Marcus Bachmann. Because he can’t be parodied. A closeted Christian “pray the gay away”  conservative who in his heart is as gay as Glee. As gay as blancmange. As gay as the cast of Glee eating blancmange and watching Sex & The City reruns. But he’s why Michelle will never run this country, so for that alone, dear Jesus, we are grateful.

Slutwalks have gone global. Even Korea and India have joined in the fun. And the rise of public sluttery in the name of feminism is surely a win-win for both genders. It’s possible though, that the message might be better driven home if the sluts were drunk. Because, my ya ya sisters, drunkenness isn’t consent either. I can think of no more powerful feminist statement than a parade of drunken slappers in microminis and clear heels staggering down the street, stopping only to pee in a drain. Like Newcastle-upon-Tyne after ten o’clock. Perhaps they could combine these drunken slutwalks with those trendy downtown art walks? (If there are any sluts reading this, do get in touch, perhaps we can knock a few ideas around.)

The brilliant Ian Dury on Reasons to Be Cheerful Part 3. “A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it, You’re welcome, we can spare it. Yellow socks.” Where is the Ian Dury movie? Come on England, make it happen.

Posted in Blogging, Books, Change, Happiness, Home, Los Angeles, Music, Politics, poverty | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Secrets Out

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Sanjiv

Invitation to launch of Secrets & Wives at Skylight Books, on June 18th

A few days ago, the book went on sale in shops and now there’s a launch party coming up and I gotta say, this is no small thing for me.  Not because it’s some great book or anything—you be the judge—but Jesus, the saga, the fucking trilogy it took to get here. I used to just blasé my way through shit like this, but not any more. It’s time to stop and realize a little, take some stock. Because that’s what happens when you get older. You give a milestone its due. It’s the upside of ageing and mortality, the flipside of all the crow’s feet and hangovers.

It started a whole lifetime ago, this book. Two lifetimes, maybe three. Between the writing and the Kindle download I’ve moved five times and been around the world like Lisa Stansfield. I had jobs, I wore suits. I fucked my ankle and my back and let’s not even go into the other wounds, the internal bleeding. But that’s what happens when you move your life to Bombay and get stabbed in the back and kicked in the teeth, only to return to LA, then back to India, Delhi this time, then over to Connecticut and back to LA again. My life was turned upside itself and over again. I was in a tumble dryer that was trapped in a barrel and tossed out to sea. And everywhere I went I had this book in my suitcase.

I remember when, in the bowels of the 2009 depression, my book caught a sniper’s bullet out of the clear blue sky. It started out an ordinary enough day when this giggling goomah went out on a date with her wiseguy, her Moltisanti, but then someone shot her in the head before dessert. Picture a dead orphan on the side of the road. I’m not even going to lie about the buckets of weeping. Think about Delhi in the monsoon and all the filth and wailing and gnashing. You can bring the entire string section in for this bit, tell the director to go montage, slo-mo, close up, all that. Fetch the Kleenex, we’re going to be here a while.

But when it’s done, can you hear Jimmy Cliff? Wonderful world, beautiful people. It’s a new dawn. You know what happens next. You know the Lazarus story.

David Foster Wallace said something about how our lives are so governed by connections and encounters that we neither control, understand nor even know, that it’s near impossible not to wonder about a higher power or force at play. I’m not going to argue. I still don’t understand how or why the defibrillators came out and went BAM! but they did. And like a miracle, the orphan’s up again with a new agent and a new publisher. For a whole year, it gimped around the track, all battered and heroic like the person who comes last in the marathon, the person who really ought to win the prize. (Why reward speed when you could reward suffering? Life isn’t about speed).

Then a strange thing happened. As it scraped around that last bend into the home strait, Secrets & Wives suddenly straightened out like Keyser Soze and marched to the finish line. Today, you you can Kindle it, or Nook it, or iBook it or just plain ship the shit out of it. And it can be found in all corners—my mate Bryan Malone got his copy and he’s in New Zealand.

So come to the launch and raise a glass with me. It’ll be a lovely summer’s evening in Los Feliz. I’m going through all that pre-natal anxiety – ‘what if no one shows up and the microphone doesn’t work and my pants fall down and everyone laughs?’ But these are wisp clouds, they will pass.

What matters is the ritual. To give a milestone its due. I gave birth to a word-baby, 352 pages, which must be presented to the world and set it on its way.  It’s the way things should be. God knows, it’s been a long time coming. I talk about the gestation period and blue whales spit out their plankton: “Three years! Sister you crazy! Nuh-uh! Oh hayle no!” (That’s how blue whales talk).

Saturday June 18th, 5pm – Skylight Books in Los Feliz. Here’s where to RSVP.

See you there.

Posted in Books, Change, Happiness, Home, India, Journalism, Los Angeles, Polygamy, Work | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Shot To Death

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Sanjiv

There’s been a development in the Fabienne Cherisma story. If the name doesn’t mean anything, let me quickly fill you in.

Fabienne was a 15 year old girl from Port-Au-Prince in Haiti who, in the aftermath of the earthquake, on January 19th, 2010, was shot in the head by either police or security forces. The country was devastated, a quarter of million people were feared dead and the looting was underway. It’s believed that police were firing warning shots to disperse the looters when a bullet struck Fabienne – a tragedy upon a tragedy upon a tragedy.

But Fabienne’s end is where the story starts. Because once she’d been shot, she was shot again and again – but by cameras this time.  Her corpse became one of the defining images of the earthquake. In fact, the image of her lying dead on the slope with oblivious looters in the background has struck such a chord that of the 15 international photographers who took her picture, five have won awards.  Pictures like these:

But of all the pictures of Fabienne Cherisma, one has really caused a stir – this image of photojournalists just going about their business:

Prison Photography has covered the controversy with great sensitivity and intelligence over the last year or so. Interviews with photographers, accounts of the actual events – if you’re after the facts, that’s the place to go. Because it’s clearly not straightforward – whatever revulsion we feel at seeing these photographers clustered there like vultures, these people have done more than any of us in drawing attention to Haiti’s plight, and they’ve risked their own lives in the process. So they’re actually heroes. Is this what heroism looks like?

Anyway, here’s the latest. On May 14, it was reported that Lucas Oleniuk won a National Newspaper Award in Canada, becoming the fifth photographer of Fabienne’s corpse to be honored. And  a few hours later, the Jury received an impassioned email from one of the photojournalists who was apparently crouched next to Lucas on that day in Haiti. That email has come into my possession and I’m going to share it with you today in full.

I ought to warn you – it’s emotional and it pulls no punches. It really takes you inside what it feels like to be one of those frontline photographers whose work we see, but about whom we know so little.

—-

Dear Jury,

When I started out as a photographer, people would tell me that this business would make me hard, and as time went on, I wouldn’t be affected so much by the things I saw. But that’s not true. I’ve been shooting wars and disasters for ten years now and yet when I look at Lucas’s picture of Fabienne Cherisma, I get overcome with emotion. Anger, frustration, helplessness. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve cried on occasion. The truth is that it never gets easier to witness things like this. And this photo in particular really got to me. I was raised a Catholic, but I have to wonder – if there is a God, how could He allows this kind of injustice?

The facts, as you know, are clear. I was sitting right next to Lucas that day, and I took the same picture as he did. But no one gave me an award. I didn’t even get an honorable mention.

I know what you’re thinking – maybe it was out of focus, it wasn’t composed properly or whatever. Bullshit! When I say “same picture”, I mean “exactly fucking identical.” Same corpse, same looters, same everything. If one award had been given, then all right, I could have stomached that. Maybe two at a push. But five? It’s like some kind of sick joke. If there was anything fair and just in this world then I’d have something on my mantelpiece too. But no – what this picture tells me is that life isn’t fair, it’s just a fucked-up lottery where some people get all the breaks in life and other people get tossed to the side, and it’s all totally random.

Don’t get me wrong, the photo deserves recognition. It’s a great picture. It’s powerful and evocative and it transports me right back to that terrible day in Haiti. I remember the looters all around and the panic in the air. I remember the stench of death and dust in my nostrils, and that uneasy fear you feel when all around you is chaos and confusion. But even then I had a rock I could cling to, a truth that could sustain me through all this – I knew that this picture would win me awards. Beyond Fabienne’s poignant corpse I could see a trophy on my mantelpiece, maybe a new agent, maybe a meeting with Magnum. Over the howl of dogs and the wail of dying babies, I could hear the applause as I made my way to the podium.

Photojournalists are used to seeing terrible things. We’re no strangers to man’s inhumanity to man. We have nightmares, sure. But when we wake up in the morning, we grab our cameras and we go to work. That isn’t just what we do – it’s who we are.

But there isn’t one of us out there on the front lines that hasn’t seen something so horrifying that it changes us, maybe forever. An image that makes the world look different forever more. I know that I’ll never forget that ordinary Sunday morning when I checked my email, and there it was – a press release in my inbox with the subject line “Lucas Oleniuk becomes the fifth photographer to…” I couldn’t read on. I had to look away. I could feel my world falling apart even then.

I never thought I would say this, but I don’t know if I’ll be picking up my camera again. I’m not the same person I was before Haiti.

Yours

[name concealed]

—-

Here are some links to the excellent work mentioned in this post:

National Newspaper Awards winners

The excellent Prison Photography articles about Fabienne Cherisma

Lucas Oleniuk’s vimeo site

Paul Hansen’s site

Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Edward Linsmier

Nathan Weber

Posted in Journalism, Politics, Vanity, Work, photography, poverty | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Out With The Old

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Sanjiv

Something seismic is taking place in the Repugnican party and it’s got us loyal supporters a bit concerned.

For the first time in decades, a key GOP demographic – the Stupids – is beginning to question the party’s ideology. According to recent reports, elderly Stupids in the South are actually speaking up in town hall meetings. And this is not good. Because no Reputrican can get elected in 2012 without the Stupids on board.

The Stupids are that thick – really thick – seam of ordinary Americans who have been voting against their economic interests for decades. The kind of salt-of-the-earth poor folk who who look in the mirror and see a rich person, the way anorexics look in the mirror and see a fat person. Except anorexics know they’re dying (they hate themselves) whereas the Stupids are oblivious (they love themselves). All they know for sure is that they are the bestest people in America. That and the fact that President Obama is a Muslim from Africa.

But now they’re angry. They’re standing in their living rooms shaking their dentures at the TV screen and babbling incoherently. Some are urinating over themselves. It’s a terrible scene. And this is the guy that’s done it to them:

The Ryan Plan For America

Congressman Paul Ryan is the chairman of the house budget committee and occasional drowner of kittens.

According to the Stupids, Ryan’s proposed budget isn’t simply “bold” and “courageous” like they say on FOX. They’re concerned that it will destroy the social safety net in order to pay for a new round of summer mansions and Lear jets for millionaires. They’re worried that Seniors will be left to rot while Ivanka picks out her new yacht. The sick will die in the streets while Real Housewives buy themselves new tits.

All of which is true. But if you look a little closer at the Ryan Plan, it truly is a visionary document, full of fresh ideas to put America back on a path to greatness. You need to read the small print to understand why the GOP top brass have so eagerly endorsed this plan. There’s a reason that Speaker Boner’s got a boner (which is no mean achievement at his age).

Here are a few highlights that the liberal media has omitted to mention so far:

  1. The rich vacation in every season, not just summer. So the Ryan Plan doesn’t simply provide the wealthy with new summer homes, but with new homes for spring, fall and winter too. This will in turn trickle down long term jobs for nannies, gardeners and other assorted serfs.
  2. Ryan is not some run of the mill Congressman. He’s the most advanced Capitalist Android currently working on Capitol Hill. Top scientists spent years honing Ryan’s circuitry – he’s been so carefully programmed that he smiles at exactly the point that he cuts essential services. So his budget plan can’t be compared to that of an ordinary human. It’s like chess – the supercomputers tend to win.
  3. By killing Medicare, the Ryan Plan not only eliminates “waste” – ie. seniors, sick people, hobos etc. – it also offers them a much nobler future. Why wither in a hospice at $5000 per month, shitting your pants every ten minutes when you could be serving your country by working for the private sector?

Some of the ideas that have been proposed by entrepreneurs include:

  • Employ the terminally ill in live Hollywood stunts, as suggested by Bill Hicks. By using actual people in explosions and shootouts, our entertainment industry will profit and seniors will get to realize a dream of starring in a Hollywood movie.
  • Use old people as bombs by dropping them out of planes. In tests, dropping a 90 kilo geriatric from two thousand feet can cause significant damage to enemy property while also curbing defense spending at a time when we’re fighting three separate wars. A win-win. (Morbidly obese may also apply).
  • In the case of a nuclear disaster like Fukushima, our least productive citizens could be air dropped into the disaster site to soak up the radiation. Why burden insurance companies with expensive chemotherapy treatments when existing cancer patients can plug the leak and save lives?
  • The car industry always requires crash test dummies… You’re way ahead of me.

In short, let the private sector address our Senior Surplus. Big Government is not the answer. Let the market decide on an appropriate and cost-effective role for veterans and poor people and cripples. So long as our CEOs, our job creators, are free to gold-plate their house plants or surgically rejuvenate their trophy wives’ vaginas, Wall Street will remain confident, morale will soar like the Eagle and America will rule from sea to shining sea.

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