Our wonderful friend Sanya has several fantastic handmade screen prints up at her store on Etsy. And if the prints weren’t already cool enough, she is now offering FREE shipping all through December!! What a way to spread around the holiday cheer :)
Here’s a sample of her works:
She also has a series of daily drawings up on her blog.
As some of you know, my wife is a media artist. She recently won the Art vs. Design contest, organized by Artists Wanted. Her work PEEL, which was the winning entry, is also a contestant for the Celeste Prize. From their website:
An international prize for contemporary arts and a network for art professionals.
There are some really amazing videos in there. If you are interested in video art at all, I highly recommend checking out some of the entries. And of course, if you like Surabhi’s work, please vote for it! Here’s PEEL:
Artist: Euphoria
Media: CD
Year: 2006
Its official — Euphoria is my favorite desi band. Their consistency and quality just amazes me. I’ve done innumerable reruns of all three (the website says four…) of their albums and every now and then I would re-discover some song that had skipped my attention earlier. Across all their albums, there is no song I actively dislike, and a lot of songs that I actively like. That says something, doesn’t it :-) Anywho, naturally when I heard their 4th album, “Mehfuz” is out, I was excited.
I’m happy to announce that Euphoria is mehfuz with Mehfuz. The album is instantly recognizable as Euphoria — the beats, Palash’s voice, the music supple and crisp at the same time. There’s a good mix of songs — some fast (Zabr Bhoola, Dil) and some slow (Mehfuz, Sawera). The title song Mehfuz is just fabulous and my favorite so far. Beautiful lyrics and nice, soulful music. Doha is a pleasant departure from conventional pop, and it was refreshing to see them dabbling with english ballad-style “She’s beautiful”.
The other nice thing about this album is that it is very diverse in its sounds. There are shades of punjabi, konkani, bangla and marathi music sprinkled here and there. Highly recommended!!
… is perhaps the worst movie I’ve seen after coming to the US (or definitely, the worst movie experience!) Here’s why:
Alright, for starters this was a free screening for UCSD students. Passes were being distributed at the UCSD box offices. We had already picked up 4 passes and since the pass said “reach early” and “seating on a FCFS basis” we reached at 6:30 for the 7 pm show, only to find that the line had already become so long that it spilled out of Mandeville onto Gilman Drive!!! :-O
Ok, so these people are just as crazy about freebies as anyone else. But it was just the beginning. Sometime between 20 min and half an hour, we realized that the passes were no good—since the passes were actually passes for getting “red tickets” that would actually get you admission into the movie. And some guy came down shouting that they had sold out of all red tickets.
Great, just great. While Mac and Anish waited in the line, Kiran and I went up to scout things out. And while we were scouting, Mac and Anish got lucky with some blokes who were just handing out their red tickets—so they promptly got out of line and came up front looking for us. Meanwhile (ok, too many whiles I know) Kiran and I had managed to “squeeze” our way into the front little knowing that our passes were no good.
Mac and Anish soon joined us and gave the bad news. Dejected, we were just about to drop out of the line where I sighted a guy who was giving back 2 red tickets to one of the organizers—just our luck! I seized upon the guy without wasting a second and coaxed him into handing over the tickets to us. So far so good! We were so happy that luck was on our side this evening.
Ah well, that didn’t last long though. First we were made to go through an airport grade security check—and all laptops, cameras and even walkmen were confiscated :-O It took excruciatingly long to fill up the auditorium and the movie started almost 2 hours behind schedule. After the movie was over, it took another 30 min to retrieve our electronics and get out of that place.
But of course, if it was not for these exciting events, I wouldn’t have had anything to write about, for the movie itself was just plain pathetic. I could hardly grasp the story, let alone the big picture. Acting was mediocre, special affects wasted, not even enough skin show to hold us back. What are they counting on to pull this movie through???
