Ali Binazir

Last night I finally had the chance to watch a movie that I had on my ‘must see’ list for a couple of centuries — Tous Les Matins du Monde (1991), directed by Alain Corneau, after a novel by Pascal Quignard.  It’s a fictional story based on historical characters.  Gérard Depardieu plays Marin Marais, a viola da gamba player and court musician to Louis XIV.  As a young man (played by Depardieu’s son Guillaume), Marais was a student of M. Sainte-Colombe, a recluse after the death of his young wife.

The movie is about music, love, betrayal, regret, longing, and the meaning of true art.  It has a largo pace, with long takes allowing you to imbibe scene and nuance.  It’s hard to imagine a Hollywood movie allowing any one character to speak as long as the young Marais in his first visit to Sainte-Colombe, where, in an incredibly discursive and ballsy monologue, he makes his case for being taken on as the maestro’s student; or to have so many scenes of uninterrupted bucolic beauty; or to dare to dwell on close-ups conveying worlds of meaning with the subtlest of facial gestures.  Although the score is ravishing — put together by Jordi Savall from his own and the protagonists’ compositions — in a movie about music, the silences sometimes speak the loudest.

In my research into the movie, I made a heartbreaking discovery: Guillaume, who plays the preposterously handsome young Marais, died of a freak lung infection in 2008 at only 37.  That this eerily paralleled some of the fictional action underscored the film’s pathos.

In the end, if the best art compels us to nobler thought and deed, Tous les Matins du Monde certainly qualifies.  Should you watch the movie — to paraphrase Coleridge from the closing lines of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner — a sadder and a wiser man (or woman) you shall rise the morrow morn, and more human.

Everywhere I turn these days, Iranians seem to be in the news. Back in the home country, the women are causing tremors through sheer power of thought and implied hotness under the tents they wear. Both the women and men are causing minor tremors in the US, becoming culturally prominent in ways that I can no longer ignore. And it’s not just here in Los Angeles – they’re everywhere!

Iranian authors are all over the bookstore: Marjane Satrapi with Persepolis; Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran; Roxana Saberi’s just released Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran; Firoozeh Dumas’s Funny in Farsi. Shirin Ebadi took the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Nasim Pedrad is our very own Saturday Night Live cast member. The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, is Iranian. So is Firouz Naderi, the head of NASA’s Mars Exploration; Omid Kordestani, Senior VP at Google; hundreds of super-genius university professors; and about 12 million doctors and dentists, one of which has made you say ‘aaah’ in the past week.

Unfortunately, there has not been a commensurate rise in Iranian-American jokes. There are jokes about Irish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Polish-Americans and Italian-Americans. (To be fair, there are also no German-American jokes, but what is there to make fun of? Punctuality? Good hair? Superior engineering? But I digress.) Heck, there are even jokes making fun of Southeast Asian drivers.

But who’s making fun of Iranians? Nobody. Except for Iranians themselves, like Maz Jobrani and his riotous US Census videos. Most likely, this shortcoming stems from

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I just got back from a talk with Robert Thurman and Danny Hillis at the Skirball Center here in Los Angeles.It was about religion, science and ethics, bringing together Danny’s viewpoint as a scientist and Robert’s viewpoint as a Buddhist scholar. Basically the equivalent of crack cocaine for my brain.

Thurman is the leading Tibetan Buddhist in America, a professor of religion at Columbia and buddy of the Dalai Lama.He’s just one seriously cool guy – take my word for it.

Danny Hillis is a genius.For me, the idea of genius isn’t just about being smart and having the intellectual horsepower. It’s about generativity, about making things.Well, in his spare time, Danny Hillis created the 10,000 year clock to illustrate his concept of ‘the long now’ – the idea that it’s a good idea to lead our lives now as if we’re having impact way beyond our own lives and that of our children. Hence, ‘long now’.

He’s also made a computer out of tinkertoys and been a Disney Imagineer and a zillion other things.I’d never met Danny in person, and the one thing that I noticed is that this guy is massive.He’s got these meaty bear paws, is at least 6’3”, and has the biggest head I’ve seen on a person.In fact, you could easily fit two of my heads inside his.All them neurons need a home, I tell ya.

But enough introduction.The conversation started civilly enough.Thurman talked about the 3 jewels (or refuges, or rattanas) of Buddhism:

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Around January of this year, my friend Randall and I started to discuss the possibility of visiting China for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.Randall had been taking Chinese lessons for some time, and I was itching for an excuse to start them myself.After some back-and-forthing over phone and email, we carpe’d the diem on February 27, when Randall purchased a brace of plane tickets to the Imperial City.Alea iacta est — the die is cast; can’t go back.We would arrive in Beijing on Sunday, August 3, five days before the opening ceremonies of the Games of the 29th Olympiad.

Before I launch into the story, you should recognize that neither Randall nor I is a rabid sports fan.In fact, we couldn’t be bothered about organized sports at all.Our interest was in seeing China, breathing its air (occasionally), eating its food, practicing its language, and witnessing the spectacle of the games up close.And if we caught an event or two, even better.

Having attended the Games in Athens in 2004, I just wanted to marinate in the unique atmosphere the Olympics create: revelry and friendly competition between all nations; being amidst some of the most talented, hard-working, accomplished young folks on the planet; witnessing the spectacle of human achievement; seeing which country’s fans got wasted the most.Athens was an amazing experience, and I was eager to repeat it Beijing-style. As it turns out, Athens also became the touchstone by which Beijing would be judged, as Greece and China went about hosting the world’s biggest party in dramatically different ways.

Incheon our way to Beijing

If for some reason the story of our trip were to be read in Mrs Golding’s English class, she’d say that our stopover at Seoul/Incheon International Airport was an example of foreshadowing.Why?Seoul was awarded the hosting of the 1988 Olympics.At the time, Korea was at best a developing nation, their most visible product being

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Last year was the first time The New Yorker magazine organized a conference around innovators. At first, I was a bit skeptical, especially since the whole affair lasted just a day and cost a pretty penny and a half. But over the weeks, as every issue of the magazine teased me with yet another brilliant speaker eager to share presto-neato ideas with the world, I decided to plunk down — to find that it was sold out. I had already bought my plane ticket to New York City, so I flew in anyway and spent some quality time with friends. Of course, not before making a quasi-valiant effort at socially engineering my way into the conference — le système D, as the wily French put it.  But pan out it did not, leaving me resolved that this business of being shut out of overpriced conferences will never happen again.

So when the 2008 edition of the conference was announced, I made a big sticky note of the date and time online registration opened, and hopped on it mere seconds after the e-doors opened at 9.00am PST on February 6, 2008. This time the conference cost two pretty pennies, but clearly that was not going to deter this here man on a mission. I was in, baby, in. Later I was informed by one of the kind organizers that I was the very first registrant. Zealotry = results.

Fast forward to the morning of Thursday, May 8. I arrived by cab on a rainy New York morning before the whimsically imposing InterActive Corp (IAC) Headquarters building by the Chelsea Piers. The first impression I got of this building was of a giant wedding cake, with a lot of reflective meringue frosting, if that makes any sense. The swoopy lines and curvilinear facade practically scream “Frank Gehry was here.” And the frosted glass with the transparent bands makes it look like the entire building is

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When I arrived in Rio de Janeiro’s Antônio Carlos Jobim International Airport (three-letter symbol: GIG, obviously), it had more of the feel of the tiny Treviso airport (trip to Croatia, Summer 2003) than one serving a city of 8 million. João was holding up a card with my name in the small receiving area — let the royal treatment begin! — and directed me towards my cab. I found it heartening that a country would name one of its biggest airports after a composer — namely, “Tom” Jobim, the man who wrote the lilting tones of The Girl from Ipanema (in Portuguese: A Garota de Ipanema). Can you imagine an American airport being named after Irving Berlin or Aaron Copland instead of some dead president? Ladies and gentlemen — I had officially arrived in a place that was Different.

There are shiny airports, and then there are not-so-shiny airports. Airports tend to reflect the rest of the city. JFK is marginally shiny. LAX is shiny. Amsterdam’s Schiphol is way shiny. Heathrow is gleaming. GIG is not shiny. And Rio itself is great, but shiny it is not. In fact, I got a feeling that it disdained shininess.

The drive through Rio immediately reminded me of Tehran, another vast metropolis with upwards of 8 million people, lots of culture, and great disparities in wealth (the absence of half-naked people running through the streets at all hours is a subtle difference between the two cities). As we drove towards our condominium in Ipanema — about as far from the airport and downtown area as you can get — we went through the favelas, the slums made famous by movies like City of God (Cidade de Deus). I had imagined these shantytowns to

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A couple of nights ago, I had the pleasure of seeing The March of the Penguins, the acclaimed Luc Jacquet documentary.  The screening room at the William Morris agency did the sweeping Antarctic vistas and majestic aerial shots of the movie justice, and some friends were on hand to
share the experience.  If you haven’t seen the movie, it follows the breeding ritual of the emperor penguin, one of the few animals that
makes its home on Antarctica (where I hear beachfront real estate is still eminently affordable — buy before everyone else catches on to
this whole global warming thing).

The story goes something like this.  Towards the end of the Antarctic summer, penguins rocket out of the water and start a
migration en masse to the breeding grounds where they were born. Now penguins are pretty picky about their real estate.  Because
they will be particularly vulnerable during this time, they need to be far away from predators.  They also need to be in a place where

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As with all trips, there was some pre-departure hesitation before leaving for my cousin’s wedding in Costa Rica last week.  Right at that metaphorical threshold which has “Go” on one side and “Stay” on the other, all the demons of habitude and hebetude rise from the nether regions of the psyche and insinuate themselves into your internal dialogue with such profound pronouncements as “Dude, it’s gonna cost you money”, or “It’s going to be so different — you sure you want that?”  The tautological reasons, even though they generally come under the “It’s a feature, silly, not a bug” heading, seem strangely compelling at the moment you’re about to plunk down hundreds of hard-loaned bucks and several days of life for what is basically a deliberate venture into the unknown.  For such occasions, it’s handy to have a rule to live by (rules being, in my book, what you use only when common sense fails).  My rule is simple: When in doubt, go.  So go I did. 

The 1.05am departure from LAX arrived in San Jose’s Juan Santamaria Airport to a blazing 8am sunshine through crisp skies, resulting in an industrial-strength reset of my circadian clock by a solid 2 hours.  The airport is named after the wily drummer boy who torched the wooden fort where the crazed invader William Walker had taken refuge in February 1856. Walker fled as a result, Costa Rica was

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It all started innocently enough.  I was having a little promenade on the Promenade here in Santa Monica when I saw the shop window.  At first I tried to ignore it, but resistance was futile.  Slowly, the decidedly straight path my feet were on turned into an arc, like an electron deflected by a magnetic field, as some mysterious force drew me towards the front entrance.  Oh no, not again — I had just promised myself last week that I was going to lay off for a spell.  Go cold turkey.  Force of will.  And I had been doing so well.  But I saw the wares in the shopfront, in all their seductive shapes and colors, and before I could muster up some resistance,

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In the few years since I’ve graduated from medical school, there has been enough time to go back to medical practice in some form, but I haven’t and don’t intend to, so quit yer askin’, dammit.  But of course, people keep on asking.  Their comments range from the curious — “Why don’t you practice?” — to the idealistic — “But medicine is such a wonderful profession!” — to the almost hostile — “Don’t you like helping people, you heartless ogre you?”

Since it’s certain that folks will continue to pose me this question for the rest of my natural existence, I figured that instead of launching into my 15-minute polemic on the State of Medicine each time, interrupting the flow of Hefeweizen on a fine Friday eve, I could just write it up and give them the URL.  So that’s what I did.

Now, unfettered by my prior obligations as an unbiased pre-med advisor, here are the myriad reasons why you should not enter the medical profession and the one (count ‘em — one) reason you should.  I have assiduously gone through these arguments and expunged any hint of evenhandedness, saving time for all of you who are hunting for balance.  And here are the reasons:

1) You will lose all the friends you had before medicine.
You think I’m kidding here.  No, I’m not: I mean it in the most literal sense possible.   I have a friend in UCLA Med School who lives 12min away, and I’ve seen her once — in three years.  I saw her more often when she lived in Boston and I was in LA, no foolin’.

Here’s the deal: you’ll be so caught up with taking classes, studying for exams, doing ward rotations, taking care of

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Here’s a little something I wrote about Cambridge when I first got there. May you find it enlightening and amusing.

“A late welcome from the banks (and BoGs) of the Cam”

It is a Sunday morning here in Cambridge, with an absurdly forceful wind
whipping through town, ripping off tree branches, launching horizontal
raindrops at pedestrians at relativistic speeds and making cyclists ride at
oblique angles just to maintain balance. It’s been nearly three weeks
since I arrived here, having left on a Sunday afternoon to arrive at the
Monday morning opening ceremonies of my course with 150lb of luggage in
tow. Just days before, I had been told by the course assistant director
that ‘There’s no reason for you to show up before October 5′, only to be
informed the next day that orientation begins October 7. As it turns out
there were many reasons to be present before the 5th — somewhat symbolic
of the slapdash nature of this course, as it is the first time it’s being
done. More on that later.

It is just after brunch at the Caius College (pronounced ‘keys’) dining hall,
which comprised two fried eggs, a croissant, a bowl of yoghurt, a glass of
Minute Maid orange juice, canned pear tomatoes and beans, and a raft of
bacon and sausage and hash browns which I dodged — all notable because
they form the essence of the Full English Breakfast experience. I’m
sitting here in the

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About a month ago, I had the opportunity to visit parts of the US that I had not seen before. Having lived mostly in Boston and Southern California, I had left the vast middle portion of the country unexplored. So I welcomed the mission to get some work done in San Antonio, Dallas, Ft Worth, St Louis and Cleveland. The cities were lovely: San Antonio’s Riverfront eating/shopping district was quite charming even late on a sleepy Monday night; Dallas had an upstart, upwardly mobile feel to it with a very lively youth culture (and exceptionally welcoming people); and St Louis seemed to have much more to commend it than just a big ol’ arch. I was particularly gratified that in my 24-hr sojourn in St Louis, I very nearly got caught in a hailstorm of 2-inch ice pellets and a tornado. To this here left- and right-coaster, that was as quintessentially Midwestern an experience as having an earthquake and brushfire would be to Joe Sixpack visiting LA for a day from Kansas City.
Although my time to roam amongst the natives was limited, I thought that a scan of the area radio stations from the comfort of my rental car would be a step towards capturing the local zeitgeist. And so, armed with the craftily-named ‘Scan’ button of the radio, I listened. The very first station that tuned in caught a female voice singing the chorus of a song: ‘God is with us.’ The second station was talk, not music, and sounded like a speech or a sermon — something about Michael looking across the water to see Jesus walking on it. The next one was a Christian rock station. Of the seven or so stations that I scanned before settling on some classical music, four were broadcasting either Christian music or preaching. Now an evangelical radio station per se is not anomalous, but what struck me was the preponderance of such formats in these markets. Clearly all these stations have an audience to make them economically sustainable. Although my survey was informal, you would never get such a high percentage of Christian stations in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston or San Francisco. I’d even argue that there isn’t a total of 4 such stations on the FM dial in any one of those markets.
OK, so what? In my last blog entry, I talked about my surprise at finding out about the vastness of the evangelical book market. And these travels along the highways of Middle America, where billboards urge passersby to accept Christ as their savior at a weekend-long revivalist retreat, confirmed my suspicion of the existence of an America with which I am less familiar: what the journalists have been calling ‘Red America’, after the infamous map of the 2000 Presidential election showing the states voting for Gore in blue (mostly seaboard states) and those voting for Bush in red (the inland states). The designation ‘Red America’ is particularly ironic, since the color red has historically carried strong anti-American connotations: first symbolizing the perceived Native American threat (the ‘red man’) to homesteaders in the nation’s earlier years; and then standing in for Communism (the ‘Red Menace’) from the early twentieth century till 1989 (and today to some extent).
This evening I had the privilege of seeing Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, give a speech at the United Methodist Church in Venice, CA. He was his usual self-deprecatingly funny self, opening with: “All these years in public service have worn me down. I started out being 6’2″, and now look where I am.” Although me may stand a mere 5 feet tall, his persona and charisma more than filled the room. He talked about many subjects, including his forays into Red America along his cross-country drive from Cambridge, MA to Berkeley, CA with his eldest son. At the roadside diners, he would sometimes be approached by locals (“because I looked peculiar”), who would engage him in discussion with a “You’re a Democrat, aren’t you?,” to which he would respond, “Yes, and I’m proud to be one.” After the native would proclaim himself/herself a Republican, Reich would ask why he/she would vote for Bush. According to Reich, the near-unanimous response in all of these states was “because he’s honest” (which elicited audible groans from the Venice audience). After Reich presents his interlocutor with a few incontrovertible counterexamples to this trope, the native changes his tune and says, “Well, it’s really because he’s so folksy.” Aaaah. So that’s it — somehow W’s good ol’ boy talk and broken English conveys to these Reds that he’s one of them, in spite of his blue-blood pedigree and life of perpetual privilege. The surprising and even encouraging part of Reich’s report was that, after only 3 or 4 minutes of presenting some simple facts about the current administration’s record, many of those he spoke to were quite willing to admit, “Well, y’know, maybe I won’t be voting for him after all.”
All of this brings me to this question: Is America really as divided as the red-blue map would make us think it is? Reich would have us reconsider that, and there’s evidence to support that. You can see the red-blue map from the 2000 election at this site  http://www.makethemaccountable.com/misc/…). If you scroll down further, you will see another quite ingenious (and utterly logical) map that colors each state in a blend of blue and red in its proportion of Democratic and Republican votes cast in the 2000 elections. What this map shows is that almost all of America, with the exception of a handful of stronghold states (CA, IL, NY, MA, RI, HI for the blues; ID, NB, WY, UT for the reds) is more or less the same shade of purple. So perhaps there are more of the 40% self-identified evangelical Christians in those red states, who may identify with the Bush born-again persona and some its attendant dogmatism, and maybe they did vote for him in the 2000 elections in greater proportion. But in the end, we all want to be able to stand tall as Americans and be proud of the values of freedom, tolerance and high-mindedness that has made this country great, prosperous and a model of hope. And all Americans are smart enough to know that no amount of folksiness can ever make up for a compromise of those values, or being worse off then they were four years ago, or the threat of being drafted to an unjustified war, or having their sons and daughters come back from halfway across the globe in a body bag. Reich’s note of pragmatic optimism, echoing that of Clinton in his BEA speech three weeks ago, resonates with me. The American people have consistently chosen and will choose unity, democracy still works, and we’re gonna be alright. Now get out there and get the word out.

People have brought to my attention that my blog here has been gathering e-dust, languishing in the vast underworld of unheralded, undersubscribed blogs. It ain’t for lack of material — lord knows all kinds of zany things have been happening. So, best to write up the events of last week before they get corrupted and ultimately deleted by the editorial caprices of that gentle tyrant, memory.

I spent the better part of this past week at Book Expo America in Chicago. I arrived in the Windy City — so-called apparently because of its fickle political affiliations and not the hearty sweep of air through its skyscraper-fortified corridors — on a Tuesday night, and through some strange convergence of fate, all of my housing options with friends fell through at once. This gave me a prime excuse for slumming it, so I ensconced myself at a Lincoln Park hostel full of foreign travelers unwilling to call it a night, ever. Although getting to bed at 3am was consistent with my usual sleep time minus West Coast jet lag, it did not make for a pleasant rousing at the butt-crack of dawn to get to my writers conference at McCormick Place, Chicagos gleaming behemoth of a convention center just south of the Loop. The Writers Conference, sponsored by Writers Digest — separate and not related to the main Expo, lest you think that your $149 will grant you the privilege of wandering onto the convention floor, ha — was a full day of talks and workshops on how to get published. Almost every attendee was a first-time author; Id peg their average age at 45 and say 60% were female. They were there to soak in the advice of the sages on Writing the Popular Novel, finding an agent, The Best Way to Create a Non-Fiction Book Proposal, ‘Writing the Breakout Novel’, creating a marketing plan, etc. My favorite part was the Pitch Slam Breakout, when everyone had 30 seconds to pitch his/her nonfiction book before a panel of three highly experienced agents and editors — Michael Larsen, of the Larsen-Pomada Agency, Jonathan Malysiak of Dearborn Trade Publishing, and Bethany Brown of Sourcebooks. It was a miniature parade of dreams, with each would-be author condensing years of thoughts, experiences, ideas and life lived into half a minute of plea and proclamation before a three judges and a hundred fellow dreamers. The fascinating diversity of the proposals was only outdone by the repsonses of the panelists. Right after every pitch, each one got the microphone and commented on the viability of the project, how best to market it, what angles to explore etc. Remarkably all three panelists paid full attention and gave cogent, constructive and gracious commentary to every one of the 40+ presenters — quite a feat. Their real-time analysis evinced that these people really know books and readers. I was there, so I tried my hand at pitching my non-fiction self-help proposal. The feedback from the panel and audience was quite positive — precisely the fuel I needed to propel my writing for the next three months.

The final talk of the day was also memorable. Heather Sellers, a willowy young writer and English professor from Hope College, spoke with mellifluous voice and heartfelt reason on Page after Page: Six Ways to Go Home Writing. Her six principles made all kinds of sense, and her exhortative yet caring delivery made her suggestions mom-irresistible. After all, I am writing in this blog after a three-month hiatus, am I not? I bet everyone else in the room wanted to give her a hug afterwards, too, so heres a remote control hug from my keyboard — mmhmm, there. (And if you want to know what the Six Ways are, write me and Ill tell you.)

After that talk I sought out Michael Larsen, the panelist whom I hadnt had a chance to thank after the pitch slam, and as we spoke and exited McCormick Place, we ended up sharing a cab to the Miracle Mile area of Chicago. Ive got to tell you: this man is good. Even after the barrage of pitches and a procession of prospective authors buttonholing him about this and that for hours, he still questioned me with genuine interest, listened to everything I had to say, and was incredibly gracious while still challenging my half-baked notions. I have met and heard of others who are phenomenally good with people — Bill Clinton comes to mind — and Michael is certainly one of them.

Of course, Bill was to make an appearance of his own. Thursdays main event was the keynote address on My Life, the autobiography of William Jefferson Clinton. I had never seen him speak live, and this was quite a treat. In customary Bill fashion, he was 45min late to appear, but in customary Bill fashion he was brilliant, so we immediately forgave him the peccadillo. Sonny Mehta, the patriarch of Alfred A. Knopf — the ne plus ultra and toniest of the tony publishing houses — delivered a rousing hagiographical introduction whose structure seemed to follow a point-by-point comparison of the most glowing aspects of Clintons legacy with the current Presidents most dubious accomplishments. Even though W. was never mentioned by name, you could almost hear the hissing sound of hot air escaping from his carnival balloon persona with each invisible Sonny Mehta verbal stab — [Clinton] presided over the period of greatest economic expansion in American history, pffffffffft… went from record budget deficits to record surpluses pfffffffffffffft… was an agent for peace pffffffffttt.

But back to Bill. Yes, everything that you have heard and suspected is true. Clintons a phenomenal public speaker, and within the first ten syllables he had connected personally to even that camera-toting neck-craner 300 feet away in the far back row (I should know — that was me). Even though the audience was about 4500 strong, with camera crews and Secret Service men littering the landscape, he was able to address you and you alone, as if it were all a fireside chat between old friends. Talked about the process of writing the book (20 notebooks written in longhand and transcribed by an assistant); the gambits with his editor Robert Gottlieb (he tried to sneak in Robert Gottlieb is the greatest editor in the world; Gottlieb cut it but with some reluctance); growing up in Arkansas in the pre-GI Bill era, where the gas station attendant was likely to be as smart as your doctor, making for an interesting childhood; his family of gifted storytellers, poor white folk who didnt have a racist bone in their bodies; his wife (my Senator); and yes, politics. He was particularly evenhanded and non-vindictive towards his loyal opposition, urging us to think of them not in terms of their being good or bad people, but of being right or wrong — Bush was merely fulfilling his campaign promises. He ended the speech with an invigorating message of optimism, tacitly acknowledging our troubled times by drawing parallels between now and other eras of turmoil and divisiveness, reassuring us that at these historical inflection points, Americans have always chosen greater unity. I interpreted that all as meaning Dont worry; the Bushies will lose, and left the speech with a big smile on my face.

Of course the main event on the convention floor had yet to happen. Once I stood before the vast and particolored array of booths on Friday morning, it was with a mixture of awe and bewilderment that I uttered the syllable immortalized by that arch-thespian and bard of Western Civilization, Keanu Reeves: Whoa. Where do I start? I decided that the beginning was a good place to start, and I designated the real estate under my feet at that moment as The Beginning. This was going to go well.

Its fair to say that in the first day of the Expo, I was exposed to more information than your average medieval man dealt with in a lifetime. Hundreds of publishers hawking their wares, the more prominent, well-heeled ones closer to the main entrance, the name recognition factor dropping as you move to the back of the convention floor — the domain of the independent presses, offbeat products, solo visionaries and just plain zealots. Hierarchy and means were also displayed through carpeting, as you unconsciously sped up when your tired feet hit the nanometer-thick quartz covering (ow), while finding yourself lingering a little bit longer on the superplush shag with extra-squishy foam of Bantam Doubleday (mmmmmm). Marketing managers hawk their wares, give away sample copies, posters, toys, pens, plush animals — anything to get your attention and achieve salience amidst this vast sea of printed word. Meetings with buyers happen a hundred all at once (one Canadian buyer told me she had 14 meetings on that first day) while agents and booksellers trudge around lopsided, adding yet another publishers catalog to their bursting bag of goodies. My mission was mostly exploratory — finding out how the industry works, what its social customs are, deal structure, proper channels of information, etiquette, protocol, form. Thou shalt not submit a Proposal unsolicited, unless a publisher explicitly says they art cool with that. Thou shalt have an Agent, for thou shalt thusly distinguish thyself from the masses with unpolished words unworthy of Dissemination. Thine Book Proposal shall follow the Proper and Accepted format or shall be consigned to the Black Hole of Rejection, whence not even its cries of neglect will ever be heard again by the Literate Living.

Lots of great books, people, conversations. Surprised by the preponderance of Christian presses, and how well they do. Did you know that Gary Chapmans Five Love Languages series has sold 2.5 million copies? Oy. And then theres the ubiquitous LaHaye/Jenkins Left Behind series — cover of Newsweek two weeks ago. How can a book sell 60 million copies in my supposed country, and I know not one person who has read it? (See discussion on Red and Blue America in the next blog installment). I did not attend any of the author luncheons, where for a mere 30 beans, you got to hang with the likes of Terry Gross, Tom Wolfe, Maureen Dowd and David Sedaris. My good man Baratunde Thurston 99, comedian and writer whom I had the good fortune of bumping into (check out http://www.baratunde.com for his latest shenanigans), had the pleasure of munching lunch with P.J. ORourke before ever knowing how much they would like each other — lucky dawg. Mega-, mini- and quasi-celebrities abounded, of course — Marilu Henner and Gene Hackman were looking sharp, and that dude in the cab line who looked like chef/author Tony Bourdain actually was Tony Bourdain. Who knew. In any case, the sheer amount of stuff going on made it absolutely imperative that I clone myself, stat. I can see a phalanx of a dozen mes (that would be the plural for me), ripping down the aisles simultaneously, devouring all data in their path with the efficiency of a locust swarm. That would be a lot of underwear Id have to pack for the next trip for all twelve of us, though.

Which brings me to the next section. Scored scores of freebies. I love you, Andrews & McMeel — not just because you brought Bill Wattersons Calvin & Hobbes to the world, but also because of the Open Your Mind, Open Your Life and Sex Game (for mature audiences only) decks of cards, which will no doubt make me a more enlightened, hornier person. Thank you Picador, who gave me two copies of one of my favorite books of recent memory, which shall remain nameless lest prospective gift recipients think I have spent any less on them than the cover price suggests. My favorite book title would have to be How to Clone the Perfect Blonde, by Sue Nelson and Richard Hollingham. At first your friendly neighborhood arch-skeptic dismissed the book out of hand. But when a quick browse yielded concise, coherent explanations of such concepts as general relativity and reverse time travel according to Kurt G

Friday night I attended a talk by Chris Chapple (pronounced like ‘chapel’), professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University, on the Bhagavad Gita. I’ve just started reading the Bhagavad Gita, half out of pique, since TS Eliot has this habit of referencing it gratuitously in his work and I’ve been re-reading some of his stuff lately, half out of complementarity, since along with the Tao Te Ching it is one of the main texts of Eastern philosophy, and half out of morbid curiosity since I’d never gotten around to reading it. And yes, Mr or Ms Smartypants, I’m fully aware that three halves make for one and a half, and one and a half of everything makes for a fuller life, and I like it better that way; thanks for noticing. Anyway. One cool thing about the Gita — basically a conversation between Arjuna, the super-warrior wracked by guilt and indecision before the imminent bloodshed of his kinsmen, and Krishna, his charioteer/advisor, who is really an avatar (earthly incarnation) of the powerful god Vishnu — is that it makes for a powerfully dramatic story. And, in the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna/Vishnu, a great deal of wisdom is passed along, much of it in the vein of Lao-Tse and the Tao. But every once in a while, something like this creeps in:

Krishna: If I did not continue to work untiringly as I did, mankind would still follow me, no matter where I led them. Suppose I were to stop? They would all be lost. The result would be caste-mixture and universal destruction (italics mine). Bhagavad Gita, Ch 3

So ‘universal destruction’ and ‘caste mixture’ are uttered in the same breath here. OK, so maybe this is just an aberration, they’re not really serious, right?

We know what fate falls/ On families broken:/ The rites are forgotten,/ Vice rots the remnant/ Defiling their women,/ And from their corruption/ Comes mixing of castes:/ The curse of confusion/ Degrades the victims/ And damns the destroyers. (Ch 1)

Well. Glad we made that one clear. I’m only up to Chapter 4, and there have already been 4-5 mentions of how caste-mixing is the ultimate evil, almost as bad as deep-fried chocolate bars or voting Republican. Could it be that this book of scripture — as influential in India as the gospel of Hinduism as the Bible is to an American audience — could have perpetuated the hereditary Indian caste system for centuries while holding back the development of egalitarianism even to this day? Could it be that the priesthood, the Brahmins, the members of the highest caste and the only ones capable of writing, conveniently slipped in these oppressive clauses in the otherwise transcendent, timeless narrative of the Gita? I’ll read more before I decide, but in the meantime I refer you to my particular translation, published by Barnes & Noble, which is not only quite easy to read but also has a magnificent introduction by Aldous Huxley, who not coincidentally, names the escapist drug in the epochal Brave New World after Indra the thunder-god’s favorite hallucinogen — soma.

Recently I spent a weekend in Las Vegas, and before I go on any further, let’s go through all the possible nicknames for that town and get it out of our system: Lost Wages, Sin City, Lust Vegas, The Meadows (you’d think ‘vegas’ would be Spanish for ‘arid lifeless desert’, but it’s not), insert your favorite nickname here. Now every time I go there I have a blast, as long as I limit my sojourn to 48hrs or less (and even then, I need to undergo a full mind-and-body disinfectant scrubbing before I’m fit to re-enter proper society, but that’s a story for a different late Sunday night). A particularly surreal moment occurred when I was in the poker room of the Mandalay Bay casino, overlooking the sports book. There, amidst the solid burghers and dedicated hedonists betting on ace-king or Dudley’s Dignity the harness-racing horse, two monitors were turned to CNN, which just happened to be showing an undercover special on trafficking and prostitution of minors in Romania. The contrast between this industrial-strength dose of reality and the foam upon the foam that Vegas rests on was sobering. Of course, both scenarios are real, in the sense that they are both occurring and constitute economic activity. However, I will hazard to say that the Americans in that poker room were experiencing a higher standard of living than the hapless Romanian abductees. The US is a remarkably affluent society, as even its poorest members enjoy a remarkable degree of abundance. Merriam-Webster online weighs in on the word thus  www.m-w.com):

affluence, n. 1 a : an abundant flow or supply : PROFUSION b : abundance of property : WEALTH

But let us abstain from conjecture and refer to the facts instead: per annum, the average American consumes 7960 kg of oil equivalent and 730 pounds of paper; use 484,000 gallons of water; own 844 TV sets and 774 vehicles per 1000 people; and consumes 269 pounds of meat (compare these figures to those for China: 880, 73, 116,000, 292, 16 and 104, respectively). (Source: National Geographic, 3/04, p 91). From this and anecdotal evidence (I’m living in Santa Monica, CA now — enough said), we will conclude that there is much abbondanza in our fine country. But abundance, a complicated boon like all others, has its side effects. Too much of it can make you ill or just plain kill you. Back to Merriam-Webster:

disease, n. : 1 : a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning : SICKNESS, MALADY
2 : a harmful development (as in a social institution)

To me, ‘dis-ease’ implies an absence of ease — something absolutely ubiquitous in our hyper-affluent society even under the most cursory scrutiny. Too much food and leisure results in large paunches, sluggish bodies and clogged arteries, antitheses of ease if they ever existed. Traffic, overcrowding, pollution, time pressure, and covetousness compromise mental ease. Affluence means distancing oneself from the ‘real’ preoccupations of sustenance (finding food, shelter, clothing) and instead getting embroiled in monitoring our body fat percentage, following fashion, and losing a month’s salary at the roulette table. It means affliction with diseases like depression, anxiety, bulimia, anorexia and fibromyalgia which did not exist for 99.8% of recorded human history.

Let me make clear that I am not advocating some kind of atavism (although in the old days, the physical requirements of daily sustenance had some stress-relieving effects that desk jobs don’t provide), and Hobbes’ point about ancient man’s life being ‘nasty, brutish and short’ is probably true. Nor am I a fan of austerity — the greatest act of worship is in acknowledging and celebrating the bounty of the earth. However, it would seem that too much of a good thing ceases being a good thing. Affluence can make you sick. Yet, perversely, that same affluence has managed to procure the salves against these maladies — bypass surgery and simvastatin, credit cards and equity loans, psychiatrists and Zoloft — such that we can mollify their symptoms for three quarters of a century before succumbing to the cumulus of decay.

But fret not, my dear readers, for there is a solution. It’s called yoga.

For some reason this popped into my head while dining on pansit, a filipino dish. Perhaps it was something in a Time magazine article on John Kerry, which made me wonder. Now normally these thoughts go unacknowledged and experience their own exponential decay, with no herald of their birth nor record of their demise. But now I have a blog, which is precisely for this kind of fleeting thought-form to have its moment of exposure to retinas not my own. Of course, dear reader, now you get impatient — ‘Which thought, for godssakes?’ Ah yes. I was thinking what constitutes ‘cool’ and ‘coolness’. Such a bandied-about term, and one that at best has a Justice Felix Frankfurter definition to it (“I know it when I see it”). In fact there was a good part of one Simpsons episode devoted to deftly defining ‘cool’ (or at least demonstrating its undefinability). So, in the fine tradition of the reductionist, I will say that coolness is a mix of several components. Tolerance is one of them — to ‘be cool about something’ means that you do not bludgeon it with your judgment. A corollary to that is imperturbability — if you are cool, you tend not to get too riled up, emotional, defensive about things. But the mix of imperturbable and tolerant merely makes for mellow; there must be other factors involved. Edginess and an independent spirit certainly qualify, as does a tendency to care for others (although I would argue altruism is not a requirement of cool, but an adjunct). Talent is good. Egolessness is good, although there are some industrial-strength braggarts out there who love themselves so much, we sometimes find ourselves swept into their world and find them undeniably cool (e.g. Muhammad Ali). I think if I were to pick one characteristic to round out what makes cool, it would be competence. Without manifestation, talent means little and fails to communicate itself. So, until the next revision, here are the x-y-z axes of cool, the Holy Trinity of Tolerance, Imperturbability, and Competence.
Question for follow-up: Which other countries and linguistic traditions have an equivalent word for ‘cool’? How many of them have appropriated it from America? Is ‘cool’ an American concept at its heart?

Hey there, boys and girls. I suppose you can now welcome me to the digital age, and to this populist phenomenon called the blog. I’m not quite sure what its purpose is, and I’m even less sure why I signed up for it. But I suppose the self-aggrandizement associated with having a law.harvard.edu blog is just too juicy to resist. I’ve just returned from a class at Yoga Works (led by the infamous Vinnie Marino), and I feel as if my whole body has been pulled through the eye of a needle. Now does that tentatively qualify me for admission to heaven, or do I have to do it all again when I’m rich while riding a camel? All you New Testament scholars out there kindly clarify.

So I would surmise that part of the function of this whole blog thing, besides self-indulgence (duh), is to provide a forum for all the heretofore voiceless individuals to express themselves publicly, sans censorship or fear of reprisal. That’s nice, but taken to its theoretical limit, reading other people’s blogs would require several lifetimes, and so if enough people blog, blogs simply become reduced to fancy electronic diaries that can vanish in the blink of a server that the world can peek into if it had time. It follows that some blogs are more equal than others, and some convergence has to occur as certain prominent blogs get more readership than others (the 80/20 rule again, manifesting itself once again in the context of a network). So, with any luck, my blog will be one of the ignored ones, and my miscellaneous incendiary ramblings will go unnoticed by the objects of my disaffection, and I will have an excuse to exercise the writing muscle, which shall soon become the source of my vast income and impending immortality, hallelujah and amen.

This is already more fun than I thought.
Cheers for now
AB