Life

Gregory Peck Was Iranian

Gregory Peck was Iranian. That was the only explanation for it. He was speaking in English and his characters had American names like Atticus Finch and even particularly American accents sometimes, but if he was going to be as principled as he was, if he was going to be so attuned to the story of the search for justice, and so sure about how much of that story to tell and how much to hold inside him, then the only explanation that made any sense to me as a boy was that he was more or less Iranian, and languages and names and accents didn't have that much to do with it. He looked it too. Not just the black hair and brown eyes that looked even darker in black-and-white. It was the way he kept something of who he was for himself and something for the world>>>

آمريكا

آمريكا،
اى گسترده پهندشت قدرت و مكنت جهان
وى بيشه سبز سبزينه دلار،
اى كه جنگل شيشه و پولاد افراشته اى
وز اوج بلند آن
سينه سپهر خراشيده اى.
اى كه  آبى آسمان و سپيدى ستاره را
با رنگ سرخ خون آميخته اى، >>>

Angels and devils and spoonfuls, oh my!

Lately I have worked on a lot of events that have involved finger food or canapés and it has made me think about different ideas and combinations that are not only simple, but taste great… especially for the coming holiday season. Canapés are incredibly common in Europe, although I think when a food item is so tiny, it really is ridiculous if the preparation involved is time consuming and tedious. All that trouble for a single morsel of food? Forget it. Normal people like you and I, not only don’t have the time, but lack the patience required to produce something that will only get greedily chomped down without even the slightest thought given to the work involved in its creation! “Boooooo!” I say! Down with laborious, painstaking, fussy finger food and instead up with simple but delectable mini mouthfuls of pure heaven!>>>

More please

The thing I love most about Kiosk, is their predictable unpredictability. Just when you think you have them pegged.To jump right in, the thing I love most about Kiosk, is their predictable unpredictability. Just when you think you have them pegged, that they are going to shift from what you know, they shift off into a different direction dragging you not so much as surprised, but gladly so behind them. You're like a late entry to a long conga line at a wedding and you only have enough time to ask the person in front of you, "Where the hell are we going?" Whether done on purpose, or merely a haphazard result of the free creative process, Kiosk's latest album, "Global Zoo" takes us on the wildest ride yet. Stretching our imagination over the span of rock, blues, tango, waltz, and dare I say country western, and urrrp the long thought dead Disco!>>>

Taming my Animus

Once upon a dream, a stream of senses surges in my bone
I feel a danger, a stranger chasing me in a forest unknown.
I waken and know it is you, my spirit, inner man
imprinted in my soul.
 
If possessed by you, your rigid voice of irrational lore
becomes the law of my world. Thus knowing you
and taming your bents is the key to my wholeness. >>>

Toddlers & Vandals

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Sherri's Story

Sherri's phone rings incessantly. She won't pick it up and she pretends like it isn't ringing. It rings five times and clicks over to her voice mail, and just when it seems like the caller has given up, it starts ringing again. It is driving me crazy. I say: "Maybe it's an emergency." She looks at the Caller ID and says: "No. It's Pedram." Pedram? The young chap Sherry has been seeing privately for the past six months? I thought she had said that little arrangement was going really well. My mind is full of questions. She finally says: "Let me unplug this phone and I will explain." My friend, Sherri, is beautiful. She is an athlete who has been running marathons since college. She is slim and petite, with beautiful long hair, huge eyes, and pouty lips. Married briefly and divorced, she never had any children and this is one part of her life with which she feels the most at peace>>>

Fareeb

Video>>>

Cordoba to Kurdistan via flamenco

Hamed Nikpay speaks Farsi the way he plays his music: rapid staccato syllables held together by slow melodic interludes. Maybe this is why he favors the setar when he speaks his heart. The instrument comes to life at the flick of the index finger over the strings, followed by a trilled sustain detailing the life of the tone. Nikpay’s new CD album, All Is Calm (Asoudeh) seems to follow the emotional biography of a young artist sparked to life by a devastating early romance whose lament still haunts him in the sustain. In the first track, Deceit, (Fareeb), he sings “You bestowed kisses from my lover’s lips to the other man.” I ducked the temptation to ask Nikpay who she was and what happened. Instead we chatted a little about the man who penned those lyrics >>>

It's in the pot!

I took part in a UK based TV cookery show (The name of which, I sadly cannot repeat until it airs next year) But the idea is based on a group of strangers who each take turn to host and cook dinner for the group, often to hilarious and bitchy consequences. Each cook is scored for their efforts, by the other guests and the winner gets a prize at the end. It has a somewhat cult-status here in the UK and I can tell you that the whole process was a bizarre experience, indeed. A week of intense filming, Monday through Friday from 6pm-3am sometimes, leaves you absolutely exhausted as you have your normal day job to do also and so you are getting only 3 hours sleep each night! I wasn’t planning on even writing about this, but someone made me promise I would mention it… Although I did agree that only in the instance that I won, would I write about… and by some miracle I did actually win! >>>