Friday, February 27, 2004
The 2004 Rock Rich List via Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=2804
(0) comments
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=2804
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
(0) comments
Some random thoughts/sitings...
Why was the movie "Antwan Fisher" super slept on?
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/elsewhere/47.html
Stay clear of GMO's
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0223-04.htm
Saw that "City of God" is back in theaters. Please go see it if you haven't already.
(0) comments
Why was the movie "Antwan Fisher" super slept on?
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/elsewhere/47.html
Stay clear of GMO's
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0223-04.htm
Saw that "City of God" is back in theaters. Please go see it if you haven't already.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
(0) commentsWednesday, February 18, 2004
Wealth inequality in the U.S. and the myth of upward mobility.
excerpt:
Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?
full article:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17452
(0) comments
excerpt:
Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?
full article:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17452
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
(0) commentsFriday, February 13, 2004
A timeline comparison of Kerry and Bush (via lowculture blog)
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/02/02_400.html
(0) comments
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/02/02_400.html
Thursday, February 12, 2004
John Kerry calls my people's terrorists.
Is it any wonder we get hate-crimed everytime a building is leveled?
This is our Democrat Representative for president.
The future looks as good as the past, shitty.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/478893.cms
Sikh bodies protest branding as terrorists
PTI[ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2004 12:12:43 PM ]
NEW YORK : Sikh organisations in the US have taken strong exception to reported remarks of John Kerry, seeking Democratic Presidential nomination, for what they called, "singling out adherents of Sikh religion as terrorists" and demanded an apology from him.
The Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART) quoted Kerry as saying during his campaign in Oklahoma City on January 31 that terrorism did not begin on September 11, 2001 .
He went on to give examples by mentioning Northern Ireland , the Basque separatists in Spain and the Sikhs in India . In a letter to Kerry, SMART said that he did not mention any religion other than Sikhs.
"Based on your response, which was broadcast on C-SPAN and other news outlets, all adherents of the Sikh faith can be interpreted as condoning or being associated with terrorism," the letter said.
SMART, the oldest national Sikh American civil rights organisation, said Sikh Americans were still targets of discrimination and racial profiling as well as hate crimes based on the ignorance of individuals and stereotyping in the media.
"Your congressional staff has long worked with SMART on workplace discrimination and hate crimes issues, and we are confident that it was not your intent to single out adherents of the Sikh faith as terrorists," it said.
(0) comments
Is it any wonder we get hate-crimed everytime a building is leveled?
This is our Democrat Representative for president.
The future looks as good as the past, shitty.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/478893.cms
Sikh bodies protest branding as terrorists
PTI[ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2004 12:12:43 PM ]
NEW YORK : Sikh organisations in the US have taken strong exception to reported remarks of John Kerry, seeking Democratic Presidential nomination, for what they called, "singling out adherents of Sikh religion as terrorists" and demanded an apology from him.
The Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART) quoted Kerry as saying during his campaign in Oklahoma City on January 31 that terrorism did not begin on September 11, 2001 .
He went on to give examples by mentioning Northern Ireland , the Basque separatists in Spain and the Sikhs in India . In a letter to Kerry, SMART said that he did not mention any religion other than Sikhs.
"Based on your response, which was broadcast on C-SPAN and other news outlets, all adherents of the Sikh faith can be interpreted as condoning or being associated with terrorism," the letter said.
SMART, the oldest national Sikh American civil rights organisation, said Sikh Americans were still targets of discrimination and racial profiling as well as hate crimes based on the ignorance of individuals and stereotyping in the media.
"Your congressional staff has long worked with SMART on workplace discrimination and hate crimes issues, and we are confident that it was not your intent to single out adherents of the Sikh faith as terrorists," it said.
Magic Johnson's investments in the inner-city.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blackhistory/news/story?id=1733048
(0) comments
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blackhistory/news/story?id=1733048
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
This is Outkast week, article via MTV.com...
Outkast - Black Dog/Black Wolf
By Joseph Patel
http://www.mtv.com/bands/o/outkast/news_feature_030929/index.jhtml
Full article:
Outkast's Andre 3000 walked into the MTV Radio lounge about as cool as anyone wearing blue flood trousers, a pinstripe shirt and suspenders can be. That's to say, he was "ice cold" cool, to borrow a phrase from his current hit single, "Hey Ya!." His partner in rhyme, Big Boi, followed behind him a few seconds later. He was the antithesis of Dre's psychedelic vintage style, with his baggy camouflage pants and loose-hanging sports jersey. While Andre slinked his skinny frame up to a stool in the room, Big Boi kind of rumbled there, like a bull, clutching a greasy box of fried chicken from a nearby Popeyes.
"Anyone want some chicken? Y'all can have what ya want," Big said in a low mumble.
"You givin' 'em your chicken?" Andre asked, surprised, cocking his head to the side.
"Chicken, sure. Biscuits, too," Big answered. Just some of that Southern hospitality, he seemed to be saying. Andre had no interest in the grease, the chicken, the biscuits or the comfort of this food — he's a vegan, going on eight years.
"You want some?" Big Boi asked, staring at Andre. There was a long pause, then laughter as Andre just shook his head.
It was a small moment in a thousand that happen each day in the lives of Andre and Big Boi, but not an insignificant one, because, for one thing, this easygoing and familiar moment hardly paints the portrait of a group in turmoil.
Yet many have been presenting such a picture of the duo. The press has seized upon the "Outkast Go Their Separate Ways!" story like sharks on fresh sea turtles dropped in their tank. The conceptual divide of the duo's new double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, actually comprised of two solo efforts, and the accompanying cover, a royal looking Big Boi adorned with a hustler-friendly, extravagant fur coat on one side, a white-capped Andre in a glam-rap pose on the other, led to the easy hook. Some magazines would follow suit, featuring two different covers with the two different members. And they all asked the question, "Is this a prelude to breaking up?"
"We did something separated, [but] the unity is still here..."
"It's on, brother," Big Boi boomed. "We did something kind of separated to show you the separate visions. It's still the group. The unity is still here." He hit Andre 3000 on the arm, then said, "They thought we were gonna break up, Dre!"
"We've had photo shoots where the entire time, we're together taking pictures," Dre explained in a slow, country manner that's all flat-as-flapjacks vowels and syrupy consonants. "We get the magazine covers back and they just happen to pick the picture where we're both looking away from each other. I understand it but ... no, we're not breaking up. This is just one project, one album. We thought it'd be a great idea."
Indeed, splitting the new Outkast album in two wasn't a precursor to their demise, a signal that these two lifelong friends had suddenly grown sick of each other; it was just another grand — and risky — idea in a career full of bold choices. The move has not only forced the hip-hop community, which embraces change only incrementally, to reconsider what can be a successful album, it's also reinvigorated the creative spirit of both Dre and Big Boi after their last album, Stankonia, drained it out of them. Rather than breaking them apart, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below will probably save them.
"People are always playing this game safely," Big Boi said, shaking his head. The rapper is a solid, 5'6'' mass of feistiness, and if Andre's accent is cat-like sleek, then Big's is pure bulldog. "You know, if you've been winning for a long time, you say, 'I got a formula and it works.' With us, we want to come in and create, and whatever happens, happens. We were wondering what it would sound like if you had me in one kitchen cooking and Dre in the other kitchen cooking. We did it just to make it more exciting. It was a challenge doing it this way. Otherwise you do the same sh-- all the time. We switchin' and changin'. You don't want to do something to just get by."
Some people would disagree. One magazine even asked if on this latest album — where Andre lives out his Prince playboy fantasy and Big Boi acts like a newly single hustler — the group has gone too far musically.
"With Outkast music, it's not the easiest thing to swallow," Dre said. "It's always on that fence — people can hate it or they can love it. Or they could say, 'They have gone too far.' "
"What is too far in doing music?" Big Boi asked.
But is that where Outkast have gone on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below? Big Boi's single, "The Way You Move," is a smooth, soulful anthem lionizing the female form, while Andre's song has transcended hip-hop and attracted fans of rock and pop radio. If that's "too far," then they'll take it. "I'm not a pop writer," Andre said, "but I do want everybody in the world to get a chance to listen to my music."
What many ignore when they say Outkast have overstepped their bounds or infer that they've grown tired of making music with each other is just how strong the relationship between Andre and Big Boi is. Outkast are not a pair of guys who happened to run into each other in the studio one day only to discover a professional mission. They have known each other since their formative years at Tri-Cities High School in Atlanta, where they were best friends who discovered in each other what they liked about themselves: a desire to do things differently and subvert the mainstream.
One way this manifested itself early on was in their fashion sense. Neither Andre nor Big Boi were afraid of putting their own fingerprints on the styles of the day. They dressed like preppies (in the era of Boyz II Men, new jack swing!) with pressed Girbaud jeans and collared shirts. But they would always add a new wrinkle to the look.
"We would cut our clothes up and dye them different colors and say we bought them from Australia or wherever," Big Boi said with a laugh. "Just so people at school could be like, 'Damn, where'd you get that?' We had our own little style. We'd color our hair. Folks was diggin' it. Anything to get a rise out of anybody. That's when we started rapping, too. Two Shades Deep was the name of the group. I was Black Dog and Dre was Black Wolf. Became Outkast right after that."
Big Boi gets downright indignant if people suggest that he and Dre no longer see eye to eye. "It's a brotherhood, man," he said. "You click up with somebody you don't hardly know but at the same time, you got the same fascination with the same things and the personalities click. We started out as just homeboys first. I slept on his bedroom floor the last two years of high school damn near. We came up with the whole vision for the group together. We grew up together and learned those things together — that's how the sound came about. It's like it manifested in both of us and we spit it out in all different types of ways. But we brothers first, before the group. We brothers."
Big Boi gets downright indignant if people suggest that he and Dre no longer see eye to eye. "It's a brotherhood, man," he said. "You click up with somebody you don't hardly know but at the same time, you got the same fascination with the same things and the personalities click. We started out as just homeboys first. I slept on his bedroom floor the last two years of high school damn near. We came up with the whole vision for the group together. We grew up together and learned those things together — that's how the sound came about. It's like it manifested in both of us and we spit it out in all different types of ways. But we brothers first, before the group. We brothers."
While Big Boi and Andre share the desire to approach things from a unique perspective, in all other ways they're different. Big Boi is the homeboy of the crew, the populist who most adheres to the traditional styles of hip-hop, like throwback jerseys, 20-inch rims on his SUV and girls with the badunkadunk. Andre is the loner, the one who rhymes about inner emotions and outer space, the one who can throw on a purple fur coat and make it look masculine in the tradition of George Clinton and Prince.
That yin-and-yang fit has made Outkast's previous four albums, from their 1994 debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, to 2000's break-out hit, Stankonia, stand out from the typical sounds of hip-hop. And through it all they've managed to connect with people — Stankonia, as avant-garde a hip-hop album as you'll ever hear, has sold 4 million copies in the U.S.
The success of Stankonia allowed the duo to step back and do things a little differently for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Big Boi explored his roots, his communal, Southern-funk side. The song "Tomb of the Boom" is the epitome of this, a hardcore-beat roundtable that features Ludacris, Big Gipp of the Goodie Mob and a new group discovered by Big Boi called Konkrete. "I wanted to do something like 'The Symphony' with Marley Marl," Big Boi explained. "Just MCs from the South, straight street MCs ready to bust on a hard-ass ghetto beat."
On his side, Andre played with the kaleidoscope of the black musical diaspora, touching on jazz, doo-wop, soul and blues, often in the same song. He wrapped the tracks around a fictional story he created in his head, set in Paris, about a man afflicted with lust who finally falls in love. Musically, what stands out is his withdrawal from any actual rapping; instead, Andre sings most of his lines in a down-home falsetto.
"It wasn't a conscious thing where I said, I don't want to rap no more," Andre said. "Even on early Outkast albums I've always felt [sung] melodies. I guess the melodies just took over more and more, and then next thing [I know] I was writing full songs. I was real excited about that, it was a challenge to me to step into that arena and see if I could shake my tail. I was pretty stuck on [that story]. But I didn't want to hear a bunch of love raps. To say what I wanted to say, it'd come out better in song."
Once again, Outkast's experimentation seems to be working — both for themselves and for the fans. In conceiving the album, the two came up with a story line for a new movie, which will be produced for HBO and based on the songs from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. It's a rap fairy tale that finds Andre searching for love and Big Boi living out a gangsta-pimp fantasy — much like the themes on their own albums. The soundtrack to the film, which begins shooting early next year for a fall release, will mix some of the songs that missed the cut for these discs, as well as new cuts Andre and Big Boi are working on together. "I want to put my creative energy into different things now," Andre divulged. "Restaurants, things like that. I want to see fly stuff everywhere."
The first week Speakerboxxx/The Love Below showed up in stores, it sold 509,000 copies, topping the Billboard albums chart and besting a list of high-profile debuts that week from Dave Matthews, Limp Bizkit, R. Kelly and Eminem protégé Obie Trice. It proved Outkast's place in the pantheon of pop was not an anomaly that began and ended with Stankonia.
"It's always amazing to me," Andre said, smiling. "You never know what people are going to like. I've seen the best of them, boys I've loved, go by the wayside. I don't know if it's them or the audience. Maybe it's the times. One thing I do know, nobody will stay on top forever. Once you get that in your mind, it won't be such a crash. You just gotta keep on keepin' on, keep doing what you want to do."
(0) comments
Outkast - Black Dog/Black Wolf
By Joseph Patel
http://www.mtv.com/bands/o/outkast/news_feature_030929/index.jhtml
Full article:
Outkast's Andre 3000 walked into the MTV Radio lounge about as cool as anyone wearing blue flood trousers, a pinstripe shirt and suspenders can be. That's to say, he was "ice cold" cool, to borrow a phrase from his current hit single, "Hey Ya!." His partner in rhyme, Big Boi, followed behind him a few seconds later. He was the antithesis of Dre's psychedelic vintage style, with his baggy camouflage pants and loose-hanging sports jersey. While Andre slinked his skinny frame up to a stool in the room, Big Boi kind of rumbled there, like a bull, clutching a greasy box of fried chicken from a nearby Popeyes.
"Anyone want some chicken? Y'all can have what ya want," Big said in a low mumble.
"You givin' 'em your chicken?" Andre asked, surprised, cocking his head to the side.
"Chicken, sure. Biscuits, too," Big answered. Just some of that Southern hospitality, he seemed to be saying. Andre had no interest in the grease, the chicken, the biscuits or the comfort of this food — he's a vegan, going on eight years.
"You want some?" Big Boi asked, staring at Andre. There was a long pause, then laughter as Andre just shook his head.
It was a small moment in a thousand that happen each day in the lives of Andre and Big Boi, but not an insignificant one, because, for one thing, this easygoing and familiar moment hardly paints the portrait of a group in turmoil.
Yet many have been presenting such a picture of the duo. The press has seized upon the "Outkast Go Their Separate Ways!" story like sharks on fresh sea turtles dropped in their tank. The conceptual divide of the duo's new double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, actually comprised of two solo efforts, and the accompanying cover, a royal looking Big Boi adorned with a hustler-friendly, extravagant fur coat on one side, a white-capped Andre in a glam-rap pose on the other, led to the easy hook. Some magazines would follow suit, featuring two different covers with the two different members. And they all asked the question, "Is this a prelude to breaking up?"
"We did something separated, [but] the unity is still here..."
"It's on, brother," Big Boi boomed. "We did something kind of separated to show you the separate visions. It's still the group. The unity is still here." He hit Andre 3000 on the arm, then said, "They thought we were gonna break up, Dre!"
"We've had photo shoots where the entire time, we're together taking pictures," Dre explained in a slow, country manner that's all flat-as-flapjacks vowels and syrupy consonants. "We get the magazine covers back and they just happen to pick the picture where we're both looking away from each other. I understand it but ... no, we're not breaking up. This is just one project, one album. We thought it'd be a great idea."
Indeed, splitting the new Outkast album in two wasn't a precursor to their demise, a signal that these two lifelong friends had suddenly grown sick of each other; it was just another grand — and risky — idea in a career full of bold choices. The move has not only forced the hip-hop community, which embraces change only incrementally, to reconsider what can be a successful album, it's also reinvigorated the creative spirit of both Dre and Big Boi after their last album, Stankonia, drained it out of them. Rather than breaking them apart, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below will probably save them.
"People are always playing this game safely," Big Boi said, shaking his head. The rapper is a solid, 5'6'' mass of feistiness, and if Andre's accent is cat-like sleek, then Big's is pure bulldog. "You know, if you've been winning for a long time, you say, 'I got a formula and it works.' With us, we want to come in and create, and whatever happens, happens. We were wondering what it would sound like if you had me in one kitchen cooking and Dre in the other kitchen cooking. We did it just to make it more exciting. It was a challenge doing it this way. Otherwise you do the same sh-- all the time. We switchin' and changin'. You don't want to do something to just get by."
Some people would disagree. One magazine even asked if on this latest album — where Andre lives out his Prince playboy fantasy and Big Boi acts like a newly single hustler — the group has gone too far musically.
"With Outkast music, it's not the easiest thing to swallow," Dre said. "It's always on that fence — people can hate it or they can love it. Or they could say, 'They have gone too far.' "
"What is too far in doing music?" Big Boi asked.
But is that where Outkast have gone on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below? Big Boi's single, "The Way You Move," is a smooth, soulful anthem lionizing the female form, while Andre's song has transcended hip-hop and attracted fans of rock and pop radio. If that's "too far," then they'll take it. "I'm not a pop writer," Andre said, "but I do want everybody in the world to get a chance to listen to my music."
What many ignore when they say Outkast have overstepped their bounds or infer that they've grown tired of making music with each other is just how strong the relationship between Andre and Big Boi is. Outkast are not a pair of guys who happened to run into each other in the studio one day only to discover a professional mission. They have known each other since their formative years at Tri-Cities High School in Atlanta, where they were best friends who discovered in each other what they liked about themselves: a desire to do things differently and subvert the mainstream.
One way this manifested itself early on was in their fashion sense. Neither Andre nor Big Boi were afraid of putting their own fingerprints on the styles of the day. They dressed like preppies (in the era of Boyz II Men, new jack swing!) with pressed Girbaud jeans and collared shirts. But they would always add a new wrinkle to the look.
"We would cut our clothes up and dye them different colors and say we bought them from Australia or wherever," Big Boi said with a laugh. "Just so people at school could be like, 'Damn, where'd you get that?' We had our own little style. We'd color our hair. Folks was diggin' it. Anything to get a rise out of anybody. That's when we started rapping, too. Two Shades Deep was the name of the group. I was Black Dog and Dre was Black Wolf. Became Outkast right after that."
Big Boi gets downright indignant if people suggest that he and Dre no longer see eye to eye. "It's a brotherhood, man," he said. "You click up with somebody you don't hardly know but at the same time, you got the same fascination with the same things and the personalities click. We started out as just homeboys first. I slept on his bedroom floor the last two years of high school damn near. We came up with the whole vision for the group together. We grew up together and learned those things together — that's how the sound came about. It's like it manifested in both of us and we spit it out in all different types of ways. But we brothers first, before the group. We brothers."
Big Boi gets downright indignant if people suggest that he and Dre no longer see eye to eye. "It's a brotherhood, man," he said. "You click up with somebody you don't hardly know but at the same time, you got the same fascination with the same things and the personalities click. We started out as just homeboys first. I slept on his bedroom floor the last two years of high school damn near. We came up with the whole vision for the group together. We grew up together and learned those things together — that's how the sound came about. It's like it manifested in both of us and we spit it out in all different types of ways. But we brothers first, before the group. We brothers."
While Big Boi and Andre share the desire to approach things from a unique perspective, in all other ways they're different. Big Boi is the homeboy of the crew, the populist who most adheres to the traditional styles of hip-hop, like throwback jerseys, 20-inch rims on his SUV and girls with the badunkadunk. Andre is the loner, the one who rhymes about inner emotions and outer space, the one who can throw on a purple fur coat and make it look masculine in the tradition of George Clinton and Prince.
That yin-and-yang fit has made Outkast's previous four albums, from their 1994 debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, to 2000's break-out hit, Stankonia, stand out from the typical sounds of hip-hop. And through it all they've managed to connect with people — Stankonia, as avant-garde a hip-hop album as you'll ever hear, has sold 4 million copies in the U.S.
The success of Stankonia allowed the duo to step back and do things a little differently for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Big Boi explored his roots, his communal, Southern-funk side. The song "Tomb of the Boom" is the epitome of this, a hardcore-beat roundtable that features Ludacris, Big Gipp of the Goodie Mob and a new group discovered by Big Boi called Konkrete. "I wanted to do something like 'The Symphony' with Marley Marl," Big Boi explained. "Just MCs from the South, straight street MCs ready to bust on a hard-ass ghetto beat."
On his side, Andre played with the kaleidoscope of the black musical diaspora, touching on jazz, doo-wop, soul and blues, often in the same song. He wrapped the tracks around a fictional story he created in his head, set in Paris, about a man afflicted with lust who finally falls in love. Musically, what stands out is his withdrawal from any actual rapping; instead, Andre sings most of his lines in a down-home falsetto.
"It wasn't a conscious thing where I said, I don't want to rap no more," Andre said. "Even on early Outkast albums I've always felt [sung] melodies. I guess the melodies just took over more and more, and then next thing [I know] I was writing full songs. I was real excited about that, it was a challenge to me to step into that arena and see if I could shake my tail. I was pretty stuck on [that story]. But I didn't want to hear a bunch of love raps. To say what I wanted to say, it'd come out better in song."
Once again, Outkast's experimentation seems to be working — both for themselves and for the fans. In conceiving the album, the two came up with a story line for a new movie, which will be produced for HBO and based on the songs from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. It's a rap fairy tale that finds Andre searching for love and Big Boi living out a gangsta-pimp fantasy — much like the themes on their own albums. The soundtrack to the film, which begins shooting early next year for a fall release, will mix some of the songs that missed the cut for these discs, as well as new cuts Andre and Big Boi are working on together. "I want to put my creative energy into different things now," Andre divulged. "Restaurants, things like that. I want to see fly stuff everywhere."
The first week Speakerboxxx/The Love Below showed up in stores, it sold 509,000 copies, topping the Billboard albums chart and besting a list of high-profile debuts that week from Dave Matthews, Limp Bizkit, R. Kelly and Eminem protégé Obie Trice. It proved Outkast's place in the pantheon of pop was not an anomaly that began and ended with Stankonia.
"It's always amazing to me," Andre said, smiling. "You never know what people are going to like. I've seen the best of them, boys I've loved, go by the wayside. I don't know if it's them or the audience. Maybe it's the times. One thing I do know, nobody will stay on top forever. Once you get that in your mind, it won't be such a crash. You just gotta keep on keepin' on, keep doing what you want to do."
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Excerpts from Rome’s email’s regarding the Grammy’s
Yo the music industry is in big trouble.
Their intent was to make it the best one ever and they failed miserably.
Everyone knows if you do your thing at the Grammy's your record sales should increase by at least 5%. So these pimps took all their hoes out the stable and put 'em to work.
Prince w/ Beyonce,
Earth, Wind & Fire w/ Big Boi,
George Clinton w/ some guy I've never heard of,
Black Eyed Peas w/ Justin Timberlake,
Beyonce again,
CHIC COREA W/ SOMEBODY?
The Industry is basically saying... GET OUT THERE AND MAKE ALL OF US SOME MONEY!!!!!!!
They even went as far to break for an "important message about unapproved downloading." Then showed a young girl on a g4 laptop downloading, it was eerily similar to the “this is your brain on drugs” shit.
Coldplay plugged Kerry for president which is deep because they’re not even American.
It was cool to see Andre and Big Boi have a real moment on stage.
The industry simply can't keep up. Things are moving too fast and no one really knows what’s cool anymore so they just put a little of everything popular.
It was predominantly black-oriented music which is how you know they were ho-ing
And the country shit was not really there. One the biggest and segregated genres of music. I've heard in the past that the Country Music Grammy's is almost as big of a deal as the Grammy's. After this, the Grammy's won't be worth shit to the Country crowd. It’s going to be on some civil war shit because if anyone is going to plug Bush, it'll be there.
Quintin T.. was trying to talk with some sort of silly white interpretation of black dialect for no reason.
I mean the whole shit was strange...and why were the Roots nominated for anything?
so that's why I wanted you to watch the Grammy’s but you didn't.
(0) comments
Yo the music industry is in big trouble.
Their intent was to make it the best one ever and they failed miserably.
Everyone knows if you do your thing at the Grammy's your record sales should increase by at least 5%. So these pimps took all their hoes out the stable and put 'em to work.
Prince w/ Beyonce,
Earth, Wind & Fire w/ Big Boi,
George Clinton w/ some guy I've never heard of,
Black Eyed Peas w/ Justin Timberlake,
Beyonce again,
CHIC COREA W/ SOMEBODY?
The Industry is basically saying... GET OUT THERE AND MAKE ALL OF US SOME MONEY!!!!!!!
They even went as far to break for an "important message about unapproved downloading." Then showed a young girl on a g4 laptop downloading, it was eerily similar to the “this is your brain on drugs” shit.
Coldplay plugged Kerry for president which is deep because they’re not even American.
It was cool to see Andre and Big Boi have a real moment on stage.
The industry simply can't keep up. Things are moving too fast and no one really knows what’s cool anymore so they just put a little of everything popular.
It was predominantly black-oriented music which is how you know they were ho-ing
And the country shit was not really there. One the biggest and segregated genres of music. I've heard in the past that the Country Music Grammy's is almost as big of a deal as the Grammy's. After this, the Grammy's won't be worth shit to the Country crowd. It’s going to be on some civil war shit because if anyone is going to plug Bush, it'll be there.
Quintin T.. was trying to talk with some sort of silly white interpretation of black dialect for no reason.
I mean the whole shit was strange...and why were the Roots nominated for anything?
so that's why I wanted you to watch the Grammy’s but you didn't.
Monday, February 09, 2004
The day-to-day journal leading to Outkast's Grammy Awards'
http://www.accessatlanta.com/music/content/music/0204/09grammydiary.html;COXnetJSessionID=Ao32fGfWi0hTLoSAl1F19LUKfVC1SUOllcrDW09TstNrJNt2bnoG!-1798508434?urac=n&urvf=10763774627780.3351082454286971#
(0) comments
http://www.accessatlanta.com/music/content/music/0204/09grammydiary.html;COXnetJSessionID=Ao32fGfWi0hTLoSAl1F19LUKfVC1SUOllcrDW09TstNrJNt2bnoG!-1798508434?urac=n&urvf=10763774627780.3351082454286971#
The Music that moved me in 2003 list
I've been trying to write my own reviews for each of these,
hopefully I will, but in the meantime just wanted to make sure
you're all up on these. I don't want to hear that there's no
good music out there.
Meshell Nedegeocello - Comfort Woman - The woman with the hard-to-pronounce last name gives us diverse sounds, smoothness, and excellent content.
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief - (already wrote a review a few weeks back, learn about it)
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People - Heard this playing in T-Shirt Orgy, asked the cat behind the counter, he sold me on it. I bought it and now want to sell you on it.
Outkast - Speakerbox/The Love Below - (review almost completed on this one)
Murs - The End of the Beginning - First west coast artist on Def Jux, songs with personality, character, and at times excellent production
Livesavas - Spirit in Stone (Solid debut, interested in hearing the next one)
Jay Z - The Black Album (In the last few years I've gone from a hater to a congratulator)
Massive Attack - The 100th Window - definitely mood music, but well constructed and lyrical.
Audioslave - what good gangster rap is, hard and visual. They're hurting em.
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells - came out in 2002, but I didn't hear it till 03. Two-person band that makes full music.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way - how do you follow-up a classic? Create a beatle-esque album fully equipped with visual content and crooning.
Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher - Mood music as well but I like the idea of it. Electronica meets hip hop, but it's definitely hip hop.
God's Stepson - 9th Wonder -
He gets a pass for using the same snare on every song
because he brought life to songs that I couldn't stomach via God's Son,
ex. "The Cross," "Mastermind," "Revolutionary Warfare."
Started this accapella-remix craze.
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein - The album came out in 01.
Rome pulled my teeth out to get this in 02. I still slept.
Much like a painting when someone gives you their take,
your perception may actually change. This album is the truth.
(0) comments
I've been trying to write my own reviews for each of these,
hopefully I will, but in the meantime just wanted to make sure
you're all up on these. I don't want to hear that there's no
good music out there.
Meshell Nedegeocello - Comfort Woman - The woman with the hard-to-pronounce last name gives us diverse sounds, smoothness, and excellent content.
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief - (already wrote a review a few weeks back, learn about it)
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People - Heard this playing in T-Shirt Orgy, asked the cat behind the counter, he sold me on it. I bought it and now want to sell you on it.
Outkast - Speakerbox/The Love Below - (review almost completed on this one)
Murs - The End of the Beginning - First west coast artist on Def Jux, songs with personality, character, and at times excellent production
Livesavas - Spirit in Stone (Solid debut, interested in hearing the next one)
Jay Z - The Black Album (In the last few years I've gone from a hater to a congratulator)
Massive Attack - The 100th Window - definitely mood music, but well constructed and lyrical.
Audioslave - what good gangster rap is, hard and visual. They're hurting em.
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells - came out in 2002, but I didn't hear it till 03. Two-person band that makes full music.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way - how do you follow-up a classic? Create a beatle-esque album fully equipped with visual content and crooning.
Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher - Mood music as well but I like the idea of it. Electronica meets hip hop, but it's definitely hip hop.
God's Stepson - 9th Wonder -
He gets a pass for using the same snare on every song
because he brought life to songs that I couldn't stomach via God's Son,
ex. "The Cross," "Mastermind," "Revolutionary Warfare."
Started this accapella-remix craze.
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein - The album came out in 01.
Rome pulled my teeth out to get this in 02. I still slept.
Much like a painting when someone gives you their take,
your perception may actually change. This album is the truth.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Just when I was feeling like complete amnesia set in regarding slavery,
the UN opens Slavery Remembrance Year. The short article is longer
than the paragraph they squeezed in for high school history.
"By institutionalising memory, resisting the onset of oblivion, recalling the memory of a tragedy that for long years remained hidden or unrecognised, and by assigning it its proper place in the human conscience, we respond to our duty to remember," he said in a message for the year.
full article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3385601.stm
(0) comments
the UN opens Slavery Remembrance Year. The short article is longer
than the paragraph they squeezed in for high school history.
"By institutionalising memory, resisting the onset of oblivion, recalling the memory of a tragedy that for long years remained hidden or unrecognised, and by assigning it its proper place in the human conscience, we respond to our duty to remember," he said in a message for the year.
full article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3385601.stm
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Well written and informative article regarding Bush's war and "intelligence." (obvious oxymoron)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0204-09.htm
(0) comments
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0204-09.htm
From an article in the New York Times about Indians dominating the hotel business in America:
"That's the sacrifice they're prepared to make," said Hitesh Bhakta, chairman of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. "If you want to improve your lot in life, educate your children, then maybe you have to go to Minnesota where no one else will go."
full article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 3, 2004
For a New Generation, Rooms to Succeed
By JOSEPH BERGER
inu Patel realized his immigrant dreams by working 100 hours a week to turn a profit on a struggling motel. He wanted something better for his children.
Morning and night, Mr. Patel, an immigrant from the Indian state of Gujarat, manned the front desk and did repairs on a 60-room Econo Lodge in Bordentown, N.J., while his wife, Indu, and two children hauled suitcases, made up beds and vacuumed rooms. And the work paid off. At age 57, Mr. Patel owns not only the Econo Lodge but, with relatives, four other hotels.
As with thousands of other Indian hotel owners, Mr. Patel hoped his children would choose to stay in the hotel business, but he wanted them to work with bankers and brokers rather than as bellhops. So, with an immigrant's classic trust in education but a novel Indian twist, he helped put his son, Montu, and daughter, Payal, through hotel school, in their case the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University.
Immigrants from India - mostly from the state of Gujarat and many bearing the name Patel, which is common in the region - have, during the last three decades, quietly acquired more than one-third of the 53,000 hotels in the United States, most of them budget and mid-priced franchises, hotel industry officials say. But this strike-it-rich story has more recently taken a compelling though not entirely surprising turn.
At hotel schools like those at Cornell University, New York University and San Diego State University, as well as more general business schools, the children are studying how to manage chains of hotels, work in corporate offices of name-brand franchisers and acquire more upscale properties like Marriott and Hilton. Call them the Cornell hotel Patels.
"What we did we did the practical way," said Vinu Patel, reflecting on the generational change. "With their educational background, the children can work for corporate America. They understand what corporations are looking for in the hotel industry - how to market and acquire the product better than we do." Montu, who received his master's degree in May, is advising his father on acquiring new hotels while working full time as director of sales and account development for American Express's travel agency network. Payal, who attended N.Y.U.'s undergraduate hospitality program, evaluates hotels and other real estate for Standard & Poor's.
The children are not only pursuing bigger and better hotels but also, apparently, hipper hotels.
Jay and Neil Shah's parents started with a run-down hotel in downtown Harrisburg, Pa., in 1984, but the sons, armed with degrees from Cornell and Harvard, took the business public in 1999 as Hersha Hospitality Trust. Their $275-million-plus company, named for their mother, operates 27 hotels, and among them is the recently built 24-story Hampton Inn in Chelsea, which Neil Shah describes with the kind of business argot that reflects a newly minted generation.
"Our strategy is to try to bring mid-priced hotels into the Manhattan urban market, but to do so with a bit of flair," he said. "We work with top designers and fit our hotels out with a contemporary fresh look that people identify with New York, with cutting-edge design, but for which they don't have to pay $300 a night." (Rooms at his Hampton Inn start at $149.)
Sociologists call businesses dominated by a single ethnic group, like the diners owned by Greeks, fruit stores owned by Koreans and a nursing profession with an abundance of West Indians and Filipinos, "ethnic niche businesses." They say the children of the Gujarati immigrants illustrate what sometimes happens with the second generation
Sometimes, as with Korean grocers, the parents want the children to become doctors and scientists, far outside their own line of work. At other times, as happened among many Jews in the garment industry and Italians in construction, the children raise their parents' livelihood to new levels, working as designers and dress manufacturers rather than cutters and sewing-machine operators, becoming the construction contractors on skyscrapers rather than toiling as stonemasons.
Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, said that certain immigrant groups often concentrated in certain businesses because of a particular characteristic of the American labor market at the time they arrived.
When Indians came here in large numbers after the loosening of immigration laws in the 1960's, the hotel business was at a watershed. With the growth of interstate highways, American travelers were shunning tumbledown roadside motels and welcoming sleek new franchises like Holiday Inn. The gas crisis of the 1970's and the savings and loan crisis of the 1980's meant that a lot of these hotels could be picked up cheaply enough for immigrants to afford, said Dr. Chekitan Dev, a professor of marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.
But running a hotel is a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year business, often operated with the loneliness and dislocation pictured in the movie "Mississippi Masala." "That's the sacrifice they're prepared to make," said Hitesh Bhakta, chairman of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. "If you want to improve your lot in life, educate your children, then maybe you have to go to Minnesota where no one else will go."
The Indians' knowledge of English and a commercial savvy prized by their culture gave them a distinct leg up on other immigrants, and they had a network of relatives and close friends to help out. Like much of India, Gujarat, on the west coast just north of Bombay, has a deeply rooted ethic of hospitality.
"There's actually a phrase in Hindi: 'A guest is like God,' " Professor Dev said.
Mr. Bhakta (formerly Patel - he changed his name to make it distinct) said that his 8,400 members own 20,000 hotels worth $37 billion, including half the nation's Days Inns, half its Ramadas, 40 percent of its Holiday Inns. The group has become such a presence that it is negotiating with insurance carriers to lower steeply rising rates for its members. Not surprisingly, the negotiations are being led by Tarun Vig, a 27-year-old Indian-American and Harvard M.B.A. from a hotel-owning clan.
At Cornell's hotel school, 13 percent of the graduate students are of Indian origin.
"I don't want to stay as a mom-and-pop operation," said Vikas Patel, a second-year student. "I want to make it on a bigger scale."
Students are studying finance, property development and labor negotiations, learning such things as how to evaluate the profitability of a hotel and how to cut costs by pooling laundry services and airport transportation for different hotel brands. Most hotel chains allow owners to manage competing brands as long as chain standards are maintained.
This semester, the "executive-in-residence" at Cornell will be H.P. Rama, who as a young immigrant worked as a waiter at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Manhattan and is now chief executive of JHM Hotels, a family business that owns 33 hotels with 5,000 rooms in the Southeast. In 1999, he became the first Indian chairman of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. His nephew, Vinay M. Rama, is a senior at Cornell hotel school's undergraduate division.
Vikas Patel's father, Ramesh Patel, the son of Gujarati sugar cane farmers, came here in 1970 to complete his studies in civil engineering. While working as an engineer, he also invested in a 30-room hotel in Tempe, Ariz. Now, with three brothers-in-law and a friend, he owns three Days Inns and a Best Western in Arizona and New Mexico., and he is delighted that his son is being formally educated in the hotel business.
"He will learn more marketing skills, the business skills that I didn't learn directly," the elder Mr. Patel said. "He will do a lot of networking and come into contact with lots of people in the hotel business."
Vikas Patel actually started medical school, but the siren song of the hotel business proved too seductive.
"I want to expand our family business, maybe increase the level of the brands we own, like Hampton Inn or Hilton Garden Inn or Courtyard by Marriott, possibly even some full-service properties like a Marriott or Holiday Inn," he said.
There are more than a few cultural twists to Indian hotel ownership. Some Hindus have spurned the larger hotels because the restaurants they include require them to serve alcohol and cook meat. Professor Dev says that sometimes there is tension between the generations, as parents resent their children's foisting new commercial ideas on them. "They're questioning the business model that enabled the parents to send their kids to Cornell in the first place," Dr. Dev said.
But even those parents do not begrudge their children's education.
"We don't want it to be a crapshoot like it was for us," is the way Dr. Dev phrased the parents' attitude. "We were lucky; you may not be so lucky."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
(0) comments
"That's the sacrifice they're prepared to make," said Hitesh Bhakta, chairman of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. "If you want to improve your lot in life, educate your children, then maybe you have to go to Minnesota where no one else will go."
full article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 3, 2004
For a New Generation, Rooms to Succeed
By JOSEPH BERGER
inu Patel realized his immigrant dreams by working 100 hours a week to turn a profit on a struggling motel. He wanted something better for his children.
Morning and night, Mr. Patel, an immigrant from the Indian state of Gujarat, manned the front desk and did repairs on a 60-room Econo Lodge in Bordentown, N.J., while his wife, Indu, and two children hauled suitcases, made up beds and vacuumed rooms. And the work paid off. At age 57, Mr. Patel owns not only the Econo Lodge but, with relatives, four other hotels.
As with thousands of other Indian hotel owners, Mr. Patel hoped his children would choose to stay in the hotel business, but he wanted them to work with bankers and brokers rather than as bellhops. So, with an immigrant's classic trust in education but a novel Indian twist, he helped put his son, Montu, and daughter, Payal, through hotel school, in their case the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University.
Immigrants from India - mostly from the state of Gujarat and many bearing the name Patel, which is common in the region - have, during the last three decades, quietly acquired more than one-third of the 53,000 hotels in the United States, most of them budget and mid-priced franchises, hotel industry officials say. But this strike-it-rich story has more recently taken a compelling though not entirely surprising turn.
At hotel schools like those at Cornell University, New York University and San Diego State University, as well as more general business schools, the children are studying how to manage chains of hotels, work in corporate offices of name-brand franchisers and acquire more upscale properties like Marriott and Hilton. Call them the Cornell hotel Patels.
"What we did we did the practical way," said Vinu Patel, reflecting on the generational change. "With their educational background, the children can work for corporate America. They understand what corporations are looking for in the hotel industry - how to market and acquire the product better than we do." Montu, who received his master's degree in May, is advising his father on acquiring new hotels while working full time as director of sales and account development for American Express's travel agency network. Payal, who attended N.Y.U.'s undergraduate hospitality program, evaluates hotels and other real estate for Standard & Poor's.
The children are not only pursuing bigger and better hotels but also, apparently, hipper hotels.
Jay and Neil Shah's parents started with a run-down hotel in downtown Harrisburg, Pa., in 1984, but the sons, armed with degrees from Cornell and Harvard, took the business public in 1999 as Hersha Hospitality Trust. Their $275-million-plus company, named for their mother, operates 27 hotels, and among them is the recently built 24-story Hampton Inn in Chelsea, which Neil Shah describes with the kind of business argot that reflects a newly minted generation.
"Our strategy is to try to bring mid-priced hotels into the Manhattan urban market, but to do so with a bit of flair," he said. "We work with top designers and fit our hotels out with a contemporary fresh look that people identify with New York, with cutting-edge design, but for which they don't have to pay $300 a night." (Rooms at his Hampton Inn start at $149.)
Sociologists call businesses dominated by a single ethnic group, like the diners owned by Greeks, fruit stores owned by Koreans and a nursing profession with an abundance of West Indians and Filipinos, "ethnic niche businesses." They say the children of the Gujarati immigrants illustrate what sometimes happens with the second generation
Sometimes, as with Korean grocers, the parents want the children to become doctors and scientists, far outside their own line of work. At other times, as happened among many Jews in the garment industry and Italians in construction, the children raise their parents' livelihood to new levels, working as designers and dress manufacturers rather than cutters and sewing-machine operators, becoming the construction contractors on skyscrapers rather than toiling as stonemasons.
Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, said that certain immigrant groups often concentrated in certain businesses because of a particular characteristic of the American labor market at the time they arrived.
When Indians came here in large numbers after the loosening of immigration laws in the 1960's, the hotel business was at a watershed. With the growth of interstate highways, American travelers were shunning tumbledown roadside motels and welcoming sleek new franchises like Holiday Inn. The gas crisis of the 1970's and the savings and loan crisis of the 1980's meant that a lot of these hotels could be picked up cheaply enough for immigrants to afford, said Dr. Chekitan Dev, a professor of marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.
But running a hotel is a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year business, often operated with the loneliness and dislocation pictured in the movie "Mississippi Masala." "That's the sacrifice they're prepared to make," said Hitesh Bhakta, chairman of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. "If you want to improve your lot in life, educate your children, then maybe you have to go to Minnesota where no one else will go."
The Indians' knowledge of English and a commercial savvy prized by their culture gave them a distinct leg up on other immigrants, and they had a network of relatives and close friends to help out. Like much of India, Gujarat, on the west coast just north of Bombay, has a deeply rooted ethic of hospitality.
"There's actually a phrase in Hindi: 'A guest is like God,' " Professor Dev said.
Mr. Bhakta (formerly Patel - he changed his name to make it distinct) said that his 8,400 members own 20,000 hotels worth $37 billion, including half the nation's Days Inns, half its Ramadas, 40 percent of its Holiday Inns. The group has become such a presence that it is negotiating with insurance carriers to lower steeply rising rates for its members. Not surprisingly, the negotiations are being led by Tarun Vig, a 27-year-old Indian-American and Harvard M.B.A. from a hotel-owning clan.
At Cornell's hotel school, 13 percent of the graduate students are of Indian origin.
"I don't want to stay as a mom-and-pop operation," said Vikas Patel, a second-year student. "I want to make it on a bigger scale."
Students are studying finance, property development and labor negotiations, learning such things as how to evaluate the profitability of a hotel and how to cut costs by pooling laundry services and airport transportation for different hotel brands. Most hotel chains allow owners to manage competing brands as long as chain standards are maintained.
This semester, the "executive-in-residence" at Cornell will be H.P. Rama, who as a young immigrant worked as a waiter at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Manhattan and is now chief executive of JHM Hotels, a family business that owns 33 hotels with 5,000 rooms in the Southeast. In 1999, he became the first Indian chairman of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. His nephew, Vinay M. Rama, is a senior at Cornell hotel school's undergraduate division.
Vikas Patel's father, Ramesh Patel, the son of Gujarati sugar cane farmers, came here in 1970 to complete his studies in civil engineering. While working as an engineer, he also invested in a 30-room hotel in Tempe, Ariz. Now, with three brothers-in-law and a friend, he owns three Days Inns and a Best Western in Arizona and New Mexico., and he is delighted that his son is being formally educated in the hotel business.
"He will learn more marketing skills, the business skills that I didn't learn directly," the elder Mr. Patel said. "He will do a lot of networking and come into contact with lots of people in the hotel business."
Vikas Patel actually started medical school, but the siren song of the hotel business proved too seductive.
"I want to expand our family business, maybe increase the level of the brands we own, like Hampton Inn or Hilton Garden Inn or Courtyard by Marriott, possibly even some full-service properties like a Marriott or Holiday Inn," he said.
There are more than a few cultural twists to Indian hotel ownership. Some Hindus have spurned the larger hotels because the restaurants they include require them to serve alcohol and cook meat. Professor Dev says that sometimes there is tension between the generations, as parents resent their children's foisting new commercial ideas on them. "They're questioning the business model that enabled the parents to send their kids to Cornell in the first place," Dr. Dev said.
But even those parents do not begrudge their children's education.
"We don't want it to be a crapshoot like it was for us," is the way Dr. Dev phrased the parents' attitude. "We were lucky; you may not be so lucky."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
(0) commentsSunday, February 01, 2004
(0) comments