Missing Music

What has happened to me? What have I become? I try to be good, I try to follow the handbook and live by the rules and regulations. But now I fear I may have committed the most unforgivable sin of my people. This goes beyond not having a six-pack or visiting the salon at least once a week. This is bigger than a missed botox appointment. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

While I have been living my life, trying to get from A to B while doing a bit of shopping in between, I completely neglected to pick up the new Madonna album. It was released two days ago. Two whole days! I am so far out of the groove. Where is the man I used to be? The one who would go to a record store when the pre-launch shipment arrived to bride a sales person for an advance copy? What happened to the guy that managed to get a CD of Erotica almost a week before everyone else? I was the guy that bought “Breathless” and dared to like it. I am the one that put hundreds of miles on my car just to get the video of “Justify my Love”. I have stood out in the wind and rain and made pilgrimages to far off cities to see HER onstage. I was there when she simulated masturbation in Los Angeles. When she told me to express myself, I did. And how! I even taught myself to Vogue. I was desperate to find Susan and decided that if anything should ever happen to me, I was keeping my baby. I was living in a material world and I was a material boy. It wasn’t always easy and it wasn’t always pretty, but I did it. And gladly. It was my destiny. The expectation placed upon all my people when our Moses called forth to us and commanded “everybody, come on, dance and sing!” Those were the days when I was not only like a virgin, I was a virgin. Unfortunately for me, I had no idea at the time that I would remain so for years and years to come. In a dog’s life, it would have equated to decades, but no need to get overly dramatic. That is so not my thing.

So today I have a mission. A goal. A destiny. A date with a diva followed by an iPod to sync.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I am trying out a little experiment. No Mom, this one will not set the kitchen curtains on fire - and besides, that was so long ago and those curtains deserved what they got, if I do say so myself. But more about that later...

I have installed Snap Shots... And now for the company pitch:

Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, IMDb profiles (Marco's fave), YouTube and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

See Mom, it's not so bad, and definitely curtain friendly.

TGIF

One of the great joys of moving around and living in different areas are the people we meet, people we may not have come into contact with back in our old surroundings, our lives played out in familiar routines and places.

It was just over a year ago that I met Stephen and Pierre. Stephen and I met through this very blog and started exchanging emails and then a week or two later made plans to meet up. It was that evening I first entered their newly decorated apartment that would become a source of envy for me, lingering even after all these months. That was also the evening they dragged me to TGI Fridays for margaritas. I had not been to a Fridays since I left New York so many years ago.

And now tonight, just over a year later we are returning to TGI Fridays for our last drinks before Stephen and Pierre head back to Scotland and wherever life takes them beyond that. They will be leaving quite a void in our lives here in Delhi. We have gone in cycles of seeing each other a lot, having the filet Mignon at Smokehouse Grill, Blueberry Mojitos at Sevilla or grooving to the Sunday afternoon beats of DJ Ahsish at Aqua while talking trash about the guys trying to play volleyball in the pool, more often than not sending the ball hurling toward our drinks that would then find themselves poured all over our linen shorts and designer swimwear. The drinks always got replaced by the bar, but for some reason they only seemed to get knocked over when they were completely full, so no free drinks for us, just sticky legs and sandals. And then sometimes not seeing each other so often due to their addiction to weekends in Sydney and other exotic locales, but sooner or later they would always return, just a 20 minute drive from Defence Colony, a phone call away from another adventure in cocktails.

I know we will stay in touch and I am confident we will be clinking glasses again somewhere on the globe, hopefully against a backdrop of clear blue water and sandy beaches littered with hunky, scantily clad guys in their Aussie Bum shorts. But I can’t say I am not sad. I will miss them very much. That is the downside to living abroad, most of us are here for a limited time and then we are off to start the process all over again.

But for Stephen, Pierre and I, we will always have TGI Fridays.

Ode to Horton

In the heat of the day and nowhere near a pool,
In the middle of Delhi and quite far from Nool,
We took an old rickshaw to a mall that’s quite groovy,
With one goal in mind, the new “Horton” movie.

We sat in the rickshaw, just Manuel and me,
And looking around, oh the sights we did see!
Two painted elephants out on the street,
Stomping and stomping atop their flat feet,

They hobbled and wobbled and danced a small jig,
Led by the one in the front with a twig.
The driver said “hmmmpff” as he as quite grumpy,
And I have to concur that the road was quite bumpy.

We bounced up and bounced down,
We bounced here and bounced there,
And I am sure more than once,
We flew through right through the air,

But we finally arrived and we sat in our seats,
With Pepsi and popcorn and sugary treats,
Ankit had joined us looking quite floral,
In a colorful kurta of purple and coral.

And then there on the screen was our hero from Nool
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing… enjoying the jungle’s great joys…
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.

I was glued to my seat, I stayed put in my chair,
As that small speck of dust blew about through the air,
Whatever will happen? Will the speck come to harm?
Those are the questions I asked in alarm.

What would happen to Who-ville and every last Who?
I wondered and wondered what Horton would do,
But he saved all the folks, he’s a very fine friend,
He saved all the folks on the dust speck no end.

He saved all the houses, the ceilings and floors,
He saved all the churches and groceries stores.
Horton never gave up, he believed in them all,
For a person’s a person, no matter how small.

He meant what he said and he said what he meant,
An elephant's faithful one hundred percent.