Monday, September 11, 2006

Humid days, a radical solution, Little Miss Sunshine and Dhaliwal's Tourism

Monday September 11 - humid and hot with the earthy scent of a sky pregnant with rain. Yet the rain does not fall and it feels like I am breathing steam when I walk out to lunch. The weather is almost tropical and reminds me of home- is it global warming or just one of those days- who knows?

The war of the vices -the Obasanjo-Atiku and Blair-Brown sagas continue to unfold. While in the UK there appears to be a temporary truce as the truth slowly sinks into the skulls of Brownites and Blairites alike that they haven't been elected to spend the time squabbling like nursery school brats; in Nigeria VP Atiku ratchets up the heat by heading for the courts. I read the report of the "investigative panel" the president set up and I wonder where in the Nigerian Constitution this panel fits in.......at least in the UK everyone sort of knows the framework within which the fight is conducted...oh well! I'm increasingly being drawn to the neither/nor option in both cases- dump Blair AND Brown in the UK and dump Atiku AND Obasanjo in Nigeria.....

Went to watch Little Miss Sunshine over the weekend- it's the kind of dark comic tale of a dysfunctional family where you never quite know if it's okay to laugh. For me the best scene is one where a smarmy serenades the contestants in a beauty pageant with America the Beautiful as they strike suggestive poses and their dolled up faces grin. Problem is they are all under ten years old and if you think kiddy beauty pageants are ok- you really should watch this film......

Have just finished Tourism, by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. It's no surprise he gave Gautam Malkani's Londonstani such a harsh review- they're kind of in the same market....Tourism is an okay read-with liberal instances of equal opportunity provocation- everyone in modern London from the working class to the middle class to the rich are slagged off, as are every ethnic group from the author's own Sikhs to blacks to whites (or honkies, as the author persisted in calling them) I've never actually heard that phrase used except in books and comics from the 7os USA but then perhaps I've lived a rather sheltered life. Apart from the provocation, there's lots of fairly graphic sex but frankly it feels like a hodge podge of scenes and ideas and thoughts cobbled together.... Nevertheless there are some great scenes of contemporary London and certain echoes ofAlan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty- in the way in which outsiders enter the circles of the rich in London and are corrupted....

2 comments:

Nkem said...

Went to the cinema to watch Little Miss Sunshine - sold out. So settled for Black Dahlia. Like all James Ellroy films, it requires another viewing.

Anonymous said...

You don't seem to be a big fan of Nirpal Dhaliwal. I think he's quite brilliant though I recognise his "angry" style of writing which I suspect is a coy to crave some niche for himself. By the way, he's one of the reasons I stick with the Evening Standard.