Not sure if continue acting: The Life of Pi's Suraj Sharma
Life-changing’, ‘surreal’, ‘unbelievable’ are the words this young debutant uses to describe his journey into showbiz. Not surprising considering someone like him — who never had acting on his agenda — to actually land the lead role in Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee’s film. Meet Suraj Sharma who made the cut to play Pi in Lee’s ambitious The Life of Pi. Describing himself as a simple boy studying philosophy in St Stephens College in New Delhi, the newbie says the feeling is yet to sink in, though people around him seem rather excited. “It’s all so new, I’m just taking it one day at a time,” says Suraj in one of his very first interviews ever. As we chat with the actor, he shares his anxiety of being on the threshold of international fame and reveals his future plans. Excerpts...
Did you ever imagine making your debut on a huge international scale, as you are with 'The Life of Pi'?
Never in my wildest dreams. In fact, I had never wanted to be an actor. I was just accompanying my younger brother who was the one actually auditioning for the role, when I landed it.
Wasn’t it intimidating working with Lee and a more established star like Tabu?
No, it could have been, but I never let myself be overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. Had I thought of that, the pressure and stress would’ve been unbearable. I tried not to think about how big a project this actually is. Also, everyone really made me feel comfortable and prepping for the actual shoot for almost five months helped too.
Are you gearing up for stardom?
I don’t know what stardom is, so I’m not thinking about it at all... dekha jaaega. My college friends are excited and so is my family back home in Bengaluru, but for me it’s not sunk in yet. They all are proud of me and it’s humbling. But to be honest I had never harboured Bollywood or Hollywood dreams.
You are already being touted as the next export to Hollywood after actress Freida Pinto...
Well, it’s too early to say anything. Bollywood, Hollywood... I don’t even know if I want to continue being an actor at this point. I am trying to take one step at a time. But I do plan to complete my studies first. If I ever choose to continue acting, I will be open to both Bollywood and Hollywood equally.
You turned 18 on the sets...
Yes, and I feel metaphorically there were many parallels I could draw with Pi’s life. To a great extent, it’s been a spiritual journey for both. Like Pi, I too felt lost initially, but then have matured, grown up faster with the journey of this film. There were parts which were challenging in the film like the ones that required intense emotional output and at the same time a lot of physical movements. It wasn’t easy, but I felt like Pi at the end of it all!
Monday, September 10, 2012
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Kim Kardashian: my life as a brand
Kim Kardashian: my life as a brand
Kim Kardashian is in a makeup chair under giant rollers, looking down at her phone and intermittently up again, to meet her own eye in the mirror. We are at a studio in a Los Angeles suburb; various stylists and Kardashian hangers-on fill the room. "One second," says the star's assistant, calling the group to order. Kardashian frowns at her phone. "You guys," she says, "what should I say? You guys?" There is a moment's hush; Kardashian is passing a tweet.
For those few who haven't yet had the pleasure, Kardashian is a 31-year-old US reality TV star, lately prominent in Britain, who has, since becoming famous in 2007, ascended to the level of a symptom in the culture. Keeping Up With The Kardashians, currently in its seventh season, is contrived, sensationalist, repetitive and witless, but no more so than a lot of things one enjoys without accusing them of spiritual corruption. The difference in this case is reach. Twitter is an unreliable measure of influence, but Kardashian has nearly 16 million followers, putting her ninth in the world, three places behind President Obama. (Lady Gaga is number one; Taylor Swift number eight.) With her two sisters, Khloé and Kourtney, she runs a chain of clothing stores called Dash, has a Las Vegas-based outlet called Kardashian Khaos, promotes makeup and fashion lines under the label Kardashian Kollection, all of which act as window dressing for the business, merely, of being Kim Kardashian: a woman of above average looks, seemingly rather nice, who along with the rest of her family – emotionally speaking – strips on TV for tips. After the shoot, we sit in a courtyard at the back of the studio and Kardashian tries to explain what the fuss is about.
There is an awful lot of fuss. For Kardashian haters, the tipping point came last year when she filed for divorce from Kris Humphries, a basketball player, after three months of marriage and a blizzard of wedding coverage said to have been worth many millions (she will dispute the numbers). The whole thing looked like a stunt to drum up trade for her TV show, although if it was, it backfired in that for a short while she was reviled as the most cynical woman in America. She seems to aggravate male actors in particular. Earlier this year, Jon Hamm unchivalrously referred to her as a "fucking idiot" in Elle magazine, as did Daniel Craig in GQ the year before. Kardashian takes all this with a certain laconic indifference, the standard LA response, heightened by what is probably an effort not to emote too much and generate wrinkles.
"When I hear people say [what are you famous for?], I want to say, what are you talking about?" she says slowly, her eyes wide as a bushbaby's. "I have a hit TV show. We've shot more episodes than I Love Lucy! We've been on the air longer than The Andy Griffith Show! I mean, these are iconic shows, so it blows my mind when people say that."
But you're not performing; you're just being followed around by cameras…
"But to be able to open up your life like that and to be so… if everyone could do it, everyone would. It doesn't make sense to me."
The day before the interview, I go to Dash in Beverly Hills, the flagship store aimed at Kardashian's teen fan base. A bouncer stands outside letting teenagers in one by one, although the store is almost empty. "There's a line!" he calls out to baffled passers-by, and the teenagers snigger. Inside, the clothes are very nice; soft T-shirts, cute shorts and dresses, but that isn't why people are here. Kardashian says that since the show started airing, the store has become a "tourist attraction" and the stock is angled accordingly. After taking photos of themselves in front of a giant Kardashian family montage, the adolescents buy one of several items within their price-range; a $20 compact mirror; pencils for a few dollars; or a $10 bottle of water with the Kardashian sisters' photo on one side.
"Our water sells out all the time," Kardashian says. "People collect them because each store has a different picture on the bottle."
That's amazing.
"It's really crazy," she says. "I mean, a water bottle? It's crazy." She blinks slowly at the wonder of effortless profiteering.
Kardashian characterises her typical fan as "a younger girl, like 15 or 16, who loves fashion, loves to be a girly girl, loves beauty, glam", and whom she respects as a backwards projection of herself. If you can overlook the vacant materialism, she is in some ways not a bad role model. She points out that she is not "your stick-skinny typical model"; that she doesn't go out on benders; that she tries not to swear too much. "I remember this one time when I used the F-word – and everyone was like, I can't believe you said that! You never say that! I am really cautious about what I say and do. If I look at the message I'm portraying, I think it definitely is be who you are, but be your best you."
Whether or not you approve of the show, she has wrought a successful business out of thin air. It's also worth pointing out, given how snotty the fashion industry is towards Kim Kardashian, that to anyone's knowledge she has never thrown her phone at a personal assistant.
And yet she makes people incredibly angry. "Yeah. I have no idea why. I work really hard – I have seven appointments tomorrow before 10am. I'm constantly on the go. I have a successful clothing line. A fragrance. I mean, acting and singing aren't the only ways to be talented. It's a skill to get people to really like you for you, instead of a character written for you by somebody else."
She is currently dating Kanye West, who might have had a hand in the following analogy. "When rap music first started," Kardashian says, "rappers were not respected and people thought it was just a fad. And people thought reality shows were going to come and go. They have taken over the soap operas. So it's a modern version of a soap opera."
The difference, of course, is that the Kardashians are purporting to sell something real. For bald cheek, nothing matches a recent scene in the show in which Kardashian balked at attending a family therapy session because, she said, she didn't feel like sharing family secrets "with a stranger". Very occasionally, a genuine emotion is caught on camera and stands out in relief to the rest of the show – most recently during a staged discussion about Khloé's paternity; while her mother and sisters mugged centre screen, Khloé, to one side, looked fleetingly devastated.
Despite all the phoniness, rehearsed dialogue and fake scenarios, however, there is some grain of authenticity to the Kardashians to which fans respond: when I asked teenagers at Dash why they liked the show, the most common reason was that, despite all the drama, "they all really love each other and are such a close family". Like the Osbournes before them, the Kardashian family unit is convincingly tight. There is something unexpectedly soothing about this.
For the record then, what is Kardashian's talent?
"What is my talent?" She cocks her head to one side. "Well, a bear can juggle and stand on a ball and he's talented, but he's not famous. Do you know what I mean?"
The mastermind behind the Kardashian empire is assumed to be Kris Jenner, mother, manager and ringmaster of her children's careers, who comes across on the show as a gimlet-eyed monster, wringing every last dollar from the family conceit. Despite her 100% belief in the reality genre, Kim Kardashian has to admit she is very glad she went through adolescence off-camera, unlike her youngest sisters, who were nine and 10 when the show started. (Their father is Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic athlete and Kris's second husband, whose career as a motivational speaker she reignited after marrying him. Her first husband, Robert Kardashian, who died in 2003, was OJ Simpson's lawyer.)
"I feel a little bit sad for my little sisters," Kardashian says. "If there's one thing I'm so thankful I have, it's that privacy of pretty much my whole life until seven years ago."
It was a spoilt childhood, materially – her father was a wealthy entrepreneur as well as a lawyer – and it's a mark of the milieu they grew up in that the Kardashian girls and their brother, Rob, were considered deprived because their parents wouldn't give them their own credit cards.
But her dad bought them each a car, right?
"He gave us a car, but I had to sign a contract with him before I got it."
The contract said she had to have it washed once a week; had to make sure it always had gas. "And my grades had to be at a certain average to keep the car. If I crashed it, I had to be responsible for paying for it." She did crash it, within the first six months, and got a job to pay for the repairs.
This was the beginning of Kardashian's career. She found work in a clothing store and liked it so much that, after paying off the car, she kept the job. She started to design her own accessories. "I would make these headbands that were really popular and I'd sell them to all the fun stores in LA. I would make them after school and go around selling them."
She and her sisters periodically lived with their father at this point, their parents' marriage having disintegrated after Kris Jenner had an affair with a 22-year-old. Fault lines in the family were, bizarrely, crystallised by the OJ Simpson trial. Kardashian's mother had been one of Nicole Brown Simpson's best friends and was supposed to have seen her on the day she was murdered; she believed OJ was guilty. Robert Kardashian was one of OJ's best friends and defended him.
"We were kids – 14 and 15 years old, me and Kourtney," Kim says. "We took my dad's side. Just because my dad was not married and my mum kind of broke his heart. It was personal. And we thought that my dad was the smartest man in the whole world. And if he thought he was innocent, we were going to be on that side."
One day, their father came to them and said, "Girls, this is a huge trial and is going to be a part of history, and I think you guys are old enough to handle it." They went into court with him and sat in the OJ camp. "And my mum had gone with Bruce and she was sitting on the Brown side – on Nicole's side. And she turned around and gave as a stare like, I don't even want to see you guys when you get home. We wouldn't even look her way. She was so mad."
This was the beginning of the family's life in the spotlight, although Kardashian had always wanted to be on TV. She watched the first MTV reality show, The Real World, and thought that's what she wanted to do.
What, be on a reality show? "Yes. I wasn't thinking fame. I was just thinking how cool." Why? "I don't know; I just thought my life seemed interesting. I thought, if only people knew the crazy things that go on in this household, it would be so funny. And everyone kept saying that. They'd come over and be like, 'Oh my God, you need your own reality show.' I was always on board. Kourtney was the one who wasn't."
Kim inched farther towards her goal when she started knocking around with Paris Hilton, and then, in 2003, she made a sex tape with her then boyfriend, the singer Ray J. The tape was eventually leaked and a star was born. (In a rare moment of coyness, Kris Jenner, in her memoir, glosses over this momentous turning point in the family history: "There was so much media coverage swirling around Kim then, both positive and negative.") Anyway, to "take advantage of the moment", Jenner made a pilot of the family and took it to Ryan Seacrest at US TV network E! Word came back that there were too many characters, too many siblings and that it was confusing. But Seacrest ultimately backed the show, correctly intuiting that, as with band members, young fans would be able to choose which of the three sisters was their favourite: blank but beautiful Kim, sweet Kourtney or sarcastic Khloé. Meanwhile, Jenner's conniving entertained adults and, for comic relief, there was Bruce, bobbing around in the background, looking more startled with each season and new wave of plastic surgery.
It's no small thing to keep a reality show afloat, and even Kardashian admits that by season four the family was getting panicky about content. "I was like, 'You guys, I don't know that I have much more to give. I can only be myself, like… we're so boring now, we've shown everything.'"
And? "And then Khloé got married, Kourtney got pregnant and everything else just happened organically."
OK. So here's the thing: surely, living under that kind of pressure to feed the beast, one is tempted to say yes to things one might otherwise say no to, for example marrying Kris Humphries and then divorcing Kris Humphries. It doesn't even have to be mercenary; just a matter of needing to Make Something – Anything – Happen.
"Not really. We had done filming our season at that point, so we decided to film for the wedding. And that was a decision that he and I made together. But I think that, with any decisions in life [brace yourselves], like, I spoke to a girl today who had cancer and we were talking about how this is such a hard thing for her, but it taught her a big lesson on who her friends are and so much about life. She's 18. And I was like, that's how I feel."
There is no ethical dimension to Kardashian's defence of her marriage, merely the rationale that it would have made bad commercial sense to have faked it. "Getting married and divorced quickly, if that was my goal the whole time – I'm not an idiot, I obviously know that that would be a bad business decision. If anything, I probably would have left sooner had I not been filming, because I didn't want to end the relationship on TV." The sums of money she was said to have made are "completely outrageous and not true", she says. "No, I mean even with the money we made, we still had to pay for the wedding. We didn't even make enough for that."
So if you married again, would you sell the rights? "I would definitely do it differently. Just all the scrutiny that I got. You don't plan to go through all of that willingly. For money." Her voice rises out of its Californian drawl and sounds momentarily urgent. "That's just not what a sane person would do. So. Would I get married on TV again? No."
She thinks about it for a moment. "Well, I guess you never say never. Because who knows? So many other people I know have gotten married on TV and it has worked out amazing for them."
There is a pause. "William and Kate got married on TV," Kardashian says thoughtfully.
Not all the endorsement deals have been successful. There was a debit card ("the Kardashian Kard") that had high hidden fees and from which, after a firestorm in the press, the family distanced themselves; and a diet product that is currently the subject of a lawsuit. Of the card, Kardashian says, "definitely not the right deal for us. It sounded like a good idea when we went into it, but there were all these hidden fees and costs that even we didn't know about. Although, if you looked at it, it was still a lower percentage than the bank gives you on a credit card."
(It's true that $10 a month fees for prepaid debit cards are not unusual, although there were other fees attached – $1.50 to ring the service centre for example – which looked, given the age of the target market, a little ungenerous.) In Kardashian world, attracting bad PR is a moral failing. "For us, we just didn't want that negative press, so we backed off." As for QuickTrim, the diet product, "If you look at every diet product, there's tons of lawsuits. So that is a successful product, actually."
Kardashian has probably attracted more criticism for her decision to pose topless in Playboy and W magazines, something she hesitated over, but her mother talked her into. Good old Kris. Her father would have been horrified, Kardashian says. "He would have killed me."
But her mum? "Oh, she was all for it."
Doesn't she think it undermines her credibility as a business person? "No, sex is powerful and I think it's empowering, so I don't. I would have thought that before, but now I don't. I go back and forth about it."
The point is that men in her position would not be asked to pose naked. "Yeah!" she says with wonder, as if we have hit upon yet another feminist advantage in the world. "I think it's empowering and I'll do what I want!"
She has at least been consistent in this. In her early 20s, long before the show, Kardashian was married to a musician called Damon Thomas, a fact she shared with her family only after the event. When I ask why she didn't tell her mother she was getting married, she has what looks like a rare, unstudied reaction. With a shuttered look, Kardashian says, "Just a bad choice on my part."
For months after the second marriage debacle, Kardashian says she stopped Googling herself, as near to a breakdown a member of that family can get. She changed her email address. She lost friends. "All these people who were so on my side completely turned on me, and they're now trying to come back and be friends."
Her pairing with Kanye West is odd; he so outspoken and political, Kardashian so neutral on almost everything. The first time she voted in her life was for Obama. "I loved being part of that decision-making process, but I never voted in prior years when I was legally eligible. I don't know why." She is, she says, a "liberal Republican", put off Mitt Romney because of his stance against gay marriage. This election, she says, "I don't know which way I'm going to go." Her favourite politician of all time is Kennedy.
Kanye will appear intermittently in the next season of the show. They are taking their relationship "season by season". "It's what we're both comfortable with, and it's all about making a group decision. Him and I, as a team."
I imagine Kris Jenner might be in that decision, too. Won't the day come, I ask, when Kardashian rises up and overthrows her mother? She actually breaks out an annoyed facial expression. "We are totally equal. She listens to what I say. She follows my lead. She works for me. I mean, on the show maybe it doesn't come off that way…"
Meanwhile, another generation of Kardashians is emerging to fill the endless hours of scheduling. Kourtney's child Mason, a toddler, now takes up a good part of many episodes. Khloé and her husband Lamar have their own show, Khloé & Lamar. The other day, Lamar went to the dentist. If Kardashian had a baby, she says, she would probably put it on TV, with certain caveats. For example, with Mason, "he can come in and say, hi/bye, and that's it", but isn't allowed to drive story lines.
The point is, she has more perspective these days. The marriage crisis changed her. "I'm leaning more towards being a little more private."
So she might potentially say no to another season? Kardashian blinks. "I never said I wouldn't do the family show." But it's very possible, she says, that the universe has shifted enough for her to say words she couldn't have imagined herself saying a year ago, an extraordinary break with Kardashian family values: "I'll never do a spin-off."
Kim Kardashian is in a makeup chair under giant rollers, looking down at her phone and intermittently up again, to meet her own eye in the mirror. We are at a studio in a Los Angeles suburb; various stylists and Kardashian hangers-on fill the room. "One second," says the star's assistant, calling the group to order. Kardashian frowns at her phone. "You guys," she says, "what should I say? You guys?" There is a moment's hush; Kardashian is passing a tweet.
For those few who haven't yet had the pleasure, Kardashian is a 31-year-old US reality TV star, lately prominent in Britain, who has, since becoming famous in 2007, ascended to the level of a symptom in the culture. Keeping Up With The Kardashians, currently in its seventh season, is contrived, sensationalist, repetitive and witless, but no more so than a lot of things one enjoys without accusing them of spiritual corruption. The difference in this case is reach. Twitter is an unreliable measure of influence, but Kardashian has nearly 16 million followers, putting her ninth in the world, three places behind President Obama. (Lady Gaga is number one; Taylor Swift number eight.) With her two sisters, Khloé and Kourtney, she runs a chain of clothing stores called Dash, has a Las Vegas-based outlet called Kardashian Khaos, promotes makeup and fashion lines under the label Kardashian Kollection, all of which act as window dressing for the business, merely, of being Kim Kardashian: a woman of above average looks, seemingly rather nice, who along with the rest of her family – emotionally speaking – strips on TV for tips. After the shoot, we sit in a courtyard at the back of the studio and Kardashian tries to explain what the fuss is about.
There is an awful lot of fuss. For Kardashian haters, the tipping point came last year when she filed for divorce from Kris Humphries, a basketball player, after three months of marriage and a blizzard of wedding coverage said to have been worth many millions (she will dispute the numbers). The whole thing looked like a stunt to drum up trade for her TV show, although if it was, it backfired in that for a short while she was reviled as the most cynical woman in America. She seems to aggravate male actors in particular. Earlier this year, Jon Hamm unchivalrously referred to her as a "fucking idiot" in Elle magazine, as did Daniel Craig in GQ the year before. Kardashian takes all this with a certain laconic indifference, the standard LA response, heightened by what is probably an effort not to emote too much and generate wrinkles.
"When I hear people say [what are you famous for?], I want to say, what are you talking about?" she says slowly, her eyes wide as a bushbaby's. "I have a hit TV show. We've shot more episodes than I Love Lucy! We've been on the air longer than The Andy Griffith Show! I mean, these are iconic shows, so it blows my mind when people say that."
But you're not performing; you're just being followed around by cameras…
"But to be able to open up your life like that and to be so… if everyone could do it, everyone would. It doesn't make sense to me."
The day before the interview, I go to Dash in Beverly Hills, the flagship store aimed at Kardashian's teen fan base. A bouncer stands outside letting teenagers in one by one, although the store is almost empty. "There's a line!" he calls out to baffled passers-by, and the teenagers snigger. Inside, the clothes are very nice; soft T-shirts, cute shorts and dresses, but that isn't why people are here. Kardashian says that since the show started airing, the store has become a "tourist attraction" and the stock is angled accordingly. After taking photos of themselves in front of a giant Kardashian family montage, the adolescents buy one of several items within their price-range; a $20 compact mirror; pencils for a few dollars; or a $10 bottle of water with the Kardashian sisters' photo on one side.
"Our water sells out all the time," Kardashian says. "People collect them because each store has a different picture on the bottle."
That's amazing.
"It's really crazy," she says. "I mean, a water bottle? It's crazy." She blinks slowly at the wonder of effortless profiteering.
Kardashian characterises her typical fan as "a younger girl, like 15 or 16, who loves fashion, loves to be a girly girl, loves beauty, glam", and whom she respects as a backwards projection of herself. If you can overlook the vacant materialism, she is in some ways not a bad role model. She points out that she is not "your stick-skinny typical model"; that she doesn't go out on benders; that she tries not to swear too much. "I remember this one time when I used the F-word – and everyone was like, I can't believe you said that! You never say that! I am really cautious about what I say and do. If I look at the message I'm portraying, I think it definitely is be who you are, but be your best you."
Whether or not you approve of the show, she has wrought a successful business out of thin air. It's also worth pointing out, given how snotty the fashion industry is towards Kim Kardashian, that to anyone's knowledge she has never thrown her phone at a personal assistant.
And yet she makes people incredibly angry. "Yeah. I have no idea why. I work really hard – I have seven appointments tomorrow before 10am. I'm constantly on the go. I have a successful clothing line. A fragrance. I mean, acting and singing aren't the only ways to be talented. It's a skill to get people to really like you for you, instead of a character written for you by somebody else."
She is currently dating Kanye West, who might have had a hand in the following analogy. "When rap music first started," Kardashian says, "rappers were not respected and people thought it was just a fad. And people thought reality shows were going to come and go. They have taken over the soap operas. So it's a modern version of a soap opera."
The difference, of course, is that the Kardashians are purporting to sell something real. For bald cheek, nothing matches a recent scene in the show in which Kardashian balked at attending a family therapy session because, she said, she didn't feel like sharing family secrets "with a stranger". Very occasionally, a genuine emotion is caught on camera and stands out in relief to the rest of the show – most recently during a staged discussion about Khloé's paternity; while her mother and sisters mugged centre screen, Khloé, to one side, looked fleetingly devastated.
Despite all the phoniness, rehearsed dialogue and fake scenarios, however, there is some grain of authenticity to the Kardashians to which fans respond: when I asked teenagers at Dash why they liked the show, the most common reason was that, despite all the drama, "they all really love each other and are such a close family". Like the Osbournes before them, the Kardashian family unit is convincingly tight. There is something unexpectedly soothing about this.
For the record then, what is Kardashian's talent?
"What is my talent?" She cocks her head to one side. "Well, a bear can juggle and stand on a ball and he's talented, but he's not famous. Do you know what I mean?"
The mastermind behind the Kardashian empire is assumed to be Kris Jenner, mother, manager and ringmaster of her children's careers, who comes across on the show as a gimlet-eyed monster, wringing every last dollar from the family conceit. Despite her 100% belief in the reality genre, Kim Kardashian has to admit she is very glad she went through adolescence off-camera, unlike her youngest sisters, who were nine and 10 when the show started. (Their father is Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic athlete and Kris's second husband, whose career as a motivational speaker she reignited after marrying him. Her first husband, Robert Kardashian, who died in 2003, was OJ Simpson's lawyer.)
"I feel a little bit sad for my little sisters," Kardashian says. "If there's one thing I'm so thankful I have, it's that privacy of pretty much my whole life until seven years ago."
It was a spoilt childhood, materially – her father was a wealthy entrepreneur as well as a lawyer – and it's a mark of the milieu they grew up in that the Kardashian girls and their brother, Rob, were considered deprived because their parents wouldn't give them their own credit cards.
But her dad bought them each a car, right?
"He gave us a car, but I had to sign a contract with him before I got it."
The contract said she had to have it washed once a week; had to make sure it always had gas. "And my grades had to be at a certain average to keep the car. If I crashed it, I had to be responsible for paying for it." She did crash it, within the first six months, and got a job to pay for the repairs.
This was the beginning of Kardashian's career. She found work in a clothing store and liked it so much that, after paying off the car, she kept the job. She started to design her own accessories. "I would make these headbands that were really popular and I'd sell them to all the fun stores in LA. I would make them after school and go around selling them."
She and her sisters periodically lived with their father at this point, their parents' marriage having disintegrated after Kris Jenner had an affair with a 22-year-old. Fault lines in the family were, bizarrely, crystallised by the OJ Simpson trial. Kardashian's mother had been one of Nicole Brown Simpson's best friends and was supposed to have seen her on the day she was murdered; she believed OJ was guilty. Robert Kardashian was one of OJ's best friends and defended him.
"We were kids – 14 and 15 years old, me and Kourtney," Kim says. "We took my dad's side. Just because my dad was not married and my mum kind of broke his heart. It was personal. And we thought that my dad was the smartest man in the whole world. And if he thought he was innocent, we were going to be on that side."
One day, their father came to them and said, "Girls, this is a huge trial and is going to be a part of history, and I think you guys are old enough to handle it." They went into court with him and sat in the OJ camp. "And my mum had gone with Bruce and she was sitting on the Brown side – on Nicole's side. And she turned around and gave as a stare like, I don't even want to see you guys when you get home. We wouldn't even look her way. She was so mad."
This was the beginning of the family's life in the spotlight, although Kardashian had always wanted to be on TV. She watched the first MTV reality show, The Real World, and thought that's what she wanted to do.
What, be on a reality show? "Yes. I wasn't thinking fame. I was just thinking how cool." Why? "I don't know; I just thought my life seemed interesting. I thought, if only people knew the crazy things that go on in this household, it would be so funny. And everyone kept saying that. They'd come over and be like, 'Oh my God, you need your own reality show.' I was always on board. Kourtney was the one who wasn't."
Kim inched farther towards her goal when she started knocking around with Paris Hilton, and then, in 2003, she made a sex tape with her then boyfriend, the singer Ray J. The tape was eventually leaked and a star was born. (In a rare moment of coyness, Kris Jenner, in her memoir, glosses over this momentous turning point in the family history: "There was so much media coverage swirling around Kim then, both positive and negative.") Anyway, to "take advantage of the moment", Jenner made a pilot of the family and took it to Ryan Seacrest at US TV network E! Word came back that there were too many characters, too many siblings and that it was confusing. But Seacrest ultimately backed the show, correctly intuiting that, as with band members, young fans would be able to choose which of the three sisters was their favourite: blank but beautiful Kim, sweet Kourtney or sarcastic Khloé. Meanwhile, Jenner's conniving entertained adults and, for comic relief, there was Bruce, bobbing around in the background, looking more startled with each season and new wave of plastic surgery.
It's no small thing to keep a reality show afloat, and even Kardashian admits that by season four the family was getting panicky about content. "I was like, 'You guys, I don't know that I have much more to give. I can only be myself, like… we're so boring now, we've shown everything.'"
And? "And then Khloé got married, Kourtney got pregnant and everything else just happened organically."
OK. So here's the thing: surely, living under that kind of pressure to feed the beast, one is tempted to say yes to things one might otherwise say no to, for example marrying Kris Humphries and then divorcing Kris Humphries. It doesn't even have to be mercenary; just a matter of needing to Make Something – Anything – Happen.
"Not really. We had done filming our season at that point, so we decided to film for the wedding. And that was a decision that he and I made together. But I think that, with any decisions in life [brace yourselves], like, I spoke to a girl today who had cancer and we were talking about how this is such a hard thing for her, but it taught her a big lesson on who her friends are and so much about life. She's 18. And I was like, that's how I feel."
There is no ethical dimension to Kardashian's defence of her marriage, merely the rationale that it would have made bad commercial sense to have faked it. "Getting married and divorced quickly, if that was my goal the whole time – I'm not an idiot, I obviously know that that would be a bad business decision. If anything, I probably would have left sooner had I not been filming, because I didn't want to end the relationship on TV." The sums of money she was said to have made are "completely outrageous and not true", she says. "No, I mean even with the money we made, we still had to pay for the wedding. We didn't even make enough for that."
So if you married again, would you sell the rights? "I would definitely do it differently. Just all the scrutiny that I got. You don't plan to go through all of that willingly. For money." Her voice rises out of its Californian drawl and sounds momentarily urgent. "That's just not what a sane person would do. So. Would I get married on TV again? No."
She thinks about it for a moment. "Well, I guess you never say never. Because who knows? So many other people I know have gotten married on TV and it has worked out amazing for them."
There is a pause. "William and Kate got married on TV," Kardashian says thoughtfully.
Not all the endorsement deals have been successful. There was a debit card ("the Kardashian Kard") that had high hidden fees and from which, after a firestorm in the press, the family distanced themselves; and a diet product that is currently the subject of a lawsuit. Of the card, Kardashian says, "definitely not the right deal for us. It sounded like a good idea when we went into it, but there were all these hidden fees and costs that even we didn't know about. Although, if you looked at it, it was still a lower percentage than the bank gives you on a credit card."
(It's true that $10 a month fees for prepaid debit cards are not unusual, although there were other fees attached – $1.50 to ring the service centre for example – which looked, given the age of the target market, a little ungenerous.) In Kardashian world, attracting bad PR is a moral failing. "For us, we just didn't want that negative press, so we backed off." As for QuickTrim, the diet product, "If you look at every diet product, there's tons of lawsuits. So that is a successful product, actually."
Kardashian has probably attracted more criticism for her decision to pose topless in Playboy and W magazines, something she hesitated over, but her mother talked her into. Good old Kris. Her father would have been horrified, Kardashian says. "He would have killed me."
But her mum? "Oh, she was all for it."
Doesn't she think it undermines her credibility as a business person? "No, sex is powerful and I think it's empowering, so I don't. I would have thought that before, but now I don't. I go back and forth about it."
The point is that men in her position would not be asked to pose naked. "Yeah!" she says with wonder, as if we have hit upon yet another feminist advantage in the world. "I think it's empowering and I'll do what I want!"
She has at least been consistent in this. In her early 20s, long before the show, Kardashian was married to a musician called Damon Thomas, a fact she shared with her family only after the event. When I ask why she didn't tell her mother she was getting married, she has what looks like a rare, unstudied reaction. With a shuttered look, Kardashian says, "Just a bad choice on my part."
For months after the second marriage debacle, Kardashian says she stopped Googling herself, as near to a breakdown a member of that family can get. She changed her email address. She lost friends. "All these people who were so on my side completely turned on me, and they're now trying to come back and be friends."
Her pairing with Kanye West is odd; he so outspoken and political, Kardashian so neutral on almost everything. The first time she voted in her life was for Obama. "I loved being part of that decision-making process, but I never voted in prior years when I was legally eligible. I don't know why." She is, she says, a "liberal Republican", put off Mitt Romney because of his stance against gay marriage. This election, she says, "I don't know which way I'm going to go." Her favourite politician of all time is Kennedy.
Kanye will appear intermittently in the next season of the show. They are taking their relationship "season by season". "It's what we're both comfortable with, and it's all about making a group decision. Him and I, as a team."
I imagine Kris Jenner might be in that decision, too. Won't the day come, I ask, when Kardashian rises up and overthrows her mother? She actually breaks out an annoyed facial expression. "We are totally equal. She listens to what I say. She follows my lead. She works for me. I mean, on the show maybe it doesn't come off that way…"
Meanwhile, another generation of Kardashians is emerging to fill the endless hours of scheduling. Kourtney's child Mason, a toddler, now takes up a good part of many episodes. Khloé and her husband Lamar have their own show, Khloé & Lamar. The other day, Lamar went to the dentist. If Kardashian had a baby, she says, she would probably put it on TV, with certain caveats. For example, with Mason, "he can come in and say, hi/bye, and that's it", but isn't allowed to drive story lines.
The point is, she has more perspective these days. The marriage crisis changed her. "I'm leaning more towards being a little more private."
So she might potentially say no to another season? Kardashian blinks. "I never said I wouldn't do the family show." But it's very possible, she says, that the universe has shifted enough for her to say words she couldn't have imagined herself saying a year ago, an extraordinary break with Kardashian family values: "I'll never do a spin-off."
Friday, September 7, 2012
Biden Says Life Better Than It Was 4 Years Ago But Nothing Can Touch Summer Of '87
Biden Says Life Better Than It Was 4 Years Ago But Nothing Can Touch Summer Of '87
Accepting his renomination at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden countered recent Republican criticisms by asserting that most Americans were indeed better off than they were four ago, but he acknowledged that life still paled in comparison to that one “killer fucking” summer in 1987.
Dressed in a slightly ripped Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, Biden tapped the top of an Icehouse tallboy, cracked it open, and then informed the 20,000 people in attendance that while the economy is no longer hemorrhaging jobs as it was in 2008, nothing, “not even that little trip I took to Thailand in ’92,” could ever live up to the unforgettable months of June through August 1987, when “the skirts were short, the brews were cold, and you couldn’t walk 2 feet without stepping into some grade-A tang.”
“Things are definitely better today than back in ’08, but is this the summer of ’87? Not a fucking chance,” said Biden, reminiscing about his “prime seed-spreading days,” when he was a carefree 44-year-old senator cruising the Delaware boardwalks in acid-washed Jordache jeans and his pink Sonny Crockett blazer. “Oh, man, that summer was one hell of a ride. I’d take off the T-tops, pack a cooler full of happy juice, and drive down the strip blasting G N’ R.”
“And it seemed like every night ended with a little skinny-dipping with one of those hot-to-trot lifeguards,” continued Biden, making sure to reiterate that he was “tan from head to toe.” “Didn’t matter if they were legal or not. No one cared back then.”
Biden, who reportedly hitchhiked to the convention and almost didn’t make his speech on time because of some business he had to take care of in Greensboro, briefly touched upon how the economy had been moving in the right direction in recent months. However, he emphasized the nation would never see another string of weeks like the run in 1987 when he got “totally blitzed” on his buddy Blaze’s deck nearly every night, tore donuts in the Food Lion parking lot after hours, and scored some “primo” seats for Great White’s Once Bitten… Tour in Atlantic City.
In addition to the “all-night fiestas,” Biden noted that the summer also included a welcome share of mellow nights spent passing a few jays around a beach bonfire with some “real laid-back compadres.”
“The babes back then were a sight to behold,” said Biden, recalling one particular “fiery redheaded number” named Starla who “showed [him] a thing or two” about where to get hot and heavy on the beach without the cops noticing. “They were everywhere—rollerblading in their tight little frosted jean shorts and bikini tops, or kicking back beachside with Van Halen’s 5150 blasting on the boombox. And with my Trans Am purring, I had the pick of the litter.”
“You could almost see their panties getting soaked when I’d rev the V8,” Biden continued. “Drilled a few holes in the muffler to get that rumble that really gets their juices flowing. Wasn’t exactly street legal, but it got me down and dirty more times than I can count.”
While the vice president repeatedly referred to the summer of 1987 as “bitchin’” and “badass,” he admitted the period was not entirely without hardship. Explaining that everyone “played it real damn loose back then,” Biden said he had a brief HIV scare and things were definitely touch-and-go for a while.
Assuring delegates the incident blew over and it had been “smooth sailing” ever since, Biden informed the women in attendance that he was “100 percent clean and mean down there” and that they were all free to inspect for themselves.
“Nothing will ever match ’87, but that shouldn’t stop us from at least trying to relive some of that magic,” the vice president said before draining his third beer of the evening and tossing the crumpled can on the stage. “So if anyone out there wants to keep that spirit alive, I’m declaring it ladies’ night over at Rico’s Cantina on Caldwell, and the Cuervo’s on Uncle Joe.”
Accepting his renomination at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden countered recent Republican criticisms by asserting that most Americans were indeed better off than they were four ago, but he acknowledged that life still paled in comparison to that one “killer fucking” summer in 1987.
Dressed in a slightly ripped Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, Biden tapped the top of an Icehouse tallboy, cracked it open, and then informed the 20,000 people in attendance that while the economy is no longer hemorrhaging jobs as it was in 2008, nothing, “not even that little trip I took to Thailand in ’92,” could ever live up to the unforgettable months of June through August 1987, when “the skirts were short, the brews were cold, and you couldn’t walk 2 feet without stepping into some grade-A tang.”
“Things are definitely better today than back in ’08, but is this the summer of ’87? Not a fucking chance,” said Biden, reminiscing about his “prime seed-spreading days,” when he was a carefree 44-year-old senator cruising the Delaware boardwalks in acid-washed Jordache jeans and his pink Sonny Crockett blazer. “Oh, man, that summer was one hell of a ride. I’d take off the T-tops, pack a cooler full of happy juice, and drive down the strip blasting G N’ R.”
“And it seemed like every night ended with a little skinny-dipping with one of those hot-to-trot lifeguards,” continued Biden, making sure to reiterate that he was “tan from head to toe.” “Didn’t matter if they were legal or not. No one cared back then.”
Biden, who reportedly hitchhiked to the convention and almost didn’t make his speech on time because of some business he had to take care of in Greensboro, briefly touched upon how the economy had been moving in the right direction in recent months. However, he emphasized the nation would never see another string of weeks like the run in 1987 when he got “totally blitzed” on his buddy Blaze’s deck nearly every night, tore donuts in the Food Lion parking lot after hours, and scored some “primo” seats for Great White’s Once Bitten… Tour in Atlantic City.
In addition to the “all-night fiestas,” Biden noted that the summer also included a welcome share of mellow nights spent passing a few jays around a beach bonfire with some “real laid-back compadres.”
“The babes back then were a sight to behold,” said Biden, recalling one particular “fiery redheaded number” named Starla who “showed [him] a thing or two” about where to get hot and heavy on the beach without the cops noticing. “They were everywhere—rollerblading in their tight little frosted jean shorts and bikini tops, or kicking back beachside with Van Halen’s 5150 blasting on the boombox. And with my Trans Am purring, I had the pick of the litter.”
“You could almost see their panties getting soaked when I’d rev the V8,” Biden continued. “Drilled a few holes in the muffler to get that rumble that really gets their juices flowing. Wasn’t exactly street legal, but it got me down and dirty more times than I can count.”
While the vice president repeatedly referred to the summer of 1987 as “bitchin’” and “badass,” he admitted the period was not entirely without hardship. Explaining that everyone “played it real damn loose back then,” Biden said he had a brief HIV scare and things were definitely touch-and-go for a while.
Assuring delegates the incident blew over and it had been “smooth sailing” ever since, Biden informed the women in attendance that he was “100 percent clean and mean down there” and that they were all free to inspect for themselves.
“Nothing will ever match ’87, but that shouldn’t stop us from at least trying to relive some of that magic,” the vice president said before draining his third beer of the evening and tossing the crumpled can on the stage. “So if anyone out there wants to keep that spirit alive, I’m declaring it ladies’ night over at Rico’s Cantina on Caldwell, and the Cuervo’s on Uncle Joe.”
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Sen. Murray: A life on the line for Obama
Sen. Murray: A life on the line for Obama
Defending the nation’s social safety net gets personal for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., even when she’s speaking to the Democratic National Convention and a nationwide TV audience.
On Wednesday, Murray discussed the tribulations of her own childhood, from her father’s multiple sclerosis to the family’s reliance on veterans benefits. She talked about a period when “we were on food stamps” and the federal student loans that gave seven brothers and sisters “a shot at a college degree.”
“It’s a story that President Obama understands, because it’s a story that he has lived,” Murray told the convention.
She didn’t tell the convention a few things. Murray is chairing the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, charged with holding the Democrats’ narrow Senate control in a year when 23 of their seats are up.
Obama has supplied very little assistance to the Democrats’ Senate committee. The President has concentrated on his own fundraising to the exclusion of his party’s Senate and House candidates. He did help Murray in 2010.
Still, Obama is a defender of what Patty Murray believes in, federal programs designed to benefit the middle class, which Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have targeted for deep cuts.
“Their plan would cut away at the foundation of our great nation,” said Murray. “It would mean throwing in the towel on our middle class. And we are not going to let them do it. Not with President Obama in the White House . . .
“They will end Medicare’s guaranteed benefits and repeal health care reform. So on day one, millions of young people on their parents’ policies would lose their coverage. They would take away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own pregnancy and decimate Planned Parenthood, where millions of women get basic health care services. They would sell out our middle class to cut taxes, for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations.”
Murray has hit repeatedly at what she calls the Republicans’ “War on Women,” and made a political issue of the House GOP’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood clinics and failure by the House to renew the Violence Against Women Act.
It has worked — at least in this Washington.
A heavy majority among women voters in the Puget Sound area sent Murray back to the Senate in 2010, and carried Gov. Chris Gregoire to reelection in 2008.
Murray has been targeted by Republicans in three consecutive Senate reelection races, only to win thanks to her reputation as a politician who sweats such issues as veterans benefits and women’s health and college loans.
The cool, somewhat aloof Barack Obama needs to put on those sweats.
Defending the nation’s social safety net gets personal for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., even when she’s speaking to the Democratic National Convention and a nationwide TV audience.
On Wednesday, Murray discussed the tribulations of her own childhood, from her father’s multiple sclerosis to the family’s reliance on veterans benefits. She talked about a period when “we were on food stamps” and the federal student loans that gave seven brothers and sisters “a shot at a college degree.”
“It’s a story that President Obama understands, because it’s a story that he has lived,” Murray told the convention.
She didn’t tell the convention a few things. Murray is chairing the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, charged with holding the Democrats’ narrow Senate control in a year when 23 of their seats are up.
Obama has supplied very little assistance to the Democrats’ Senate committee. The President has concentrated on his own fundraising to the exclusion of his party’s Senate and House candidates. He did help Murray in 2010.
Still, Obama is a defender of what Patty Murray believes in, federal programs designed to benefit the middle class, which Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have targeted for deep cuts.
“Their plan would cut away at the foundation of our great nation,” said Murray. “It would mean throwing in the towel on our middle class. And we are not going to let them do it. Not with President Obama in the White House . . .
“They will end Medicare’s guaranteed benefits and repeal health care reform. So on day one, millions of young people on their parents’ policies would lose their coverage. They would take away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own pregnancy and decimate Planned Parenthood, where millions of women get basic health care services. They would sell out our middle class to cut taxes, for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations.”
Murray has hit repeatedly at what she calls the Republicans’ “War on Women,” and made a political issue of the House GOP’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood clinics and failure by the House to renew the Violence Against Women Act.
It has worked — at least in this Washington.
A heavy majority among women voters in the Puget Sound area sent Murray back to the Senate in 2010, and carried Gov. Chris Gregoire to reelection in 2008.
Murray has been targeted by Republicans in three consecutive Senate reelection races, only to win thanks to her reputation as a politician who sweats such issues as veterans benefits and women’s health and college loans.
The cool, somewhat aloof Barack Obama needs to put on those sweats.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Life & Style: Jakarta Might Not Be a Top 25 City, but It’s Home
Life & Style: Jakarta Might Not Be a Top 25 City, but It’s Home
When I was a teenager, home was an apartment that housed my loved ones. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I didn’t have to — I was “at home” most of the time. As I grew older and joined my parents for overseas holidays, the term “home” expanded to include Singapore, as it now meant the place that I was born, raised and schooled.
In my 30s, the term “home” changed again when my daughter and I relocated to Germany with my husband for his job. The culture shock, the struggles to cope with the long winter and to befriend locals, who sometimes seemed as cold as the weather, made us miss home more than ever.
But then after about a year, and without us even noticing it, we began to feel “at home.” We picked up some of the language, made friends, experienced the German lifestyle and grew to love Munich, our adopted home. Over time, we felt strangely like foreigners in our own hometown when we flew back for the holidays.
It dawned on me then that it was possible to have more than one home simultaneously. It makes sense. Some cities just resonate with you so that you can’t help but want to settle down there.
Monocle recently published a list of the top 25 “livable and lovable” cities. The cities were judged in 14 different areas such as infrastructure, crime, unemployment rate, culture and climate. These seemed like fair and logical criteria for analysis, but at the same time, I wondered: Can one be happy making a home in a city based on a list of cold, hard facts?
I have visited 13 of these top 25 cities over the past 10 years. Cities like Munich and Honolulu were a joy to visit, but there were also a couple of cities that my family and I found to be rather hectic and stressful to stay in, despite all the obvious advantages.
Jakarta, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen on Monocle’s list, and in a 2012 Global Livability Survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, it was ranked 118th out of 140 cities. Having lived here for the past three years, I found the survey rather harsh.
I have met many people who have made Jakarta their home and who would never think of relocating to one of Monocle’s top 25 cities.
In fact, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve known people to stay on in Jakarta after their expatriate contract ended. Then there are the many friends who left Jakarta after their work stint, but found themselves irresistibly drawn back to the city.
So what is it that draws people here?
The people. That was the most common answer I got when I put the question to friends. Relationships, be they spousal, friendships or business ties, play a significant role in making a city home. Despite media reports of religious persecution, Jakartans have an amazing ability to embrace differences.
My personal trainer, who was born Catholic, still practices her faith even though her husband is a Muslim. During the month of Ramadan, she prepared his breakfast in the wee hours of the morning and cooked up a feast for the family on the first day of Lebaran. And she is not the only one. I have met many others like her.
An American friend of mine who has lived here for more than three decades says that the people in Jakarta have always been there for her. And there are many other foreigners I know who not only live here but have also found life partners and raised children here. They have become perfectly at ease with everything from eating tempeh to taking a bajaj.
For these people, no magazine list would be worth referencing because for them, it is the soft factors than count. Perhaps the saying “home is where the heart is” has a lot of truth to it after all.
But just imagine the kind of city Jakarta could be if it fulfilled the criteria listed by Monocle but retained the Indonesian spirit. It would be unbeatable.
When I was a teenager, home was an apartment that housed my loved ones. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I didn’t have to — I was “at home” most of the time. As I grew older and joined my parents for overseas holidays, the term “home” expanded to include Singapore, as it now meant the place that I was born, raised and schooled.
In my 30s, the term “home” changed again when my daughter and I relocated to Germany with my husband for his job. The culture shock, the struggles to cope with the long winter and to befriend locals, who sometimes seemed as cold as the weather, made us miss home more than ever.
But then after about a year, and without us even noticing it, we began to feel “at home.” We picked up some of the language, made friends, experienced the German lifestyle and grew to love Munich, our adopted home. Over time, we felt strangely like foreigners in our own hometown when we flew back for the holidays.
It dawned on me then that it was possible to have more than one home simultaneously. It makes sense. Some cities just resonate with you so that you can’t help but want to settle down there.
Monocle recently published a list of the top 25 “livable and lovable” cities. The cities were judged in 14 different areas such as infrastructure, crime, unemployment rate, culture and climate. These seemed like fair and logical criteria for analysis, but at the same time, I wondered: Can one be happy making a home in a city based on a list of cold, hard facts?
I have visited 13 of these top 25 cities over the past 10 years. Cities like Munich and Honolulu were a joy to visit, but there were also a couple of cities that my family and I found to be rather hectic and stressful to stay in, despite all the obvious advantages.
Jakarta, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen on Monocle’s list, and in a 2012 Global Livability Survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, it was ranked 118th out of 140 cities. Having lived here for the past three years, I found the survey rather harsh.
I have met many people who have made Jakarta their home and who would never think of relocating to one of Monocle’s top 25 cities.
In fact, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve known people to stay on in Jakarta after their expatriate contract ended. Then there are the many friends who left Jakarta after their work stint, but found themselves irresistibly drawn back to the city.
So what is it that draws people here?
The people. That was the most common answer I got when I put the question to friends. Relationships, be they spousal, friendships or business ties, play a significant role in making a city home. Despite media reports of religious persecution, Jakartans have an amazing ability to embrace differences.
My personal trainer, who was born Catholic, still practices her faith even though her husband is a Muslim. During the month of Ramadan, she prepared his breakfast in the wee hours of the morning and cooked up a feast for the family on the first day of Lebaran. And she is not the only one. I have met many others like her.
An American friend of mine who has lived here for more than three decades says that the people in Jakarta have always been there for her. And there are many other foreigners I know who not only live here but have also found life partners and raised children here. They have become perfectly at ease with everything from eating tempeh to taking a bajaj.
For these people, no magazine list would be worth referencing because for them, it is the soft factors than count. Perhaps the saying “home is where the heart is” has a lot of truth to it after all.
But just imagine the kind of city Jakarta could be if it fulfilled the criteria listed by Monocle but retained the Indonesian spirit. It would be unbeatable.
Monday, September 3, 2012
How to prolong life by 2 yrs
How to prolong life by 2 yrs
Melbourne: Sitting less than three hours each day may increase your life expectancy by two years, a new study has claimed.
According to the researchers, being sedentary is an independent risk factor, ABC News reported.
This means that no matter how much gym time you log or how many vegetables you consume, being on your butt for long periods of time every day can shave years off your life.
Sitting for long period is almost as harmful to your health as smoking, study author Peter T. Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said.
The researchers aren’t exactly sure of how being on your feet increases your life span, but past research has shown that your large leg muscles are inactive when you’re seated.
Standing activates these muscles, which helps your body manage blood sugar and metabolize cholesterol, Katzmarzyk he says.
Ultimately, this reduces your risk for heart disease.
A few easy ways to get on your feet after a long week at work include getting off the couch.
Katzmarzyk and his team found that limiting your time on the couch in front of the television to less than two hours may extend a person’s life by 1.4 years – place your remote near the TV instead of keeping it next to you so you’ll have to get up to get up to change channels during commercials.
Keep your cell out of sight – stash your cell phone on the opposite side of the room when you get home from work, suggests Manning Sumner, owner of LegacyFit in Miami, Florida, as this will force you to get up in order to answer an incoming text or phone call.
Melbourne: Sitting less than three hours each day may increase your life expectancy by two years, a new study has claimed.
According to the researchers, being sedentary is an independent risk factor, ABC News reported.
This means that no matter how much gym time you log or how many vegetables you consume, being on your butt for long periods of time every day can shave years off your life.
Sitting for long period is almost as harmful to your health as smoking, study author Peter T. Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said.
The researchers aren’t exactly sure of how being on your feet increases your life span, but past research has shown that your large leg muscles are inactive when you’re seated.
Standing activates these muscles, which helps your body manage blood sugar and metabolize cholesterol, Katzmarzyk he says.
Ultimately, this reduces your risk for heart disease.
A few easy ways to get on your feet after a long week at work include getting off the couch.
Katzmarzyk and his team found that limiting your time on the couch in front of the television to less than two hours may extend a person’s life by 1.4 years – place your remote near the TV instead of keeping it next to you so you’ll have to get up to get up to change channels during commercials.
Keep your cell out of sight – stash your cell phone on the opposite side of the room when you get home from work, suggests Manning Sumner, owner of LegacyFit in Miami, Florida, as this will force you to get up in order to answer an incoming text or phone call.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Life after Paterno at Penn State
Life after Paterno at Penn State
Joe Paterno's grave is about halfway between Mount Nittany and Beaver Stadium. In nearby Bellefonte, Jerry Sandusky is inmate No. 12-0529 at the Centre County Jail. Penn State is set to begin a season like no other in its storied football history.
Saturday's game (noon ET, ESPN) against Ohio University once would have been viewed as simply a matchup with that other Ohio school — not Ohio State. But this is no typical year in "Happy Valley," where roars of "We Are … Penn State!" have echoed through past falls, a distinct, unified and thundering voice known across the college football landscape.
"We know what we're going through is tough … but we also know the power football has to bring people together," says senior fullback Michael Zordich, whose father played for Penn State in the 1980s. "We know that it can't heal everything, but we know that it can help."
The healing Zordich speaks of will continue this weekend in a stadium packed with roughly 100,000 fans — die-hards who have witnessed the Penn State football program's stunning and swift fall from grace after a child sexual abuse scandal, and alleged coverup, that dominated the nation's headlines for months.
In interviews with dozens of students, merchants, business people, faculty and alumni, USA Today encountered common themes: displeasure with stiff NCAA sanctions, fatigue over news media coverage of the scandal, disgust with the crimes committed — and enduring support for Paterno and the football program that he built.
"I hope it's a year in which we can demonstrate to everyone how important it is for all of us to be respectful of one another … and to reflect the best of the university and the community as we move forward together," university President Rodney Erickson said Monday before an event to build relationships between students and local residents.
In the company of the Nittany Lions mascot, Erickson joined in the fifth annual Lion Walk, visiting homes to chat with students and locals.
Joe Paterno's grave is about halfway between Mount Nittany and Beaver Stadium. In nearby Bellefonte, Jerry Sandusky is inmate No. 12-0529 at the Centre County Jail. Penn State is set to begin a season like no other in its storied football history.
Saturday's game (noon ET, ESPN) against Ohio University once would have been viewed as simply a matchup with that other Ohio school — not Ohio State. But this is no typical year in "Happy Valley," where roars of "We Are … Penn State!" have echoed through past falls, a distinct, unified and thundering voice known across the college football landscape.
"We know what we're going through is tough … but we also know the power football has to bring people together," says senior fullback Michael Zordich, whose father played for Penn State in the 1980s. "We know that it can't heal everything, but we know that it can help."
The healing Zordich speaks of will continue this weekend in a stadium packed with roughly 100,000 fans — die-hards who have witnessed the Penn State football program's stunning and swift fall from grace after a child sexual abuse scandal, and alleged coverup, that dominated the nation's headlines for months.
In interviews with dozens of students, merchants, business people, faculty and alumni, USA Today encountered common themes: displeasure with stiff NCAA sanctions, fatigue over news media coverage of the scandal, disgust with the crimes committed — and enduring support for Paterno and the football program that he built.
"I hope it's a year in which we can demonstrate to everyone how important it is for all of us to be respectful of one another … and to reflect the best of the university and the community as we move forward together," university President Rodney Erickson said Monday before an event to build relationships between students and local residents.
In the company of the Nittany Lions mascot, Erickson joined in the fifth annual Lion Walk, visiting homes to chat with students and locals.
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