Aziz’s ‘Food Club’ Makes a Splash. Aziz Ansari and his friends Eric Wareheim and Jason Woliner (who directed Ansari in the MTV sketch show Human Giant) have created a new web series called ‘Food Club’ in which the trio visits various Los Angeles restaurants. The series is meant to parody reality TV, going so far as to create intense dramatic moments, such as Woliner spilling sauce on Ansari, on the way to the trio ‘plaquing’ their favorite Los Angeles culinary destinations. Those that perform well are awarded the Food Club Plaque. Featuring stars such as Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio, the first webisode aims to capture the drama, suspense, and superficiality of the reality television food scene that has captivated audiences as of late. [Tube Filter]
Musilims in the UK are ‘Happy’! In their own rendition of Pharrell’s hit song ‘Happy’, Muslims around Britain are featured jamming to showcase their happiness in a new video. With the aim to “make other people smile and laugh,” the video stars pro-LGBT social commentator Mo Ansar, former Respect leader Salma Yaqoob, and Timothy Winter (Abdal Hakim Murad, Director of Theology and Religous Studies at Wolfson College, Cambridge), among others, the video has recieved mostly positive responses on social media. [Buzzfeed]
Could the NBA Soon Get Its First Player of South Asian Origin?! Sim Bhullar, a 7’5″ center at New Mexico State, has declared his entry into this summer’s NBA Draft. If selected, Bhullar could be the first professional basketball player of Indian origin. Bhullar is entering the NBA draft after a sophomore season in which he averaged 10.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.4 blocks. He earned the WAC tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award for the second straight season, and led the Aggies to the NCAA tournament for the second straight year. [Yahoo Sports]
Remembering Salman Rushdie’s Epic Phone Call with Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, noted novelist and writer, died yesterday at the age of 87. Marquez, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, is known for such classics as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
Fellow novelist Salman Rushdie spoke affectionately of Marquez when as he received his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Writers Workshop last year:
“I was very sad that I never met Garcia Marquez. But I did have this extraordinary moment where I spoke to him on the phone. I was in Mexico City — he was in Havana. He pretends that he doesn’t know any English. Actually he understands English quite well, but he doesn’t speak it. I don’t really speak Spanish at all. I understand some of it. And so we had bad French in common. We had this conversation in English, Spanish and bad French. It went on for an hour. In my memory, there’s no language issue. In my memory we were just talking to each other. It was a very affectionate, intimate conversation.”
[The Aerogram // New York Times]
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Priya Arora is a graduate student at New York University studying human development and social intervention with a research focus on mental health in LGBTQ youths. Born and raised in California, Priya has found a home in New York and will be attending Columbia University this fall to become a licensed mental health counselor. Follow her on Twitter at @thepriyaarora.
