March 28, 2005
Our Bombay slugger as Cupid: who knew?Humor
Here. :) Enjoy some light wedding fare:
AS the sun started to set over Miami Beach on March 19, Rita Nakouzi, a consultant on fashion and lifestyle trends, and Touré, a writer and pop culture commentator, were married on the sand behind the Raleigh Hotel in the South Beach area.
"O.K., who's got the bling?" asked the Rev. Joseph Simmons, a Pentecostal minister, who was looking for the couple's wedding bands. Also called Reverend Run, he is best known as a member of the pioneering rap group Run-DMC. The crowd of 120 included his brother, the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons; the CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien; and members of Miss Nakouzi's family, who had flown in from Beirut, Lebanon, where the bride was born.
..."We fit very well together," said Touré, a correspondent for CNN and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. "She's somebody who can go with me from a 50 Cent concert to a Toni Morrison reading and be equally comfortable in both places."
Wait, wait...don't tell me. I know what you're thinking-- why should you care? Aside from the fact that Reverend Run is cool, that's a fair question. Heck, why does the Mutiny care?
The answer lies within the story of how they met, during one magical night at a Lenny Kravitz video shoot at Limelight NYC:
"I don't even like Lenny Kravitz," said Touré, 34, who uses only one name. "I don't know what I was doing there." But soon he spotted Miss Nakouzi, whom he assumed was Indian.
He introduced himself and told her, "It's funny I'm meeting you now because I'm reading 'Midnight's Children,' " the Salman Rushdie book.
"That's great," she replied. "But I'm not Indian."
Miss Nakouzi, now 29, said she was not turned off. "Here was a guy who was trying to tell me he was intelligent," she said. "Most men aren't trying to prove to you they're smart in their first comment." Touré was embarrassed but undaunted. He circled around for another attempt.
See? If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
Upon reflection, and with sincere concern for the impressionable youngsters who might be reading this, "try" up until a point. When she threatens you with her Malayalee Hit Squad-connected cousins, that is a good sign to STOP.
Anyway, doesn't that NYT article make you all swoon-y? NO ONE ever comes on to me by telling me what they're READING. That's so hot.
/end nerdery.
anna on March 28, 2005 12:23 PM in Humor · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Hey ANNA
At the moment, I am reading The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, and I just finished If You Are Afraid of Heights by Raj Kamal Jha. After I finish the Bellow I am either going to re-read Lolita or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Is that hot or what?
;-)
What are you reading at the moment ANNA?
:-D
for the real low-down on the wedding, see the King of the NY Times Wedding page:
http://nytimesweddings.blogspot.com/2005/03/daddys-home.html
Nik,
i could hug you for introducing me to zach*. sooo genius.
*zach writes the scathing, perfect blog nik thoughtfully left us the URL to...
:-(
Anna, I'm reading whatever bits of writing I can scurry from your trashbin in the dead of night.
I sleep with an over-ripened banana peel from that very same trashbin; I can only assume some part of the peel met your lips once upon a time.
Can you please send me some of your bathwater when you have the time? Just leave it in a ziplock bag by the trash.
What.. why are you.. hey.. no, no, my eyes can't take any more mace!
Dearest Punjabi Boy,
i hit "post" and then belatedly realised my error; i had not addressed your kind query.
i'm reading "the twentieth wife" and it is fantastic. and yes, though i always thought you were a yummy bit of commenting goodness before, i now find you hot enough to require silicon oven mitts. :)
:+:
anonymous coward-- i don't write anything longhand anymore, so take care regarding what you are fishing out of the bin. ;)
ANNA
I can skateboard and breakdance too :-D
Anna,
"Dearest Punjabi Boy"? No 'dearest' epithet for me? Share the affection!
:sniff:
:wipes my tear-glazed eyes:
Nik,
Sweet merciful blogging, batman! Writing which trumps even the witty prose of the sepia squad comes along only once every couple hours.
I thank you as Anna has for the introduction to Zach. In fact, I'll go a step further than she has and concur with the gambino crime family:
Life is cold, gray and meaninessless with substitute Zachs.
I demand a statue of Zach be erected on this webpage in hommage to true acerbity! Nay, I demand Zach be deified with a claymation gif89a!
Anna,
I agree with anonymo'rd. He has bested me and I must chivalrously step down as your dearest. I insist you call him your dearest as I am but a dim light when compared to such a shining exemplar as he.
Please, if you know what is wise, reserve the true saccharin words like 'dearest' for anonymo'rd and I shall settle for maltodextrin monikers such as 'sorta dearish, kinda, somewhat, a little, sometimes, but not in that way, I hope you understand'. It's lengthy, I know, but at least it cements my being second rate to superior anynom'ord, your true completing half.
yes, my life has become much more meaningful after discovering Zach and his blog. my life as a corporate drone becomes much more bearable (such that it crosses the threshold below which i would jump out my window -- if it opened) when i have a daily dose of ascerbic wit sticking it to the high-falootin' bourgeois nitwits that make up the ny times weddings pages. and keep reading through his archives, some of his best stuff is his earliest!!
Hey.. I'm one omnivorous bibliophile.. and I don't seem to have any of Toure's luck..
Methinks something is missing somewhere..
Kinda like those beer commercials. A geek can buy all the beer in the world, but none of those women is going to show up in his personal video
"maltodextrin monikers" would be a great name for a band.
ANNA
you'll love "Feast of Roses" even more. I read both back to back and they were the best books I've read in a LONG time. Now I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, Taj Mahal with my newfound interest in Mughal-Mania
Maltodextrin® is a registered trademark, just as Kleenex® is. Its use in colloquial english is social anathema, but its use in a commercial boi band would be grounds for a lawsuit - which is worse, as it involves procuring money, which people have and love, as opposed to impugning dignity, which we are all fortuitously lacking.
Then again, why am I reining in lawsuits against boi bands? May one foolish enough pick the name Maltodextrin Monikers!
[narrator chants] Om Sri Boi Band Swami
[chorus] May gravity bless your trousers so they may hover unbuckled at your knees!
Call me old-fashioned, but "I'm reading Jitterbug Perfume right now" doesn't roll off the tongue as well as "You must be tired because you've been running through my mind all night."
That said, I think it's clear: I am pretty much doomed to single life.
rajesh,
two words:
. . arranged
. . marriage
jitterbug perfume is one of MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME!!!!
*swoon*
anonymous coward, just as i was about to crown you "my belowed" per PB's advice, you have a competitor for the title! ;)
Well if I could just find a matrimonial that extols the virtues of being a Tom Robbins fanatic, then I'd be "arranging" it myself.
But alas, indiamatrimonials.com has no Favorite Novelist Who Is Not Ray Bradbury search filter.
When is this site gonna start a book club?
and pray tell fairest fellow robbins-fan, how would that work? we announce we're reading something, set a generous deadline for when we are going to post on it, you ready your thoughts for the comment-fracas?
if you're in DC, this might be easier, since that's where i'm at...then again, i love conducting meetings via AIM, as my poor peers will testify. :D
What, no hard-sell for Kahani, AJP? For SHAME!
We gots a book club here. But even better.
And maltodextrin is NOT copyrighted; that's its chemical name.
Er, that is, it's the name of an entire range of carbohydrates.
And if you start me talking about "glucose-equivalency" or chirality, bleepin' kill my geek ass now.
Yeah I live way across the country, so no real life Sepia Book Club for me.
A group chat on AIM or whatever would be one way I'd be fine with. Another would be a moderated message board Television Without Pity-style. It would take some amount of effort to maintain, though.
Hell, I'll even give y'all a name for it: Sepia Com-Mutiny.
Get it? Har har.
Oh, rajesh, you mentioned TWOP... now I'm in lurve with you too!
And Salil, thanks for beating me to the punch on the maltodextrin nerdiness. ;)
uh, last i checked Kahani was a WRITING workshop, not a book club. dearest sugar nerd. ;)
Sugar nerd would make a great name for a band! ;)
-D
P.S. - And I think Salil's point was that Kahani is a book club of sorts...it's for, um, foetal books.
I have an imitator.
It isnt me.
There is only ONE Punjabi Boy
Who wrote Jitterbug Perfume?
tom robbins did. :)