Dwight Garner: The Pride of West Virginia

The Times' published a whimsical little essay by Dwight Garner this week, supposedly about his soul-searching trip to West-Virginia. Of course Mr. Garner couldn't have just hopped in his car for a good ol' fashioned doobie ride, he had to undergo a "cultural cleanse" on Interstate 79-- and then write about it.

Two things struck me about this essay:

1) The short film clips at the top of the essay -- I'm pretty sure these are just GIFs. I understand why the editors thought a constantly looping five-second shot of a nameless highway would be cool, but I personally think it looks pretty amateurish and a bit choppy. Shoulda gone with a full video, Timesmen.

2) Unless I missed an entire extra page to the essay, the only thing Garner talks about is how much he loves music when he travels. That's cool man, I guess only a lucky few can get paid to write about how "music is ridiculously important to me." You must feel very unique in that regard, Garner...I would've been interested to hear about what you actually "found" on your journey, since the title clearly stated you are "in search of" yourself, but I guess providing any sort of legitimate analysis or fact is anathema to you metaphysically mysterious essayists.

John Denver be not proud of you, Mr. Garner

First off, I acknowledge I'm the fool for clicking on the Times' "Arts" section and expecting to find hardcore analytical arguments. But before this blog turns into a twice-weekly hate letter to the NYTimes, I should explain what boils my bean about essays like Mr. Garner's. All too often, the writers churning out the most self-serious, self-pitying lifestyle essays are also penning mournful dirges about America's income inequality, corporate structure, lack of business ethics, etc. I agree Wall Street's contributions to the economy appear increasingly dubious. However, if you receive an upper-middle-class paycheck every month for doing no actual research or fact-digging, but for just relating anecdotes to your readers that you think prove why America sucks (a la Ta-Nehisi Coates) -- or maybe explaining why I should buy a totally sweet Paul Motian CD (natch Dwight Garner) -- please spare me your opinions on why the economy is no good. Think about how lucky you are that you get paid more then 90% of Americans for writing about whatever makes your heart bleed at the moment, and then reconsider whether you really have the knowledge to critique positions as complex and fact-based as economic policy.

Alright, I think I got all the Times-hate out of my system. My next post will be about how I gave an elephant money on its trunk the other day! Stay tuned.

Everyone Watch H+...

I think EVERYONE who's ANYONE knows that the classic model of watching television -- waiting around like a chump for the cable channels to feed you your daily dose of content and hope they play your favorite episodes -- is long over. Free web-isodes or die, baby. 

Hence, it's good to see ol' media giant Warner Brothers taking a stab at legitimate web video entertainment with their new Youtube series "H+." Naturally, the show portrays "an apocalyptic future where technology has begun to spiral out of control." I was decently intrigued by a perusal of the first episode -- it's like The Jetsons meets Blade Runner. Minus The Jetsons.

Next 'Jetsons' -- Rosie the Robot totally freaks out.

I'm struggling to connect this post to India in some way...I donno, just watch the video and support Warner Brothers as they play the role of plucky Web upstart. 

How do you say "Showtime Lakers" in Hindi?

The only time I've really gotten into basketball the past few years is during playoff seasons...the rest of the time, I generally check up on box scores a few times a month, tops, and otherwise ignore my once beloved NBA. But there's something about graduating college and moving to a foreign land that has left me searching for outlets of Americanism. Thus, I think it's fate that the Lakers -- a team I was once so obsessed with that I baked Kobe Bryant a birthday cake -- have made a few key off-season moves and are suddenly the most badazz team in the League. 

Most badazz...and classiest!

I was raving about the Dwight Howard pick-up this morning to my roommates, before stopping mid-sentence: "You guys don't watch basketball, do you?" Guess it's ironic that my sudden rejuvenation of basketball fan-dom intersects the exact moment I decide to move to a country where the weird kids watch basketball and the cool kids play cricket. Whatev. 

The plan at this point is to turn one of my roommates into a Celtics fan, then slowly degrade his ego at the season goes on. Will keep you all updated on this pet project.

Such a Beautiful Creature, the Feral Dog...

No matter how many times the travel nurses told me to "expect wild animals," I still wasn't fully prepared for the packs on packs on packs of stray dogs roaming the Mumbai streets. I have had a few dubious experiences with dogs, so I'm generally weary of any pup without a leash. However, my roommates were quick to dissuade my worries, noting "They never do anything. Just don't pet them..."

Indeed, the dozen or so doggies I pass on a given street block here all seem focused on finding the next heap of trash to procure their daily 'noms, and pay little attention to the general insanity of India day-to-day traffic and street life. I eventually grew accustomed to the constant canine presence -- until now.

The New York Times ran an article today on India's street dogs, and once again, I am given reason to never ever trust my roommate's advice on anything ever. According to The Times, 80,000 people were bitten in Mumbai alone last year...and 20,000 people die every year in India from rabies infections, the vast majority of which are dog-inflicted. 

I had thought rabies was a 28 Days Later sort of deal, where those bitten run around biting other people until you stick them with the antidote...a quick Google search proved me wrong, as well as leading me to more then a few grim lil' Web MDs who classify rabies as "inevitably fatal." Well then.

Oh yeah, and these ain't wild pugs roaming the streets...these are "Indian pariah dogs," which The Times describes as "similar in appearance to other prehistoric dogs like the Australian dingo." 

Now granted, 80,000 bites in one year means that about 0.6% of the Mumbai population gets bitten. And maybe the government's most recent plan to spray the dogs with ink to take poll of their ranks will help the situation...or it could just result in a bunch of ink-covered, pissed-off dogs. That Indian government is a wonder, isn't it?

If only this is what we were dealing with here...

Christopher Hitchens: Destroying Indian Bloggers from Beyond the Grave

I always gag a bit whenever I read some fawning New York Times elegy on a  literary figure they deem to be "indispensable"...like their recent obituary on Gore Vidal. Unfortunate, because I'm sure I'd love Mr. Vidal's work as countless other have, but I always feel like with each successive death of a "last of a breed," as the Grey Lady termed Vidal, the grizzled Times' newsmen are really lamenting the death of their industry.

Despite my aversion to self-serious, self-destructive essayists, I still surprised myself by how long I held out on reading any Christopher Hitchens. Must've been a particularly lachrymose Times' obituary, that one. Regardless, I was happy to find a 1997 Vanity Fair essay of his, "There'll Always Be an India," which comments on pretty much everything, say, a blog on India could cover...only in essay form!

Among other epic declarations in the piece, Hitchens notes: "Land of Contrasts. I challenge you to show me the Indian guidebook or travel piece that does not resort to this dismal cliche."

Well...uhhh...there goes the subject of my next post...

Ooohhh you're just so erudite and witty, aren't you...

Hitchens also explains why Coca-Cola's relationship with India is even more complicated then I thought -- turns out the Indian government demanded the secret Coke formula in the late 1970s. Coca-Cola "denounced India as a basket case" and stopped doing business in the country until the 1990s.

I highly suggest reading this piece, for more then just the pithy asides -- he packs in a lot of info, and a lot of reporting. Not bad for a guy who was probably wasted when he wrote it. 

India to Jim O'Neill: "Shut up, you're not even my real Dad!"

Maybe it's just because I live with other five other post-college twenty-somethings, but at times this country seems like it's organized with all the care and common sense of a hormonally challenged, demotivated adolescent. So I guess I wasn't surprised that the hardass father of the BRICs, Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs, would speak to the country en masse as if he were talking to his loser teenage son.

"The country's huge power blackouts highlight once more the scale of their challenges, and at the same time, ongoing economic indicators lead more to scale back cyclical GDP forecasts. In addition, they are the one BRIC nation that doesn't appear to be here on mass in London. What is the matter with you guys?"

"Dammit, India!" O'Neill went on to say. "You forgot to take out the trash...again...and hell if your gonna sit on your ass all summer while your friends are out playin' sports. Get your shit together, son!"

"Clone High" had Gandhi right all along...

I was also discouraged to see that O'Neill specified India as the BRIC that has disappointed him the most at a recent investor conference. Well, O'Neill, you may not be proud of your son's report card, so to speak, but that poke at the lack of athletic prowess is just a low blow -- just wait till they put cricket in the Olympics! India is still too big and fast-growing to count out...O'Neill knows this...and the computer nerds always get the last laugh anyway. As a proud hanger-on of computer nerds, I hope to be laughing right there with 'em. Either that or getting back to Virginia and kissing that sweet, stable American soil, I haven't really decided yet.

Olympics in India

Friday night's Olympics opening ceremony happened to coincide with a bout of food poisoning -- or whatever the hell makes you nauseous for 48 hours straight without actually throwing up. I haven't missed an opening ceremony since 1992 -- e.g. before I was conscious of the "Olympics" -- so I tried my best to stay awake, but at 12:30 a.m. nothing remotely opening ceremony-esque was showing up on the live feed, so I left my crowd of multicultural comrades in the living room and schlepped to bed. Around 5 a.m, my roommate opened the bedroom door, plopped down on his floor mattress and fell asleep. Apparently blinding hallway light and unmistakable party sounds from the living room don't bother sleeping East Africans, but I -- with my high-and-mighty bed frame and Western standards -- was immediately jarred awake.

This whole post might be a passive-aggressive jab at my roommate, were it not for the fact that his eccentric sleeping habits allowed me to hear the unmistakable sounds of the Olympic opening ceremony from the living room. Thanks, bro!

So, with a twinkle in my eye and the spirit of the Games in my heart, I skipped down the hallway and found a pack of roommates, friends and associates watching the London march of athletes on a moderately-sized computer screen. I squeezed in between one roommate from Peru and another associate from Egypt on the couch, and commenced the gossiping and screen-shouting.

Watching the opening ceremony certainly made me proud to be American, particularly when comparing team strengths and weaknesses with my internationally diverse array of  comrades. "Oh, how many athletes does Serbia have this year? 115? Ya, America has 529, soooo....y'knowwwww..."

Really though, I was pretty lucky to be able to watch an Olympics ceremony with an incredibly diverse crew. Hearing other country's takes on the Games was interesting to say the least. Among other conclusions, I've deduced that pretty much the only time anyone in the world watches swimming is during the Olympics.

Now if I can just get my roommates to watch some Team USA basketball with me, I can really get an ego boost...

Go forth, grand athletes! Make America proud!

"The Dark Knight Rises" is Visual Dank Chronic

Some friends and I saw "The Dark Knight Rises" last night. That sh** is tightttttttttttt. Even with its grim, post-9/11 vision of NYC/Gotham, the movie still made me miss the good ol' US of A.

All we have over here is "Punjabi Batman"

After the negative experience at "The Amazing Spiderman," we opted for the regular screen over iMax -- even though Manohla Dargis' New York Times review insisted that iMax is "the way to see the film." Well, an Indian "regular" screen is pretty darn big as it turns out, so sucks to your suggestion, Ms. Dargis.

The movie also gave me my own visions of big screen glory -- a dream that is conveniently easy to manifest here in Mumbai, where a number of my associates and roommates are already "acting" (re: appearing in the background) of major Bollywood films and commercials. The pay is also not too shabby, considering your usually just asked to dance around or stare at the protagonist in awe...half-a-days work can net you a few thousand dollars rupees.

Now that's some free enterprise that even Bane could support!

Guar: The Little Bean That Could

Of all the national policy issues that campus activists continually rallied around during my four years of college, hydrofracking was probably the most incendiary. Perhaps it was because I went to school in central New York...home to layers upon layers of precious, precious shale oil. Oil best obtained by hydrofracking, of course, although there's a slew of water pollution and environmental degradation issues that come with the territory. You can see some of the strong reactions against fracking in the video below, which I helped produce:

I really liked the activists in the videos above. They were chill. But that doesn't mean I'm about to leap behind every "bleeding-heart smellfare" program -- or "save the environment" mumbo jumbo -- they support.

Thus, I'd be interested to see how some Wavy Gravy's react to this recent New York Times' article, which extols the financial benefits of guar bean production for poor northwest Indian farmers. Yeah, guar beans...which are a crucial ingredient in HYDROFRACKING!

Indeed, this lil' guy's price has skyrocketed in the past few months because of energy companies' increasing demand -- and the fact that the bean is in limited supply and only grows in particularly arid, desert-like climates.

And these farmers are making a killing on guar. Says one Sohan Singh, "Now...we have a house made of stone."

iT'S your choice, activists! Save the Indian farmers or save the environment! You can't have both!

But on the real....this is a tricky economic policy issue (not to mention environmental...and social...), and showcases how important it is to have export diversity in an economy. In the guar-producing parts of Rajasthan, the economy depends primarily on agriculture -- a relatively fickle business, especially when the farmers there are not exactly using high-technology, high-yield techniques. It's like relying on the Rain Gods to supply your salary every year.

That doesn't mean I'm not rooting for them; go 'head, Mr. Singh! Milk them energy companies for all their worth!

Drug Makers: "Fuck this, we're going to India."

At my job recently, I've been researching certain pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies investments in emerging markets -- particularly Brazil, India and China -- and hot dog if these companies aren't licking their chops at the opportunities. Pricing pressures in the U.S. and Europe means that drug companies are going to increasingly rely on the exploding middle classes of BRIC countries to drive sales. Spending on drugs are going to double in emerging markets in the next five years, according to the New York Times - now that's a win/win for drug companies and B.Doyle. Oh yea, and for India.

Above: India and pharmaceutical companies, meeting for the first time. 

Needless, I'm going to walk to work with a little extra pep in my step tomorrow. Unless it's monsooning again...in that case I'll tell the rickshaw driver to sing that lil' Hindi diddy extra loud, for ol' B.Doyle. Fuck ya.

Coca-Cola: Fighting the Good Fight

As a follower of business, I'm a fan of Coca-Cola. Have been ever since freshman year of high school, when I wrote my World History final paper on why the invention of Coca-Cola was the most important development in human history.

So of course, I'm happy to hear that Coca-Cola is planning a fairly aggressive expansion of operations in my current homeland, according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to the article, Coca-Cola accounts for 60% of soft drink revenues in India, compared to PepsiCo's 37%. However, in my little slice of Mumbai, I've noticed it is much easier to find Pepsi products -- in particular "Mirinda," a tart little orange soda, and Pepsi itself -- then Coke. I've almost started to miss that classic red logo. And the actual drink. 'Cuz Pepsi blows.

Here's to you, Coca-Cola! Ignore Mayor Bloomberg and his Big Brother-esque soda policies...it's just you and me.

Suggest Unto Me Your Biographies

This blog just passed the venerable 50+ views mark. I'm going to ball-park that only 25 of those were me, so either my half-assed attempts at SEO maximization are working and forcing people to stumble upon "Of Bombay and B.Doyle," or there is a burgeoning market for content with regards to media critiques and avant garde gangsta hip-hop. 

So, let's interact: I need biographies to read. As previously mentioned, I just finished Neil Gabler's Walt Disney biography, and am currently in the midst of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography. Shoot me a suggestion of a biography about an epic personality or epoch-defining businessman, and I'll friend you on Facebook! Oh, the private pictures of mine you could view.

But seriously, biography suggestions. I wants them. Now. This Mumbai heat makes "epic" books the only kind worth sitting down and reading.

Above: Mickey Mouse, the product of a tortured, perfectionist soul, according to Neil Gabler.

Moody's: India "Stable"

How you like them apples, Standard and Poor? Moody's noted today that the lower growth trends as of late are "unlikely to become permanent or even mid-term features of the Indian economy."

This is of importance to B.Doyle for two reasons:
1) The rupee (and thus, my paycheck) may not be doomed after all, and...
2) These next 11 months in Mumbai may have some economic growth meaning for the ol' career, aside from that intangible "experience" factor.

Of course, I'm not letting my hopes and dreams simply ride on the verdicts of finicky ratings agencies. No, I'm  much more comforted by this Business Insider slideshow explaining "Why Everyone is Freaking Out About India." Madness, illuminated.

Grow, damn you, grow!

Content Innovation: If Disney Can Do It, DealBook Can Do It

I recently finished Neil Gabler's "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination." Disney pushed a lot of innovation in his day, but one area where he was incomparable was his innovation of "content" -- his perfectionism for his film's storylines, character development and overall themes was unparalleled. He never compromised, and he never rested on his laurels.

Flash forward sixty years, circa the B.Doyle era: reading New York Times' "Dealbook" section -- which previously held a scintillating aura of New Media excellence, not to mention some damn good writing -- it strikes me that the whole section has become fairly boring. Everything about it -- the content, the dearth of videos, even the bush league "single-column" listing of articles -- gives me the impression that Andrew Ross Sorkin stopped trying to really push the site's envelope, maybe, eight months ago. And in a digital media age where there's still a wide-open playing field to prove true "excellence" in content delivery and style, absolutely no website should be resting on its laurels.

Aww, but maybe I'm just salty because I miss the inimitable Kevin Roose on my DealBook homepage. He's since moved onto greener (except not...) pastures at New York Magazine. And I'm probably in no position to take Mr. Sorkin to task, considering he's only about ten years older then me and has already written a generation-defining expose and, well, founded "DealBook."

Regardless, I would like to point to Business Insider as the Internet's premium example of a true content innovator. They combine Huffington Post's penchant for addictive lists and slideshows with a fair bit of trenchant insight and solid numerical analyses. And damn if the site doesn't know what I want to read -- take their slideshow of "The World's Hottest Billionaire Offspring." Now that's some good juice!

To conclude: Dealbook's gotten weak, Business Insider rocks, and the Internet has yet to see its "Walt Disney." Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some BI slideshows to peruse.

Sorkin: Less squawking, more Dealbook-ing, please!

Rupee Hits All Time Low...Morale at All Time High...

So the Indian rupee was in a hell of a free fall this week...as of a few hours ago, it hit yet another "all-time low" of 57.12 rupees to the American dollar. That's bad news for the millions of us who get our paychecks in rupees...and ostensibly even more demoralizing for the small minority of us who had the option of working for the good ol' American simoleon.

Thankfully, this unfortunate bit of news is the only annoyance I've had in an otherwise fantastic week. Every fellow worker I've encountered here is young, cosmopolitan, and educated. Case in point: on my team of seven analysts, at least three have MBA's, all are under the age of 30, all are well-paid, and all are extremely articulate on the unique economic and social challenges their country faces on the road to economic stability. Anecdotes may not speak as loud as statistics, but it's still hard to get down about a few inauspicious economic indicators when I see first hand the growth and excitement of business here. 


Worse comes to worse, I'll just start acting in Bollywood movies for some extra cash, maybe do some back-up dancing. I could show the guys below a meannn Harlem Shake...

Speaking of New Media Mistakes...

Last Friday, I logged onto The Onion to get my weekly dose of fake news. After clicking on a headline -- I think it was "Capricious God Violently Shakes Ant Farm Day After Bestowing Orange Slices Upon Colony" -- I was greeted by a confusing, self-defeating notice:

"...If you enjoy our probing and analytical journalism and want full access, we ask that you support our hardworking reporters by purchasing a subscription for as low as $2.95/month or $29.95 a year."

Uhhhhhh.......pay for comedy? Online? And are they actually trying to make a joke by referring to "probing and analytical journalism," right before they name their price? Hardy-har-har, Onion.

Needless to say, these yucksters have lost a reader. It's probably for the best though; I was becoming increasingly weary of articles which were less and less hilarious and more and more, I donno, liberal. Like "Victim in Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck." As if we can all chuckle to ourselves knowing we share a mutual hate of Glenn Beck. Except I don't. Amurrica, mothaf***as!

Above: The Onion, in simpler, funnier times. RIP.