Talented people these are. (Click here for the background story on why Colbert and Fallon perform this Rebecca Black song.)
As much as I appreciate Fallon and Colbert for doing this, the $52,000 raised appears to be next to nothing compared to the cost of producing this five-minute clip. I mean, add up the cost of labor and materials that went into this, and I am willing to bet all the money, which I don't have, that this total cost exceeds the amount raised for charity.
I have this complaint all the time when I see celebrities leading some charity drive or the other. It used to drive me crazy when Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg did that fundraising "Comic Relief." The could have simply handed over their big paychecks from their movies and other ventures and spared us of all their sermons!
For a long time I was on NRDC's mailing list (yes, I, too, care about the natural environment!) It was atrociously hysterical to get emails from my "friends" Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio asking me to donate to some cause or the other. These are guys who earn gazillions of dollars, and own quite a bit of the natural environment through their real estate holdings, even like this one.
I way prefer the approach a few celebrities take--like Sandra Bullock, for instance, who is reported to have donated a million dollars for relief operations in Japan.
Oh well ... as for the original "Friday," here it is:
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Friday, April 01, 2011
Why we travel ... to Ecuador!
The gifted travel writer, Paul Theroux, describes the number of times he paid no attention to "do not go there" ... and writes:
I have been thinking about travel a lot lately, after reconnecting with school-mates after 30 years. We are in different parts of the world now, after spending all our growing up years in a teeny town in the southern part of India.
One friend notes that in his job he is "country head ...for 35 odd countries. visit all these countries 2-3 times a year." Another, who lives in India, notes "I was in Kenya in 2009 stayed in the bush for a month doing wildlife conservation - can u beat it?"
Simply incredible how far we have come, and the terrains we have traversed!
And to think that I was 22 years old when for the first time I flew in an airplane! It was a short one-hour trip from Madras to Coimbatore!
I now wonder if all of us classmates put together might have even covered an overwhelming majority of the countries on the planet. It is not impossible at all.
One classmate, about whom I have blogged before, probably has Europe covered all by himself--particularly the countries that most of us tourists might not have been to. The Middle East, well, plenty of mates there. Most of Africa, yes. There is a small possibility that South America is yet to be "conquered" ... well, other than Venezuela, which was my first ever foreign trip after coming to the US. I am so tempted to collect the data from my classmates :)
If everything works out well, I will take care of my travel itch when I head to Ecuador in June.
The few days in Quito and its vicinity will be a lot of fun. And educational. Plus the additional excitement of going to a place where I know not the local language. No habla Español!
the fact that a place is out of fashion, forgotten or not yet on the map doesn’t make it less interesting, just more itself, and any visit perhaps more of a challenge. But travel maps have always been provisional and penciled in, continually updated. The map of the possible world being redrawn right now — parts of it in tragic and unsettling ways — might soon mean new opportunities for the traveler who dares to try it. Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening.The guy is way too good a writer for me to do any follow-up writing in this post :(
One friend notes that in his job he is "country head ...for 35 odd countries. visit all these countries 2-3 times a year." Another, who lives in India, notes "I was in Kenya in 2009 stayed in the bush for a month doing wildlife conservation - can u beat it?"
Simply incredible how far we have come, and the terrains we have traversed!
And to think that I was 22 years old when for the first time I flew in an airplane! It was a short one-hour trip from Madras to Coimbatore!
I now wonder if all of us classmates put together might have even covered an overwhelming majority of the countries on the planet. It is not impossible at all.
One classmate, about whom I have blogged before, probably has Europe covered all by himself--particularly the countries that most of us tourists might not have been to. The Middle East, well, plenty of mates there. Most of Africa, yes. There is a small possibility that South America is yet to be "conquered" ... well, other than Venezuela, which was my first ever foreign trip after coming to the US. I am so tempted to collect the data from my classmates :)
The few days in Quito and its vicinity will be a lot of fun. And educational. Plus the additional excitement of going to a place where I know not the local language. No habla Español!
Obama at his best
Hey, yes, I am highly critical of many of Obama's policies, including the remarkably dumb decision to bomb the shit out of Libya. But, this 30-second video is cool. Actually, awesome :) (ht)
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