Reunion!

My two chubby and loveable friends from Cali came to reunite with me last weekend. I just received the pictures hot off the press so I thought I'd share.
I have a feeling the only reason they came was to be featured in my blog.
*Sigh*, it's not easy being in the limelight.

Here they are, round and jolly, trying to find their way to my apartment:

So we went around the city: Did tons of cool stuff. I taught them about New York. They learned.

Hoda insisted to try EVERY flavor. (and she did)


"King of New York!"


Bean Buddies since 7th grade. (notice how much taller I am)


Just cause I look cool.


Just cause the picture is cool


You'll notice Payam is not in many pictures, mainly because he ditched us to watch a basketball game.
You'll also notice that the weather was amazing, they brought the sunshine with them and then took it back. Its raining now.
m'kay bye.

Hunting the Hunter

Today Nicey saved me from an uninvited visitor. When I came home from school I heard a creepy buzzing. Immediately he spotted the culprit and came up with an attack plan:





After the use of guerilla tactics and walkie talkies, Nice and I caught the enemy bee.



Relax animal lovers, the bee was shoo'd out of the window and not smashed. Please don't send me forwards about how wrong it is to wear fur.

The Nina, The Pinta and the SabaNas

On a lighter note from yesterday. They say April showers bring May Flowers and Sunday was the first day of a few days of April Showers. NYC Mayor Bloomberg fears floods but since we're on top of a hill, we're fine. Instead Smo and I walked down to the park below our building to the flooded Baseball Diamond to test run our paper boat.

I introduce, the SabaNas




Go little boat, go.



Check out the footage of some flips: Extreme!

Smooth Sailing

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Unfortunately, it was a short lived glory.
R.I.P. SabaNas, R.I.P.

Yellow Journalism: Follow up on Cube

Yellow Journalism refers to the idea of sensationalizing or basically lying in the newspaper in order to sell more papers. The term was coined during the late 1800's when Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolf Hertz accused each other of exaggerating their headlines specifically in relation to the start of the Spanish-American War. (Maybe Jack Kelly was wrong when he said "Headlines don't sell the papes, Newsies sell the papes")

On February 15th 1898, the U.S.S. Maine mysteriously blew up in the Havana Harbor. Although Spanish scientist claim that the explosion was caused by "an internal and accidental explosion" the competing newspapers, eager to have a better headline, began to fabricate the events fueling American anger by publishing astonishing "atrocities" committed by Spain in Cuba and accusing them of blowing up the ship. So much so that on April 11, President William McKinley asked Congress for authority to send American troops to Cuba for the purpose of ending the civil war there.
(Cubans didn't want either of them there, and they still don't)

So why am I telling you this? Because today in the New York Post (a newspaper known for its bull-shit), yellow journalism, a practice continuously executed since the Spanish-American War, found it's face on the front page yet again.
The article reeks of McCarthyism and is filled with lies and propaganda.
The Beacon school, where I student teach, and Mr. Turners house were swarmed with paparazzi all weekend and all day today. As students walked out of class, they would scream: "Hey, how was Q-ba?" (To which one student responded "Eff you!" )

Please read for yourself: NY Post

The students and several community members have extended their support and if it can bring attention to ending the blockade then hopefully the situation can turn out for the best. I would appreciate everyone's support in basically just having our back. This will probably get worse before it gets better.

Reggae Sun Delight

Welcome to the "Reggae Sun Delight Juice Bar"
Located at the corner of 135th and Lenox in Harlem
(Notice the sugar cane leaning on door)



How are you feeling today? Do you have Menopause? Jet lag? Allergies perhaps? Well, don't worry we have the best con-cock-tion for you.
Start with some greenery: celery, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes and even cilantro. Add some fruit, cantaloupe, green apples or purple grapes.
Blend together with a dash of hot sauce and ginger. Peep the menu and ingredients.
(click to enlarge)







Saba and I ordered a drink to heal bruises. We had just gotten into a fist-fight and needed to heal. (I won) Ingredients include: Pineapple, Orange, Lemon and Ginger. We stayed away from the greens. But they should have written ginger in bold because it was liquid fire.
Here's me playing off the intenseness:

When we showed up the owner had stepped out to buy some honey. In the meantime Caviar and I chopped it up with other customers about gout, sea-moss and chomped on a soy chicken empenada. Homey didn't show up till half-hour later, casually strolling in (honey in hand) and finally made our drinks.

Spring Break Trip.

For those of you who don't know, I went as on a really cool spring break vacation. Want more details? Call me.

I have hundreds of pictures, here are a few:

The Classic

Fellow Comrades

a school in Pinar del Rio

I'm so popular with my students.

Pablo Neruda: "Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked you are blue as a night in Q-ba"

Two Shining Stars

The Week In Review.

First of all I want to let everyone know that I am extremely dissapointed in the response to the chahar-shambe-soori video. It really discourages me from embarrassing myself again.
Now I know, I know I've been kind of inconsistent with my bloggin but it's been a very hectic week or so. A laundry list of events if you will.

One. Navid (from the OC) and his friend Hafez ( I know, really deep right?) visited, which was lovely. They brought the sunshine with them from Cali and in exchange we took them to Rice, Spice and all other eateries that ryhme with Nice.







Two. My students turned in their much anticipated Enola Gay-ay-ay museum exhibits on Thursday. I decided that I'm pretty much a bad-ass teacher cause my students turned in some off the hook projects. I pretty much taught them everything and they learned so good. :)











Three. This one night though, Nicey our cat, ran out our window and up the fire escape and Navid (from the OC) had to go and rescue him. Being white trash and all, he was wearing a wife beater and so when he grabbed the kitty on the 5th floor stairs the cat started flipping out and scratched the shiz-nit out of him. He said, "Nastaran, dare bad joor chang mizaneh!"
Check out the war-wounds. (yuck!)



Four. Off to Coooo-Ba in the morning!! Going to go pick up arms and shit.
Byeeeeeeeeeeee!

"Let's get to the jump"

FINALLY it's here, the highly anticipated chahar-shambe-soori footage. As you can see we created a home away from home. A ceremonious night filled with classical Persian music, pictures of our beloved parents and of course, a small kindling fire.

shab-e yalda

Add to My Profile | More Videos

feat Caviar Moet as Robin Leach. The commentary is REALLY important to the hilarity. I would recommend watching it several times.

"10,000 years of tradition boils down to this one moment- the jump!"

Saleh No Mobarak!

So, at first I was going to do a generic post giving the history of the Persian New Year (which is today) and of course I would rant on and on about haji firooz, because he wears black-face and dances around like a clown, BUT then I found this jewel on YouTube and I thought that this would be MUCH better
It's amazing. It's the Michael Jackson's Thriller video with LEGOS!!!
If you want, you can skip to the 8min mark for the dance scene but the anticipation is thrilling, to say the least.



And of course, in case you forgot what the orginal is like, here it is for your convenience.



And then while looking for the original, I found this atrocity. Entertaining at best.




Anyway, Eid-e Hamegi Mobarak!

the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

Today is the day when all the Ee-roo-ni's build a big fire and leap over it going on about some shit about my yellow, your happiness... etc.
New York doesn't have Ee-roo-ni's. It has some Persians who live in Long Island and fortunately, I have yet to meet one. So anyway, just wanted to share with everyone how I spent my day of fire.


Me and Nicey did some cuddling while I was lesson-planning. It was grand.




















However, later that night Saba and Nate showed up and we made a fire with candles and lightly leaped over it. in fact we made an amazing video with music, pictures and commentary by, none other than, Robyn Leach himself.
Video of the night coming soon pending Nate sends it to me!


Ja-ye everyone khali !

Our Ancestors

When I was at UCLA I took one Psychology Class as a filler elective. It was a waste of time because I hate Psychology. The entire social science to me is based mainly on speculation and first-world problems. The only reason this class appealed to me was because it was the Psychology of Sex. Even though it was the only class at UCLA I got a C in, I managed to learn a few interesting things.

Among them, I was introduced to the Bonobo Monkey. Our professor had done some research on these crazy little creatures because they enjoyed, cough cough, pleasuring themselves if you will. We watched videos of these horny little fur balls sitting around for hours playing with themselves and cracking up. Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees, live only in the Congo River Basin and are notable for using sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors for food. ( so many jokes...)

(Mark Wahlberg in Planet of the Apes anyone?)


So, to my delight, I recently read that a new population of Bonobos, who by the way are one of humankind's closest genetic relatives, has been discovered deep in a forest in Africa's Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The group may number as many as 3,000, and scientists speculate that this is perhaps the largest known concentration of bonobos anywhere,—a significant addition to a recent estimated a grand total of 10,000. The thriving new population may owe its success to its location—partly within a private ranch—and to the local Bateke people

"We consider them human, our ancestors," a Bateke man said. "We don't eat them, and we don't kill them."

Awesome.

Enola Gay-ay-ay

So, the reason why I haven't been able to blog, talk on the phone, sleep or think about anything else is because of this little plane. I have been teaching an entire unit on the Enola Gay, named after Paul Tibbets, the pilots, mother.
This little fella dropped the first Atomic Bomb in the history of the world on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II.

So, yeah.
Here it is:

















And here my friends, are some really short shorts.

















My 90 students are going to be putting together a model of a museum exhibit around the Enola Gay. I'm tricking them into writing essays about Truman's decision to drop the bomb. I'll take pics of the exhibits when they're done.
ta-ta !!

New Orleans (Part 2)

Now, the fun part.
So you can try to kick the people out of New Orleans, but they'll always come back on 'Fat Tuesday' After a morning of gutting, we went to Mardi Gras in the French Quarter .
Out of the Backstreet Cultural Museum, the D.J. played music while crazy drunk ugly people dance all over the streets.







kids scrambling for the beads

then there was these two crazy kats:




Coming Soon: Mardi Gras Videos.