Surprised at the sound coming from the radio, I do a double take. Yes, my radio is tuned to 88.5, to KQED, which is the NPR station in San Francisco. I hear the name Terry Gross and know for sure that I am at the right station.
I smile and listen to the song and am very pleased by what I hear.
“Outsourced”, a prime-time NBC show set in an office in India, opens today with a song and dance sequence similar to those in Bollywood films. Normally there is no singing or dancing in this show. It’s a half-hour sitcom with a story which relies on the culture clash as a white American manager runs an American company with Indian employees.
The show airs on Thursday nights but I TiVo it and usually watch over the weekend. As I eat my cereal and watch the bright and shiny rainbow colored high energy movements of the dancers, I let the music wake me up with it’s bubbly enthusiasm.
The music doesn’t last long however because the manager wakes up the employee who is daydreaming about being a Bollywood star, and the real story of “Outsourced” starts to take shape. I am not disappointed. The song and dance it nice and refreshing change but I’ve tuned in for comedy.
Last week, when I was in Washington D.C., I hadn’t expected to find LL Cool at the National Portrait Gallery. His portrait commanded the center wall in the room just like Obama’s famous campaign poster adorned the center of the previous room. The size of both portraits were about the same.
My knowledge of rap music is limited to Digital Underground from the 80s and a book that I bought recently on how to write a rap song after someone in my poetry workshop brought a delightful rap about his cat.
I was clueless to the prominent position that rap has taken in the American cultural landscape and was taken by surprise to see LL Cool James, aka, Ladies Love Cool James in a room next to Obama.
The bio next to the painting said that his real name is James Todd Smith. No, it doesn’t quite have the resonance as LL Cool. This guy understands the power of words.
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