Give a dog a bone

and he eats for a day.
But take him to the cemetry and he brings back your grandpa.

Your grandpa not mine. We cremate ours.

Hindus - we are serious about recycling - even our dead.

President Bush today said that India and China aren't doing enough
to reduce pollution.

If you really want to reduce pollution and create more resources - recycle
the dead. What do they care ? They are dead !

Tapandy

Grace Uma Trivedi - a giggle worth of observations

She is TALL. She is a tall tall girl. She is an inch taller than a girl a year older than her and
her mom thought SHE was tall. My mom told me that 'to protect her from the evil eye' tell people
that she is three (she is not even two yet) . Mandy injected the voice of reason by saying
that 'if we do that then people will think she is a slow learner which she is not'.

She is a puzzle solver and has the patience that she can only get from her mom's side.
She is constantly finding all the snaps of the stroller and snapping them into place.
She takes the water bottles , her sippy cups - anything that can be twisted and closed
shut and does those herself often with the patience and an attention span rarely seen
in her daddy. I guess that is the same gene that makes her mom solve Sudoku - for fun!

She is a cautious adventurer. She walks carefully at the fort at McKinley park but isn't afraid
to go down the slide in various positions once she has tried them. Yes, even when there is a kid
at the other end. Yes, even when she knows the other end has spilled water. The water that she spilled.

She loves to be naked. She takes off her clothes every opportunity she gets. THen tries
to put them on all at the same time. Often we will see her putting on two shorts and a shirt at the same time.
All on the bottom.

She is mostly toilet trained. This is perhaps Mandy's great achievement. My little girl is capable of
telling us she wants to go pee pee.Get her potty, take her bottoms off , do her thing and if it is no .2 = call us.
And then empty her little potty in the toilet and flush. Its funny how she claps after the flush. The positive reinforcement
thing totally works .It works a bit too well actually in the sense that we do it even when she isn't around.
Nothing like flushing the toilet and going 'YAAAAAAY' and clapping as a grown man. In an airport bathroom.

She is so so so loving. She gives me a flying kiss every time I leave the house and a kiss every time I come back.
The rest of the time that she is around me she keeps on kissing my cheeks even when I haven't shaved. She has a fascination with keys and keeps on asking for my keys which she recognizes so I can't fool her by giving fake keys.

She is a good jumper. She has her little trampoline which she jumps on while I jump on mine to lymphasize.
I count about 100 to 150 jumps and am DONE. She is still going.

Enuff for today. More later....

Tapandy

Does 'the Secret' work ?

So here goes. After years of being Mr.Sarcastic I read the Secret and decided
to give it a shot. Truly truly give it a shot. Make changes from inside and such.
Truly getting the cobwebs off the soul and being grateful and acknowledging
my own past successes rather than putting them down graciously as I did before
etc. Also giving was a huge part of it. Just giving - not sacrificing . The difference
being one feels good and one dosen't.

Being plagued with survivors guilt its tough to acknowledge that good things do come
to you but ever the pragmatist (read pessimist) I decided to put this to test.

I wouldn't take anything for nothing even from the universe so I decided to do one
good thing and then set an intention to get something BIG back in my life.

Here is the story.

I worked with Russell Peters - the quintessential South Asian comic from April 24th to 27th.
Russell being the generous guy he is gave me a bonus paycheck. I took it but I wanted
to give it back to him . What do you give a guy who has everything ? So I did this with the
money on May 21st.

people.tribe.net/indiancom...3e0f51f0d8

Mandy also totally agreed so it was not causing anyone any pain.

Nothing happened for about a week. But on May 28th I got a phone call from Comedy
Central that a sweepstakes that I had entered (honestly I don't even know when ?) had
come true for me. I won the A 1 in 80,000 chance and it came true for me. I won a new Kia Spectra.
The cool thing is I had been wanting a car for the CoExist ? Comedy Tour so that we
can actually travel and now we do. How great is that ?

So remove the doubts from your mind and let go of the negativity and charge forward with
whatever you want . This thing actually works. My spiritual investment was given back to me
280 times its monetary value. Do good and it will follow. Don't sacrifice just do good !!

Sincerely,
Tapan Trivedi

Cover Art for the New Book I am writing!!

Now leave a comment!

Sacbee article about Coexist and me - Come out to the shows at the Geery Theatre now.....

www.sacbee.com/entertainm...972704.html

Laughing together
A Muslim, a Hindu and an atheist walk into a club ...
By Jim Carnes - jcarnes@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, May 30, 2008
Tissa Hami, a Muslim born in Iran, and Tapan Trivedi, a Hindu born in India, have a lot in common. Both belong to religions that are little understood in much of America, where they have chosen to make their home.

And both want to make you laugh with – not at – them.

They are two-fifths of the Sacramento-based Coexist? Comedy Tour that will open a four-weekend stand at the Geery Theater tonight. The other comics are John Ross, a Christian; Sammy Obeid, a Buddhist; and Keith Lowell Jensen, an atheist.

"When I started, when I got very short sets in clubs with mostly male stand-up comics, it was very much about being a Muslim and being a Muslim woman," Hami said recently in a telephone interview from her home in San Francisco. "I'll really never not be the female Muslim comedian on a show," she said.

Hami had worked on Wall Street in New York City and in the admissions office at Harvard University in Boston before she became a stand-up comic about six years ago – after 9/11. "Obviously, that was a big event for all of us, but as a Middle Eastern person, it was especially difficult. I felt it from various levels, as an American whose country had been attacked, as a person from the Middle East where the attack originated, and as an American of Middle Eastern descent who was somehow suddenly suspicious.

"It remided me of when I was a kid and the Iranian hostage crisis happened, and all the hatred toward people of my background.

"Then (after 9/11), watching all the Middle Eastern 'experts' on TV, who were all these white guys and an occasional white woman, I wanted to make my voice heard."

Initially, Hami said, "I was terrified. A year after 9/11? Yes, terrified. One, I was terrified the way any new comedian would be terrified, to try to go onstage and make a roomful of strangers laugh. On top of that, I was doing it as a veiled Muslim woman, in the city where 9/11 had happened. I didn't know if (the audience) would boo me, 'stone' me with beer bottles – I didn't know what would happen."

That's right, Hami went on stage veiled. "My concept originally was to do the veiled woman as a character and then to take the veil off and do the rest of it as me, the stand-up comic. But I wasn't an actor and I couldn't pull it off. So, I started out being veiled and half-way through, I'd unveil and continue.

"I couldn't do that in my home country. When I was in Iran, I had to be veiled – but here I can. I want to show that I'm the same person with or without the veil on."

Hami, 35, appeared in a PBS documentary, "Stand Up: Muslim American Comedians Come of Age," and recently was invited to appear on "The View" on ABC-TV, where she was interviewed by co-hosts Joy Behar and Sherri Shepherd. (The segment can be seen on YouTube. There's a link from www.coexistcomedy.com to the tape.) Despite her experience onstage, Hami said she was "pretty nervous" beforehand. "This was live and this was it," she said. "If I screwed something up or was just an idiot, that's what people would forever know me as."

Early in her career, Hami appeared on an all-ages show with half-a-dozen other comics (male and female) at a Starbuck's in suburban Boston – not every gig is a big gig. Afterward, she said, "A boy, about 7 or 8, came up and stuck out his hand and said, 'You were the best comedian on the show.' He didn't say I was the best woman comedian on the show or the best ethnic comedian on the show, just the best comedian.

"That's the reaction I want."

Trivedi, 31, was co-founder of the Coexist? company, along with Sacramentan Jensen. The idea came to them one night, backstage at a comedy club.

"We were laughing that here we were, an atheist and a Hindu, about to go onstage before a roomful of Christians and tell jokes," Jensen said. "It hit us what a cool thing that actually was."

Trivedi recently taped an episode of the Showtime cable series "Comedy Slam," which is hosted by comic Russell Peters. Peters is an ethnic Indian who was born in Toronto and is a major stand-up star in much of the world.

"He is probably the most famous comic that you have never heard of," Trivedi said in a recent telephone interview. "He talks about all the minorities that nobody else talks about, and he reaches audiences that haven't had a comic of their own. Thanks to him, when you say, 'I'm an Indian comedian,' they don't ask, as they used to, 'What do you bring to the stage besides the accent?' "

Trivedi also credits Peters with opening opportunities for Indian comedians, including corporate shows and private performances, such as at weddings. "Indian people mostly spend money on events like a major birthday party or a wedding," Trivedi said. "Usually, it's a kind of tight-fisted community, except when it comes to these special events."

Peters helped make it possible for comics like Trivedi to make remarks like that. He also helped make it possible to talk about similarities and differences among cultures. Differences such as religion.

"Humor is the best way to talk about religion," Trivedi said. "There's still some stigma associated with talking about it. It's still a touchy subject. That's one reason why we formed the group.

"Once you laugh at something, you've admitted its existence. It makes it real. It puts it out there. You start to deal with it."

His relationship with Jensen has been revealing," Trivedi said. "Where I grew up, there weren't that many atheists, period. In the beginning, getting to know Keith, it was like, 'Oh, my god, I can't believe him.' But I've come to understand where he's coming from, and I admire that he has gone ahead and hit the delete key on what used to be a very big part of his life." Jensen was born into a Catholic family but abandoned religion at 16.

Forming Coexist? was "a leap of faith," Trivedi said. "Keith would disagree, but it was."


Coexist? Comedy Tour

WHEN: Opens at 8 tonight and continues at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through June 21

WHERE: Geery Theatre, 2130 L St., Sacramento

TICKETS: $10 general

INFORMATION: (916) 470-9393, www.coexistcomedy.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shark Infested waters.....

Of late I have been hearing a lot of stories about surfers being bit by
sharks because they were swimming in 'shark infested waters .'
Hey newsmedia - the last time I checked the sharks LIVE in those
waters. If you take a piece of wood and have the galls to stand on it
on a wave in a place where humans aren't supposed to be in the first
place - you are the infestation. Not the sharks.
The headline should read - he was surfing in the human infested waters
and was bit by the rightful owner of the water who was merciful and
didn't eat him altogether.


I will write more on this later.

Tapan

We sponsored a little child in India through

the WorldVision organization. No jokes. Its been on my mind
a lot lately and it just had to be done. Mandy completely agreed.
Laxman Rajaram . Age 5 years old.



Govinda Damodar Madhaveti

Tapandy

Breathe In ......Just Breathe In......

I
Read you
And God i'm good at it
I'm so spot on

Chord
Shapes in air
Go press that dissonance
If you dare

And you
Breathing in
Finesse an innocent
From her partying

And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling
And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling
'Cause I love you no
Can't help but love, you know

What
Part of no
Don't you understand
I've told you before

To just get
Off my case
This isn't happening
Stop this now

And I
Where was i
I have to be somewhere
Now where did i put it

And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling
And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling
'Cause I love you no
Can't help but love you know

Is this it
Is this it
Is this it

Is this it, no
Is this it, no
Is this it

Yes
Hello we're back
And we're taking calls
Now what was the question

And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling
And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling

And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling
And I'm high enough from all the waiting
To ride a wave on your inhaling

'Cause I love you no
Can't help but love you know

'Cause I love you no
Can't help but love you know

Frou Frou

Growing up.....

My mom always used to insist that we finish each and every aspect of our
conversations. She used to shout at us " FINISH YOUR CONVERSATIONS
THERE ARE KIDS DYING WATCHING TV IN AMERICA !"

Tapan

Working at Harbin Hot Springs.....

Last Saturday May 3rd - the CoExist Tour was the featured artist at Harbin Hot Springs. Now I have been a visitor to the fabulous Harbin Hot Springs for years now but this was a completely different experience. From the momment we reached the office till we departed the site the next day it was a dream come true.

We were welcomed to the office and we chatted as we got our room keys . Rasool the resident event co ordinator is one of the coolest guys we have met in the business. He showed us to our rooms and then to the place where we were to perform. Seemed like a cool place.

After we get settled in and dressed we go out and we are confronted by the sight of beautiful naked people just chilling by the pool. There is something about doing a show for people who you know you are going to see naked that can be described as weird at best.

As we are eating our early dinner Rasool comes up to us and tells us that the event has been moved from the original place to the Temple ( a larger venue) due to the response they received. Good news ! Then he announces to the entire restaurant that we are the comics. People start coming up to us and telling us that they are looking forward to the show.

Showtime is 8:00 p.m. and I get there about 15 minutes before time to make sure that the room is good and do a mike check. I am surprised to see that the entire crowd is resting and I mean really resting. Each and every one of them is lying down on pillows . There are maybe 10 people total that have a vertical spine at that point. This is the closest my audience has been to an orgy.

I also see that there are kids in the audience . After years of doing Indian gigs while there are kids around its no big deal to me but Keith and John are concerned. Sammy Obeid - who is a kid himself (24 he claims) isn't too much concerned.

The show starts and Keith does good and brings Sammy up . Sammy has this natural way of connecting with any crowd which is an awesome asset to have at 11 months in comedy. This is one comic to watch . He kills with his set and does about 5 new jokes. I am so proud of his growth and glad to have him on the tour.

John Ross goes up after him and does great. He keeps the audience on the edge of their non existent seats by his jokes.

I go up and do about 40-45 minutes and riff for about 10 minutes in that set. Good goings all around. People really really liked the show.

We head over to our rooms and change and get into the pools. The hot /cold pool change makes me very content and relaxed .

I go to my room and sleep. Breakfast next morning is GREAT as people keep on telling us what great time they had at the show.

I think Sammy may have hooked up with someone but I am not sure .

Thank you to Harbin Hot Springs for a great show.

Tapan Trivedi