Turkey’s Rock n’Roll Imam

I never knew that this species existed :) Apparently in Turkey there is an Imam who also doubles up as a rock musician! Ahmet Muhsin Tuzer from a tiny hamlet on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has run into trouble with the country’s powerful religious authorities — for his other life as a rock musician. Tuzer told AFP he is being investigated by the Diyanet, the state body in charge of the country’s mosques, over his activities. In a telephone interview from Pinarkoy, a tiny community near the Mediterranean beach resort of Kas, he said that although he is awaiting the results of the investigation, he is going to continue making music no matter what. He plans to go to the courts to continue his music career.

The Diyanet is looking to determine whether his form of music is compatible with Islam and whether his work as a musician conflicts with his role as imam, a government-funded post. And it recently sent a group of inspectors to the hamlet to question members of his 40-strong congregation about his activities. “I want to show that you can be a Muslim, listen to rock music and be modern at the same time,” insisted the 42-year-old. The imam made headlines in August when he and his band Firock performed for the first time in public at a local festival in his hometown of Kas in front of a crowd of hundreds of curious onlookers. He says his music is steeped in Sufism or mystical Islam and is primarily geared towards Turkish youth “who are distancing themselves from Islam today”. The probe into Tuzer highlights the ongoing battle in Turkish society between the religious conservatism espoused by the government and the staunchly secular traditions of the modern republic.

Tuzer is active on Facebook and Twitter and a single released by the three-member Firock “Mevlaya Gel” (Come to God) has had over 32,000 hits on YouTube. Tuzer previously angered religious authorities in Turkey in 1997 when as a prayer leader at a mosque in Istanbul he married a foreign tourist, a Christian woman who later converted to Islam. They have an 11-year-old son.

Rasputin, The Mad Monk

Rasputin, The Mad Monk is a 1966 movie from Hammer Productions directed by Don Sharp. It stars Christopher Lee as the Russian peasant-mystic Grigori Rasputin, notable for gaining great influence with the Tsars prior to the Russian Revolution. Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Suzan Farmer, Richard Pasco, Dinsdale Landen and RenĂ©e Asherson also star in this movie. Although based on some events mentioned in Prince Yusupov’s account of the story, the movie is partly fictional.

In the Russian countryside an innkeeper is lamenting over the near death state of his wife and the doctor has given up hope on curing her. That night Rasputin, a wandering monk dressed in a robe, wild hair and a long beard (looking like a tall, thinner Rabindranath Tagore) comes in and demands wine. As he learns of the innkeeper’s wife’s illness he goes to her room and, in front of her husband, daughter and another man, cures her using his ‘special powers of healing’. The grateful innkeeper provides large quantities of wine and there is much singing and dancing as the daughter dances with Rasputin. Later he sneaks the girl off to the barn for a romp in the hay but is attacked by a suitor of the girl. Rasputin defends himself and gravely injures the man but is forced to escape away on a horse as the girl’s screams brings all the men come in thinking the monk is the attacker! Later hauled before an Orthodox bishop for his sexual immorality and violence, the innkeeper springs to the monk’s defence. Rasputin protests that he is sexually immoral because he likes to give God “sins worth forgiving”. He also claims to have healing powers in his hands, and is unperturbed by the bishop’s accusation that his power is from Satan.

Rasputin makes his way to St. Petersburg and at an inn enters a drinking contest with a disreputed doctor, Dr Boris Zargo. After consuming huge quantities of wine, Boris faints and is carried to his room by Rasputin, who then makes himself at home there. He sets his designs on gaining influence over the Tsarina and plans his strategy. He seduces the Tsarina’s Tsarina’s lady-in-waiting, Sonia, on whom he has a hypnotic effect and after using her to quench his voracious lust for sex, he sets her out to do his biding. He instructs Sonia to push the Tzarina’s son from a high ledge and the injured boy goes into a coma. After doctors cannot cure him, Sonia tells the Tzarina about the holy man who can heal anyone and Rasputin is asked to come and heal the royal child. Rasputin heals the boy to everyone’s astonishment and he is rewarded by the Tzarina. Soon, setup in a grand house, with Boris as his assistant, Rasputin receives many gifts and makes a lot of money by healing, mostly women, Rasputin becomes wealthy and arrogant. His ruthless pursuit of wealth and prestige, and increasing control over the royal household attracts opposition. Finally he dumps Sonia, saying he lusts after her friend Vanessa who he finds very attractive, who he has grown tired off and she kills herself. Sonia’s brother Peter had earlier enlists the help of Vanessa’s brother Ivan to bring about the monk’s downfall as he was enraged at the monk’s manipulation of her.

They find a disillusioned Boris who walked out on Rasputin sitting in an inn and they hatch a plan. Ivan invites Rasputin to his house for dinner on the pretext of meeting Vanessa. However when Peter discovers his sister’s dead body he goes to kill Rasputin but gets a beaker of acid in his face for his troubles. At night as Rasputin arrives at Ivan’s home he gorges himself on poisoned chocolates & wine that Ivan provides. He sees Boris and struggles with him & Ivan but is pushed through the window and falls to the snowy ground and dies.

Unfortunately the didn’t stick to the original story, much to my chagrin. In reality he was poisoned, beaten when he still survived and then shot to death. The popular song ‘Rasputin’ by Boney M comes to mind and is responsible for many, like me, to be fascinated by the life of this man. And yeah he doesn’t seem to have a romantic relationship with the Tzarina, despite the lyrics :) Anyway, good film and it looks like Lee had a ball in it. 7.5 outta 10!

On Facebook Groups

How many Facebook groups are you a member of? Are you an admin in any of them? How often do you contribute to the posts/discussions and debates on these groups?

1. How many Facebook groups are you a member of?
A. I am a member of exactly 30 groups on Facebook! That seems like a lot to me but I’m sure that there are people with many more group memberships but 30 seems like a lot to me. I am a member of 3 groups that are meant only for my family members – sister, cousins and cousins’ spouses, 1 ex employees groups, 1 for the alumni of my former high school, 1 bloggers based in and around my city group, 1 hard rock & metal fans group and 1 photography friends group.

I am also a member of the 1 million Indians Support LGBT Rights group and a member of 6 Atheists groups (some of which have theists also in there to cause debates and or attacks). 2 Horror movie & tv shows lovers groups, 2 Stargate fan groups, 1 Battlestar Galactica group, 2 general Scifi shows fan groups and 8 Star Trek fans groups!!! 30 in total!

2. I am an admin in just 3 of them – a family group (the main one), a Star Trek fan group and my own Scifi group (which I created but never post in it at all). I might be starting up a new one and sharing admin responsibilities with another guy, a friend on Youtube.

3. I’m a regular contributor to about half of them. Regular meaning about 1 post or comment a day. On several it’s multiple posts and comments/discussions a day. There are a few that I post/comment only once in a while and perhaps 3 that I rarely post at all.

Judging A Book By It’s Cover

How important are book covers in getting you to read a book?

I know the saying but it’s not always something I follow. Admit it, we all like the outer covers and are atleast momentarily attracted to (an object or a living creature) because of the way that it/they look. Now, I’m going to stick to the subject at hand, which is books.

I feel that done right book covers can attract the right reader for the kind of book it is. Or attract a reader to the kind of book he/she wants to read. For example, if you wish to read a horror novel about vampires, an appropriate image on the cover will help you go towards selecting the book and if not reading it, atleast checking out what the book is all about. Same for a scifi adventure novel set in distant planets and solar systems – if the cover shows an alien being or a spaceship in space that would make the scifi fan pick up the book and go through the synopsis given on the back cover.

However never will I buy a book based solely on the cover. No matter how attractive or enticing it may look. A good check of the back cover, a quick reading of a couple of pages (no store owners have ever bothered to chase me away even if I stand there for a couple of hours but I usually don’t stay for more than 30-40 minutes) just to see if the book interests me and only then will I purchase the book and/or borrow it in case I am borrowing the book from a friend/colleague/acquiantance (I haven’t been a member of a library in ages) to read.

The Hangover III

The third and final film in the trilogy of movies, The Hangover III is a 2013 comedy film. The movie stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, and Ken Jeong. The supporting cast includes: Jeffrey Tambor, Heather Graham, Jamie Chung, Mike Epps and John Goodman with Todd Phillips directing a screenplay written by himself and Craig Mazin.

The movie starts 2 years after the events of the sequel movie and Leslie Chow escapes from a maximum security prison in Thailand. As the story unfolds we find out that Chow had hijacked half of a $42 million gold heist from mob leader Marshall before he went to jail. Alan’s dad dies in the middle of an argument after Alan accidentally decapitates his new pet giraffe that he had purchased (a stupid CGI giraffe). At his father’s funeral, after Alan first sings a melodic number and then acts inappropriately, Doug tells Phil & Stuart that Alan has been off his ADHD medication and is out of control. They setup an intervention with Alan’s family, in which Alan agrees to visit a rehab facility in Arizona, so long as “the Wolfpack” takes him there. On the way to Arizona, Phil’s minivan is rammed off the road by a rental truck and the group is taken hostage. They are later confronted by mob leader Marshall and “Black Doug”, his head of security. Marshall takes Doug hostage and tells the other 3 that they have 3 days to find Chow and bring him to Marshall. As Alan was the only person who had contact with Chow while the latter was in prison via letters, this seemed to be the logical choice.

They setup a meeting with Chow in Tijuana using Alan’s phone and the plan is to drug him and take him to met the mob lord. However he sees right through the setup and he forces them to confess they are working for Marshall. Chow explains his plan to retrieve the stolen gold from the basement of a Mexican villa he previously owned. Stu, Alan and Phil break into the house and successfully retrieve the gold, but Chow double-crosses them by locking them in the basement, rearming the security system and escaping in Phil’s minivan. They are arrested but mysteriously released from the police station, where they are picked up by a limousine and taken back to the villa, where they meet up with Marshall. That’s when they are told that the house was actually Marshall’s and what they had just stolen was the remaining half of the gold and now Chow has all that money! Marshall forgives them for their mistake but kills “Black Doug” for his incompetence and reminds them of their now two-day deadline. The trio then track Phil’s phone, which was in the mini-van and find that Chow is now in Las Vegas and they find that he has exchanged some old for cash at a pawnshop. Alan strikes up a rapport with the store owner, Cassie (Melissa McCarthy) and he learns from her that Chow wanted to get drugs and escorts. Using Stu’s former lover Jade (Heather Graham) as their contact, they learn that Chow is barricaded in the penthouse suite of Caesars Palace.

While Stu waits in the car Phil & Alan sneak into the suite via dangling from the roof on tied up bedsheets,but Chow escapes, jumping from the balcony and parachuting down to the strip. Stu catches up to Chow and locks him in the trunk of the limo that Marshall had lent to them. They take the gold and meet with Marshall, who releases Doug back to the group. Although Marshall initially promised to not harm Chow, he changes his mind and shoots through the trunk of the car, presumably killing him. Luckily, Alan had freed Chow through a backseat compartment just moments earlier. Chow comes out and kills Marshall and his men with a gun and then turns the gun on Phil but Alan steps in front of his friend and Chow relents as Alan had just saved his life. He offers Alan a bar of gold as a gift, but Alan turns him down, and ends their friendship due to Chow’s unhealthy influence on the group. As Chow sadly watches them leave, they go to retrieve Phil’s minivan from the pawnshop and Alan makes a date with Cassie and the two kiss. 6 months later the gang is gathering for Alan’s wedding with Cassie and he “resigns” from the wolfpack although he says that he wants to meet up every Tuesday and alternate Sundays for fun. As the four of them walk to the ceremony, a montage of their clips from all 3 movies plays as the movie ends. Post credits we see he morning after the wedding, Alan, Cassie and Phil appear to have staged another wild party that they cannot remember. Stu emerges from the bathroom with breast implants and Alan remembers that the wedding cake was a gift from Chow, who emerges from the next room naked, laughing and wielding a Katana.

What the fuck? I need to get that final scene erased from my memory. Another hangover? Well, it’s funny and all that. It’s enough to get a 7.5 outta 10 from me. Good for an afternoon of fun.

RIP Paul Walker

Actor Paul Walker, best known for his role in the Fast and the Furious movie franchise, died early this morning (last night in the US). He was just 40. According to reports Walker and another person were killed when the driver of a Porsche GT lost control and crashed, bursting into flames. The accident is said to have occurred in Valencia, California, where the actor was attending an open house at Always Evolving Performance Motors. According to fire officials, the single vehicle crash happened at around 3:30 p.m. local time in the Rye Canyon Business Park. A red Porsche had struck a light pole and a tree. Two occupants were pronounced dead at the scene.

The Californian actor began modeling at the age of 2 began working on television shows in 1985 and commercials. Walker’s film career began in 1986, with the horror/comedy film Monster in the Closet. He continued with roles in several other movies without much success: it was not until 1998 that Walker made his feature film debut in the comedy Meet the Deedles, which finally gained him fame. This subsequently led to supporting roles in the movies Pleasantville, Varsity Blues, She’s All That, and The Skulls. In 2001 he got his breakthrough role when he starred opposite actor Vin Diesel in the successful action film The Fast and the Furious. The franchise has spawned 5 sequels with a 6th one being filmed. His other prominent movies are Joy Ride, Into The Blue, Eight Below & Flags Of Our Fathers. He lived in Santa Barbara, California, with his dogs. Paul and his then-girlfriend Rebecca have a daughter, Meadow.

Paul William Walker IV (September 12, 1973 – November 30, 2013)