This and That: Shouter Baptist Liberation Day edition

Today Trinidad & Tobago celebrates Shouter Baptist Liberation Day — with a public holiday, of course, so I’m at home playing my usual game of catch-up, without clients, editors (the Trinidadian ones, at least) and callers trying to reach the Curepe Junior Secondary School (our office telephone number shares six of seven digits with this institution’s) breathing down my neck for a change.

I, food judge: The murder of little Sean Luke still has me quite upset (here’s the latest, from the Express), but today I get to distract myself by looking at gorgeous images of food, as I’ve been fingered by Melissa de Leòn Douglass as a judge on the 14th leg of the “Does My Blog Look Good In It” competition (DMBLGIT). Melissa is hosting DMBLGIT this month over at her muy sabroso Cooking Diva blog (winner of the 2006 Bloggie for Latin America).

Here are the photos I have the enviable yet unenviable task of choosing among. And pictured below are a few creations from my cousin Christiana, who’s training as a pastry chef at the French Culinary Institute in New York. I’m posting this photo in the hope that one day she actually lets me sample her wares.

Global Voices meets the Soca Warriors: Or at least they will tomorrow — sort of — as this morning I had the pleasure of interviewing Stacy-Marie Ishmael, the London-based Trinidadian who maintains the T&T World Cup Blog, for my next Global Voices article. I’ll be sure to post the link to the article here as well, but in the meantime I urge you to check out the T&T World Cup Blog and Stacy’s commentaries on the happenings on and off the pitch as the Soca Warriors prepare for Germany 2006.

Boycott the official World Cup Song: It was thanks to Stacy-Marie, for instance, that I first heard the outrageous news that the official Trinidad & Tobago World Cup song had been outsourced to two guys in Leeds. Yes, Leeds, England! Why hasn’t there been a public outcry about this scandal? Or if there has, why haven’t I heard about it?

Even more appalling is the insipid rationale offered by Choque Hosein, one of the composers:

Soca is a Trinidadian style of music that has been developing over the last 10 years. It has been influenced by radio from Miami, Brazil, Venezuela as well as reggae. . . . We wanted to do a classic football song and the best ones are from the '70s.

But wait — that’s not only insipid, it’s factually incorrect as well. Choque’s mother might be Trinidadian, but she’s done a very poor job of educating him about the culture: soca was developed in the 1970s, son. And the team is called the Soca Warriors, so a soca song would suit the situation just fine. In fact, as Stacy-Marie pointed out, we already have a perfectly good official song, called “Fighter”.

How did I get involved?: I’m borrowing my buddy Walt Lovelace’s favourite phrase as the title for this one, because honestly, how is it that my least favourite of all the images I have ever posted at Caribbean Free Photo (note the disclaimer, “this one of so touristy it hurts. . . .”) has turned out to the most controversial, becoming a symbol of sorts for a very serious incident whose only relationship with the photo is that is took place at the location depicted therein? To think I was once accused of “perpetuating that beautiful idyllic view of the Caribbean”.

I do however sympathise completely with the two people who left comments on the post (one of whom was the daughter of the man who lost his life). There is absolutely no excuse for an establishment whose signature activities are drinking and cliff-diving (often combined, I’m sure) not to have an efficient emergency response system, and if my photo will help change that, I’m happy. But I have to say the first commenter loses me completely when he writes, “My advice to any person from North America is to stay away from Rick’s.” When is a certain kind of North American going to realise that the rest of humanity also bleeds when cut and that they’d win more friends if they at least pretended to acknowledge that?

Me on Open Source Radio: Last and certainly least, Chelsea Merz, one of the producers at Open Source Radio, e-mailed yesterday to say that the interview the esteemed Christopher Lydon did with me the other day was going to be featured at the end of the March 29th show. I haven’t listened as yet because, to be truthful, I’m scared. As pleasurable as it was to chat with Christopher, my memory of the interview is of me grasping for words and not finding any and giving lots of inaccurate information in the process. And while few believe me when I say it, I truly dislike the sound of my own voice. Listen at least for the rest of the show, which is sure to be quality stuff.

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