Sinanation

I would have never imagined her to turn into the woman she is today when she played the little sister in Home Alone 3.

Since then, Scarlett appeared in numerous movies and became the muse of Woody Allen. This Danish New Yorker is the girl that makes chubby OK. Her flour-white skin, blue eyes, blond hair and perky lips and (obviously) boobs makes her the target of voluptuous male fantasies. Her looks override her weaker points in acting, making her one of the most popular actresses of our time. I guess Woody Allen and Ryan Reynolds are the only ones who could turn this fantasy into reality, one through movies and the other trough matrimony.

Name: Janos Papai

Nickname: Papa, Papai

Notable Appearance: Thick, gelled hair with a goatee. Heavy Hungarian accent

Can’t do without: Light blue jeans, plaid lumberjack shirts, glasses to protect the eyes from the rays of computer screens, heavy breakfasts, scarfs

Notable Hobbies: Travelling, going to bars, test driving cars, fixing and building stuff, quick workouts

Weakness: Sadwiches, India, Indian food

Favorite Quote: “Bastas!”

Last Seen: London, New York, Mumbai, Budapest, Latin America

It is time to party like they used to. I am naming this set Discothèque because it is the meeting ground of numerous oldies and popular beats from today. It can be the core set of a celebration. It can be a warm up to a wild house party or a Saturday brunch. No matter what, it takes on the legendary disco balls as inspiration and builds up on the Disco life that became popular in the 1960s.

The first Discothèque came about by mistake in 1959 when the band that was supposed to play at a German dancing hall unexpectedly cancelled its gig. The owners of the hall had to play from record to keep the place open. Although Discos became popular in 1960s, the disco ball is much older than that. It is known to be widely used in nightclubs in 1920s and its invention dates back to 1890s.

Enjoy Discothèque.

I remember the days when I used to go nuts seeing it snow outside. I would run from one side of the house to the other to see how well it was covering the surface. Happiness and excitement would flow out of my eyes. I would be a Formula 1 driver with my socks, gliding like a maniac on the wooden floors. My only wish would be to hear the governor close the schools the next day. Only then the real fun would begin. With the company of a few friends we would take on the white powder with multi layers of ski outfits. Our cheeks pumped with blood and our hands and feet soaking wet, we would become the Eskimos of the urban life. On the way back home, we would jump up and down to get rid of the snow stuck on us and take the leap into our beds after hours of snowman projects, snowball fights and trekking.

Along the years snow stayed the same, but I, unwillingly, have changed. I still think of the aftermath whenever I see snow outside the window, but from a completely different point of view. I now think of the mess that is going to be on the pavements the next day. The harmless beautiful white snow will turn into harsh ice and then melt into an annoying grey slush. Shoes will be ruined. Socks and pants will be soaking wet. Within all the crazy pavement traffic in Manhattan, we will once again be challenged with successfully solving an extra equation while walking. We will be forced to calculate the best routes to avoid falling down and/or getting wet on the corner of each block.

I am still a big fan of the snow, but I now have to be in parks or on ski slopes to let the kid in me take control.

No wonder why Danny Boodman T.D. Lemons or in short “1900″ falls in love with this amazing girl who travels on his cruise ship in The Legend of 1900. That is the only movie and the first time I saw Thierry. The French Goddess appears on the other side of a tiny window overlooking the room where 1900 plays the piano for his first recording. Her perkly lips and blue eyes grabs the male ego by the balls. She pauses life once her looks are blended with 1900′s music on the background.

Honestly I went to A View From the Bridge to see Scarlett Johansson in the flesh. Thanks to an incredible cast and a most demanding script, it turned to be beyond my expectations.

With not much sleep from the previous night, I took my seat in the second row with a little discomfort and doubt. After a cup of dark Turkish coffee, I was determined not the blink en eye. The play was supposed to be a drama about Italian immigrants who move to Brooklyn in the 1950s with the prospect of a better life. Within the little time left for the 1st act, I grabbed onto my BlackBerry to read a little more about the story. A View from the Bridge is a family tragedy based on forbidden unrequited love.

Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman in the mid-1950s, lives near the Brooklyn waterfront with his wife, Beatrice, and her orphaned niece, 17-year-old Catherine. Eddie dotes on Catherine, and his obsession becomes more pronounced after Beatrice’s nephews, Marco and Rodolpho, arrive from Italy and move in with the Carbones. The threat of expulsion from the country for being illegal immigrants weighs on the two newcomers, and a jealous Eddie becomes fixated on his belief that Rodolpho is wooing Catherine only because marrying her would result in a green card. Meanwhile, the sheltered Catherine falls in love with charming Rodolpho. Eddie’s passionate jealousy propels the play toward a series of tragic confrontations.

It is not conventional to go a show with low expectations and leave it mesmerized. It was the case with A View from the Bridge. Liev Schreiber puts it all out as Eddie Carbone. Together with Scarlett Johansson they portray the confusion and the heavy guilt between a 17-year old girl who sees the husband of her aunt as a father and the husband who is perplexed with his feelings beyond parenting towards the girl who was brought up in his hands. The impeccable performance of Johansson and Schreiber can not be perfected without the help of Jessica Hecht who plays Beatrice.

As the wife who is perfectly aware of her husband’s forbidden love, as the aunt who is trying to look after her naive niece and as a woman who fights the urge of being jealous, she is torn apart. From her toning to her mimics, Hecth can not portray a better Beatrice. The way her chest drains air every time she opens up to Catherine or Eddie is not something that can go unnoticed. There is another character that deserves credit in the story. There are instances when Corey Stoll, as Marco, a father and a brother whose sole purpose is to take care of his family, mesmerizes the audience with his reaction to injustice.

The scene where he asks Eddic “Can you lift this chair?” with the protective urge of an older brother and the desperation of a bashful illegal immigrant makes the audience admire his strength, but feel sorry for his fatality. With his left arm firmly tight, Marco lifts the chair Eddie couldn’t, certifying his superiority and warning for respect.

A View from the Bridge will be on Broadway until April 2010.

I really don’t know what happened here. Until the most recent episodes of Gossip Girl, Jessica was the “eh, I am not sure” girl in my opinion. Most of my friends also agreed on this comment. Yet, as the episodes progressed, this actress/model from Wisconsin, blossomed into a really attractive girl. Supposedly she started her career at the age of 6 with and ad campaign for Quaker Oats.

I still have difficulty making a strong argument for her attractiveness in the TV show. She has her moments of glamour. But out in the media, at regular city sightings and events, she keeps it going.

It is  a great source of happiness and pride to see Sinanation‘s ever-expanding global reach. Thanks to Google Analytics, I now have the opportunity to see the origins of my readers. Here are the places Sinanation has been so far:

• U.S.
• Turkey
• U.K.
• Canada
• Italy
• France
• Germany
• Norway
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Ireland
• Australia
• China
• India
• Thailand
• Saudi Arabia
• South Korea
• Senegal

Thanks to all the readers!

The follow-up to the original Istanbul at Night mix comes with a selection of Turkish songs I have been listening to while walking to the office in the mornings. They have been my favorite so far for 2010. Some are classics remixed and others are hits from the 2nd half of 2009. As I mentioned in The Truth about Turkish Songs; most lyrics reflect on cruel love and breakups. Thanks to the beats on the background, one can dance to these sad songs rather than being dragged into contemplation and reflection. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. After all, they have been my wake-up call for the last two months.

Name: Andrea Favale

Nickname: Fava, the Italian Stallion

Notable Appearance: On the brink of being built up. Failure to do so would make him chubby. Loaded with Italian Merino body hair.

Can’t do without: Black cotton t-shirts, black shirts, jeans, Argentinian Malbec red wine, Red wine from Puglia, Las Vegas, California, entrepreneurship, Porsche Carrera, fiery Latin women, big breasts, curvy buttocks, Brazil, the Internet, Patrick Bateman’s vision of life, steakhouses, coffee in the morning, the afternoon and the evening, mineral water, tomatoes, funk & soul music, Rustico, Ford Con-Fusion

Notable Hobbies: Investing in real estate, starting companies, reading about the progress in the media and technology, traveling, contemplating, diversifying, watching action movies, blogging, taking a shower each time before leaving the apartment, speeding, afternoon Siestas

Weakness: Peas, Vintage Italian Songs, Sunscreen

Favorite Quote: “What’s up SinanBa?”, Gringo

Last Seen: London, Istanbul, Lecce, New York, Cambridge, Trancoso/Brazil, www.artandseek.com, TheWaterRat, Old Homestead Steakhouse NYC, CityandOut