Urban Turban

A MOST INTERESTING BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Dear Ms. glamourpuss,

Please be allowing me to introduce myself. My name is Anthony L. Tandoori. Together with my brothers Ravi and Pinky, we form Tandoori lndustries, lnc.

You may have heard of us from our mutually acquainted Derek Chutney. PhD. He is actually our mother's second cousin's uncle's brother-in-law's neighbour's grandfather's son-in-law twice removed (once, l am having to be regretting to say, forcibly from our same village (it is, indeed, a small world...or, perhaps an extremely large and overpopulated one depending with which side of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada computer database you find yourself most in sympathy) (and those with whom you are not so much, but which the database masters are having the short and the curlies). It was the mostly esteemed Mr. Chutney who showed us your highly prestigious graphic fashion periodical novel and suggested you might be overripe for a marketing venture of great mutuality.

At Tandoori lndustries we have been developing for many years an invention which will revolutionize not only the fashion industry but also the aforementioned entire small and/or large world: The URBANturban!

Glamourpuss #19 (May 2011)

Art by Dave Sim, text by Eddie Khanna

EDDIE KHANNA:

This began with me writing to glamourshots under the alias Anthony (Tony) Tandoori of Tandoori Industries. It all started from a few issues previous when Dave was forced to run an Anime postcard with ramblings on it in the letter column section glamourshots, due to what I assumed was a lack of letters and feedback (other than Johnny McPhanbot). At this point I quickly realized that it was ‘open season’ on glamourshot letters and a pretty sure way to get a letter published in a comic book (eat your heart out T.M. Maple). Note for young letter column writers: When a comic is forced to publish an anime postcard with what appears to be drunken ramblings on the other side, they’re probably scraping the barrel for letters to choose from.

At this point I thought, well, let’s come up with something I’ve had an idea for a while that I thought would be pretty funny, the Urban Turban, and combine it with the fashion magazine models in glamourpuss. So I photocopied a bunch of the glamourpuss models from previous issues, drew some turbans on them, (thinking the whole time, I may not have any artistic ability, but by Rama Kushna and the Wandering Spirit of Boston Brand, I am gonna give it my all trying to draw some photo-realistic turbans. Some people draw moustaches on pictures, I guess I do this.) and wrote a mock proposal under the above alias listing built-in cell phone features for it and sent it off to Dave, along with a picture from a fashion magazine of a model wearing a turban I had found.

Dave wrote back saying that he had enjoyed the letter, and that he was going to run it glamourshots, and do a drawing using the fashion picture I had sent him and trying to incorporate as many of the features listed. Which he not only did, but added a few of his own which were way funnier than anything I had come up with (and Dave is responsible for some of the funniest comics in the history of the medium), including the ‘Internally Crispy Micro Processor Chip (plain or barbecue), the USB ports connected to Fibres In Your Optic Injury to Eye Motif cables, and the My Thumbs Fly Like The Winds Easy Texting, which had me laughing out loud for days.

And, the icing on the cake: he very generously and graciously sent me the Urban Turban artwork he drew!!!! It was like that scene between Jaka and M. Zulli, in Minds, only with photo-realistic turbans instead of carved wooden boxes and egg shells. 

Synchronously, after the issue was published, I began to see examples of it everywhere. For example, in the same month that the above glamourpuss issue was published (May 2011), there was an on-line fashion article about how Karl Lagerfeld wanted to introduce something similar called the ‘Murban’ because 2011 had been declared the year of the Urban Turban for women. And then afterwards a South Asian Magazine did a fashion shoot with stylish turbans that they actually called the Urban Turban. I guess in the same way Alan Moore talks about Steam Engine Idea time, it was Urban Turban idea time.

It’s too bad that glamourpuss ended when it did, otherwise in my next letter I was going to start a Tandoori Industries membership drive for an organization called "The Friends of Apu".