I went to Bangalore for the weekend. A time well-spent, especially because Uddu had this scooter he filched from some friend of his, and consequently there were no unpleasant incidents with auto-drivers. Had my first brunch at Koshi’s and ’twas yummy. Mandatory trip to Planet M and then a DVD/CD shop called Habitat which has an amazing collection of cds, the best I have seen in a long time. Only rarities and collectibles, I believe. I got Mike Oldfield’s Exposed – 2 cd set, with live and complete versions of Incantations and Tubular bells.

Onward to Blossoms’ – got Vector Prime, the first book of the New Jedi Order series, and the monthly Gotham comics fix – an Ultimate Spiderman superspecial being the highlight. Most of the afternoon and the evening was spent with my sister who, being possessed of extreme short-term-memory, informed me that I had not gifted her anything since getting a job, and proceeded to remedy that at Lifestyle and Commercial Street. Jeezus! She sure knows her shops. Dinner was at Tiger Bay, a seafood restaurant at MG Road, Uddu and Arul regaling me with tales of days-gone-by.

Sunday. Three quizzes in a row. We skipped breakfast and sat through the first, a college quiz. Madhav came in just when it was about to end, and very soon, the Hollywood Quiz was underway. Midway through the prelims, I decided Pradeep Sebastian must be a very nice guy – there were about six questions ( out of thirty) on cult horror movies.

And then the finals. Somehow managed to hang on until the very end, answering the questions madhavn and Anustup let go. Second prize was book coupons of 1500 bucks.

The next quiz was a bummer. The prelims were all either second-hand Quiznet stuff, or culled from the newspaper headlines of the last two weeks ( and in one case, that day’s TOI ) The finals pissed me off, with the QM referring to Vangelis as a “band”, and according to Anustup, messing up fundaes about horse-racing. The first audio round was painful, don’t people learn that tapes are passe? Our question was about a Lorenna McKennit song – we were told to identify the lyricist . The answer happened to be Lord Tennyson’s Lady of Shallott, which we could have gotten had we recognised anything against the noise from the tape. Then there is an Indian audio round where questions like “Identify the band.” ( C’mon, how many bands are there with Sufi lyrics and a Page-like guitar and an Azmat-like voice? ), identify the film ( I can identify Atheseyam from Jeans and Pachai Kiligal from Indian in my sleep, thank you) and other such enlightening topics were asked.

Anyhow, we finished second. Mostly because of Anustup.

Interesting stuff that happened after I came back: A trip to Walden showed that they have something called The Bloody Streets of Paris, which is a Black and White graphic novel, and according to Time.com’s Andrew Arnold, “Jacques Tardi and Leo Malet do for comix what the French New Wave did for film: taking the trappings of American pulp fiction and retooling them with a cool, European update.” Cool!

Another surprise: Marjane Satrapis’s autobiographical Persepolis, available in Odyssey of 640 Rupees. To my surprise, this was on display in the “biographies” section. This graphic novel has gotten a lot of accolades, and thanks to those, and mikester‘s recommendation, and the sample pages he pointed me to, I think I will buy it. Ditto for the Paris book.

*Sigh* Total expenditure for 2004, even before 2004 has started : 350+400+350+590+640 = 2330. Not good at all.