The second instalment of Mahaquizzer, the Karnataka Quiz Association’s All-India Written Quiz is just two days away. I was in Bangalore the last year when it happened, and was made the coordinator of the Hyderabad segment of the quiz. The day of that quiz was one of the worst Sundays ever. there was some political rally going on, so all roads to Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, in King Koti were blocked by policemen. I could reach the venue myself only because I knew some of the gullies that led from Liberty circle. The turnout was pretty decent. But I cannot but help wondering if more people would have arrived had it not been for those road-blocks.

This year, the Hyderabad venue is St Francis College, just a stone’s throw away from my regular haunts. I used to stay very close to this esteemed ladies’ college two years ago, and the K-Circle would hold their monthly league quizzes in the classrooms of St Francis. One fine Sunday, it was found out that there was, of all things, a recruitment thingie going on, because of which we people weren’t allowed to enter the college. Instead of scuppering a well-made quiz, we ended up doing it in my flat. Yeah, it was a fairly big house, with a huge hall, and all of the participating members could squeeze in somehow and lounge on the somewhat-dusty floor answering questions. I remember the flat watchman getting rather nervous as a number of nattily dressed young (and middle-aged) people strolled into my house, with much enthusiasm – later he told me he thought I was about to be beaten up or something.

Well, I digress. Like I was saying, St Francis is hosting Mahaquizzer this year, and I hope participation is good. I won’t be here, though – I am supposed to be coordinating the Delhi chapter of the quiz, but bsing, I wish you all the best. I hope you buy a cellphone by the time you’re here, you lazy dog, because I’ve been taking calls from Delhi AND Hyderabad, pah.

And as for you quizzers/quiz-dabblers reading this, in case you’re wondering if it’s a good idea to wake up early on a Sunday morning and waste your beauty-sleep for some shady written test-thingie, here are a couple of words of advice. Because I am a coordinator, I’ve had a Sneak Preview of the question paper ( If you’re about to ask me a question, the answer is “No, I shan’t. You will see them on Sunday morning.”), and tried it out under stringent Mahaquizzer conditions. Well, I had more fun last year, when Arul had gotten all the coordinators together to Koshy’s and read out the questions one by one, and we had made a combined score that would have beaten the Mahaquizzer Maximum by quite a few points, heh. I attempted this last night, having taken a copy of the questions home from the office. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a print-out of the key, so had to come verify the answers and scores at the office. I scored quite average, let me assure you, about 44 or 45. I would give myself 45, as I didn’t write the name of a TV series when I was supposed to, inspite of going “A-HA! This is what it should be!”. The line that came to mind immediately after this was “Oh, bummer, but it can’t be this, can it?”, and yeah, I didn’t write it down. But still….)

It’s a brilliant quiz. I am not saying this because I know all of the people who set it and because two of them are on LJ ( take a bow, al_lude and kvk. The other two quizmasters are Dibyendu Das and Ochintya Sharma), but because, seriously, this quiz totally, totally made me sit and pull out my hair when I read the answers. NOT a bad thing. Every question I didn’t get made me feel like I should have gotten the answer, IF ONLY I had thought for ten seconds instead of dismissing it as something too obscure or obfuscated. This in itself makes it a perfect quiz in my opinion. A crib I had with last year’s instalment of Mahaquizzer was that some answers left me completely clueless even after knowing them, and that crib no longer applies this year. The weight given to various topics, at first glance, appears really balanced – I need to take a careful look at it later if I have the time, though, so don’t quote me on that. Some of the topical questions seem clustered on one page ( especially the Hindi movie questions on page 6, pah! )

Right. So if I have managed to pique your interest, here’s one more tip for you. When you have the paper with you, make sure READ the questions carefully. Don’t just hop, skip and jump around, go through them in order. Each of these questions have been framed really well, with just the correct amount of information that could trigger an answer from the depths of your tormented quiz-memories. Oh, tormented you will be, for sure. 150 questions in an hour and a half is no joke!

Pantheon Books is reprinting Craig Thompson’s first graphic novel Goodbye Chunky Rice. The Pantheon website states the release date as May, 2006, and the price is 12.95$. Considering that Pantheon is a proper book publisher ( the earlier graphic novel releases, such as Persepolis 1and 2, David B’s Epileptic and Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers have all been available at regular bookstores in India), I think there is a fair chance that I might be able to buy Goodbye Chunky Rice pretty soon. Need to talk to the folks at Bookworm and Blossom, hmmm. Oh, and Jessica Abel’s La Perdida is also being brought out by Pantheon. We wants!

As a friend pointed out to me recently, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls, which Moore describes as “literary pornography” ( he refuses to call it erotica) is complete after 16 years of developement. The story is about three classic characters from literature, Dorothy from The Wizardof Oz, Wendy from Peter Pan and Alice from Alice In Wonderland, who, in the year 1914, meet at a chateau and talk about their erotic adventures. Top Shelf Productions is bringing out a 3-volume hardcover edition, on sale from June 2006 for 75$, as well as a signed and numbered edition of 500 copies, available for a mere 150$. *Sigh*. According to the website, “this will be the most expensive book Top Shelf has ever published, with the first printing costing us almost $200K. Why so expensive? Because Lost Girls will be published as three, 112-page, super-deluxe, oversized (9″ x 12″) clothbound hardcover volumes, each wrapped in a beautiful dust jacket, with all three volumes sealed and shrink-wrapped in a gorgeous slipcase. “Much as I would like to buy the lot, I realised that it would be completely impossible to bring it into India – Customs would no doubt be ready with their permanent black markers to protect me from obscenity. Did I ever tell you about my copy of Heavy Metal magazine that had certain pages blackened by our moral guardians?

I am a little hesitant about getting the 2-disc King Kong DVD that’s available right now, because there might be a seperate collectors’ release in the future. With a figurine and all.

Meg Cabot’s seventh Princess Diaries title is out, and is priced at 376 Rs, goddamnit!!! Now I just need to wait until it lands up in the Bargain section of Odyssey at half-price. But, but, what am I saying?? I want to read that book SO BAD, I am pretty sure I am buying it at full price before the month is out. It’s called Seventh Heaven, by the way, keeping in tune with the number-themed earlier books. (Book 3 was Third-time Lucky, Book 4 was Mia Goes Forth, and so on).

Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead is one series that is so completely true to the Zombie genre – I have been following it since issue 1, scanned, of course, and when I look to buying it off eBay, the prices make me faint. Apparently the early issues had very low print-runs, so there have been instances of the first two issues selling for 113$, and the first printing of the first issue for 81$ – you get the drift. So what I found is that if I want to buy The Walking Dead, the best thing would be to go, like a true completist, for a slipcased hardcover edition. This collects the first 24 issues of the series, and costs a mere 100$. Another such selling-for-real-high-prices-on-eBay series is Invincible, also by Robert Kirkman, and they have got hardcover collections for this series up on Amazon too.The second collection hasn’t been released yet, though. Heh.

For the record, I would also buy this, but I already have the original comics. Hmm, yeah, that was my oh-look-I-am-so-cool line for the day.

* * *

So this friend of mine reads this post just now, and comes up on GTalk.

Anon Friend: you are not really going to buy chunky Rice right?
Beatzo: :D
I am actually of the opinion that someday, this management guru will come to me and say “dude, i owe my craig thompson love to you, so I bought you a signed copy of Goodbye Chunky Rice as a token of my gratitude.”
Anon Friend: (bitter laughter)
Strong doubts about me becoming a management guru. and secondly i will NEVER ever buy you gifts man.
i mean you are the sort of guy who would totally deflate a potential gifter: “Thanks. but I already have the Ultimate goodbye chunky Rice, signed, numbered, with Craig Thompson’s semen enclosed and packed in Alan moore’s beard shavings. Of course, i can try to sell this on ebay…”

Oh phoo. I need an image makeover, and fast.

Darna Zaroori Hai.
Craig Thompson’s Blankets.
Alex Robinson’s Box Office Poison.
Lost Season One: Season Finale.
The Director’s Commentary of Rang De Basanti.
Futurama Seasons 2 and 3.
The Greatest Feel-good Rahman Mix CD, ever.

orpheus78 had this interview meme on his Livejournal, in which he can ask a potential interviewee five questions, and those questions have to be answered on the latter’s Journal. I volunteered, and these are the five questions he asked me. Each question in itself would be fodder for single posts, but I have done my best to abstain from excessive verbosity.

1.What are the best and worst things about living in India?

The diversity. It’s like constantly being surprised by your surroundings. You travel to a place a few hundred miles away, and you find yourself in a locality that looks completely different, that has a different language, the food’s different – it’s like you are somewhere else altogether. Meeting people whose lifestyles are radically different from one another, and watching them get along. There’s just too much of this country to take in during one’s lifetime.

The worst thing about living in India is the tendency to “adjust” yourself to societal norms. I know that’s a problem everywhere, but more pronounced in India because of the volume of the population. You find yourself conforming to a lot of things just because it’s the acceptable thing to do, and not because you like doing it or would want to do it. It’s still a country where your future career would be decided by your parents and the people around you, and not by what you are interested in.

2.What do you think is the worst thing about being a collector of stuff, aside from the obvious two problems of spending too much money and running out of space?

Three things. Burning out. Running out of things to collect. The fact that my collection won’t be appreciated by my kids.

What worries me the most is that one fine day I might wake up and get the feeling that everything I own is worthless and does not deserve a bit of my attention, which for me is equivalent to burning out. Looking around for things to possess, that gives me the enthusiasm to look forward to every new day, and I do not want to lose that. I have begun collecting comics artwork because I had a scary thought last year – at the rate at which I was getting things, by the time I was thirty, I would own and read every comic I ever wanted. Original artwork would make it more challenging – I have a new set of goals in life now.

I constantly fear that my kids (that is, the progeny of me and my future wife) would be these gadget-crazy, coke-snorting, party-going animals who would think me a doddering old fool who has spent money on a bunch of useless artifacts. I have come out of that phase now. I will show those wretched ingrates who’s boss – I shall just gift my comics away to the first comicbook fan I find! (No donating to libraries, libraries in India are full of magpies who would rather lock book collections away than let people at them. Which is not a bad thing, really.)

3. What collectable have you spend the most time trying to acquire, and was it worth it when you finally got it?
This was the easiest to answer.

Before eBay, there was the humble Indian Book Store, where one could pick up scattered issues of comic series and try to make sense out of them. So it was with a miniseries called Batman: Black and White, which came out sometime in the nineties, with quirky stories related to Batman and his mythology, all of which were out-of-continuity, and written and illustrated by the best creators in the industry. You had everyone from Denny O’Neil to Katsuhiro Otomo to Simon Bisley to Brian Bolland to Neil Gaiman writing about Batman, and was it good or what!

I found issue 4 first, in 1997 in a bookstore in Guwahati. Issue 3 in 1998 in a dingy basement shop in Delhi, issue 2 in Hyderabad, in 2002, in a book-sale right next to my office. And I DIED looking for issue 1. It was nowhere to be found! I was tempted quite a few times to buy it on eBay, but refused to do so, out of the stubborn belief that I would find it someday, just like I found the other three issues.

Until I talk to a friend in Guwahati, and he casually mentions that among the comics he bought in a recent Book Fair, issue 1 of Batman:Black and White. It took a lot out of my Amazing Powers of Persuasion(tm) to get him to part with it. That, and a couple of issues of Ronin.

It was worth it, it was completely worth it. The Bruce Timm Two-Face story in the first issue alone made up for all the wait.

4. If you could ask Alan Moore one question, what would it be?

Now this question made me think a lot. Because there are a lot of questions I could ask Mr Moore that would get me a firm “no”. ( Examples that come to mind: “Would you have me for your son-in-law?”, “Can I come visit you sometime?”, “Could I kiss your fingers?”) or monosyllabic answers.

Hmm, sometime in the unforeseeable future, I would like to ask him this question, either in person or through mail. Pardon the long-windedness of the question, or the inherent conceit. Even though this *might* still get me a monosyllabic answer, it would at least make me happy to ask the question.

“Mr Moore, I am from India, and I have been part of this community that encourages comic reading and collecting throughout the country. We are organising the first comic-convention ever in India, and though I know that you do not frequent such events outside the UK, we would be honoured to have you as a guest here, and we promise you a good time and a lack of any autograph hounds during your stay. Would you be interested?”

5. What do you believe is the biggest misconception of you that people have?

That I spend too much money. Not really. I buy loads of stuff, true, but I rarely buy them at full price, or the price they retail for. I do not spend money on (what I inherently think are) stupid things – like full-price branded apparel, or shoes, or over-priced restaurants. $299 for an iPod, which will last only a couple of hundred battery cycles? Uh HUH! I would rather buy a Bill Sienkiewicz original page for the same price, and listen to music on my discman.

The second-biggest misconception people have is that I am obsessed, which is not really a misconception, because yes, I am obsessed. “Focussed” is the word I prefer, but I can live with obsessed, too. :-P

Without much ado, let’s plop ourselves right where we were the last time. Feel free to refresh your memory with this entry. Oh, fine, because I am a generous person ( and also because I know how lazy I can be when reading an LJ entry, I would NOT have clicked, heh heh), here’s the rundown so far: John Constantine, along with his compatriots Frank and Judith, and with Swamp Thing in tow, plan to prevent these harmless cavedwellers called the Brujeria from launching a peaceful, non-violent assault on humanity. On the way, Judith decapitates Frank, Constantine is captured by a guy whose face he cannot see ( heh heh, Pee Jay only) and Swampy is stuck between worlds. Judith vomits out her innards, Constantine near-drowns in a pool of mud, and a single flower changes a lot of well-laid plans. John is saved, and Judith becomes a crow that flies away, and all something bad is about to happen.

What happens next…