OK, so now it’s official.

IIM Indore has its quiz-fest (named ‘Nihilanth’) on 4th and 5th October. I am supposed to conduct the Music, Movies and Entertainment quiz. Well, the press releases and online promos don’t mention my name, and I wasn’t taking things ( like preparing questions, or deciding on the format of the quiz) too seriously. Yesterday, I got the two-way air tickets delivered to my office, so now things are serious.

Frankly speaking, I am scared. I have too few questions, and people like Siddharth Basu (yes, him.) and Arul Mani and Gautam Ghosh are doing the other quizzes. The usual nightmares, of stammering on stage, or somebody pouncing up and saying ( worst-case scenario: some other QM doing this) – “No man, your funda is all wrong.”, or the deadliest of them all, me forgetting the answer to my own question. Yes, that has happened to me once, I was on stage goggling like a water-deficient fish for about 7 seconds, trying to figure out whether the answer given by the team is the correct answer or not. Trust me, when you are onstage, everyone can hear you think. (this one occasion had a happy ending, though. I just pretended, like all “good” quizmasters do, that Team C’s answer was a wrong one, and sauntered over to Team D, my mind working wildly all the time. By then, inspiration struck, I realised that the previous team had answered right, so I whirled around, and said “TEN POINTS for Team C!!!” real loud, and also managed to ask “Was that a guess, or did you know the answer?” Team C was, of course, too relieved to answer. ) This generally happens because the paranoid me does not write down the anwers along with the questions, just to ensure that there isn’t a chance of anyone coming upon the Q&A and…..

Hmm. So couple of things I am really concerned about –

• The anti-plagiarist in me says, no quiznet repeats. The practical guy says, how on earth do I check if my questions have not appeared in quiznet before?
• I don’t have enough visual questions, as in video clips/pictures. Asked for permission to use the CDG scanner, and that’s done. I just have to coordinate my sources, that’s all.
• I think I won’t have to worry about audio questions. One hour with my mp3s should be enough. Memo: get rid of id3 tags. Should I save as mp3s or write the tracks as an audio cd? Or both?
• Got to keep the questions short, so that I don’t ramble onstage. I think this will be tough. Keeping questions short, I mean, not not rambling. Stop rambling, dumkopf.
• And I have to make sure my questions are based on “reliable” sources. *Cookup* is a word that’s very unsparingly used among quizzers.

Hey, I just realised that cartoons by Charles Addams are very hard to come by on the Web. Not only that, his books, or rather, collected editions of his ‘toons for The New Yorker magazine sell for quite high prices on eBay. Which makes me quite happy, because I have five of his books, in the paperback Dell editions of the 50’s and 60’s. The biggest tragedy happens to be the fact that the Charles Addams Estate donated his entire body of work to the New Yorker magazine after the artist’s death. Tchah! That lowers my chances of ever buying Addams original art.

Vice City Update: Tommy Vercetti now owns a large mansion facing the Ocean. The Vercetti estate, formerly the Diaz Estate generates a daily income of five thousand dollars through various (ahem) sources. Rampages passed: 11 out of 35. Hee hee hee ho ho ho ha ha.

anybody… should get a gun and show me Kaizad Gustad’s brains. Yeah, that way. Boom.

Once upon a time, deep in the drudgery of my RECian life, I remember seeing a shocker of a movie called Lal Badhsah. That film made a new man out of me. It gave me an insight into my masochistic capabilities, and since then, Lal Badshah and the song Dhanno Ki Aankh has been a benchmark by which I measure my paisa-vasooli factor – a bad movie I might have seen now and then, but then, i would always remind myself, it wasn’t as bad as Lal Baadshah, was it?

Today that benchmark has been torn apart. I have gone lower. I have seen Boom and lived to tell the tale.

P.S: I know I am being melodramatic. I can’t help it.

The mental block that was removed when I passed Death Row in GTA:Vice City has done a lot of good things. For one, I am concentrating more at work. There was this code review – and it’s official – someone other than myself has acknowledged that my code rocks. Which does wonders for my confidence, thank you.

Then I was coming back from lunch, and in the lift, a senior colleague looks at me and says – “Where do you get your hair-cut?” Expecting the usual barbs, I say – “Ok, some place near my house.” And hastily add – “It’s weird, right, the haircut? Everybody says that, I know.” And he says – “Well, actually, no. It’s quite different. Very chirpy. Very cheerful.”

Oh, great. A new perspective on my hair. After all the years of self-doubt and mental torture and i-know-my-hair-sucks-don’t-stare-kind of looks, that remark mollified me somewhat. In fact it gave me this milk-curdling grin that refused to go away. I think it went away when I fell asleep. Am not too sure. Most likely I had this rictus on my face in the night – good thing I keep my door closed.

And at night, we went to see Boys. As is my underdog-complex, I liked it a lot. I liked the graphics, though they drown out the music of Boom Boom and make it seem like I am watching that annoying Chito-program on MTV. ( Is that programme still on? ), loads of weird squeals and squeaks and what-not. Shankar may be the master of the Deus ex Machinae, but he sure knows how to entertain. And yes, I seem to understand Telugu better than I thought. I wish I understood the language enough to get all the wink-wink stuff. The Boys ( the girl included) have just the right amount of chutzpah to carry off the whole thing, without making it seem a routine Yo-Pepsi-type movie.

But seriously, where exactly is it so vulgar? I didn’t see anything that bad. Or is it because I am less puritan?

One major irritating part: Ok, so you take a song and shoot it in beautiful locales to enhance it. Good. You dress the hero and heroine in matching-matching colours and let them prance around. Not too good, but ok. You see too many reruns of the Matrix and decide to use Freeze-frame to shoot some part of the song and go around town publicising the above fact. Oh good. But why the heck do you have to ring some freakin Windchimes everytime a freeze-sequence comes onscreen, Mr Shankar? We get the point!

I just realised that listening to Boys on headphones, properly, is a completely different experience from listening to it on 5 speakers. (The center one still doesn’t work, ahem ), which in turn is a different experience from listening to it while working. God apparently works in Mysterious Ways. In the middle of the night, of course.

Hee hee hee ho ha ha!

Last night, at precisely 10:20 PM, I completed the Death Row mission in GTA: Vice City. Then, exactly 30 minutes later, I completed the next mission, called All Hands on Deck!. I feel good!

It all started the night before, when, as a result of multiple rampages passed and stores robbed, I gathered enough money to go buy a place called Hyman Condo. And as it so happened, Hyman Condo has this heli-pad on the terrace. And that has a helicopter parked, just in case an occasional homicidal maniac should choose use it to carry out some unspeakable acts.

So, very leisurely, free from the perils of traffic and sudden urges to jump off the bridge between Little Havana and Vice City, I flew to the junkyard, dispatched of those no-good Haitians, freed Lance and escorted him to el ‘ospitale.

And then, with a broad smile on my face ( and peace in my heart), I had my dinner. Read some of From A Buick Eight – the most guilt-free reading session since last week.

Then I proceeded to Cortez’s yacht and carried out another mission. And then indulged in Kill Frenzies and rampages until it was lights-out.

It’s small things like this that elevates my life from the mundane to the sublime.

So, once again –

Hee hee hee ho ho ha ha !

The major part of last week, I played Grand Theft Auto:Vice City.

Correction: The major part of last week, I played the same freakin’ mission in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That is because I could not complete that freakin’ mission, though I must have played it something like seventy-two times.

Did somebody say “lousy gamer”?

I am. I definitely am.

The mission in question in something called Death Row. Tommy Vercetti ( that’s me) goes and meets an obnoxious Brit-clubber named Kent Paul at the Malibu club in Vice City, and learns that his partner Lance is being tortured by the Haitians in Little Havana ( that’s on the other end of a bridge). So what I have to do – go and resuce Lance before he croaks. That means – I need to drive fast, all the way to the Little Havana junkyard. The goons ( and there are lots of them) open fire at my car. I need to ram the car that’s blocking the gate of the junkyard, get out of the car ( which, in all likelihood, will start burning. Being fired at and hitting another car at full speed is not good for it’s constitution) and run like hell. (Time’s ticking away for dear Lance) Millions of other Haitian goons open fire with automatic guns, you know, the kind that go rat-a-tat, and very accurate they are, too.

There have been times when I actually manage to get inside the shed where Lance is kept and free him. Now I have to take him out of the junkyard and into a hospital. But there are still more goons firing at me from outside. And sooner or later, either me or Lance eat too much lead, and well, Hasta la Vista, bay-bee. Reload game.

Stuck!

I think it’s because the game is so insanely addictive that I have carried out the above procedure – load, drive, fire, get fired at, die, reload – so many times. And I refuse to cheat.

Friday evening, I realised that enough was enough. There were just too many things to do than waste my time failing the same mission over and over. ( Well, I been saying this to myself over the week. I would ditch the game for sometime, and try to read some novel, then say “What the heck, i’ll do it this time.” and start playing again. But on Friday it got serious) So I took out the Philip K Dick and finished it. Then I got The Princess Diaries and finished that too. Then I realised I had the second book of the Princess diaries with me, so that, too went the same way. Also squeezed in shows of LOXG and Bad Boys 2 over the weekend.
( Mental note: No, beatzo. Don’t. No movie reviews. Enough. )

Then yesterday, this itch came on again. For a time I kept it in control, by playing Soldier of Fortune 2. It got too much, though, and very soon, I was on through the same pattern – load, drive, kill, yadda yadda yadda…

I suck.