Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
– G. K. Chesterton

It’s been raining the past couple of days. A steady drizzle that does not seem to stop. During the daytime, secure in an air-conditioned office, that’s not too much of a bother. By night, though, things are different. I have to take an auto to my place, even though it’s only a ten-minute walk away. I have an umbrella, and it’s pretty much working, but I can’t just stand getting my feet wet. And then when I come home, the house smells of damp clothes. The floor feels cold, when I have taken off my shoes. Mosquitoes seem to follow Agent Smith’s tenets ( go forth and replicate, the punctuation-ignoring Agent’s Bible says ), especially when there’s a powercut. Even my ancient cell-phone seems to be acting up with the weather, it’s visuals go blank if I leave it in the cold for a night. So the past two nights I have been keeping it snug under the blanket. Another bad thing about the rain is that I can’t go out ( as is my usual habit) to the neatest grocery store to buy some popcorn when I feel like seeing a movie.

I read the Spawn comic-book lot in a night. Smiling all the while. God! I had longed for lusted after Spawn comics so much once upon a time…cursing Guwahati and its bookshop owners who would bring all the second-rate Image titles like Brigade and Cyberforce and New Men, but not Spawn. Every comic-book catalogue was raving about how good Spawn was, the cool characters, the cool artwork, Todd McFarlane’s marketing skills – he was even coming up with his own action figure line called Todd Toys, and the upcoming movie.

So I saw a pirated print of the movie when it came out, didn’t figure out half of it, it was all blue and brown. And surprise! Spawn was a black guy. I didn’t know that!!! Later, I saw the movie properly on Star Movies, figured it out better, and thought it was an ok movie.

Well, now that I have finally read the comics, it’s nice to look back and give my first impressions.( First impressions, haha! )

The comics, all the stories, are really slow. It’s all supposed to be part of an ongoing “epic” tale, but the solo story does not stand up on its own. You would have to read 4 issues or so together to feel like things are going at a steady pace. Much ado is made about Spawn’s introspective moments ( like most other deformed heroes, like Shrek and his elder brother, The Hulk, Spawn just wants to be left alone. ) He’s back from the Dead, bartering his soul to the demon Malebolgia – for a specific purpose – to reunite with his wife, Wanda. Malebolgia tricked him, though – he comes back from the dead five years in the future, disoriented, his memories nearly gone. The worst of all, his wife has remarried, and her new husband is his best friend.

Spawn is unsure about what he has to do, and he does not know what he is supposed to do, so the only thing he ends up doing is getting trapped in a number of situations.

The stories are pretty insipid, as far as comic stories go. The artwork is gorgeous! McFarlane was one of the first artists ( and Image the first company) to use digital colouring for his art, and the brilliance shows. (The letter columns are an equal balance of people who think his art is mediocre, lacking depth and perspective – and people who think he’s God. ) Gory, sinful images – Todd’s portrayal of the “everyday American Joe” turns out to be pretty quirky at time, every character is a delight to watch.

I had a major grouse against the movie – that of the ‘narrator’s voice’, a baritone that tries to give a commentary of whatever’s happening onscreen. What rot! Can’t you let the viewer figure out things by himself? But ok, the movie was only being true to the comics – there is this irritating commentary even here – with stuff like “What will happen in our hero’s life? Only time will tell.” and other 101 cliches.

Part of me felt that McFarlane was running out of ideas, so he took to hiring different writers to take on the writing responsibilities. Neil Gaiman was one of them, Grant Morrisson another, and even Alan Moore writing the Violator miniseries. The Comics I have include Morrison’s work, and it’s bloody good. Some of Gaiman’s characters, like Angela ( an emissary of Heaven, and hence opposed to Spawn) and Angels Gabrielle and Michelle keep popping up. Heh. Female versions of angels. Nice. :-)

I am happy.

Filched from andsoitgoeson.

100 books. Bold the Ones That You’ve Read

1) Philip Jose Farmer – A Feast Unknown. One heck of a novel that ‘s half Pulp, a quarter Porno, and the rest Satire. The story of Lord Glandrith – who begins the ninth volume of his memoirs saying “Jack The Ripper was my father.” Heh. He’s an Immortal. He was raised by apes. His “fictional” exploits were romanticised by his biographer. Funny, weird, and extremely disturbing at times ( chewing off and eating human testicles raw only because they grow back fast, orgasming everytime he kills someone – you bet it’s yucky! ) Things begin to heat up when an Unknown Adversary made of bronze start stalking our Lord from his jungle kingdom. White-heat read.

2) Patricia Highsmith – Strangers on a Train Hmm, this was good in the buildup and the premise, I can understand why Hitchcock chose to make a movie out of it. Two strangers meet on a train, trade life stories. Both have people they don’t like messing up their lives. One of them casually suggests that each murder the other’s problem. On with the show.

I especially liked the way Highsmith got me into both the characters’ minds, alternating between guilt-ridden, troubled Guy Haines and the enigmatic Charles Bruno. I didn’t sympathize with either, and I didn’t hate either of them. And yet, I couldn’t put the book down. The problem with the book, of course, is the way it ends. You think it’s all building up to a climactic showdown, and you keep wondering where it will lead, and suddenly, the book ends. Weird. Red-heat read, definitely. Except for the last few chapters when it gets to be a Black-read.

3) John W Alderman – Sonic Boom This was about how P2P and the rise of the Internet changed the music industry. A very good account of the early days of the ‘Net, right from the time mp3 raised the barrier for downloaders and pirates everywhere. Leads you through both the legitimate companies that cropped up (like Liquid Audio, mp3.com, garagetunes.com, IUMA, even OLGA) and then through the growth of P2P via Napster. Of course, the book is a bit dated, it focusses a lot on Napster and how the court case took it’s toll on the company. Throughout the book, the skullduggery of the RIAA is brought to the fore ( I can hate those guys in peace now, bloody leeches, all of them)

Some interesting facts:

• Justin Frankel, who created Winamp, was the same guy who developed Gnutella, the enhanced P2P service after Napster. At that time AOL owned Nullsoft, and they sought to cover-up the developement procedure of Gnutella nad forbade Frankel from doing anything more with it.
• Hilary Rosen is a lesbian. Not that it matters, but still.

4) Wolverine: Origin Technically this is not a book. The story and artwork is great, though. Wolverine, the “hottest” of the Marvel characters, never had a past. The only thing known about him was that he was from Canada, and was a test subject for the Weapon X project, and his memories were obliterated. This book tells us “The greatest story never told”. How James Hewlett, a scared runt of a boy, allergic to dust, ( funny! there is this artist who created Tank Girl called Jamie Hewlett) became Logan. As was expected, this was more of a teaser….we learn small things like – how Logan picked up the word “bub” in his vocabulary, why he likes cigars, his amazing rapport with animals. The highpoint is the artwork, splendid digital colouring by Richard Isanove over Andy Kubert’s pencils. The lowpoint is the scarcity of facts, almost as if things are being set-up for a sequel.

And currently reading…

Michael Stackpole – Star Wars: The New Jedi Order – Dark Tide II : Ruin More fun! The New Republic is in trouble. The Jedi are in Deep Shit. Most of the Jedi warriors are over-confident about the Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen Solo is confused about the difference between a Jedi’s duty and the way of a warrior. On a Vong-conquered planet, it is discovered that the aliens are allergic to a particular pollen from a tree. Cliched, in The War of the Worlds kind of way, but I have no doubt the Vong are going to wangle out of this – it’s an 18-series epic, after all.

I was just thinking of a Moody Blues song called Your Wildest Dreams, and I found, to my surprise, that it reminded me quite strongly of last year.

It reminded me of a lonely autorickshaw journey to IIIT Hyderabad. Very evocative memory it was, too, I got the exact degree of how bright the sunlight was, on that particular day ( it was a Saturday, I don’t remember which Saturday, though), I can almost remember what I did the entire morning and what I had for lunch that day.

Funny. I do associate some songs with certain memories but this is the first time just thinking about a song has made a particular day so vivid in my mind. The song is not even one of my favourites. I just happened to be listening to it on that particular day.

I will just try thinking of other songs and see if they bring back any memories. Let’s see…..

Well, Anil is in studying in IIM-Kolkata now, and he messaged me last week saying that there is a pile of DivX movies on his network, and would I like some of them written on cds, so that he could pass them on during the Landmark quiz. Thus it came – a pile of movies with titles like Fellowship of the RIng, The Two Towers, What Dreams May Come, The Animatrix, Fight Club and Citizen Kane. And the LotR movies were 2-cd rips ,so the quality was awesome.

Slight Hitch: Animatrix and The Two Towers didn’t play. Windows Media Player, helpful as usual, said “Unable to download appropriate decomressor”. This, inspite of having the latest DivX Pro bundle (version 5.0.5). The Playa just hung. No message, nothing. And I lay frustrated, because Anil had not gone back to IIM yet, and so I could not find out which codec he had used to see it. I desperately wanted to see the Animatrix, not just hear it….

So last night, after a lot of soul-searching, I decided to be done with it. All or nothing. Installed VirtualDub, in order to re-encode the movie if needed. Tchah! Even VirtualDub failed to open the movie, but it gave one helpful message. This is what it said –

Hmm.
It was 10 in the night when I discovered this. Got dressed, took up Mons’ bunch of floppies, and went over to the office. Discovered that XVID was a different codec altogether, and you indeed need new codecs to run XVid movies. Made backup copies in 3 different floppies. (Grrr! Floppies are a menace to free society ) and headed home.

11 when I got back. Suddenly remembered that my computer does not have a floppy drive. ( see above “Grr” statement for reasons), and also remembered that I had the drive from my old system lying around somewhere. Provided it worked. Half an hour of hasty cable-work ( where do all the screws go when you need them? why is it so hot when you are trying to fix something? Why do I always forget to wear chappals before touching the CPU? ) and two botched reboots later, it was done. I lay back in my comfortable armchair, Maggi bowl in hand ( no dinner until then) and …..er….watched the screen with jaws open as the opening action sequence of The Final Flight of The Osiris played.

Whooof. Me and my “urges”.