Quizmasterly Tips
How Not To Be A Jerk When Conducting A Quiz, part 1: When you are doing the prelims on powerpoint, NUMBER the bloomin’ slides. Otherwise, when someone asks you in the middle of the round – “Was that question 19 or 20?” and you find yourself fumbling for an answer, much Egg shall drip from your face. Especially when the marauding masses ask the same thing every two minutes (with varying question-numbers).
How Not To Be a Jerk When Conducting a Quiz, part 2: Have a test slide before the powerpoint show with embedded audio and video clips in it, and play them before the quiz begins. That way, you will know, when you click on a slide and find out that the bloomin’ audio clip does not play, whether the problem lies with the audio cable, or your moronic miscopying of the folders from the CD. And you will have an idea of the volume levels.
How Not To Be a Jerk After the Quiz is Over, part 1: REMEMBER THE QUESTIONS YOU ASKED, DIMWIT!!!!! Not just the answers, THE QUESTIONS. Because there might be a chance that the quizmaster the next day might ask a semi-mutilated version of the SAME QUESTION YOU ASKED yesterday, and you might be the only person in the auditorium not writing down the correct answer. Faugh!
p.s: Remember my experiences about asking a question onstage and then forgetting the answer? At least that didn’t happen this time. Whew.
Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel.
Anil told me about it first, when I was in IIM Calcutta, sitting bleary-eyed in his room and burning truckloads of divX movies. “Very good movie”, he said, “Came out quite sometime back, not really a big hit or anything, but I liked it.” “What’s it about?”, I remember asking, and when he said it’s a romantic movie, I almost did not copy it to disc. But I did. And promptly forgot all about it until last November, when Prashant and I, walking down MG Road to the nearest Citibank ATM. ( Later, we found out that there was one right on Brigade road, and we needn’t have walked all the way, but I guess if we hadn’t, this conversation wouldn’t have occurred, and I wouldn’t have been writing this line.) We were talking movies, and from a long critique of Baise Moi, which appeared as a half-brained copy of Thelma and Louise, to talking about Susan Sarandon films and then to women-oriented ones, Uma Thurman and Kill Bill included, he suddenly asked me whether I had seen this movie. I had not, of course, and so for the next half an hour, I was given a from-the-heart lecture on it. Damn, all of a sudden I wished I had my divX movies here with me.
kvk mentioned it a couple of days later, and also mentioned that the sequel had just come out. What was this – the world seems to have seen this film before me, and everybody loved it! Something had to be done, and the next time I was in National Market, I asked them if this was around. I was shown a trashy Pierce Brosnan flick that had a similar name. Bleh. A couple of days later, Prashant found the sequel while rummaging around for Tarantino movies. “Give it a miss, it’s sure to be a camera-print version”, I suggested. He didn’t listen to me, thank the Lord.
So the other day, I was hanging around all alone in the house, a little too tired to watch a high-octane action movie, and a little too downbeat for a comedy. Let me watch something I generally wouldn’t watch, I thought. The only romantic movie around was the sequel, and ok, I watched it. Finished it. Watched the Making of-documentary ( it wasn’t a camera print, after all) Watched the film again, wishing all the while I was in Hyderabad.
I found the first movie at National Market a couple of days later, but it was part of a combination, and I didn’t really want to buy it that way. So I waited. Yesterday, Sasi went a little berserk at all the Bergman/Truffaut movies he saw there – and he ended up buying the combo-DVD as well. And so, as Mark Knopfler was playing at Palace Grounds, 2 kilometers away from where I live, I watched The Movie. Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel. Oh, did I just repeat myself?
Some of the conversations in the first movie sound contrived, I agree. It appears too easy, too spontaneous. But it’s beautiful. The second film is not perfect, but the way it takes the theme of urgency even further – it’s shot almost in real-time, and yes, the soundtrack *sigh*. The dialogues are a wee bit more realistic, maybe because the two lead stars chipped in with their own lines? Some of the lines make so much sense now after the first movie. The ending? There could have been no other.
Just for the record, I plan to watch both the movies again. Back to back. And with the right person.
Off to Delhi in about two hours.
Yesterday I checked out a post I made last year, a long-winded lj-transcription of my Amazon wish-list, with a lot of pompous commentary that makes me wince when I read it again. Much to my surprise, I seem to have gotten 40 items out of the 72 listed. Not bad, eh? But my list has increased since then, so expect a wishlist for 2005 in the near future.
If anyone in Bangalore is going to Blossom Book House in the near future, keep an eye out for the posters that lead to the entrance ( right when you walk up the stairs) Beautiful theme, and beautiful design. There were three of them – one with the picture of the One Ring, with scratches and wear on the metal. It says “Fantasy books. Slightly used.” Then a photograph of a glass slipper. The caption – “Fairytale classics. Slightly used.” A deerstalker cap with a patch on top. “Detective novels. Slightly used. Asked the guy at the counter if he’s selling/giving away any of them. Refused. Said he would lend me one and I could scan it. No deal, I don’t have a scanner. Mudra Communications designed the poster, or so prashantr said.