One fine day, in Panjagutta, I am walking with Mons and generally cribbing about life. ( OK, themask07, whining, not cribbing.)

me: Cripes, I got to buy so many things. My bank balance is a mess. My Wish List is longer than ever. My waistline is increasing, so I even need to buy new clothes. This sucks. My bank account sucks. I suck. Everything sucks.

(Word to the wise: As you must have figured out already, I am no Quentin Tarantino. So my scriptwriting skills are repetitive, and they suck, too.

Second thought: No, not you. i said “the wise”, not “wiseguys”.

Third thought: I suck some more. )

Me ( continued): Like I was saying, everything sucks. And doubly so.

Mons (in her best Vernita-green impression) : Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck you, bitch.

Later, much later, when the cackles have died down to the extent that people stop staring at us, and the ache in my tummy settles down to a gentle bubbly feeling, I try to come up with a smart-alecky response.

Me: Youuuu say “fuck you bitch”, like weeeeeeee say fuck.you.beetch.

Mons: Splendid!

I cackled all the way home.

Current Kill Bill Count: 17 + 0.5 + 0.4.

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.

When I was young….

Hold on. Wrong start, I am not old enough to be saying that.

When I was a kid, and when Indian TV was a kid ( that kind of puts things into perspective), there used to be a show called Aisa Bhi Ho Sakta Hai on dear ol’ Doordarshan. This aired at 11 AM on Sunday, the Day of Days, just before Bhaskar Bhattacharya’s Alpha Plus, and an hour after Ramayana. To call it something like Guiness Book of Records would be stretching things too far – yes, it was about facts, trivia, “records” of a kind. You got to learn important things like the Howrah Bridge in Calcutta is the busiest bridge in the whole world, and that Cherrapunji in Meghalaya is the place that has the highest rainfall in the world. Good, patriotic stuff.

Sometimes, I remember, they showed people doing weird things – like growing their fingernails long or dancing on broken glass and even someone chomping on tubelights like it was fried chicken. The weirdest, I thought, were the “strong” ones. The people who would sleep on the road, and allow a truck to pass on them. There was a long conversation between me and my father about whether this was all a “camera trick” ( I had heard of vague things called “camera tricks” even then – that kind of explained how Amitabh Bachhan could die in Sholay and then die again in Deewar and then kick ass in Toofan and how Hanuman could expand and deflate at will in front of Arun Govil ) or the real deal. My father would explain, very patiently, that there were people who could do that because they practised a lot.

So I asked my father if I could practise too. I could ask the neighbouring kids to drive a cycle over me, I suggested. Like any self-respecting father would, he promised he would whack me bad if I did something like that. Like any cover-your-ass-and-run son would, I discarded my plans. Life went on.

Of course, the hypothetical question remained. Just how much would you need to practise to get a vehicle to drive over a part of your body without eliciting yelps of pain ( minor threshhold ) or without requiring surgery (major threshhold)?

Well, now I know the answer, or at least part of it.

You can have an autorickshaw drive over your foot, at normal auto-rickshawish speed, without even touching the minor threshhold. Matter of fact, you can have a cyclist ram your butt at top speed while having an autorickshaw indulge in the above activity with no freakin’ practice!!! Amazing.

But of course, this brings another hypothetical scenario into the picture. Suppose I had practised, suppose I had a parent of a more encouraging nature, I might have been the next guy you see on Guiness Book of Records, who lets a Boeing cross over his chest and then leaps up saying things like “Absolutely smashing, old chap!” Shucks. My children aren’t going to be denied when they come to me asking for basic things like having vehicles running over them. Nossir. Matter of fact, I am going to drive the vehicle myself, and teach them to leap up and say “Absolutely smashing, old chap!” in just the correct accent.

I need to get some balm for the butt.

Oh great, there’s no one in the house now except me. Rishi’s gone to Bangalore, Vineet to Bombay. Sasi’s gone home to Eluru, and Vasu’s gone with him. And I am leaving for Bangalore tonight.

Christmas Day passed by like any other holiday, except there was no sunshine, and it was real chilly outside, which gave me quite a shock when I woke up in the morning, expecting the watch to say 7:00 AM. “Congratulations, buddy.” I was telling myself, “You woke up early today.” *Shocked look at watch* “Sputter! Gak! 10:30??!! It can’t be! ”

But it was. The clock said twelve before I finally got into the groove, that is, before I decided what to do with the half-day that was left. Finally made it to MR Book Stall, where I had to repay some money – and as usual, the guy had a couple of new books. I was in control – asked him to keep them until next month, by then I would either change my mind, or get the money to buy them.

The books were –
Stanley Kubrick: Interviews by Stanley Kubrick.

Burton on Burton, by Tim Burton.

And another book on Stanley Kubrick, about which I am not too sure whether it’s the Vincent LaBrutto book or the Paul Duncan one. ( Yes, that’s the way it was, iI didn’t even look at the book, I saw it was about Kubrick, and I looked inside and read the first couple of pages, which were all very good ) He was charging 250 rupees for the first book and 450 for the other two.

I bought a couple of back-issues of Cinefantastique, and two issues of Cinescape, an original game cd of Kingpin for eighty rupees, gulped a couple of panipuris, and that was that.

Forgot to mention this, but I seem to have become a very good DVD ripper. All you need is the programs Smartyrip and FlaskMPEG, a nice big hard disk ( look again, that’s ‘s’ )and oodles of patience, and you’re done.

Kevin Smith’s Mallrats was brilliant!!! The kind of movie that makes me glad I am me. Which is not a very sensible thought, I know. Next stop: The Clerks animated series, and then Chasing Amy, and then Dogma. Cinema Paradiso, I love you!

Dinner at Angeethi’s with Mons, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to buy tickets to Bangalore. God help me, I need to go there and I don’t have tickets yet. It’s the holiday season, so chances are slight. It’s chilly, very chilly, so I am not going by General Class in the train ( besides, I hate going to Kacheguda station ) Let’s see……

Edit: Also bought a Fantasy Masterworks reprint of Lord Dunsany’s Time and The Gods at MR yesterday.

Edit: Got bus tickets to Bangalore. Madhav, Uddu, here I come! Hoo hoo ha.

Amazing what a morning of random surfing can dig up!

Earthworm Jim comics

Hitman comic scans. All the pre-Issue#30s I already have. This has the elusive Lobo/Hitman:That Stupid Bastich. If you can read this without going “Ugh” and “Ha-ha-ha” at the same time, umm, you’re not really my type.

A quick word of thanks to Amit Chako, for sending me a 12.9 MB rar file that contained all the songs from Kangalil Kaidhu Sei, and then following it up with two rar-ed pdfs of Sandman issues 5 and 6. Arigato, pardner.

Sasi and me discovered this awesome new DVD renting parlour at Banjara Hills, called Cinema Paradiso. The collection of titles has to be seen to be believed. Trust me, it has got everything, from George Romero horror flicks to The Collected Simpsons episodes to award-winning Foreign movies. Sasi got an immediate membership, the first movie he picked was Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire ( that was because someone else had rented what he actually wanted, The Colour Trilogy) , and today I downloaded all the tools needed to rip it to my hard disk, heh heh.

Right after that, we popped into Odyssey, and I bought these