Angst In My Pangst

I had this weird dream sometime this morning, just before I awoke.

OK, I saw that Cash had come back. And we were being very chummy about it, and all of a sudden we are in a class in college. Only, the class happens to be the Nursery hall of my old school. And an old professor comes in with a lot of cronies who set up a microphone ( which looked like a Shure piece, pretty professional and all ), and a speaker which was one of those conical things you see in political speeches.

Then this old chap, who happens to be a professor, comes in and starts lecturing on….believe it or not…Lord of the Rings, in pure Assamese. I can assure you that Assamese is a funny language, it’s pretty sweet to listen to, but it’s funny with words, like – saying Markin Juktorashtra for the United States cracks me up everytime. This old fellow starts teaching the first chapter of LotR, and very drily, at that. And I could vaguely get the feeling that it was the last day of the lecture, and he had been to the class only on the first day, where he had handled the preface, and exams were two days away.

All the while I was thinking, oh my Gosh, I don’t remember how to spell Gandalf in Assamese. And Cash was going crazy trying to write “Gom Pau” on a notebook. And then he got caught while trying to do that. And then I woke up.

I don’t remember eating anything odd last night.

A lot of good things happening.

The mundane ( read “materialistic”) stuff first. A trip to Walden got me this month’s swag of Gotham comics. I never held Sharad Devarajan and his crew in high regard, except for the fact that they were bringing one of the best Marvel titles to India. Ultimate Spiderman happens to be the particular title I am talking about, and really, any reader would find Brian Michael Bendis’s work on the book nothing sort of path-breaking. The best part about the book is that it concentrates so much on Peter Parker, rather than Spiderman. Think young, think a scrawny High School kid who gets these amazing powers. ( No, don’t think Tobey Maguire, he was much too old ) And this kid is trying to find his limits, trying to figure out what he can do with his powers, and most of the time he’s screwing up badly. Granted, this was the premise of the original 1962 Spiderman series, but Bendis carries it a step, no, several steps further, by adding neat twists to the tale as we know it, by making Peter Parker more than a shunned Science geek. He actually has a life here (not to mention a funky haircut ) and he’s not the “Yes, aunt May, I love you, aunt May” guy that used to be around. There’s another Spiderman title published by Gotham comics – called simply Spiderman . It’s by John Byrne, and trust me, after reading Ultimate Spiderman, it’s almost an affront to follow Byrne’s mediocre storyline. Suffice it to say ( and feel free to repeat after me ) – Bendis is God.

OK, I cheated. I went to some review site and actually got the entire storyline upto issue 45, so that there’s no niggling sense of “what happens next?”. But it’s still a treat to watch the story unfolding in the comic book. I still maintain my stand – the comics medium is unparalleled when it comes to storytelling.

And then I got a pleasant surprise. A very pleasant surprise.

Gotham also brings out a couple of Super-Specials every now and then. So far, they had been testing the waters, bringing out the previously released comics in collected format – standard Trade Paperback issue. And two or three Superman and Batman Elseworlds tales. But yesterday, I saw what was coming next.

Wolverine: Origin. Daredevil:Yellow. Batman: Tower of Babel. And believe it or not, they have started to reprint the Hush storyline in Batman – which happens to be an ongoing series right now!!!!

Monsieurs and Mesdames, I think comics are beginning to come of age in India. I particularly like the mini-comic format in which Gotham is bringing these titles out, it’s small, godd enough to fit your pocket, and it’s cheap,so kids can afford it. And kids, I dunno, always seem to have this affinity for things that look small, know what I mean? The fact that I can’t find older issues of Ultimate Spiderman and JLA ( another neat series, written by Grant Morrison ) goes to show that good storylines and writing is appreciated even here. I will forget the collectible aspect of comics for now, but the reading value of comicbooks, I believe, will not do anyone any harm.

(Oh jeez, I sound so holier-than-thou up in this last paragraph. )

This is crazy, but I have this weird idea that by the end of next year, Gotham will be reprinting the Sandman titles in India. Fingers crossed.

I also bought the Batman stash I had seen in Sec’bad. At 35 rupees each. And the guys there say that newer stocks are coming in by next week, with titles at 40 rupees. I told them that I would buy out the lot, if they get Batman. Let’s see.

More good things happening in my life. Of course, it’s nothing to do with my everyday, ho-hum interests. I just don’t know where to start. Maybe I will just frame my thoughts properly and write down something when I get the time.

The Metallica St. Anger cd is now available at Sangeet Saagar, and it comes with a DVD of the entire album live in concert. All for 495 Rupees. Hmmm….

My mom and my bro arrived yesterday. He hasn’t changed a bit, and he corrected me – it has been 12, not 10 years, since we last met. He’s still into comics and movies, yippee! And he got the X-Men prequel comics for me. They were available in Walden, and stored in neatly sealed plastic bags, and I didn’t get around to buying them, because 25 rupees per comic was a bit too much. But the stories are good. If you have seen both X-Men I and X-Men 2, and wondered where the heck Sabretooth was, this book provides the answer. And also a near-sentimental tale of “Vaagner. Kurt Vaagner” (ooh, the accent is so cool! ) before he came to join the team and how Stryker managed to make him go for the Presidential assassination attempt. Of course, I got him goggle-eyed too, with all the comics lying around. ( Well, not lying around, stacked neatly. )

Now he’s sitting down for a cd-writing spree at my place. :-)

Seems James Frazer’s Golden Bough is available here. Pretty indecently, the Bartleby people have chopped the book into neat parts, so I have to click “next” repeatedly and get a half of a chapter at a time. A wget in Linux would do fine, but the main server ( which is a Linux machine ) is being used by the PRC team.

I finally managed to win AOE2. The Way To Win, obviously, is technology. :-P Get to the Imperial Age fast, build a Wonder and defend it, or collect all the relics.

For some weird reason, the Mudhal Kanave song from Majunu has been buzzing in my mind since this morning.

The mail-id I have for my ARR-group mails has a whopping 603 unopened mails. Well, 562 now. The Boys cd has been released, it seems, and as usual, is being trashed by half the group and praised to the skies by the rest. Bah!

A stash of unbought Batman comics at Book World. Or whatever that shop is, near Paradise. Got caught in the rain on Saturday evening, after wandering around in the pleasant weather for almost four hours, savouring my freedom. ( My mom was to come the next day, so what do you expect???? ) I was in the bookshop when the skies opened up, and I didn’t realise it immediately. When I did, the shop was about to close, and there was narry an auto on the road. Decided not to buy the comics then after all….couldn’t risk them getting wet, and left them hidden deep under a pile. I wish I knew how to put hexes, so I could have hexed the pile as well. Given someone nice round warts. Right where it hurts.

Kheer and chocolate cakes for breakfast. Yum Yum!

Random things that happened over the week

The killing…