Did I mention that my discman died two weeks ago? My faithful companion since 2001 ( or possibly 2000, considering that it was originally absolut_69‘s baby that I stole away and paid him six months later), my ecape valve during final year examinations, Sunny Deol-infested bus journeys, my PRECIOUS little precious finally gave up. Was bound to happen, but I am not giving up easily. It’s off for repairs now, and the guy at the service center ( unauthorized, the Philips guys said they don’t repair discmans, especially not the Expanium, and DEFINITELY not this model.), the guy said the lens needs to be changed. I don’t have too much hope of it working for more than a year, new lens or not, and I am pretty sure it won’t be able to read any of my older Frontech mp3 CDs. But no matter. I am not giving up on you easily, precious.

It’s one of those unacknowledged laws that whenever you lack the means to listen to music, your urge to listen to music increases dramatically. I have been spending my free time ( Ha ha ha) revisiting some CDs that I hadn’t heard in quite sometime. Travis, Moby’s Play, Dixie Chicks, Bad Company, Jethro Tull, Van Morrison, Cowboy Junkies. Loads of Suzanne Vega too.

Has it ever happened to you that you hear a song, and then don’t hear it for a long time, and when you hear it again, it sounds completely different from what you had thought it sounded, in terms of the orchestration and the arrangement? That happened to me with Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, a song which I keep remembering because of the opening lyrics, that go – If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream, where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop – Could you find me? Would you kiss my eyes? – the imagery just kills me, man. I heard it after a long time, and was really, really taken aback to find that it was not really as guitar-driven as I remembered it was.

And now for some venom.

I think it was V For Vendetta that did it, finally, but I realised that the ratio of returns to investment has been mindblogglingly low for all the movies I’ve seen in theatres this and the last year. Movies that I’ve loved and enjoyed, like Sin City, Hostel, The Devil’s Rejects, even The Corpse Bride have no chance of attaining theatrical releases in India. What do we get? Pap. Bile-inducing insults to my brain. Pixellated eye-candy with six tracks of digitized nonsense. So I say, enough. No more movies in theatres. No more paying inflated prices to be mentally assaulted for 90 to 180 minutes, and with cellphone ringtone interruptions too, to boot. Especially comicbook movies. I have been completely uninterested in Superman Returns ever since yada yada yada and I am not really interested in talking about it, thank you. If you see it and you like it, well, I am happy for you. Obviously you haven’t been reading Doom Patrol or All Star Superman, so I can’t really say I am too happy for you, but yeah, you should know that I have absolutely no problems with you watching Superman Returns. Nope, none at all. Not a teensy weensy bit. Honest.

The trailer for Spiderman 3? Not interested. Ghost Rider? Pah! 300? Ditto. Nacho Libre? Well, yeah, interested, but I don’t think it’s coming to theaters here, so there!

I was also more than a little pissed off because the last copy of Hanzo The Razor available at secondspin.com got sold off this week, as did the two copies of Varttina’s Miero. GRRRAH! My credit card’s maxed out, so I couldn’t pick it up. CD-WOW still has it, but it’s almost twice the price.

I am a man of taste. I shall now go home and listen to Himesh Reshammiya until I fall asleep. I have a presentation to make tomorrow morning. Er, today morning. I am in such an ebullient mood (Part of the reason: Roger Ebert gave Superman Returns two stars. I don’t really like the guy, but that didn’t stop me from grinning a lot on reading his review) that my technical presentation has taken on shades of a standup comedy routine. Wish me luck.