gravity sucks (i obey inverse square laws)

after trying for about an hour to get a screenshot that

a. didn't reveal completely what i was doing but did enough to pique your interest
b. seemed to somehow show that i was frightened,excited or had an adrenalin rush
c. made me look good

i gave up

c is out of the question..skydiving is not makeup or plastic surgery. b didn't really happen..ok maybe i was excited just before and for a brief 2 seconds after i was pushed out of the plane.a is not possible either - human nature dictates that i brag about this so i don't really care about hiding things and piquing interests.

so you get the pic below..the all revealing, rather frightening image of me falling down with another guy strapped to my back. a minute later he saved me from going splat by opening the chute strapped to his back. the float down was a complete let down after the first couple of seconds of free fall. kind of like the scooter rides from childhood when you were made to stand in front.

so by all means go for a jump. it's kind of expensive. like many other things its hype exceeds reality and for god's sake remember to keep your mouth closed or you'll get an image like this. the video - i plan to sell it to parents as a scare aid to be used instead of the bogeyman or boochandi as the case may be.



p.s you dont know it but you just had a narrow escape.i was going to start this by explaining how i once fell from a mango tree sans parachute.but the screenshot extraction process frustrated the nostalgia out of me.

saroja saamaan nikalo

i run..now and then. a mile or so. my usual schedule is a long run over the weekend followed by 2 or more weeks of intense whining that my ankle / calf muscle / stomach / (insert muscle name here) has been sprained / inflamed / ooh..aah..ouched. but i've come to enjoy it so much that i go out and try it again as soon as i feel better. the person mainly responsible for this is my runner roomie and now he has started blogging on his runs and more here:

http://stridewrite.wordpress.com

written in a conversational style, it is quite informative (unlike this one) and is updated whenever he runs..which is like every day or so. (you can say that about my blog as well. the update frequency that is). so mosey over and give it a shot.

oh and the title - in my opinion, the best running song. it is always the last in my playlist so i gain an additional boost for the last 4 minutes 15 seconds of my 5 minute runs.

the fruits of labor (day)

3 day weekends rock..4 day work weeks are better

naan avan illai , the new version, is a horrible way to waste time. the lead is played by jeeva who is a con artist who tricks women, marries them and escapes with their jewels. my take - his insipid dialog delivery wouldn't have fooled any crow into dropping its vadai, let alone tricking 5 women. the story unravels through court scenes in which, lest you forget, they make him repeat the film's name about 276 times. finally the judge decides to let him go and some random woman kills him. the director tries hard to con everyone into thinking it was a good movie by (literally) filling the screen with distracting visuals of namitha. i heard quite a few fell for it and managed to make this a hit. if you are going to watch it, go directly to the last 3rd of the movie and save yourself some time.

urchagam [raaga.com] sees ranjith barot back after a long time. none of the numbers reach the heights of minnal oru kodi from VIP but they are all pretty good. i liked veyil and naram pookal. the other soundtrack that's been getting some play time is kannamoochi yenada [musicindiaonline.com] by yuvan. typical yuvan sans the rap piece and a complete koothu piece. of 5 songs, sanjaram is a nice number. isnt there something similar to proofreading for lyrics? in sanjaram madhushree makes pani (snow) sound like paani(thats hindi for water in case you scored 68 in your 10th board hindi exam) and thangi(stay) sound like thaangi(support/bear). my guess is that it was caused due to the transliteration into english. does anyone know how that process works - getting north indian singers to sing in tamil that is? do they get the lyrics in english or hindi or do they just make them up as they go?

finally i read next by michael crichton. its rather similar to state of fear. this time he takes up genomics. through a thin storyline, various technical papers and articles he tries to teach us about the science and ethics of genetic science. as a story its not that gripping but he does discuss some rather pertinent points about gene therapy, cloning and the likes. while it reads like one long opinion piece, its still quite absorbing. the fact that it is very relevant at this point in time is obvious. just this morning bbc had this article.

i think i said finally by mistake..there is still ooh la la la that i've started watching thanks to current. if u havent heard of it, it is a pretty decent band search tv program that is being telecast on sun tv. they are streaming it for free and legally at oohlalala.in (click on the Videos section). some of the original compositions were awesome and so were some of the remixes. take a look if you have the time.

that's it..i'm done..u can go back to work or whatever else u were upto. thanks for listening

a word of action

ever noticed how superheroes have adjectives and adverbs built into their names. like the costume they wear, it makes them different from their alter egos. making them appear more powerful while at the same time describing what they can do so there is no way you are caught unawares. when spiderman swings down to rescue you, you can be rest assured the ride is going to be kind of sticky and will involve some swinging.

now swing the cameras southside..i mean south of india side. captain. one word that encompasses all the adjectives,adverbs, nouns, pronouns and prepositions in any language, mainly tamil. its mostly a verb though cause when said aloud each syllable screams action. and no silly costume for captain. the occasional colored contact lenses and a police uniform maybe but he doesn't need a cape. there are no masks or trickery involved either. he is just captain. did you notice there is no indication of what his powers are? that's cause he can do everything. one would need the entire dictionary to describe his special powers.

with so much going for him, there is still no comic book...when amateurs like peter parker naturalize themselves as pavitr prabhakar, why this discrimination? someone start a publishing company and start one for him already.i guarantee it will be a collectible even before the first page is printed.

p.s
for those unfortunate enough to have never known the captain click here [youtube.com]

past posts on this topic: Accentually Speaking

vegetables, water, air, the music of sivi

remember what i said about familiarity and instantly likeable songs a couple of posts ago. forget it. if possible delete that post from your feed. i just changed my mind. fresh music is awesome in a way that that tripe from harris can never hope to beat. listen to sivi. dharan is a relative newcomer who has just one other movie to his credit - the bhagyaraj directed parijatham whose music was apparently a hit though i totally skipped it. so i am going back to take a listen. if you are sort of jobless, click here to listen to the songs from sivi. time well spent.

oh and the two of you who read this through a feed, here is a link you might not've seen:
www.workanhour.com
do your bit and earn free karma points. this offer wont last forever.
(karma points are not redeemable for airline tickets, magazine subscriptions, electronics or cash.)

just another day

waiting here tied down as the sun rises and the activity starts. mostly just chairs being drawn up just in front. the kids all march in, happy that in a short while it'll all be over. their clean pressed shirts wont have to suffer the entire day..just the tiny prick of a pin as paper meets cloth. important folks walk up and take the seats. a few of them stand up and take turns speaking. the kids applaud eagerly as if that will speed things up. the most important of those folks walks over. at first its just a little tug and then the climb begins. almost there. the binds seem to be tightening up. it'll be over soon.higher and higher. suddenly with a jerk the ties are released, flowers fall and the wind blows. freedom.

harris and the templates

do your senses have a tough time acclimatizing to all the new tunes? never fear cos template man is here. bheema represents yet another iteration in the neverending loop that harris jayaraj has been spinning for a while now. the songs being vaguely familiar hook into those parts of your brain that propagate the warm, fuzzy feeling that familiarity breeds and are promptly pushed to the top of your playlist. talk about reusability of code. harris has his algorithm down pat.

two of the songs - mudhal mazhai and siru paarvayalae - feature his signature meaningless lyrics. i wonder if it is to make it tough to render the songs on stage. the singers would feel silly doing that before a live audience. maybe it is to hook the kids in so they have something to repeat endlessly and irritate their parents. ranga rangamma has some drumline beats that get inducted into the library of tamil film music beats. it is somewhat of a koothu song but doesnt come close to his own kalyanamthaan from saamy. the rest of the songs are neat

if you are so inclined sit down, dissect the songs and find out where the individual bits have been inherited from. i tried for a bit and gave up. its easier to just enjoy them for now and hit up itwofs when they finally post the original source of the songs.

Listen to the tunes here

of roaring lions and foxes in the 20th century

three more movies went down this past weekend and it all probably started with a small video shop called 'video age' in the kilpauk neighborhood. my neighbor's father owned it and i remember with some clarity my many visits to the shop, with its cassettes neatly arranged in the wall and my favorites tom & jerry volumes 1 through n among them. i probably cursed my neighbor a lot for being born into a video shop, especially one that had so many tom & jerrys.

we initially had a b&w idiot box that gave way to a color one with 8 fantastic channels. 7 of those received the most beautiful static ever seen(or heard) and 1 broadcast DD and its sonorous yet hypnotic intro scene in all its faded glory when they chose to broadcast something. the sunday evening movie was the highlight of the week (i tried the 1.15 pm regional ones..but couldn't read the subtitles fast enough). there were several times we would be out on sundays and on the way back fervent prayers would be offered to the gods of buses and traffic signals to somehow take us home in time for the movie. then came the video shop and the concept that for some money you could borrow things like a VCR (or a VCP if u like) and some 5 or 6 flicks that could be watched over the weekend. it was like someone giving you all the big fun in the world for the price of 1, that you could chew and then return after the weekend. yeah it was that good a deal.

the vcr and the tv formed a two-part act which happened with great fanfare during a few summer weekends and what a show they would put on. the vcr, the star attraction, would arrive in a mini procession all decked out in its velvet-lined leather costume and windows that revealed nothing of the sights it held within. the flicks were carefully chosen to take into account everyone's tastes - a bond movie for my dad, a cartoon for me and my sis, a tam flick for my mom, a random yet somewhat famous hindi one (taken mainly because we'd seen one song on chitrahaar) and maybe one more cartoon. there would be a marathon session over the weekend as we'd hurry to get through all the rented flicks before the clock struck 12 and the tv turned back into being just a box. until the same cycle was repeated again a few weeks later

now, the library is my new video shop. every visit results in at least 2 or 3 dvds borrowed on my friend's account. if i'm too lazy to go to the hall and watch it on tv, my laptop plays them for me. weekends are still movie weekends and except for the nearly extinct VCRs and VCPs, the video age still marches on and till it does you will have to bear the posts i make about them movies. its a glorious age indeed.

the gentle notes of a shehnai playing the dd theme close out the broadcast for the day

Vertigo

Vertigo is a flick i've wanted to see for a while. there is a definite break in the film after which you can sense the mood changing. as an investigator suffering from vertigo, james stewart gets manipulated in the first part and plays the manipulator in the second. its set in san fran - the sloping streets always adding another dimension to the screen. i missed the hitchcock cameo so i guess i'm going to have to see it again and of course blog about it again.

will be taking a short break..from the short stuff that is. a full length feature which can wrap around the blog world twice when laid out end to end is on its way out..or will it be as long as 1.6 times the distance from my main blog to its one of its satellites...dont hold your breath though

disclaimer: that image..not mine. its from imdb.com. so were the others. so if anyone's copying them, dont complain if the MPAA catches up

Good Bye Lenin!

Ux - danke schoen
Good Bye Lenin! is german for "funny scripts, excellent characters and neat acting equals awesome movies". a son has to prevent his mom from knowing about communist germany's fall as she wakes up from a coma shortly after and should not hear anything exciting. he goes about recreating the east of the past and hilarity ensues. the "making of" special feature on the dvd reveals how the crew had to recreate a 90s germany in 2001 through some amazing conversations with the director and editor.

Live Free or Die Hard

the u.s govt is under siege by a cracker who hacks into their systems and who else do they turn to but john 'profanity bleeped' mcclane. had to wait a bit for the action to start. once it did, it was a gut punching, bullet ridden, mcclane screaming ride all the way. plenty of awesome punch lines and a weak hacker story that has its logic confused balance each other out. mcclane's final act reminds us once more why we enjoy this series so much.

Downsizing

so i watched more than my share of movies last week. no i wont bore you with detailed, opinionated write-ups about each one of them. instead you will get detailed, opinionated snippets that are pocket-sized for your convenience. like snacks before mealtime you wont even realize they are gone till you see that your feed is empty. however unlike those snacks, these are actually good for you in a not-so-verbose kind of way. enough said already..here comes the first of those

Transformers

p.s. spoiler alert...i have no idea if i have revealed important parts of the "story". read at your own risk ..and this post is almost as long as the transformers movie

what if robots could do everything that humans could? think independently, feel emotions, act, ham? yes ham. when bots start hamming you know that you've wasted a hard earned $5.75 on matinee tickets to transformers. my childhood robotic hero was the one and only giant robot. transformers cartoons werent shown on DD and i didnt get caught up in the mecha revolution till i started watching anime. just want to make it clear that i am not a transformers fanboy. go on.

what could one do wrong when you are given robots to play with? what if they were awesome bots that can go from mundane vehicle to mechanized warriors in a blink? well you get involved in them so much that you can forget to build a coherent plot. the first half of michael bay's toy story is a mishmash of scenes that cut from an attacked qatar US army base to the power corridors of DC to teenage suburbia really quickly. each scene barely lasts a few minutes. through these rapid cuts we come to know that
a. your car may be a bot. if its yellow and has racing stripes try talking to it
b. U.S. intelligence uses australian signal processing experts who know the top U.S hackers more than the U.S intelligence and together they all agree that something alien is attacking them
c. the U.S has secret agencies that the secretary of defense does not know about..really? No...are you serious?

the yellow car bot has some other vehicle buddies who all descend to earth in time to explain why a certain cube is so important that it has to be renamed and shrunk to a smaller size. their vehicular foes meanwhile are plotting to awaken their boss, get the cube and use its awesome power to make bots out of your toaster and microwave. Their goal - to conquer the universe. using your oven and fridge. hence proving that artificial intelligence has some ways to go.

despite my general griping, the transformation effects are awesome. i liked the mostly gray, black and silver decepticons (the bad robots) more than the autobots (the good ones) who looked like clowns stepping out of a carnival in their yellows, reds and blues. the action scenes between them are well choreographed. however perspective is something that the cgi people chose to ignore and in an effort to thrust the action on you, show two grappling hunks of machine parts so close up that you dont know whose exhaust pipe is on whose tire.

the finale takes you from hoover dam to the streets of LA where the bots pull out all the stops and transform, protect and destroy in a metal orgy (metallurgy. get it? :) ). shia labeouf runs around with the unwieldy cube which i thought could've been shrunken some more to fit in one of his pockets and megan fox who plays his girlfriend utters stellar lines like "i'll drive, you shoot". however the star of the show is a near-maudlin optimus prime ( one of the autobots) who instead of kicking the decepticons' ass offers to give his life for the human race. give him/her/it a lifetime achievement oscar and retire her/it/him. left to continue its act, its going to star in the sequel and i dont want to spend another $5.75 on a 2 hour commercial for toys and detroit cars.

scan artist

so you are one of those old enough to have started out with an yahoo account. remember your surprise when you found that you could upload photos to your yahoo account and get a snazzy url where you could point your relatives and enemies to suffer roll after roll after roll of vacation snaps. signing up and waiting in line till the sole scanner in the computer lab becomes available was an experience. as was taking up residence in the lab for the rest of the night so you could scan rolls beginning with "My first birthday" to "when vetti boys toured chicago - yesterday". yup those days are gone

yahoo closed its photo shop and invited several folks who still had photos there (me) to migrate to one of many choices (flickr - yahoo's new photoshop in case you just woke up after a decade long sleep, shutterbug etc). i was only happy to oblige. i hadnt visited those in ages and looked quite unrecognizable in some of them (ok that one was the sears tower not me). i proceeded to choose flickr as i already have an account there that i occasionally post somewhat ok looking pics to. the photos got uploaded and what do i see. a tiny little icon that says "pro" in sweet blue. that is apparently yahoo's way of saying "sorry we caused unnecessary nostalgic feelings by making you go through your old photos and then made you move them". this is something that i have been resisting for a while now. i dont take as many photos as this $24.95 yearly investment warrants but if you give it for free i am more than happy to take it. it only lasts 3 months though. so lets see if that ups my photo count. quite sneaky of yahoo though. in all probability i'll end up signing for the yearly account. if u want to test those flickr goodness before you take the plunge, look in your inbox for that mail from yahoo and migrate your scans to flickr. your snaps will be happy. for 3 months.

passive voice

i hate sore throats. suddenly my room-mate and maybe my neighbors too are happy that i am no longer singing (yup no quotes around that - typed or finger) when i cook. several people are delirious with joy that i have not called them in a while and overall the world is feeling perky despite all the other miseries. i had to find some way of ridding myself of this condition and others of their happiness and landed upon a pack of halls. its working..slowly..i'll have a voice soon.

that obviously drove thoughts back to vicks and the sway it held over me when i was young. chocolate was always there and one had a myriad assorted sugar treats that you could invest in and let dentists reap the benefits years later. but i had a thing for the vicks pill. first off it came in a neat till packet unlike the twisty wrapper. it was triangular in shape - far more geometrically attractive than the usual, boring cylinder and it had one awesome ad going for it. i still remember vicks ki goli lo kich kich dhoor karo and the animated kich kich monster that would rotate and shrink to a point as a glossy,brown molasses like vicks screen descended down the magnified throat . everytime that commercial came on i wished that i had kich kich and given a choice would've picked vicks to be distributed in class on my b'day over any of parry's offerings.

now i am troubled by that stupid kich kich monster on a yearly basis. each time that happens i pop in a zillion mentholyptus pills and as one of them slowly dissolves i realize that i may have something to write about in the next summer blockbuster post. coming soon to rss readers near you: prickly heat powders and the image of cacti and thorny bushes on people's backs.

sivaji the boss

so after the long wait outside the theater we were let in but not before several imaginary guards frisked us. they removed things that may hinder us from having fun - logic, reason, the ability to comprehend gravity or any physics for that matter. those things have no place in mythology. you dont question anything when gods reincarnate even if it is only on a theater screen.

every frame is a technicolor fantasy where each pixel has been carefully choreographed to display a precise combination of red, green and yellow. the background music/rap mix adds a dose of adrenalin to some stunning fights. all i'll say about the music is that it has been composed by this guy called a.r.rahman. the camera angles and lighting nearly perfect in every scene, song and fight, causes the already outlandish costumes to shine with a new resplendence. did i mention the colossal sets yet? they were colossal. and while all this brilliance jousts for space on the screen, the style maven, who made millions grow their hair longer just to brush it back like he does, takes center-stage and rules the movie. he dons wigs, imitates other stars, woos his woman and fights with the energy of a sprightly young star in a 3 hour sequence where he is rarely off the screen.

there is a plot somewhere and it is as old as the sherwood forest. it is about one man creating his own government from the black money he reaps in dubious ways. who cares about that when style looking like a million bucks is bouncing chiclets off villain's foreheads and tossing coins laterally. the dialogs witty and clever in the first half are delivered with the timing that only vivek can manage. in the second half they burst out like bullets when the superstar utters them in his inimitable style. the scene i liked the most is the one in the tea stall with thalaivar eating vazhakka bajji with the villain. just awesome. the songs were spectacular though for some reason athiradee reminded me of smooth criminal more than desperado. some scenes could've been removed from the first half if only to shorten the movie but it looks like shankar decided to give the fan his money's worth knowing fully well that the black ticket costs are going to soar during the first few days.

while all the supernova references and "god returns" cliches bounce around the blogs, it may be tempting to leave out Shriya. she didnt have much of a role but boy was she hot. and that girl can certainly act and dance. hopefully we'll see more of her on the screen after this. shankar is the man behind the whole show though. he proves yet again that he is a master showman. if at all any god chooses to reincarnate, i am sure they will choose this man to orchestrate their entrance and manish malhotra to design their costumes.

we finally returned from the land of the dancing maharaja at 1.55 am and regained enough logic and sense of gravity to start our cars and drive back home. the 3 hour experience was quite unlike any movie i've seen in the recent past. and yeah i realize some lines could've been removed from all this if only to shorten this paean of a post but then i wanted to give you your free subscription's worth.

from the newsdesk, wherever that may be

the word 'sivaji' has become the word that was transmitted most via text message in a given period of time. earlier the record had been held by 'happy' followed closely by 'new' and 'year'. several people in chennai reported that they had typed the word so much that their fingers were refusing to type anything else. over across the oceans and mountains, recipients of the text messages interviewed in the U.S liberally cursed the senders (mostly good friends) in their mother tongue(mostly tamil, followed by telugu) for not thinking about the high text message rates.in a cruel twist of fate several recipients were forced to seek employment in theaters showing sivaji in order to pay for those charges. incidentally the second most transmitted word record is now held by 'super'

in other news, the CEOs of Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, even U.S.Cellular submitted a petition to the Super Star asking him to act in at least one movie a month. they also suggested his movie names be longer than the single text message limit.

how loud is too loud

every man has a breaking point..mine came when the electronic sounds that form the start of athiradee started to pour out of the speakers. i stood up to dance and didnt really sit down again.actually i dont remember much of what i was doing after that. the decibel levels rose to near ear-splitting levels and caused droves of demure desi damsels to change into dancing queens. the men werent far behind. many ran up and down the aisles forming trains and others who had been sitting were dancing in place (like i suddenly found myself doing) with arms and legs flailing trying to keep up with the beat. and try doing that while also screaming your lungs out. my voice is gone, my ears are ringing and legs ache. all side effects of experiencing rahman's music live. an awesome experience. now i am properly primed for sivaji next week.

the ipod of t-shirts

damn it damn it damn it..in the recent past at least 2 of my ideas have been lifted from my brain by some clever folk and used in their posts. the best one was to screen print tees with Che-like imprints of thalaivar and it looks like ravages in collaboration with mdeii posted something very similar like 2 months back. how they did the time travel and read my thoughts can only be explained if we assume these two are the time travelling japanese guy and the mind-reading cop from heroes. well serves me right to not write as soon as the idea strikes

i shall go ahead and post this anyway cos i have nothing else to post about. so the idea was to market to rajni's fantastic following. ok so he lacks a name that rings so well with Che as does Cho but you have to accept that his style is pretty revolutionary. commemorative t-shirts would celebrate his hold over the masses. the images would be from his movies - thillu mullu could be represented by the title scene where rajni pokes his head through a 'wall' and the back could say "IAK Chandran" and have a varsity-letter style number like one of those sports jerseys, basha could have any one of his poses and then just "ULLE PO" on the back or any one of the words of wisdom from that flick..and of course one from Sivaji..all to coincide with the movie release. u get the idea.

those tees priced reasonably (ie below the rs.500 range that tantra sells in) will sell like those hot cutlets one gets near adyar signal. we would blitz the market. coupled with a decent non-profit it can actually also do good while making money. (see i am not all that greedy).

p.s i'd like to apologize to any person who in the future will think of such an idea and curse me like i am currently cursing ravages (more than mdeii as I dont know him as well)..

did i miss anything while i was gone?

thats it. after a long, hard struggle i've finally given up trying to become a film snob. my computer was plotting to kill me after i put it through movies like Z, rashomon, to kill a mockingbird, following. i even saw the start of an orson welles movie called the trial. turned out to be the best over the counter soporific you can order for me.in its defense i watched it after a slightly heavy meal. and so it was that i landed upon chennai 600028.

the movie and its characters are out to have some fun and do so without taking themselves too seriously. there is not much of a story. team a loses to team b in the beginning and then wins over them in the end. in between, you meet team a. the screenplay is what makes the difference. nothing path breaking but some regular scenes get treated in a way that made watching them quite enjoyable. there are some that use old music in a different context - in particular a retake of a song from manvasanai. the cricket commentary had me in guffaws.

i'd only recently been tricked into taking up cricket for a day. i thought it was a tennis ball match but was asked to wear the full gear and face the cherry. watching this movie after that match was quite enjoyable. it scored close to 100 considering my recent watch list. me, i scored 3 and came home limping on a really stiff knee. i think i'm also giving up on my dream to make it into the US cricket team.