apples and oranges

the last movie review post (black on feb 20)from me was also the last movie i saw. i broke the fast with a rather unsavory hindi flick that almost forced me to decide to go movieless for another month before shrek 2 with its tantalising graphics and pun-a-minute style saved me.

'fun' starts off with a song , one with lyrics firmly set in the badhan-ic pentameter,which dictates at least 2 pairs of rhyming lines ending in 'badhan'. the daring baring female dancer/heroine(?) in the song pretty much sets the tone for the movie. shrek 2 starts with a retelling of the fairy tale story where prince charming goes to rescue his princess from the dragon .instead he finds a wolf in women's clothing something the makers call a 'wolf with gender issues'. while the first continues in the same tone trying not to waste the ample hired skin, the second takes rhetoric and pun and makes them funnier. 'fun' deals with 3 women who decide to swap hubbies during a new year holiday in order to have some...er..how do u say it....fun. while shrek 2, which also deals with unstable marriage, is the normal, regular story of an ogre going to visit his human in-laws where the kind father-in-law hires a spanish speaking cat assassin to kill him.

the comparison sadly has to stop here, i can no longer shame shrek by doing this. shrek 2 is a pop-culture trivialist's dream come true. the detail in each scene is so intricate that if u paused to study it you'll rack up quite a fortune in late fees and thats only the visual component. someone has to invent a kind of slow motion for voice, using which you'll be given some time to repeat in your mind, understand the whole line and laugh out loud before the next joke hits you. i had to keep my loud guffaws in check lest i miss the next joke.it was like fast and furious except that vin diesel is a donkey and he rides a joke machine. that was a bad joke, i can assure u shrek doesnt have any.

shrek 2 rocks, fun sucks...if someone tries to lend you 'fun' , sever all ties, remove them from your messengers and block their mails. if a stranger offers you shrek 2, take them home, introduce them to your parents and place them in your pooja room or if u dont have one, for whatever politically correct reason,send them to the video shop for more such flicks.

a question of answers

i recently hit upon my topic of choice if i ever went on Mastermind. You surely remember the quiz show hosted by the man with the most questions in India, Siddarth Basu, on BBC. the show always ended with a series of questions on one topic chosen by the contestant. mine will definitely be Tom & Jerry . well to be more specific it would be on the storylines of the cartoons rather than silly details abt Fred Quimby's life. i discovered i could remember in amazing technicolor detail small things such as how jerry checks his reflection in a lady's nail in Mouse in Manhattan or how a bowling ball knocks his cousin out.. ok ok i'll spare u the details..suffice to say i can knock the socks off basu's feet when it comes to this topic. i only need someone to cover the rest of the questions for me...any takers??

one thousand vetti people

numbers don't lie.well this one does. the one on the right panel,below the blogger icon. it says 1001 but it doesnt know that i secretly visit my blog from different machines in my computer lab.but here's how the acceptance speech went :
the announcer goes "And the award for 'the most recent blog to cross 1000 page hits while simultaneously illustrating a blog's boring power' goes to Textosterone"

((a small group of friends who went to undergrad with me start clapping and whistling, ride of the valkyries starts playing in the background))

dressed in a orange tuxedo a la jim from dumb & stupider , ME , climbing up the steps to the stage to accept what looks like a keyboard covered in old m&m shards and crumbs of potato chips. a gooey mass of what was once "the worlds finest tasting coffee" adorns one corner and a few roaches tumble out as it is passed from hand to hand.

((the clapping and whistling continue unabated, and subside as i yell out "Dei adangunga da"))

"I would like to thank a few people today - my mom and dad who listened patiently to my absurd arguments about how a computer could help me in studies more, more than any gold that could be bought for the Rs.50,000 I wanted them to shell out. my sister for actually using the computer for what i said it would be used for. manisha koirala and then sonali bendre, for gracing my desktop and in the process inspiring me to urge my parents to get a 14.4kbps US Robotics modem. It was sooper fun trying to connect to a dotty VSNL connection through hyperterminal and viewing "pictures" on a site through Lynx that only showed them as a [Link] hence causing me to download the "buy" and "home" icon pictures. To bill and microsoft, who taught me that practice makes perfect after i tried installing windows 95 from 31 floppy disks, failed miserably, tried again,failed again and ended up increasing my parent's investment in technology. to apple, my first laptop that is also the first person to incur my fury when i get out of a blogger's block. and of course to all you readers, I couldnt have done it without you. as an appreciation for your persistence in reading what my twisted head puts out every week or so, I will give each one of you..."
((ride of the valkyries starts up...slowly building up))
"..the most amazing.."
((ride of the valkyries increases in volume, the microphone is cut off and you all see me gesticulating wildly and flipping the bird at the orchestra, as 2 security people escort me off the stage))

and the announcer with a sheepish grin "children: i hope you didnt see the last bit, google : the next time u give someone a blogger account please check their background, and now on to the award for the "blogs of people who forward spam and are characteristically marked by the abundance of outgoing links and a lack of written words" , we have quite a few nominees people, i hope you've packed food for the next few days."

cheap blogger trick

u know what the subject means...it means i am completely empty and dry neck-up.
so here is another experiment. following this post i am going to let some of my friends post on textosterone.
a blogjacking if you will

this is a small effort to get those who are less enthused about setting up and maintaining a blog to put some of their thoughts in the open

so go forth fellas...paint the blog in whatever shade u want to. there shall be no censorship whatsoever.

many thoughts, little logic

Anyone who has known me for more than 6 months knows how crazy my imagination can be at times. Combined with a habit of thinking out aloud this has often caused people to throw brickbats and the occasional sofa in my general direction hoping to score a hit and silence me. No use. I've just evolved into a machine capable of dodging such attacks and maintaining my train of thought ( a really long train btw) at the same time.

On a recent visit to my roommate's lab I happened to see a machine that can create printed circuit boards(PCBs) - you know those square pieces of green cardboard-like stuff with a million resistors and capacitors that you can see if you open your vcr/comp just cause you are curious (non-geeks , never fear - click here) .instantly a train departed from my demented brain station. what if , i started telling him, we have a wall full of such panels or better yet one huge PCB wall and it would have a huge button with the ON symbol located comfortably at eye level. Functional design, my friend , i explained to him,knowing only that it was a term designed specifically to function as an impressive phrase. It would be art and (computer) architecture at the same time. As the train merrily chugged along I continued voicing the thoughts it was pulling to my roomie. All the geeks would die to have such a wall. We can add fiber optics to the paths which will actually illustrate how the power goes from the button to the different appliances it would turn on, including, of course, the geek. A smaller train running alongside was now ruminating if shirts could be made from the same stuff and immediately stopped in its tracks as it collided head along with a more sensible train carrying the concept of a short circuited shirt (giving birth to the neologism 'shirt circuit'). Anyway, my roomie, after a futile attempt to work on the PCB amidst my non-stop chatter, got up to leave the room and stopping by the doorway called out to me
"Abbey Arun" he said.
I woke up from my fantasy world and saw him give me a wry smile with his hand on the light switch.

yeah ok..my bubble has a small hole.so what? the concept of having a lighted wall still has to be new, right ??
whatever.i have a million other ideas that are equally unique or already have a simpler solution. just you wait.

neoblogism of the day - 2

i did not lose my keyboard. the lack of posts is due to an untreated case of blogger's block. a shot of thought and a couple of ideas should have me back on my feet..er..wrists.. soon

madwas n. what chennai used to be

usage : i once used to live in madwas

Bilinguists are smart

an old post for all those wondering why the link from my profile doesn't work

i can speak 3 languages.damn i shud've stopped at 2.but being fluent in many languages has more advantages than the fluidity with which i can spit curses (why does one learn the curse words in a new language first - cud to chew in another blog).anyway this 'talent' of mine was piqued when in successive days i saw 2 movies twice,once each in hindi and tamil.the first was yuva/ayutha ezhuthu and the other was an oldy - gol maal/thillu mullu.
while the first was made in both tongues by the same guy (hence making a comparison moot), the second had a different treatment in each language. without an indepth comparison , i can safely say that the tamil version rocked. every joke in the hindi version was amplified to a higher comical level in the tamil one. i have watched the tamil version several times and the quirks and sounds that are unique to this language heighten the laughter quotient to such a level that i feel sorry for my room mates neither of whom knows tamil.

what happened to the twins?

i love the twins. these and the ones that used to be a bankable formula in many a indian film maker's lab. name one twin movie that has failed to succeed.. i can't. well there might've been flops but in my eyes any twin movie is worth the watch just for the scene where the two, lacking sufficient exposure to genomics, try to fathom why their mirror image is wearing different clothes than they are. yet they have been shamelessly ignored and ditched in favor of sensible storylines and realistic cinema. here then is a post aimed at making them the comeback genre of this year.

ancient scriptures and screenplay manuals governing the twin movie scripts, decreed among other things that the separation event must take place on a rainy night , it was upto the director if there needed to be a car breakdown or a corrupt nurse to actually catalyse the event.the two twins must have contrasting personalities - if one was afraid of mice, the other would eat them for breakfast. if one was a 'peter' , the other one would be a 'paruppu'. this was a pre-requisite for the mandatory switch that occured down the line. further , the twins had to have at least a dozen 'meetings' where they miss each other by a few centimeters causing everyone, except the clever viewers (us), to conclude that this guy/girl was a mutant of the Chamaeleonidae family. even a really talented director could , when asked to by the script, do variations of the same scene without compunction and once the twins switched places it was total mayhem till the movie ended with the customary scene of the twins fooling their love-interests into thinking they were the other.

there are also slightly different story lines belonging to the same genre in which the look-alikes are not twins and this is scientifically explained by the well known movie fact that for every person there are six identical 'clones' in the world. after ensuring that i was not one of a twin or a triplet ( how do i know this? i googled for it , silly) i was convinced that this had to be true. so far i've found 2 of them.one, i met while waiting for a flight. i promptly got a zippo lighter at the airport and stuffed it into his hand luggage. so he is languishing in a INS jail somewhere in the labyrinthine JFK. the other i found is a grad student doing his phD and going by his blog isnt going to finish anytime soon. as such he does not have a life, so i let him be. to the other 4 - dont ever underestimate me and go through your luggage before going through the security check. to all the directors of hindi/tamil/telugu movies - stop making 'different' movies and just give us a modern spin on the twin genre.

a jinx of remote proportions

two people saying the same thing at the same time is a common enough occurence for someone to have given it a name. its called a jinx. a jinx has to go beyond what relationship experts deem as wavelength matching. compared to the abominable snowman or bigfoot, the jinx may not be as huge a mystery but its a slightly scary occurence nevertheless.

what happened this morning was exactly what the title says. the jinx transcended physical bodies and perfectly synchronised neurons in 2 separate brains and jumped straight into cyberspace. hyper ( the same one who has quipped in a comment or two) and i were trying to figure out a way to beat the system on a website that enforced a minimum purchase amount of $20 , while the product we wanted was $19.99. like true netizens going for the cheapest deal, we proceeded to look for the least expensive item that would just tip our shopping cart over the requisite $20. after a few minutes i found one for $0.59 , mailed hyper about , only to find another mail in which he was telling me about the exact same item out of hundreds on the website. if it had been THE cheapest item or one that was readily visible on a main page, i wouldn't have bothered to blog about it. the thing was that it was several links deep into the website and both of us had picked the same thing sitting several miles apart.

after several years of struggle with high school physics, it had became obvious that my only knowledge of force of any kind would come from a certain jedi knight called obi-wan kenobi. despite that, i dont believe in coincidence or its equally mysterious second cousin luck and tend to lean more towards a scientific explanation for all phenomena. . but this time i had to accept it - there's something spooky going on in the world alright.

what do u call a jinx that happens remotely anyway?

neoblogism of the day

in yet another under-the-shower-bulb-glowing moment i realised none of you have any idea how much pun i have.
here you go:

neoblogism - A new word or new meaning for an old word that is defined for the first time in a blog.
usage: neoblogism is the neoblogism of the day today
source : from neologism

more to come..just watch this space or make one up yourself and let me know. i'm always eager to increase my vocabulary- whether its real or made-up

a short at fame

STOP bugging me with all those emails asking me when my next post is..god my gmail inbox is about to explode.

i can dream, can't i?

thanks to a friend i managed to catch all of the short films nominated for the oscar including Little Terrorist, the film touted to take the oscar making india proud. since its a short fim, so is my review.
here's my 4 word review :

Little Terrorist : ball, boy cross boundary

its a film that is as amazing as it is simple but i liked the spanish 7.35 in the morning more.

the other 3 are all animations :
'gopher broke' by blur studio has some fantastic animation but a rather disney-like gopher story .

'guard dog' in creator plympton's own words "answers the eternal question- why dogs bark at pigeons and squirrels" - while not embellished with as much eye candy as the first one it surprises instead with some real dark humor . see a short clip HERE

'ryan' is about a animator who has fallen on hard times. the gestures and movements of the characters are so realistic that i was quite surprised to read that it was done without using motion capture. take a look and decide for yourself --> Ryan

my award goes to 7.35. click the links and take ur pick.

Hurt me plenty

as his eyes blinked open, he realised he was standing. he quickly looked around trying to recollect what he was doing there. he seemed to be at the entrance to a huge hall and all around him bodies were strewn. most of them looked like soldiers, some looked like mutated humans but they were all armed. he quickly gathered a couple of guns and a few grenades. seemed like he might have to use them soon to avoid ending up like one of those bodies around. he walked into the hall and suddenly out of corner of his eye spotted some movement to his right. he quickly turned, and not waiting to see if it was friend or foe, he shot to find another mutant twitching post mortem on the ground. suddenly all hell broke loose. a horde of mutants descended on him from all corners, their guns blazing.he responded with lead but try as he might he could get only a few of them. going by the number of holes being put in him , a piece of swiss cheese might've felt sorry. as he retreated towards the door, a glance to the left revealed a window through which he could see a couple of boys of about 10 or 11 looking at him intensely. he tried warning the kids but found he had no voice. maybe it was because of the gunfire. he continued retreating and strangely the window kept pace with him floating along the wall magically.the kids kept watching as he slipped into unconsciousness. the last thing he heard was one kid telling the other "This level is the toughest. Want to try your hand at it ? "
as his eyes blinked open again, he realised he was standing.

Black

..and then there was light. its as if sanjay leela bhansali decided to wake up one day and change the perception of a bollywood film. gone are the garishly colorful songs, replaced instead with tones of grey - not the gloomy, depressing grey instead it makes us focus more on some unlikely heros. one who, while physically incapable of beating up villains , wages a battle with her disabilities and comes out triumphant. another is her mentor, who never tires of teaching her. the biggest one is the story and the way its told.

the story just sucks you in and pretty soon you dont notice that michelle(rani) is not speaking at all but you can still understand what she is saying. debraj(amitabh) is gesticulating like a madman but it seems as natural as blinking. debraj leads the blind and deaf michelle to the light by teaching her alternate ways to communicate and understand and then himself disappears into the darkness that mental disease inflicts on one's mind. michelle returns the favor by bringing him back from the black. a great background soundtrack, excellent camera work and fantastic color settings complete the picture.

i almost didnt go because it was showing at a suburb quite far away and it was a rather cold day. but thanks to some persistent friends and the lure of 'authentic' indian food at a restaurant there, i was able to see india's oscar nominee for 2006.

the oldest blogger trick

a dearth of topics to blog on + inability to think with a sore throat has forced me to reveal a much better blogger/writer.
read his take on Thirupachi

also read the comments for some interesting explanations (which means i commented there. *wonders if comments on other blogs can be considered as blogs*)

collateral

movies are most often a short segment of a life. sometimes they happen over some days, sometimes over a lifetime. look at it from this point of view : when a story takes place over a few days, there is a obvious need to skip over the redundant details. conversations are no longer continuous. rather the characters have a transient memory remembering only the intent of a conversation than the actual words spoken. we fill in the remaining details ourselves with our imagination. collateral lasts over one night in LA. this reduces our background thought process allowing us instead to concentrate on some interesting details.

first the characters . the movie starts with a cab driver. the way he cleans his cab reveals he is a neat freak. then there is this woman he picks up and through his penchant for detail figures out is a lawyer a la sherlock holmes. they have a conversation where everything clicks between him and her to the point where she leaves her card with him.then there is the assassin who spouts philosophy and demographics like captain without the trench coat or the excess flab. "no one cares if someone unknown dies" he says.

he gets the cab driver to drive him first to one kill ,then another and one more, while at the same time he reveals a strange character who kills without remorse but cares enough about the cab driver to stop him from getting harrassed by his dispatcher and also buys flowers for the cabbie's mom when he takes him to visit her in the hospital. a stockholm syndrome like bond develops between the cabbie and the assassin and some more philosophical talk happens. too much of anything is bad and this time all the extra wisdom from the assassin ticks the cabbie off into taking some proactive steps about his situation leading to a cab crash. he finds out the next victim is the lawyer woman and being the good man that he is he rescues her and kills the assassin, with a little remorse.

tom cruise comes off being a little pedantic instead of the uber-cool assassin he is supposed to be. but jamie foxx is superb as the cab driver. coming back to the advantages of reducing a smaller interval of time into a movie - the cabbie repeats some of his lines, at one point even a joke. thats a ploy i've used several times when i find a certain line or phrase works in eliciting a laugh. the conversations though longer are continuous and more like a real life conversation. all of this has helped jamie foxx earn an oscar nomination for a supporting role in this . if you were looking for a reason to see the movie, you have one right there.

its a rap

despite the misleading title, this post still dwells on tamil film music. the hip-hop movement apparently started in africa, migrated to the New World and claimed New York to be its capital. setting base there the hip-hop nation started broadcasting its agenda and the whole world tuned in and now thumps and shakes its booty to the heavy beats and the rhythmic repeptive rap.

it was only a question of time before the ingenious men (mostly) of indian film music ,who liberally borrow and sometimes steal from the world over, saw this humongous potential for something that rhymes as well as gaal and chaal or kuruvi and aruvi . initially it found few takers in the formula-bound film world which still insisted on one fast song for the hero with his friends, one for the heroine alone on misty mountains, a couple of duets-one in a foreign locale with or without caucasian dancers and the other (u guessed it ) dancing around trees and one sad song that had the hero and heroine singing separately + give or take an item number here or there(remember i am talking of a while back before the formula was modified to permanently include this spicy hot ingredient). where is the melody in someone talking rhyme they wondered.

around the same time ini kamoze was hotstepping on indian MTV , there was a guy named Suresh Peters in tamildom who was trying to kickstart the concept of a music video. his was a new voice on the block and predictably it got picked up by A.R.Rahman .together they produced what was possibly the first tamil rap song. appropriately titled pettai rap, this new art form married the folk art of gana (a regular form of entertainment in colleges) with the international phenomenon of rap. it was a rage. i still remember that "emjaaru sivaji rajini kamalu , bagulu bigulu sevulu avulu all shows house fullu" was one of the few lines i was able to "sing". sadly that was the first and last of the true tamil raps. since then there have been some other english interludes which have been added more to give a western feel than some serious lyrical support.

the most notable occurences almost all happened on Rahman's albums. samba samba from Lovebirds and kalluri salai from Kadhal Dhesam both had some lines by this dude ,aslam mustafa (same chap who sung ho gayi hai a indipop song with shibani) who i have a faint suspicion also penned them. but my favorite lines are in Enrendrum - Alai Payuthey...possibly the best rap bit in a tam film song ever. vairamuthu could not penned those lyrics even if he were seriously stoned and the cassette i have does not credit anyone. the high energy / attitude in this song is reflected well in the lyrics.here's how it goes (am not so sure abt the part in italics..anyone who clarifies it will get a mention in a wall of fame page that may come up if my readership ever exceeds 5) :

Hey here we go
I'm lipped up on the mark
Just swinging with the hip, the hop
Once again in effect
Feel the constant
Slamming of the bassline
Never mess around with the funk
B'cos I'm sticking
peeking always finger lickin
I dont need halloween
Just to be trick-or-treatin
Cos I am always on the top
yo wiguda wagudu jiguda jagudu
WASSUP

outstanding rap in my opinion and the first time i heard it, i didnt know what halloween, trick-or-treating or wassup was. a clear demo of how much one (pop)culture rubs off on another in such an exchange.

In more recent times Yuvan Shankar Raja seems to have taken over the mantle of the rebellious youth, including rap and western rhythm in many of his songs. but Rahman for his part hasnt stopped experimenting. his recent offerings E20U18 and Boys were liberally sprinkled with the spoken word by some guy named Blaaze. while the competition between the 2 isn't exactly the same as a freestyle rap battle , it is throwing up some exciting sounds for the fans of tamil film music. being one i'll blindly follow them into any genre they choose to explore.

so what up y'all ? any other genres i shud know abt. do u know of a hindi song that has celtic flutes or a tamil one that fuses hamsadhwani with heavy metal ? whatcha waiting for..get the word out

afternote : what they giveth , they taketh away. i'm sure everyone also knows abt the thoda resham lagta hai fracas that had bappi lahiri flying to LA to sue Dr.Dre and if you haven't heard jayz and punjabi mc bangin away with beware of the boys, stop reading right away and find a legal way to download it. seems like they are tuning into us too.

voices in my head

if i am home you can almost always find me in that corner of the hall on my laptop.you can call out all you want but i am not hearing you. the only things i hear are the voices in my head. from illayaraja to iron maiden, mandolin srinivas to maroon 5 all of them happily coexist in the little itunes window and sing for me on-demand. putting them all in shuffle and listening as it switches from the heavily folk "vadi vadi vadi vadi china chiclet" (kattu kattu from thirupachi) to the classic rock "When all are one and one is all, To be a rock, and not to roll" (Stairway to heaven,Led Zeppelin) is all the high i need for the day.

Here is my thank you to a small subset of those providing juice to my jukebox.this post is about some of the female voices in the tamil film song world that i like and would like to listen to more often. the only criteria I am going to enforce , to make my job easier, is to list only those voices that have fewer numbers (but most of them golden) to their credit.I also issue the caveat that I am not a maven of any of the classical schools of music. the school I went to had wooden benches that I would bang arrythmically, sometimes leading to bleeding knuckles and the closest i come to sounding musical is when i am snoring.

Sadhna Sargam - Though she is a northy, the song that made me (as well as a gazillion others) take note of her was from Alaipayuthey. Snehithane is among the higher ranked songs in my library. A very melodious voice with just a bit of the hindi accent. Though I freely curse adnan sami for murdering my mother tongue I dont mind sadhna's diction in boom boom (from Boys).Another number that I like is Swasame from Tenali.

Shreya Ghosal - One of my policies regarding movies and music , especially Indian ones is that the original is always better and so I regularly skip the remakes ,music, movie and all. This stupid notion almost made me overlook Shreya Ghosal's presence in the Pathukulle number from Vasoolraja MBBS. In fact I saw the movie just for this song and ended up enjoying both. I can almost visualise her smiling as she sings Sandiyarae from Virumaandi and lowers her voice to a whisper to suit some of the lyrics. Hard to believe she is yet another northy. Other songs of hers that keep cropping up are azhagina azhagi from E20U18, elangaathu veesuthe from Pithamagan and dil dooba from khakee(i lied when i said tamil film song world..shud've been film song world)

Madhumita - Yet another rising voice in my opinion. I really liked the song Kana Kaanum from 7g rainbow colony and thats the only famous number she seems to have sung. One of my friends who is about infinitely more musically capable than I am seemed to think that song wasn't all that tough to sing. I still think she was wrong. The song is sung very earnestly and I think that requires some talent above the average. Waiting to hear more from her.

Bombay Jayshri - Saving the best for the last seems to be the norm. Here's a voice that is famous all over south india. Anyone who knows the notes of carnatic classical is sure to have heard this name. A sizeable contingent of my near and extended family goes from sabha to sabha during the december music season.I'd always assumed my carnatic gene had been swapped with the lazy gene at conception as I would have none of that, preferring a movie instead. A couple of things caused me to pay attention to carnatic music - a.r.rahman's alai payuthey from alai payuthey and bombay jayshri's vaseegara from minnale. she managed to repeat the same genre of singing in Ondra Renda (Kaakha Kaakha) and Malargale (Puthukottailirunthu saravanan) with great results. I won't claim any nonsense about how her carnatic background is obvious from either of these fantastic renditions. Its just a glorious voice.period. I'm reminded of Unnal Mudiyum Thambi a great movie that illustrates how carnatic music can be taken to the masses. Just give me more voices from the same stable and I'd be quite happy.

Thats just 4 voices out of the hundreds that launch me into aural heaven. Are there any that I missed ? Any other worthy mentions that you think my ears would be happy to hear ? Use the comments. Make yourself heard. My earphones are plugged in.

smorg-AD-sbord

found an easy way out to avoid thinking what to write about, i am just going to type out something about a few superbowl ads that impressed :

The only thing people look forward to on Superbowl Sunday, other than the game itself , are the new ads that are showcased during the game. At $2.4 million for a 30 second spot, the brands'd better come up with something good. While it is questionable if anyone is actually swayed by the creative output, it all makes for very good entertainment and even a chronic channel flipper like me stays glued to one channel for about 4 hours on a sunday.

This year's ads started with a bud light one that was really funny .it starts with a sky diver who is afraid to jump out of the plane. the instructor shows him a budweiser 6-pack ,throws it out of the plane and asks him if he still doesnt want to jump out after it. suddenly the pilot comes running out and follows the six pack leaving the other 2 dumbfounded. go to
budweiser.com and click on the Entertainment link for a huge collection of their ads . you have to be 21+ to enter ;)

Diet pepsi had p-diddy going to a awards show in a diet-pepsi truck and seeing him every other celebrity buys the diet-pepsi truck as their new rides.huge array of celebs in the ad.

Lays chips - some kids lose a baseball over a fence..they throw a pack of Lays across into the grumpy neighbor's yard and get their ball, a kid gets his dog thrown back,another his father's '72 impala and finally m c hammer is thrown.the ad ends with the kids throwing mc hammer back while "You can't touch this" plays in the background

Pepsi itunes ad : the moment someone opens a pepsi bottle a song plays leading to some really interesting situations.a garage band is practicing with a pepsi bottle open and when one of them tips the bottle the song starts skipping.very nice concept.
the same ad continues in the next break .it was pretty interesting cos they had these 2 ads back to back..like a story.this one ends with a girl carrying a pepsi bottle playing gwen stefani's latest song entering a elevator and gwen stefani exiting it. shorter ad compared to the first one.

Michelob ad :
a guy plays music on a swell hifi system for his girlfriend but can't dance one bit - voiceover: rich..but not smooth
another guy cozys up to a girl and plays some nice soft music..its an eletronics shop and the shop manager comes and asks him where his name tag is - voiceover : smooth but not rich...
voiceover : michelob .. rich and smooth

the half-time show was pretty good. paul mcartney sang 4 beatles' numbers. though the selection was a little questionable -- get back, live and let die and hey jude with the customary singing of the na-na-na bit by the crowd

an ad for a tabasco sauce that shows a hot girl in a bikini walk into her home and add a few drops of tabasco to a dip , take a bite and then pushes her bikini strap aside to reveal that the skin that was covered is burnt not the one that wasnt..awesome ad..no voice over so took me a minute to understand.

Toyota prius - shows people walking in place, cars and trains running in place.voiceover says 'its been a long time since transportation advanced' then shows a prius zipping through all the stationary traffic and the ads ends claiming the prius 'a small step on the accelerator, a giant leap for mankind'

careerbuilder.com had a couple of ads with some chimps playing bosses to a guy. both end asking if you want to change jobs. the second one ends with one chimp literally kissing its boss chimp's ass.

the best ads : the first budweiser one. it was simple and hilarious. the tabasco ad a close second for being too clever

i'm sure my writing was so good that you could all visualise the ads just the way they were pictured. in case you want to doublecheck go to : www.superbowl-ads.com

oh yeah the game - the eagles lost proving yet again how unlucky i am to teams i support.
i'm going back to watch the simpsons.

tiger devours cattle - part 2

haven't read part 1?? just scroll down a bit

a few years later microsoft is now well known in the western world and starting to infiltrate the asian markets, leaving several english speaking asians scratching their heads trying to guess why there was such a fuss about a fabric softener .In the early 1990s a young boy who has only seen computers at school forces his parents to get a 486 DX2 PC by telling them lies like "i can do our home accounts and income tax calculations with my left hand without using the mouse and i will also use it for my school project". two days after the computer arrives his parents start looking
for a replacement for their son.the previous one had gotten lost in the castles of Wolfenstein 3d.
i am digressing.Windows replaced the green phosphorous cursor with a shiny arrow which released from the bounds of lines and columns, flew across the screen playing games with solitaire. The few americans who'd managed to overcome shock and sacrificed a car and an europe vacation to invest in a fruit were screaming their throats hoarse that they already had such a user interface. no one heard them.bill gates energised by his brand's success turned his focus on the business world's computing needs, ignored all the cleverest punners in his geek army and chose to clear the confusion by naming his next product Microsoft Office. Realisation dawned on many a face. They now knew Microsoft was into building comfortable, ergonomic offices. Apple on the other hand was facing a boardroom fight and a bunch of bad apples kicked jobs out of office (not the microsoft one). apple continued on a downward spiral while everyone in the world claimed they were the best spellers in the world because their Office knew a Word or two.

by now apple has lost so many battles that keeping count is hard. lets just jump into the next century when king jobs took back his appledom. microsoft is now giving a lot more with windows. pinball and freecell are now standard apart from minesweeper and solitaire. it becomes a rage and all those lacking psychomotor skills uninstall Doom and start playing freecell instead. but Microsoft is still adamant with their naming policies . in an effort to express the maximum meaning in the fewest words, they name their entertainment application Windows Media Player. No nincompoop can misconstrue that one. it plays media on Windows.period. Apple, trying to come out of publishing houses and art galleries , names its music player
iTunes. they've also taken the time away from public view to develop working and beautiful software and hardware and also name them with words that people identify with. safari was a adventure on the internet. no one wants to come home weary from work and use something called Office. iLife was quite literally all the parts of one's life that could be converted to 0s and 1s. Combine this with a neat little package called the mac mini and you find that more and more mislead windows users are starting to understand the term "get a life"

so Apple is back in the fray armed with word power and Microsoft taking a lesson or two about semantics from Apple named its next operating system Longhorn causing some crazy macheads to make too much of the names by making it their blog's title.

Next up : A numerological analysis of William Henry Gates III and Steven Paul Jobs . yeah right?

Disclaimer: As you might've already guessed Apple did not remunerate me
in any way for writing this. If they want to , one of those new powerbooks would be adequate.
Neither did Microsoft for all the free tips they've received. If they want to, a copy of Halo 2 alongwith an XBox will make my apartment a tad more comfortable to live in.

tiger devours cattle - part 1

i haven't started reporting for national geographic..yet. i am still on a mac high though i've stopped pointing out to everyone how cool exposé is or how i use iCal to schedule the running of my applications (unix geeks : i know abt cron, its a lot easier with iCal). Why is the mac cool and why is windows, despite its prevalence, been the butt of some bad jokes like :

What is common between james bond's tuxedo and windows xp ?
Spy ware (get it?..ROTFL at my own joke )

using illogic i shall attempt to make molehills out of the huge mountains of facts created by several technical journalists and many other regular ones who found it easier to report the most popular news instead of being original.

lets look at the name - microsoft. did someone at the business registration bureau make a mistake, leaving a hosiery manufacturer befuddled with a name like Unlimited Limited? considering it was the late 1970s the name chosen by Gates was as meaningful as the expanded name - Microcomputer Software. the number of people on the planet who knew what a computer was, let alone what software was,could have been counted by using a couple of abaci(sources inform me that this is the plural of abacus). on the other hand everyone on the planet knew what an apple was. Even if they didn't know what the english word meant, the logo of an apple was something recognizable even to apes. here's where the confusion began. apples(the fruit) were very cheap so when Jobs came up with a product that is supposed to be as easy to bite into as an apple but is about a million times more expensive people were aghast. they turned to a product which by virtue of its unique name they could not price match with any other known product in the market. so the first battle is lost -people choose price over product and over product name.

blink a few times and come back..this one isn't over yet.