Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

                                                                                                                                           - Swami Vivekananda

This happened last week: A girl sat next to me on the bus.

NO, that's not all, fuckers.

So she sat  (I dare you to repeat that quickly and not say "So she shat". Ahahahah. Er, back to the life-affirming anecdote) for fifteen minutes throwing nervous glances while I tried to immerse myself in a Jeff Noon short story collection. But for Radio City there would even have been an uncomfortable/pregnant silence. Finally, she cleared her throat and said:

"Excuse me, is this Company Y's bus?"

"Yes", I said and cracked what I thought was a comforting grin.

"Shit! I thought this was Company Z's bus!", she said and fled. I shook my head and had deep thoughts about the Indian IT industry for the rest of the journey.

So it goes, so it goes......

I know it sounds right out of  Reader's Digest but it really happened

As a team-building exercise, we were taken to Amoeba( the home of unicellular delights). Maybe it's because half my childhood was over before the economy was liberalized but I just can't stand these Archie-inspired lifestyle choices. I spent my formative years in parks and playgrounds where bowling meant running in as quick as you could and trying to kill the guy facing you. Bowling is Shane Warne pitching it outside leg and hitting the top of off. Bowling is not a bunch of software mudderfucks re-enacting the tribal custom of hurling elephant testicles at giraffe ding-dongs( Or Afridi trying a faster one. That's a throw). Pah! Death to the infidels!! The evil influence of Western culture on our youth - what's a self-righteous and sexually repressed guy to do?

I admit, I'd never even thought of touching it with my toes, Swamiji.

Pi: The Last LKB ruined a perfectly good Friday morning by informing us that he now has both the complete Far Side and a 250 gig hard drive. Worse, the bitch mentions this in two SMSes, real casual, suggesting he is now above and beyond gloating. Have spent the last one hour scheming and trying to fight off an oncominmg bout of depression. Don't think he owes me any favors and blackmail is not an option with the shameless dick. No fear, the problem could not stymie one so resourceful as yours truly for too long - I now have the perfect solution.

The gent-in-cuntsy plan is to become a permanent fixture at the fuckpad the boy is getting hisself. Visions of leading the (De)Flower Power lifestyle - of shagging sundry hoors and reading monster-sized comic books - are now diverting the blood supply from my brain.

Aye,Saala!

.......but a fiend with weed is better, eh?

Bought The Dark Knight Returns. No, I will not review it. There are already 243 reviews on Amazon and a lot of them are written in debatespeak – At the outset, per se, your argument holds no water( of course it don’t. My argument ain’t a fucking bladder). I just want to mention that I got it for a very reasonable two hunnert ninety five. I’ve read the scanned comic twice before but reading the TPB revealed quite a few details that I had missed on the earlier reads – which goes to show what a wonderful writer Frank Miller is( and NOT what a careless reader I am).

I remembered this deeply disturbing Dexter’s Lab episode this morning – the kid flies off into an obscure area of his lab where all his outdated and hence discarded creations confront him. All these robots just slowly close in on Dexter and I remember it mainly because I generally do not experience emotional distress while watching Dexter’s Lab.

A thought: I somehow dive into my comp’s hard drive (like in those delightful Johnny Quest episodes) and wander around the E:\Music\The Good Ol’ Days area when I hear a ‘baby,baby,baby,push,push,pooosh’ and see Robert Plant lurching toward me. King Diamond crawls out of ‘Some Kinda Monsters’ singing ‘Return of the Vampire’. Scariest of all, a fat man with a funny haircut and funnier glasses makes me jump by asking me if I can feel the love tonight.    

What have I been smoking? Nothing.  Why do you ask?

I feel a little guilty for ignoring all the staples (I hasten to add ‘Can you feel the love tonight?’ was never a staple. NEVER). Too much new music to catch up on, whattodo?

And never in my life have I felt such an acute need for new music. The bastards at Radio City have abused my inner child beyond recognition. Some nights I lie in bed whimpering(in pure Kannada) about the right age for a girl to get married. Last week I caught myself singing something unfamiliar –realized what it was and clapped a hand to my mouth but it was too late, too late, the words were already out – Aa mil ja phir gale, haste haste – an unpardonable sin that will make sure the gates of heaven (or wherever Cliff Burton, Bon Scott and Dimebag Darrell are currently hanging out) will forever stay shut on me.

New music has arrived in the form of one the coolest mp3 CDs ever written – Susheela Raman, Josie and the Pussycats and Infected Mushroom seem to have taken up permanent residence in my brain. And Pi’s hard drive, filled with 40 GB of music, a lot of it previously unheard, has been keeping me awake almost entire nights.

Have I become more tolerant? Before: I could never listen to a trance song without getting the dry heaves. Now: I can happily get through the entire Classical Mushroom album without skipping a single track. ‘Alternative’? Yuck. ‘Indie rock?’ Let’s see.

In case you’re worrying if getting old has made me broad-minded, let me put you at ease: Why did Jack the Ripper take to cannibalism?

If you answered, “Because his doctor advised him to eat whoresome meals”, then you have a keen mind that knows growing old from growing up (And broad-mindedness doesn’t mean having a mind for broads, does it?).

Right, off to catch my forty wanks now.

Dreaming of Comic-cons, discussing ret-cons,

and pencillers, writers, inkers and letterers,

Dealing with variant covers and Sin City-inspired boners,

These are a few of my favorite things.

Artwork by Jim Lee, Cassaday and Kirby

Stories by Bendis, Ellis and Ennis

Laughing my ass off at the Punisher's victims

These are a few of my favorite things

Good-bye, Chunky Rice, Lost Girls, Strangers in Paradise,

Surfing with aliens, scans of complete runs,

Ogling splash pages and reading letter columns

These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites

When the bee stings

When I'm feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don't feel so bad

******************************* 

Good-bye, Chunky Rice is the best graphic novel I’ve read. I’m tempted to use words like “ineffable” to describe it but I won’t because I believe everything in life is Eff-able.

Do the honors, Mr.Moore -

"Both funny and genuinely touching in turn, Craig Thompson's Good-bye Chunky Rice is an affecting meditation upon friendship, loneliness and loss, all delivered with a real feel

for the musicality of the comic strip form. This work sings and dances, and you could do a lot worse than to sing and dance along with it. Highly recommended."

We are doing the open Quiz this Dec 4th; not just any open quiz, it's the "Ganesh Nayak Open Quiz". Butterfly squadrons are already ready for takeoff and come the big day, I'm pretty sure they're going to be flying around in formation. In my stomach. We're working our asses off over this and that makes me feel a little better. I just hope we don't piss any of the big guys off with some badly phrased questions or worse, incorrect answers. And it would flatter us no end if the teams took at least three questions to crack the stage-2.

The last time there was this much riding on a quiz was way back in 2002 when we had the honor of conducting an open quiz for the college Quiz Club. I'm still very proud that we were asked to do a quiz in our first year. After all, first years are lowly ignorant shits with a proclivity for making value judgments. So, in a time when even being spoken to by a SENIOR(hushed tones) would put us on a high, Venki telling us to do a quiz made us feel like  a garage band about to open for the Stones.

( My Favorite Venki Story )
 </o:p>I remember everything about the quiz - making the poster on Pi's comp, Mukka and I flanking him on either side, everyone going crazy over it. After two hours of brainstorming, this is what we came up with: "Quizzing Back to Life!"[Pink Floyd, we got to have a Pink Floyd reference, man!]ran across the top left. A pic(ClipArt) of a guy with a bulb above his head came somewhere in the center. And our names(we used our actual parent-given names, not our assumed names of a herb with medicinal properties, a local prostitution center and Raj(!), possibly the last time we did so, which makes this poster something of a collectible in my eyes. I’m so vain? More on that later) time and venue and our very first poster was done. We had an intense argument over it and at one point Pi actually said these words -"there are too man ego-clashes going on here". Typical, huh? (Of Pi to say something like this, I mean).

We did some word-of-mouth publicity and were rewarded with a decent turnout (decent turnout implies there were enough people to warrant having the prelims). Among the famous participants was ‘Psycho/Metal’ Chaitanya, who had turned up just to take a shot at the one heavy metal question we had promised him. ( He got it wrong). 'The Joint Family', a group of free-spirited gentlemen with an appetite for mind-altering substances not seen since the Merry Pranksters, was also in attendance.

The quiz went off great. The only moment of panic was when Azhar messed up with the scores but it was shrugged off with good-natured banter. We had officially become Quizmasters. What a wonderful term! QuizMasters!! Masters, do you hear!?

The only time I have conducted a quiz on my own was the in-house quiz at KMC, Mangalore. We were supposed to do a quiz for our college tech-fest but we'd already promised to do the KMC quiz and of course the two clashed(In turn, we were promised 1600 bucks by the KMC guys which even when split three-ways was a lot of money for us). End result? I pushed off with Jeevan to Mangalore. Before I left we had a small mishap with the audios. Instead of copying and then pasting, Raj decides to cut and paste. Halfway through the transfer, there's a power failure! Our Audios are now missing, transported to Dimension X. My awesome mp3 collection came to the rescue, though and I managed to make up a new Audio round in a matter of minutes.

 We arrive at the auditorium and Jeev and I are stunned. Compared to our ageing Silver Jubilee Auditorium, the KMC audi looks like Royal Albert Hall. It is the biggest auditorium in Asia, the coord tries to convince us.

The quiz was a drab affair. We had been warned to dumb it down a bit and we ended up using the same quiz we had done for Infy some time back. Uneventful all the way till the Audio round and then all hell, if not breaking loose, at least paid a small visit to the audi.

Q1) Identify this band famed for their progressive music in the sixties. This song I'm going to play probably doesn’t represent their true style but is one of their most famous singles yada yada yada - and to a totally clueless crowd I play 'Owner of A Lonely Heart" by Yes. The answers I get - Pink Floyd, Rush. No one gets it. Anybody in the audience? NO? “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes. WHAT!!! Yes. Yes what? Yes, the band. Who? Yes. The name of the band is Yes! Why. Eee. Ess. HUH?

Q2) 'Working In A Gas Station' by Frank Zappa. A flicker of recognition on one or two faces, maybe, but nothing more.

Q3) By now I'm convinced I'm Pat Bateman (American Psycho), somebody else who spouts music trivia before he fucks/kills.  I think I played The Allman Brothers Band. It’s really hard to tell these guys apart from Skynyrd and sure enough, one of the teams said( rather doubtfully) "Linkard Skinkard?" It was my turn to be baffled but I recovered, gave him a look of infinite pity, turned to the audience and said "No, it's not Lynyrd Skynyrd"(Pronounced Leh-nerd skin-nerd as one of their albums is helpfully titled).

The teams just gave up at this point, which was unfortunate since the other audios  were Grateful Dead and two other fairly well-known bands. Interestingly, the audience questions were answered correctly. I played the Carly Simon hit "You're So Vain" and was delighted to see this woman put her hand up. "The lady in the third row-"

' “You're So Vain" by Carly Simon'.

'Perfect!’ A girl answered my question correctly! A girl who knows her Carly Simon! What joy! For some reason "Unchained Melody" began to play in my head and I thought maybe we could get married (She knows Carly Simon, don’t tell me it gets better than this) but I ended up saying entirely the wrong thing.

This is what I said to that angelic being who had identified 'You're So Vain' : Perfect! Nobody really knows whom this sing is about. An auction was held where the singer agreed to reveal the name of the person to the highest bidder on the condition that the winner would keep it confidential. Did you know that? No, she did not.

You're so vain,

I bet you thought this song is about you (You're so vain!)

Fucking Carly Simon.

The aftermath - Nice quiz, the coord told me. But the audio round...he left the sentence hanging. I felt really bad for a moment but since I couldn't jeopardize our payment by saying the actual audios were wiped out and what I had played them were vengeful substitutes, I shrugged and said "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was a smash hit in the Eighties.

The final bit of weirdness - Those guys didn't pay up in the hall. Instead, we met up on a street where they surreptitiously handed over the cash and made me sign on some receipt. Paying QMs is about as socially acceptable as buying crack, what?

Confess to liking Tomb Raider and you're likely to be ridiculed. Confess to really, really liking Tomb Raider, to thinking that Lara Croft is the greatest video game character ever, yes, even when compared to Patrick Galloway or Gordan Freeman and you're risking a beating.

It all began in the summer of 2000 when a college friend gave me Tomb Raider 3.  I had a 64MB RAM, 8.4 GB  HDD, 550 MHz P3 system. It was a monstah...those were the days, eh? The first thing I learnt was the alarming concept of History pages and self-completing address bars. And then it was on to the wonderful world of video games. I recall Rainbow 6 with great fondness. I recall greatly fondling Lara Croft. Ha ha, is joke.

But seriously, Lara Croft remains my favorite video game character. Tomb Raider was one of those things that I was obsessed with. A bit surprising because it's easily one the most frustrating games to play and in  those early days I did not have the patience to persist with a game if it took me more than an half an hour to cross a particular level. The obvious explanation about me being a 'hormone-crazed geek' (this phrase is often used to describe the many fans of the series by its equally numerous detractors) doesn't hold good. I never really thought of Lara Croft as a sex symbol. A chorus of 'Bullshit!' is going up right now, I imagine but honest, the early versions of Lara Croft were almost a joke. Starved of polygons, with two wooden blocks trying to pass off as her legs and a figure of almost cartoonish dimensions, Lara Croft was amusing, not arousing.

A lot has been said about how Eidos continually made "enhancements" to Lara's body with each successive release but never bothered with doing anything about the gameplay.

Ah, that darned gameplay. Run, jump, die, reload. One, two three, four! Clap your hands, do it again! .It's understandable that with a character like Lara Croft there was never going to be a question of TR being anything other than a third-person shooter. The wise people at Core/Eidos knew that your average hormone-crazed geek would much rather have his eyes on Lara Croft than see the world through her eyes. But what really pisses me off even after all these years is the unforgivably poor job they did with the camera.

As Lara Croft, you have the privilege of falling to your death from the most exotic places in the world. An undercurrent of sadomasochism runs through the series - see, you're watching this attractive woman get hurt real bad, which is where the sado part comes but you're also...... the attractive woman.....which is the masochist part( and a hastily abandoned line of thought).

Maybe you were one of the sad cases who downloaded the Nude Raider patch off the net but I wonder how long the novelty of watching Lara run around naked lasted in the face of all those gruesome deaths - squashed by a boulder, shot at by psychotic Tibetan monks, pursued by tigers, sharks and in one of the coolest sequences ever in a video game, T-rexes (games 1 and 3) and worst of all misjudging another leap and plunging to another frustrating death. You are hanging on for your life on a monkey-bar and you need to drop down to a ledge that is positioned so you have to judge your jump to a millimeter. You try swiveling the camera but it stubbornly refuses to lock on to anything other than Miss Croft's assets. Hold your breath and say your prayers. Pachuk!!! A textbook example of a bittersweet moment.

So many reasons why the game sucked. And yet, I played like a fanatic. I played Tomb Raider 2 & 3 from start to finish with the help of a walkthrough - read walkthrough , press alt-tab, execute instructions(these instructions were often unintentionally hilarious- "Shoot the monkey and take the Indra key", for example.).

How could it have been fun? I don't know but it was. 

I found out recently that TR7 is coming out soon.  Everyone's talking about how the whole series has been jazzed up - graphics, gameplay and even good old Lara all get revamped. Lara Croft creator Toby Gard says "Lara is more realistic than she has ever been. She has a collar bone, tendons, muscles, reactive eyes and facial expressions". Facial expressions!! Very impressive, considering she was all boobs and butt not so long ago.  Time to buy a graphics card. These days it looks like a computer game has to take up at least 3 or more CDs to be taken seriously. It's worth remembering that the first three TR games came in one lovely “Golden Collection” National Market special edition CD.

Books-
1) Needful Things – Stephen King
2) Tourist Season – Carl Hiaasen
3) Woody Allen’s Complete Prose( collects Side Effects, Without Feathers and Getting Even).

 Comics-  Punisher, Superman’93 Annual, two New Teen Titans(Wolfman-Perez), a very offbeat Batman story called ‘A Night In The Life Of…’, one Englehart Green Lantern Corps.

 DVDs-
1)      The Song Remains The Same –Led Zeppelin
2)      Bjork Live at the Royal Opera House

********************************************************************

 Downloads-
1)      Vimanarama –Grant Morrison & Philip Bond
2)      Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack – Bjork.

 My middle-class upbringing cries out against forking out mega-bucks for graphic novels but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to hold out.

It’s not that I don’t have the time or energy. It’s just that I don’t have anything more to say than a monosyllabic grunt or two about the Great Ho Hum that is my life. Nearly a month into my job and the best thing I can say about it is that I’m almost used to it. I still like to think of my company as an Indian Gulag and the security policies still baffle, frustrate and terrorize me. In particular, the internet access policies are a blatant attack on the institutions of free expression. I’m not allowed access to websites that fall under the following categories – Nudity, Job Search, Sports, Entertainment and incredibly, Cultural Institutions. I’m sure there are at least a hundred other categories that are considered out-of-bounds but these are the only ones I’m interested in. The one site I’m allowed access to is Wikipedia and I spend whatever free time I can find on Wiki, reading up on everything from Planetary to the War of the Roses.

The worst part of my job is the bitch of a commute I have to endure to get to my workplace and back home. Twenty plus kilometers at 10 kmph. Twice daily. Five days a week(Psst- Start making sentences. Now).

Things came to a head when a TV and DVD player made their appearance on the bus. At seven thirty ack emma, this conversation takes place on screen–

Preity Zinta :Life is beautiful

Salman Khan: No, my wife is beautiful.(Ms.Zinta then dies and her heart(along with her love for Salman Khan) is transplanted to another female. I’m planning to sue).

But then, as Jeph Loeb says in Spiderman:Blue, good usually follows bad in my life. The third week, I stepped on the bus armed with an mp3man the Hemster had generously loaned me (Owe ya, big time. Not just for the mp3man and the Sin City comics and the music and the movies and the books).

I would be lying if I said I hit ‘play’ and my life changed. I hit ‘play’ and got a life. Until then, I would step off the bus and walk like a runaway extra from a George Romero movie (‘Land of the Coding Dead’?). After the mp3man came into my life, I have a disposition that’s sunnier than a Hutch commercial. If I’m sure no one is looking, I even do a little skip and a hop.

Poovukenna Poottu from Bombay is somewhat overshadowed by the other songs on the soundtrack. It’s not as haunting as Uyire, or as ‘hummable’ as Humma Humma, or as memorable as the Bombay theme. Or so I used to think. After a long (if not hard) day’s work, while stuck in traffic on Airport Road, I listened to Poovukenna…and wondered why I hadn’t paid closer attention to one of the bounciest bass lines, most heartwarming lyrics and thumpingest rhythm sections ever in any song. Not to forget the sprightly kids who shout ‘gulla ,gulla, hulla gulla’ every chance they get. The kids also sing about how eyes are meant for seeing, life for living and the heart for singing. This sort of precocity usually leaves me hunting for my patented Kid-Killer boots but on Poovukenna the little ones sing with a devil-may-care insouciance that I find irresistible. Er, the song, not the kids (Who are these kids anyway? Noel James and Anupama Deshpande are the only singers credited on all the sites Google threw up).

Right after Bombay, Boys comes up – in gult. I don’t listen to the gult version because “RECs break down linguistic barriers” – bullshit! There just seems to have been a fuck-up while the CD was being written.  

Telugu joins C# and French on my list of languages to learn. I’m not sure what mullameeda kaakipilla nidurinchadaa, chettakuppameeda rojaa vikasinchadaa means but it sounds terrific. As does chinna chinna tappulu chinna chinna oppulu cheyyamani cheppenu kurratanam. Every song has me pounding a furious tattoo on the metal floorboard of the bus with my dress code required leather shoes; I get quite a few glares from the unfortunate folks who’re listening to Sonu Nigam on the radio.

I should be getting my first month’s wages tomorrow. ‘Salary’ somehow seems to give an air of respectability to the amount I earn. I’m not cribbing. Who needs money when you’ve got blank CDs?

1) Right now, I want my phone back. I also want the rat-bastard who found it but didn't bother returning it to suffer an accident while using his ill-begotten phone.

2) Right now, I'm listening to A Design For Life by Manic Street Preachers.

3) Right now, I'm wondering about my last Friday as a free person.

4) Right now, I'm wondering why I have to be extra clever and say (3) when what I mean is I'm starting work on Monday.

5) Just now, I cracked my knuckles. Bring it on, blank page.

6) Right now, I think Yvette is a really cool name.

7) Right now, I want to make it clear that despite the odd touch of sentimentality, I'm a complete bastard.

8) Right now, I desperately want to play a good racing game.

9) Right now, I solemnly vow to read every thought Frank Miller and/or Alan Moore ever committed to print.

10) Right now, I'm getting the fuck outta here.

Q. If you aren't a go-getter in life, why'll you get fucked?

A. Because then you become a 'come-taker'.

Ha.

*runs away*

Maybe two months down the line I’ll look back on this time wistfully and wish I had put it to better use. Or maybe I’ll still be waiting for my joining date. I absolutely, positively loathe my company. The bastards! It’s been two months since they last contacted me and even that was some horrible “we’re making an indecent amount of money, aren’t you glad you joined us?” kind of self-promotional crappy e-mail.

One thing about being the younger sibling is that you learn early on in life not to overestimate your place in the scheme of things. One such realistic assessment of my as yet unborn career as a Software Engineer leads me to believe that I’m going to start off in the lowest possible league- not the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, but the carpet on which stands the footrest on which you have to stand on tip-toe to reach the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. And learn object-oriented programming while I’m at it.

There are some MNCs that are slightly less exploitative – my bro got a cool thousand bucks worth coupon at Landmark from his company. Agonized over what to buy before coming away with  

1)      Lucky You- Carl Hiaasen

2)      The Emerging Mind- Vilayanur Ramachandran

3)      Tamas- Bhisham Sahni

4)      The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys- Edited by Dom Moraes.

I didn’t expect thousand bucks to go this far in Landmark, quite pleased with the books. KQA’s Premier book coupon got me The Best of P.G Wodehouse. It sounds bad to be buying ‘best-of’ compilations but I wanted this one as a traveling and bedside companion.

The British Council Library has a smallish but interesting fiction section, have been a member since Jan. Found Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason and Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man. Loved every page of Ghosh’s book. He is a great storyteller but it is the assuredness with which he writes that really impresses one, considering this was his debut effort. Ms. Smith was a disappointment- I did like Dave Eggers’s first book but ‘Hysterical Realism’ can be a pain if it’s not done well. Highly inconsistent writing but I’m still willing try her first novel, White Teeth. Currently reading Ben Elton’s blacker- than-night humor – This Other Eden and Popcorn, savage satires of Hollywood, eco-terrorists, Western society in general and anything else you can think of. Richard Adams’s Watership Down is next. I first heard about this book from my favorite author (the Beast from Bangor!) and was terribly excited on finding it in the lib.

The library also had a hardbound, photograph-laden edition of Dalrymple’s In Xanadu: A Quest; have saved this one for later: the geek’s idea of coitus reservatus!

 I almost forgot- here it is, excerpted from Lucky You, one of the most belly-achingly funny books I’ve read, this piece is a real hall-of-famer, right up there alongside Gussie’s Market Snodsbury Grammar School Speech,  The Four Horsemen scene from Good Omens and other great examples of fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing humor. Caution: Put away your sodas, snorting liquids into nostrils can be fatal.

The background: Bode Gazzer and Chub are two racist crooks who believe ‘Negroes, Cubans and the NATO” are going to launch an attack on mainland America from the Bahamas. They form a militia called White Clarion Aryans and recruit Shiner, a small town bum. Shiner has been out on patrol duty to guard the militia’s trailer while Bode and Chub go out on an errand. Then this happens-

( Read more... )

It came in the mail and it is official now – I’m a qualified Chemical Engineer. As I ripped open the envelope I must confess to my heart performing one of Keith Moon’s faster drum rolls in my rib cage. Much as I abhor self-congratulation (more due to an unshakeable fear of tempting fate than modesty), I couldn’t resist a fist-pump and a mental ‘Come On!’ as my eyes fell on the ‘first class with distinction’ bit.

 It was a nice moment - but not quite the super-orgasm I had always imagined it to be. I’m as weary as I am relieved.

What is tragic, comic, ironic and just plain damn icky is that the occasion is going to go by without so much as a single drop of alcohol being consumed. Happiness once used to come in multiples of thirty and we used to get shitfaced over no reason at all and for good or bad those days are all over. Hmm. While my eyes aren’t getting moist, my mouth is certainly going dry.   

Haaka?

The next time you're walking down Crime Alley mugging or thieving or killing waiting for a middle aged man in an outrageous costume to kick your butt, I want you to remember something. That middle aged man might say something cliched. Or he might not. But when he's done with you, you're not going to be laughing, make no mistake about it

                 - In Your Darkest Hour, Ganja. Toldja, didn’t I?! (What do you mean ‘get a life’? It’s not like anyone else is queuing up to quote me)

Thank you Christian Bale. Thanks for showing the world the Batman I know and fear – a real mean motor scooter, an obsessed, driven psychopath who sometimes makes you feel he belongs in the same asylum that lodges most of his long term enemies. Thanks for letting us know , in your own words from Batman Begins, that “clearly a guy who dresses up as a bat has some issues”(the way he spits’ bat’ out almost makes you believe words can taste bad).

Yes, the Hemster and I caught Batman Begins, first day first show at that, something that deserves the three exclamation marks that will follow shortly!!!

 Six hours have passed since the fantastic last scene where- no, methinks you’d much rather watch it yourself. Six hours have passed since the movie ended and my heartbeat’s slowed down enough for me to actually write something more than baleisbatmanisgodisbaleisbatmanisgod about how I feel.  And now I feel that Bale, as Batman, is God. Bale’s Bruce Wayne performance gave me the creeps- the guy should be banned from wearing dapper suits. Remember ‘try getting a reservation in fucking Dorsia’s now!!’ from American Psycho? Yeah right, like anyone could forget. *shudder* Having an actor who can finally justify Batman’s title as the Dark Knight would have made Batman Begins good, but what makes it is great is that the rest of the cast rock out their roles just as well as Bale does, and that the script is fucking A and that you can actually watch the action sequences without going into a sulk over fireballs that move in slow motion.  

I neither know nor care for what a non-Batman fan would make of the movie. Personally, while I may not exactly worship the ground the Batman glides over( I know well enough to steer well clear of it if I ever take to a life of crime in Gotham City), I did read the three hundred plus scanned pages of The Long Halloween (which scriptwriter David S Goyer quotes as a big influence) comic in one sitting. And so if director Christopher Nolan had muffed the movie up, I would have considered writing a long, angry letter to DC telling them to stop making Batman movies. The thought of Spidey being better than Batsy at anything, leave alone something as big as the box office, rankles.

Mr. Nolan, aware that there are worse things that can happen to one’s career than being the object of pissed off letters, does not disappoint. The movie is chock full of “gosh wow” moments –  

Crook :Where are you?!

Batman(whispers): here.

Crook –Egad!

Bruce Wayne (having just taken the god awesome Batmobile for a spin) –Does it come in black?

Some arbit guy(on Bruce Wayne’s car) : Nice car!

Bruce Wayne – You should see my other one.

 My favorite one – “He’s here.” “Who?” “The BATMAN!”

Michael Caine’s turn as Alfred is one of the best things about the movie. He transforms Wanye’s soft-spoken, umbrella carrying butler into the friend, philosopher and guide that Batman so badly needs. And he has a wicked, impudent sense of humor, ever so gently pulling Master Bruce’s leg. I hope the old man stays alive long enough to appear in the next Batman movie (assuming that Batman Begins will be the smashing success I figure it to be. Who’d agree to spend a record breaking 100 million USD promoting a bad movie?)

Gary Oldman is a terrific Jim Gordon. Although I long to talk about the many, many amazing aspects of the movie, I’m aware that doing so would definitely ruin your Batman Begins experience. But I just have to make a mention of the Batman – Scarecrow fight. Pure Evil! And the Batmobile sequences….the ‘hundred plus through black and white, warhorse, warhead, fuck ‘em man white knuckle tight’ part of ‘Fuel’ never made much sense to me, but now I have a rough idea of what James Hetfield was talking about. ‘Nitro junkie paint me dead’, indeed.

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a movie this much. The entire hall seemed to be filled with Batman fanboys – some of the cooler moments were met with the cheering and clapping usually reserved for Rajnikanth movies (non-Tams, cringe if you will, but as the song goes, “who is superstar, if you ask, even a small child will tell”). In particular, the scene where Bruce Wayne returns to the cave to confront his childhood fear saw some of the loudest and longest sustained examples of whistling in a movie theatre since the legendary entry scenes of the Superstar (where the camera would focus on his shiny new ‘sportshoes’ and then move up to show us his face, which was when our thalaiva would yank his arm out to throw a snappy salute, grinning like a madman throughout).

The soundtrack? As a friend of mine from Delhi would have succinctly put it - “It’s PUMPING!”

Now to somehow talk my brother into taking me to see the movie again.

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