I try to say a lot while saying very little. Get used to it.
Archive for October, 2009
windows 7 – quirks, quips and quarks
Oct 20th
So I finally moved to Windows 7 on one of the machines I use regularly. It wasn’t without its share of weird-ass issues – I don’t think any M$ OS can be without its quirks. Not issues/problems, mind you. Quirks. I will try to update this based on what else I figure out in the future as well. I’m not attempting a detailed critique of what its like, there are ton-loads of such reviews online (most comprehensively, here). I’m merely noting stuff that stood out to me, personally. I’ll try not to degenerate to ranting or raving about anything.
whats your problem, mr. gowarikar?
Oct 13th
You used to be able to make interesting entertaining movies. Lets refresh. It won’t take too long. You’ve only made 7 movies. And managed to hit the slippery slope pretty well. But we’ll get to that. At least, unlike Kunaal Kohliiiii, every single one of your movies doesn’t make me want to kill you. Its all changed now though. We’ll get to that too.
The curse of falling in love with your own overtly long movie has been rearing its head since ‘Swades’. A classic signature that the story was not thought through – a last half-hour added on almost as an afterthought (heh!) to make the story go full circle. Of course, ‘Jodhaa Akbar’. By my count a sweet 100 minutes could have been trimmed to make the movie more about Jodha & Akbar, and less about Hrithik getting to replay fight scenes from Troy. And now. ‘Whats Your Raashee?’ 2 minutes shorter than ‘Jodhaa Akbar’. 200 times more painful.
It plays out with the worst of movie-dom. Bad, stupid characters. Bad, stupid motivations. Bad, stupid reasoning to bring 12 zodiac signs into the 
picture (literally!). Bad, stupid timeline. Bad, stupid narrative dialogue, which doesn’t even rhyme (unlike the greatest movie of all time). Bad, stupid jokes which serve to irritate me to no end. Bad, stupid writing making things happen co-incidentally all the time (even Gunda followed logic). Bad, stupid and pointless finale which basically negates the underlying idea of the movie. For e.g. the guy meets with 12 raashees so that he can figure on his ideal one – and finally doesn’t even choose her himself. That was the best you could come up with?
tashi: the amazing, awesome (invisible) dog
Oct 4th
As I spent most of last week getting Windows 7 to work properly on my computer (which will be in a next post – it takes a while for me to get such things together) – I completely missed the chance to post about walking my dog in Brooklyn. Oh, my dog? Tashi. Was invisible. Was awesome. Was amazing. Like everyone else’s.
So, there I was doing cool cancer research in my lab when IE mailed me about a possible stunt on Sunday Sept 27th 2009. And I, like the good little jobless-but-willing-to-travel-randomly person that I am, promptly responded. And rounded up the only available suspect that I know – TH. Whose recent start in comic-dom is well worth checking out, BTW.
Having traveled a good 90-odd minutes to reach Bergen Street from NJ, we and a crap-load of people assembled in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. When Charlie Todd told us about what was going to be done that afternoon, it turned out that we were indeed meeting in an abandoned warehouse. Which had once upon a time manufactured Invisible Dogs (TH is waiting for his “dog” to finish “business” alongside). Turns out IE had 2000-odd invisible dogs, and they hoped that there were 2000-odd of us around too. The prank, as Todd put it, “pretty much wrote itself”.
We picked up our leashes and headed outside to give our “dogs” a nice stroll around Brooklyn. TH and I headed up and out of the street to ensure that we spread out and gave enough people in Brooklyn a reason to stare. Initially, barely anyone seemed to notice. Once we hit the main road though, cars were constantly stopping near us to find out just what the hell we were doing. No-one seemed to buy that “it was just a nice day, and we decided to take our dog for a walk” 
My dog, Tashi, was a pretty snappy golden retriever, and even jumped up at cars which pulled over (which I hope was captured by IE on video). I had to tell him off a few times (which is what I’m doing in the photo alongside). Pedestrians spent a while chatting with us trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. Most people who spoke to us (whether from a car or fellow pedestrians) were wondering why so many of us seemed to want to walk our dogs together. Was it a cause? Was it a protest? Did we not know there was no dog there? (Our response was one of amazement to this last) Most people petted, played with or even yelled out compliments to our dogs as they passed by. Smiles galore. I remember one traffic light where all the drivers at the front were honked at coz they waited too long in listening to/watching us. TH variously named his dog among other things: “Seeme” and “Unflushable” (courtesy 
Then of course Tashi pooped all over a traffic corner. I had to use invisible gloves, wet wipes and packets to get rid of it. Amidst suitable amounts of grumbling of course. Tashi had to be controlled around the sleeping dogs, the old dogs who were half-head, the seeing-eye dogs as well. Retrievers are more trouble than they are worth some times..
