Tangled up in you
Approximately 20 months ago, I bailed. No, I’m not talking about this shitty blog but someone I really loved and cared about. We had finally reached that point where we were starting to feel inseparable; where I couldn’t imagine getting through an hour without at least once thinking of her Zooey Deschanel-like cutesy-self and wondering if she was thinking of my Zak Spyder-like smooth self. Since I’m a big fan of logic, the next few steps were easy.
I fell off the face of the earth, went into hiding and spread word that I was training to be a Jedi. I also spread rumors that my IQ finally tipped over 160 which instantly rendered me an asexual supergenius stuck in a void that no woman could ever breach. There was also talk that I was an Oceanic 815 survivor and running around on a tropical island wearing a grass skirt with a bald machete-wielding former-cripple name John Locke but they never found any evidence of that. Truth is, I chickened out because there were certain questions that I didn’t want to answer. There was a certain road that I was too chickenshit to tread. So instead of confronting those tough questions, I chose to ignore them. And how did I accomplish that?
By pretty much shunning contact with you, and all the connectors that linked you and me.
Wait, what just happened here?
Yes, I am talking to you, Foxymophandlemama. I know you like to Google my name. I know you like to stalk me online. I know you are trying to figure out where exactly the fuck I disappeared, why I did that and why you never got the memo. Hell, I do it all the time. Truth is, girl, you were a fine woman. And I was a fine guy. And you and me were the stuff that Lifehouse’s love songs were made of. But it was never meant to be. True, I could have handled it a lot better than the Desmond Hume cowardly fashion I did it in but what would I be, if I weren’t a socially-dysfunctional, unintentionally hurtful and upsettingly neurotic manchild?
Call me if things don’t work out with him. Darwin was on to something, this evolution thing really works. I have a spine now.
Filed under: Life, Nothing | Leave a Comment
“Oh God, they go apeshit over bubbles. I mean, that’s an incredible thing about a child. What’s so great about bubbles? I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles. It’s totally sad; their smiling faces point out your inability to enjoy anything.” Pete (Paul Rudd) in Knocked Up
I only threw one tantrum in my entire childhood. We were out at the mall and like always, I looked through store windows and never worked up the nerve to ask my parents to buy me something. But that day I saw a punching bag with Yogi Bear’s face on it and I knew right there that I just had to have it. My Dad hates toy stores like I hate hospitals which presented a problem because I started rolling on the floor, threw a hissy-fit and begged him to get me that punching bag. I think what he really wanted to do was beat the shit out of me for being a whiny brat but thankfully, the evening ended with no loss of blood and we went home with some junk in the trunk.
I loved that thing like crazy. Maybe because I hated the cartoon and wanted to beat the shit out of that bear or maybe the ninja in me was glad to finally have 1337 training equipment. I had some great times with that punching bag before I embraced the fact that I was a 90s kid. And like all good 90s kids, I believed sunshine & physical activity were over-rated and started an yearlong beg-a-thon for the then objet d’art. Finally, my Dad caved in and I felt my soul depart as my life got sucked away by the Sega Mega Drive II.
We were all a bunch of Sega-fanboys in school with no room for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. All our parents had caved in and bought us the system & two games. To fulfill our part of the deal, we had to shut the fuck up for the next two years and not mention any more videogame-related purchases. Ever. We would starve all day, save our lunch money and put it away in our piggy banks, waiting for the next killer title to come out for the system. Three great titles coming out at the same time? We would work out a system where the class would split up the purchases. We would assign ourselves to groups and all our cartridges belonged to us, the gaming community. Accumulate five games, get word out about your AAA-collection and if you met the right people, you could play 25+ games every year.
The cheap-ass gamer in all of us taught us more about organizational skills than any self-help seminar I’ve ever attended.
I think it’s truly amazing how a child’s life can revolve around something that grown-ups find trivial. Of course, video games are a multi-billion dollar industry (Halo 3 made $150 million in 24 hours, $300 million in its first week) and I don’t see many 12-year-olds with $2000 dual-GPU gaming rigs. But back then, video games were only for the kids and they never understood.
Punching bag, video game console, action figures, comic books and sneaking into the living room at 4AM to watch a R-rated movie that my class’ official R-rated movie-dealer had lent me. To get a piece of the R-rated action, the dealer had to trust you could indulge in the guilty pleasure without getting caught and ratting him out. Life was so simple and joyful. I pity kids today that have parents who believe in stuff like ESRB ratings.
So how do I seek joy today? How have I supplanted video games and R-rated movies? To be honest, I haven’t. I did everything I should have, cool shit, dumb shit; I didn’t miss out on anything and have now returned to where I always belonged. The times I can’t split a pie and a pack with these guys, I relegate myself to the sweet bliss of solitude.
I live a sedentary life, mostly alone at my workstation and occasionally hanging out with the few folks left from my once-massive network of friends. Why? Because everybody started to turn into whiny little bitches forever moaning and complaining about how ‘life sucks’ and is not ‘happening’. Apparently, all our lives suck because:
1. We don’t party or go club-hopping.
2. We don’t have the jobs we want.
3. Nobody remember the last time they had an actual significant other.
4. None of us has had a drunken one-night-stand. Ever.
5. Other whiny shit usually related to a sexual dry spell.
I don’t party because I live in a shitty town where a peek inside any club (I use that word generously – any pub with satellite radio and a 4×4 patch of hardwood is considered a nightclub here) reveals the who’s who of human trash. Since when does a night out on the town equate a shitty bar, Bollywood remixes, gangsta-rap and ugly-as-sin chicks with Texas-sized-asses decked out in flared jeans, tube tops, flip-flops and shitty henna tattoos? What the fuck mate! These Hilton-wannabes are normally accompanied by douchebags (think Andy Dick) who pretend to be white-kids-who-want-to-be-black. Together, these morons strut around like they are the bastard children of Colin Farrel and Lindsay Lohan.
Fact: In Hyderabad, there is a press photographer in every upmarket pub, every weekend. Hyderabad isn’t exactly Bombay that actually has socialites and celebrities. Walk into any pub wearing a shirt even Chris Crocker would be embarrassed to wear, buy the photographer a drink and you can have your douchebag face printed in Deccan Chronicle’s Page 3 section. The caption can read, “Pretty Young Thing/Thang sets city nightlife on fire!” if you want to stroke your ego and make a mockery of yourself in the process. But here’s a reminder: about a million people are going to see your ugly mug with a caption that reads ’sexy little thing’ and will spit hot coffee right into the paper, destroying your ugly mug in the process. The awesomeness of how that scenario plays out is overwhelming.
Since I’m easily annoyed by snooty club-type people, I fart in their general direction. Someone light a cigarette in the face of my methane-storm and for once, there really will be some fire in the so-called nightlife that we all like to pretend exists here.
And then, there is the relentless whining of the perennially-single-man: “Dude, I need love! I am lonely as fuck. I feel like I am paddling up a river of sorrow made entirely of my own tears. Boo hoo. Someone please love me, hold me and whisper sweet words of passion in my pink shell-like ears.” Why does this annoy me? I’ll tell you why -
The vast majority of women piss me off and make me want to club baby seals into bloody pulp. I haven’t dated in God-knows-how-long and I don’t miss any of the bullshit and drama. I can see myself as a crazy forty-year-old loner that cracks up watching people slip and roll down a slippery ramp – and that doesn’t scare me the least bit. I am not going to get into shitty relationships just to prove that I am straight. There, I have said it. Half the relationships out there suck – the only reason they exist is because the two sorry spineless idiots feel unloved and insecure without having someone constantly tell them they are all special, wondrous, unique little bunnies. That kind of viral-dependency sucks and I refuse to be a part of it. I have accepted this harsh truth, why can’t they?
I just want to enjoy life. I love my computer. I love my music collection. I love my DVD collection. I keep moving my speakers around my room, trying to get the best acoustic response by minimizing standing waves. I love riding my 133cc 60mph top-speed bike (with no working suspension), potholes be damned. I live pretty far down south but I am tempted to believe Pakistan rains down mortar shells every time I go to sleep – I mean, where the fuck do all these potholes come from?
But you know what – I don’t think I have lost my childhood innocence. Maybe I have set my standards too low and am too accepting of life – but is that really a bad thing? Nobody has ever called me immature but I have been told that I sometimes view the world like an eight-year-old. Is that such a bad thing? My life currently consists of Internet forums, daily trips to 7 Tombs Cafe (Rs. 4/- for a cup of tea), weekend outings with my BFFs and floor-tile-wrecking air-guitar sessions in my bedroom. Borderline Anti-Social Personality Disorder be damned, I resent people (because people are stupid) and I am not apologetic about it.
I love my fucking life and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I am at peace with myself and I refuse to get sucked into the melodrama that plagues your soap-opera of a life. I am just a five-year-old with a punching bag – easily amused.
Filed under: Crap, Life | 4 Comments
Tags: Crap, Life, Rant
Tell me your dreams, right now. No, I don’t want a shitty plot summary of the Sidney Sheldon book but a tear-inducing account of your own dreams. Were the dreams in which you were dying the best you ever had? Did you abandon your dream of becoming a veterinarian to live life working in a convenience store so that one shitty night, the SPD-afflicted leader of an anarchist organization could point a gun to the back of your head in the back of the aforementioned convenience store and lay you down like the toxic waste that you are? The question, Raymond K. Hessel, is what did you want to be when you were a pimply geek with 10W30 pouring out of your pores?
If you are a superfly and total rock-and-roll wild child (like most of my blog’s audience is), through the powers of telepathy, I am going to say it involved all of the following:
1. Striking a hero pose and wailing on a Les Paul in front of 40,000 crazed fans as bras-and-panties shower down upon you from the lingerie heavens. For an encore, you pick up a left-handed Stratocaster (because you have 1337 ambidextrous guitar skills), kick into the five-minute solo from Free Bird and finish the song by leaping off the stage, wielding the Strat as a battle axe that you are going to crack a dragon’s head with.
2. After a long hard day of test-driving prototypes at Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in Maranello, you hit the showers, pick up Scarlett Johannson in your daily-driver 599 GTB for a night on the town which ends with you hitting the showers all over again. Only this time with a lot more sexay.
3. Sharing the the cover of Time Magazine with Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, John Carmack and Bono Jimmy Paige – and you are in the middle! The caption is something really cool like, “God Amidst Mere Mortals” or something equally flattering. Note: you don’t want something like this
4. Having 42 near-fatal speedball-related ODs through the course of your career and still running a halfway-decent campaign for the Presidency of the United States of America, relying on nothing but a trophy wife who would set the White House’s lawn on fire (Dennis & Liz Kucinich), the endorsement of all Hollywood liberals (~99% of Hollywood) and your good looks (that you were smart enough not to fuck up with a crystal meth habit).
5. Getting into a fistfight with Mike Tyson on U Thant Island and beating him senseless into Bolivia…err…Oblivilia…err…Bologna Sammichistan. You follow that fall from grace by giving Bill O’Reilly a makeover – with your fists!
After a wild life of street brawls with B-list celebrities, playing packed arenas and clobbering RIAA executives with your Les Pauls, starring in Academy Award-winning movies, driving 120mph over the speed limit, leading a 100,000-strong mob of anti-war hippies up to the White House and manipulating the NYSE for your personal gain, you would turn 40 and feel too old to live the dream and constantly bump up the high standards that you defined yourself. You would retire to lead a modest sedentary life with your supermodel-harem in the Palm Islands.
But of course, dreams never work out the way you expect them to. The only musical talent you have is playing the alphabet song on your cellphone; your experiments in science never moved past farting over an open flame; the only movie you will ever star in will be a 22-second clip rated ‘poor’ on Youtube for ’supreme fagginess’; the fastest car you will ever drive will be a 60bhp Japanese compact hatchback that gets 30mpg – I know, I am breaking your heart with this unsolicited reality check. You might as well put yourself out of your misery and blow your head clean off with a Desert Eagle Mark XIX .50 Action Express – but wait, the most bad-ass piece of weaponry you are packing is your idiot son’s plastic light-saber. My friend, you have failed at life – epically I might add. Your son is a dunce, your wife’s caloric intake is a number bigger than your zip code, your boss calls you girl names and your Dad has a DNA test taken every year, hoping that the results will someday reveal that you are not his but the milkman’s.
Cue in ‘Winter Overture‘ from the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack, grip reality by its brass balls and measure your worth. Not in terms of what you have gained as a human being – dude, nobody cares about abstract things like wisdom, character, honor or that post-coital child-like look of wonderment in your eyes. Nobody gives a shit unless you step out of a bitchin’ H2-stretch-limo with a 20oz. 24k solid-gold Yale® padlock hanging around your neck. Has your girlfriend dumped you because she realized she had better options (Financial Analyst at JP Morgan) for a boyfriend than a Customer Service Representative for Dell (you) that only showers for special occasions? You see how life’s lessons come back full circle to smack you silly and call you Sally while you cry yourself raw, knee-deep in the ashes of your so-called existence?
But wait – there is still hope. Cue in ‘Together We Will Live Forever’ from The Fountain soundtrack.
So you are an idealist that marches to the beat of his own drummer – a real one, not the numbskull wannabe-commie-anarchists who buy Che Guevara t-shirts from trendy chains that operate 2000 stores nationwide. You have values, you have character, you don’t mock people because their spectacle lenses aren’t manufactured by Zeiss, you are not a slave to advertising and marketing, you are the bastard child of Tyler Durden and Marla Singer, different in every way they are not while understanding the fact that you are part of the same organic decomposing compost heap.
At some point in your life, you had dreams and somewhere deep inside, they still exist. You feel passionate about things; you wax philosophical while talking about quantum mechanics; you have a better chance of getting an erection from touching a Gibson ‘61 SG Reissue than yet another random homely-and-pious-yet-modern-and-chic chick your parents want you to marry; you are the kind of guy that can take off alone on an Enfield Bullet, riding across the country until you have run out of money to fill it up and head back home; most importantly, you define your own rules and you stick it to the man.
If you are not a rebel by 20, you have no heart. If you are not establishment by 30, you have no brains.
Fuck that, don’t fucking live life on a petri dish under a microscope in your neighborhood’s laboratory. Say no to complacence, say no to that 101 Guidelines for Life™ paperback your mom gave you for your 16th birthday, say no to invasive anal cavity searches.
Who am I to comment on what constitutes life and all the stuff it packs within? I’m nobody but in my own little universe where my voice is the only one that rings in my head, I am Staff Sargent Max Fightmaster, the destroyer and liberator of the known world.
The idea for this post hit me while reading this article. I have no idea how that led to this. But I’m cool and totally delirious like that.
Ed: In retrospect, I might as well have titled this post ‘Everything I know about life, I learned from Fight Club’
Filed under: Life, Opinion | 4 Comments
Tags: Life, Opinion, Rant
Three hours ago, I came upon Thotmarket and I have found a new, insanely addictive way to waste my time. This is what they have to say about their site:
ThotMarket.com is a social bookmarking website that provides links to interesting and useful content on the web. The links featured on ThotMarket have all been submitted by our users much like many other websites like Digg.com and Reddit.com. ThotMarket is a little different than those sites, however, in the way that these links are ranked. On this site, users buy and sell shares in these links very much like how investors trade shares of companies on the regular stock market. Links on the site are ranked by their trading price, with the more valuable links ranked higher.
Instead of Diggs, you make virtual money each time people clickthrough. But of course, where’s the fun in using a site for it’s intended purpose? It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day and I have been busy scoring me some booty, YARR! For the past three hours, I have bought and sold thousands of shares in Glock, Enron, Halliburton, Anandtech, Wikipedia and NCIX. I have brought Kazakhstan (Thot Symbol: BORAT) and Pfizer (Thot Symbol: VIAGRA) to the masses and have been busy counting my haul. I have been pumping and dumping stock while constantly refreshing my account page to check out the latest dividends and revenues.
I would write more but I got me a market to manipulate. Check out the website, it’s pretty cool.
Link: Thotmarket.com
Remember: Kazakhstan needs your love <3
Filed under: The Internet | 5 Comments
Tags: Addiction, Thotmarket
Every time my best friend comes over, my life feels like it has meaning all over again. We have history; we grew up together (at least life post-High School) and had an important part to play in shaping each other’s personalities. Archie & Jughead, you can call us – except that we have far better hair. Joey & Chandler, you can call us – except that we are far less overweight. Maverick & Goose, you can call us – except that neither of us is gay.
When you know someone for so long, you start to mirror each other in a very freaky way. You know the jokes that are going to come out of their mouth a nanosecond before they do – but unlike bad comedies, the all-important LULZ are never compromised. There are no uncomfortable silences and no awkward moments where someone takes offense. You can say the words ‘My Dad is a jackass’ in front of a good friend without a second thought. A true best friend is someone who doesn’t mind you calling their dad an asshole.
Every time we hang out, we talk about the good old days of shits and giggles, the easy chicks, the prude chicks who wouldn’t even give us a second glance; the fears, anxieties, depression and rejection. The failed attempts at seduction and the few times we scored big… we know everything about each other and the TotalAwesomeCoolness™ packed within our memories. But I am losing my friend – to a woman.
My best friend is head-over-heels, bat-out-of-hell, Beyonce-crazy-about-Jay-Z in love with this chick. He is always on the phone with her, talking about her day and the cute little details of her recent bi-monthly picnic with all 67 members of her thick-as-thieves extended family. He rides his bike through a thunderstorm to get to her, he always has the dial on his Charm-and-Wit Generator turned to 11 and constantly pines, longs and nurses an aching hard-on for her. It gets annoying at times but I don’t let it bother me because it had been a long time coming. But there’s a catch – they both pretend to be friends.
At this point, you are shaking your head in disbelief and probably muttering ‘What the holy fuck?’ under your breath. He’s in love with her, she’s in love with him – it’s so freaking clear that even Captain Obvious™ can’t believe his damn eyes. Captain Obvious™ is flying around in this thrift-shop cape, wondering if there was ever a moment better suited for his finely-tuned superpowers. I can hear him yell into a megaphone two inches away from their ears, “Dude, you love her and she has already named all 42 babies she wants to make with you. Cut this bullshit out, capice? For the love of God and all that’s holy, you are both fast approaching your mid-twenties and this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes angels cry and Harley Davidsons break down on deserted highways. Do you want to write the epitaph of the greatest motorcycle maker ever? Do you want the definition of the word ‘biker’ to mean a 17-year-old wannabe-yuppie Japanese kid with a 4.0 GPA on a 65MPG Honda? No, you idiot. Bring on the lovin’ and save Harley Davidson!”
I have tried to formulate theories on why grown ups love to kid themselves but I always give up. People in love don’t make sense. Hell, people in general don’t make a lot of sense a lot of the times. When I review every relationship I’ve been, I laugh and cry at the same time. I laugh because they were right out of Urban Males Confess to Dating the Who’s Who of Human Trash; I cry because they were also featured in Urban Males Confess to Dating the Who’s Who of Human Trash and Actually Believing they were in Love at the Time.
I have been in what I thought was love a few times. The one that I like to talk about most, The Deranged Foxymophandlemama, was a piece of work. She knew nothing of politics, the arts, science, humor, life, etiquette or fun. Surprisingly, our Ross-and-Rachel relationship lasted way too long for our own good. Looking back, I realize how fucking desperate and retarded I must have been but thanks to recent events, I constitute that series of bad decisions and indecisions (while I was torch-bearer of the confederacy of dunces) to global warming, neuro-toxins in my Chinese-manufactured sunglasses and the absurdity of finding love when I was truly destined to be a Jedi.
Seriously, what was I thinking? The only thing China is good at making is Chinese people. Taught me well Yoda, you have.
I am no expert in love because I tend to go for all the wrong women. So far, I have found my heart pounding a little harder for the following:
- A girl who got married while I was still trying to figure out what a clitoris was.
- A girl who liked to fry my brains so she could enjoy it with a little Chianti.
- A girl who fell in love with me but struggled to dump both her DoA boyfriend and her fiance. Party of four, Yoda likes not.
- A girl who had a Ross-and-Rachel relationship of her own.
The list contains the main women in my past half-life and doesn’t include the other gems, such as the girl who had the distinct honor of being the world’s most sinfully boring person. Ever. She shall remain so for all of eternity – or at least until the next Ice Age. But every one of these fine (or not) women taught me a few things: namely telltale signs that tell you to back your truck up and never again be within 5 miles of someone like them. But all of these details are largely unnecessary because they have nothing to do with my best friend.
My best friend has found an awesome woman and truth be told, that awesome woman has found an awesome man in my awesome best friend. Then why for the love of the awesomeness that is Bill Gates do they pretend to be buddies? Why is my friend content with being her emotional tampon? Why is she content with being in a relationship that is pristine, genuine and not under pressure to be slotted in a predetermined societal class?
Screw all of that. You like someone, go for it. You love someone, think twice before you make that proclamation. You hate your significant other? Jump ship, throw out your SIM, delete them from Facebook and drive north-west for 42 miles. If you see Baxter, call Ron and bark twice if you are in Milwaukee.
A true friend is a rare thing, much the same as true love. The thought of finding a woman that you can love as much as your best friend makes my head spin with glee. For instance, I love Microsoft Corp. and someday, I hope to feel the same way about a woman. This brings me to a startling revelation of what I want in a woman:
Mandatory:
- I should feel as strongly about her as I do about Microsoft Corp.
- Must not have changed genders.
- Must look like a young Courteney Cox. (Friends Season One -> /drool)
- Do all those cute things Natalie Portman does in Garden State.
- Should be nothing like Alicia Silverstone’s character in Clueless.
- Must not consider herself to be a tortured artist.
Optional:
- Must think I would be perfect for any of Zach Braff’s acting roles
- Must think I can sing like Chris Cornell
- Must think that Good Will Hunting’s screenplay could have easily be written by me
- Must never question the Catwoman outfit I have in my closet – unless she intends on trying it on sometime.
- Should realize that nothing I care to put down in a list is optional, superfluous, filler junk.
By now, you all realize that I’m a shallow man forever doomed to be in loveless relationships; one who will ultimately take to drink and indulge in anorexic supermodels dimmer than Miss South Carolina. My advise to those of you that actually have a shot at something real – don’t be afraid to fucking live a little.
After-thoughts: Once again, I have managed to take a post vastly off-topic and turn it into a half-assed commentary all about me and my 2AM meanderings from the previous night while I clenched and struggled on the john. I do so, because I am lost, troubled and lonely. If you want to put me out of my misery with some lovin’, e-mail me with four non-Photoshopped pics – mugshot, front, side and back. Don’t put the words ‘hot/nude/naked/sexy/dirty/kinky’ etc. in the Subject field because my spam filter doesn’t like those.
/Checks e-mail alert from MySpace… Yhelothar lonelydirtykinkybabyprincessvirgin18!
Kthxbye.
Filed under: Life, Opinion | 6 Comments
Tags: Friends, Love
Chak De India [Review]
The great wisdom of movie-buffs everywhere has this to say: you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Historically, most sports movies are the same. You have the following ingredients:
- Fallen Hero: a man who was once at the top of his game, inches away from attaining immortality. A man whose name would go down in the annals of sport. A man whose name would be on millions of T-shirts, in EA Sports video games and perhaps a major motion picture based on his life. But shit hits the ceiling fan and he is lost and forgotten. This can be a career-ending injury, disease, major scandal, jail sentence for running a pitbull-fighting league etc.
- Several years later, a Rising Star has the potential to go down in history as one of the greats of the sport. But lack of discipline and inability to realize their full potential stand in the way. Families, friends, the school principal, bureaucracy – everybody stands in the way of success.
- The Fallen Hero (usually against their will) gets an opportunity to work with the Rising Star, exorcise their demons and lead them on to glory, treading over skulls & crossbones with nothing but blood, sweat and tears.
- Tensions rise – racism, corruption, sexism etc. rage rampant and it appears nothing short of Divine Intervention can save the Rising Star against a formidable enemy. The lead-up to the Big Game sees things spiral out of control as the evil world’s animosity and inner demons start to wreak havoc on the Rising Star’s mind. But the Fallen Hero reminds them that faltering at the altar of immortality is not an option.
- Tonight: The Big Game!
- …….
- Hurray! K.O! Touchdown! Goal! Sixer! Checkered Flag! Bingo! Gin! Yahtzee! OMGWTFBBQ! Coke-Nike-Ford Deal! Glory becomes me! Bom-ba-ye Ali!
The formula for a sports-movie is an exact science by now. It has been done before and it will be done again. The important part is: can you add your own spin to a story that has been done before? Can you write a hundred different screenplays that take the same basic story and make it unique?
In the case of Chak De! India (Written by Jaideep Sahni and Directed by Shimit Amin), the short answer is: yes. This is a film where the screenplay shines and surpasses the direction. The direction is fine and serves the purpose (and avoids any obvious Jana-Gana-Mana moments) but the bulk of the movie rests on Sahni’s characters – the strongest of which is Kabir Khan (Shahrukh Khan giving a big middle-finger to the Gillette Corporation). Based on a true story that was a real-life manifestation of a reel-drama, patriotism is the driving force to beat the devil of sexism.
The story isn’t unique, the characters are fairly stock and the ending is a given. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Is it one of Shah Rukh Khan’s better performances? Yes. Do you feel tense? Not really because you know the movie is about triumph of the underdog. But do you root for the team? Hell yeah!
My only complaint against this almost-flawless movie is that hockey isn’t one of my favorite sports and doesn’t really give you much room for hero moments like a good boxing or American Football movie does. Pardon me, hockey fans, but a hockey penalty shootout doesn’t quite have the tension of a Soccer penalty shootout (England-Portugal Euro 2004 – oh the memories!).
Technically, character development isn’t as strong as in something like Lagaan but it is also an hour shorter so I am grateful for that. Leave the strong character development for boxing movies – there are sixteen players on this team and I don’t need to know every one of them!
Shah Rukh’s character has a highly-volatile subplot (I bet fallen Former Indian Cricket Captain Mohammed Azharuddin shed a tear in this movie) but the treatment could have been a little better – do neighborhoods really turn against their biggest hero? I do appreciate the fine attention to detail: it felt a little strange to see the Captain of the Indian Hockey Team live in a very modest house in a very modest neighborhood. To paraphrase Kabir Khan, there’s nothing wrong with having a desire to play Cricket (or politics) but Hockey…? Well, you get the idea. The dude lived in a dump and it made me sad.
I am not here to offer an elitist deconstruction of the film’s screenplay, direction and acting. The girls do their part – particularly the prominently featured Shilpa Shukla (Bindia ‘Firebrand Bully’ Naik), Chitrashi Rawat (Koumal ‘Pint-Sized-Fast-Mouthed’ Chautwal), Tanya Abrol (Balbir ‘Reggie Ray’ Kaur) and Sagarika Ghatge (Preeti ‘Pretty in Pink’ Sabarwal) - and also look their part. Shahrukh Khan can deliver a monologue like no other. In an ocean of generic love stories shot in Europe, featuring blockbuster Himesh Reshammiya soundtracks, plots borrowed from a Rom-Com manual and Manish Malhotra’s haute couture, this film stands out.
The last time I was in theaters was the ludicrous Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (also produced by Yash Raj Films). It is with great caution that I buy movie tickets these days and this is a movie I can wholeheartedly recommend. It is not as emotional as Remember the Titans, Miracle or Million Dollar Baby (or the Big Kahuna that is Jerry Maguire) but it does make you feel good.
Rating: Four Jock-Straps…err…Sports-Bras out of Five.
Filed under: Movies, Review | 3 Comments
Tags: Bollywood
The people running this country – or at least desperately trying to gain power so that they can run this country – are an awesome bunch of contradictory specimens. Now take the case of Bangladeshi Writer Taslima Nasreen’s August 9th visit to Hyderabad.
Who is Taslima Nasreen?
I recently finished reading Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion and that dude is an awesome writer. You don’t have to agree with his viewpoint to appreciate the man’s ability in getting his point across and rebuking his detractors. I believe every one should read that book – theist or atheist – and try to understand the problem of religious fanaticism and how it is affecting world politics and curbing advances in science.
By the way, Richard Dawkins is alive and kicking.
Then, there is this stupid-as-fuck kid called Dylan Avery who made a ‘documentary’ called Loose Change that spouts a conspiracy theory. Or in his words, a shocking revelation of mythical proportions. What is this shocking revelation? That the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States were carried out by the Bush family, Larry Silverstein, Dick Cheney, Israel, Santa Claus, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Adolf Hitler. Sure, like I am going to believe some shitty kid’s spooky documentary over the NIST, Popular Mechanics and all 11ty billion of my brain cells. But you know what the important part is?
Dylan Avery is still alive and kicking – and yes, he is still a fucktard. He might be a douchebag but he is still alive and nobody has bothered killing him yet.
And then, let’s take Dan Brown, the super-secret pagan demigod of Earth. He wrote a moderately-decent book where he said Christianity is a giant turd-muffin, Jesus liked to get it on with the ladies and that the Catholic Church has always been comprised of misogynist, murderous, intolerant psychopaths (well, the last part is is kinda true). He sold around 61 million copies in 44 languages and is thought to be the 14th best-selling book of all time. The dude pissed off one-third of the world’s population – and guess what?
Dan Brown is still alive & likely injecting coke into the tip of his cock. How rad is that?
Now let’s consider the people that claim to be working for the common man. The guys who vote on bills, make laws and all that fancy legal-political stuff. Consider the MIM – the Majlis-Ittehadul-Muslimeen. These guys claim to be working for the benefit of Muslim people. Sure, they took over forty-lakh rupees from my friend for a medical seat (Deccan Medical College) but that’s okay, I will pretend to believe you actually are working for the community. Rumor has it that the rate has now jumped up to sixty lakh rupees this year – but fine, if idiots want to pay that kind of money, let them. What bugs me is that party head Asaduddin Owaisi studied law at the University of London. The Owaisi family run an engineering & a medical institution in this city. Cool – but these guys also believe people that disagree with their opinion should be killed, or at least beaten up and issued fatwas against.
“You showed on TV what happened at the last. But you did not show what happened in the beginning. My party had gone there first and asked Taslima Nasreen to withdraw her work and take back all her opinions, which had hurt the Muslims. But instead of that she started expressing those more strongly. She spoke derogatory things about Islam and Prophet Mohammad,” said Akbaruddin Owaisi. [Source]
Now back the fucking train up? Some attention-whore wrote a shitty book that you likely never read – and that is reason enough for you to go and make an absolute mockery of yourself? Your election speeches drone on and on about how you aim to improve the quality of life for the common man – and the best way you could think of to gain some media spotlight was physically attacking a woman? WHAT THE FUCK MATE! What difference does it make when a Salman Rushdie or a Taslima Nasreen writes a book about a religion they don’t respect or give a damn about? Why the hell should one billion Muslims give a damn about their writings? Half the world already think Muslims are the world’s most backward, intolerant, racist and violent people in the world – way to go for reinforcing that stereotype. You are sending the world the message that Muslims like to go apeshit crazy and murderous every time someone says something negative about their religion. Yeah right – like you must have never passed a comment on a Bonalu or Ganpatti-procession in your entire life. Yeah, let’s keep pretending you are the only man in the whole world who has nothing negative to say about other religions.
No religion is perfect – every major religion in this world has enough room for interpretation for corrupt and evil men to derive their own meaning and seek justification for their crimes against humanity. All Muslims are not terrorists but an awful lot of terrorists seem to be Muslims these days. Islam doesn’t condone any kind of oppression but strict Islamic societies are the number one offenders of Human Rights. Is it a mere coincidence? Should I be decapitated and my head mounted on a flag pole for pondering this aloud? Is this the freedom that my country’s constitution grants me? Is this a freedom that the constitution grants you?
This actually makes me glad my Dad’s hard-earned money didn’t go to Deccan College of Engineering but rather the other big engineering college in Hyderabad…the one that kinda sounds like Mary Jane and is something that gives Deccan’s football team nightmares – but I digress.
You know what I absolutely love about the United States of America? The fact that guys like Trey Parker and Matt Stone can bastardize the holiest of holy things in South Park. The fact that Family Guy can mock Christianity as much as they desire.
The fact that Kevin Smith can make a movie like Dogma. More importantly, the fact that all these guys are alive and not being man-handled by torch-bearers of God Inc. This is a free country. This is India – not China. Here, every person has a right to write whatever book they want, make whatever movie they want, paint or sculpt nude women and not be restricted from free thought. What the MIM did is no different from Shiv Sainiks ransacking Hallmark outlets because a Valentine’s Day greeting card will destroy thousands of years of Indian Culture.
What is Indian Culture? From the looks of it, it is all about restricting free thought and ostracizing women, homosexuals, the poor, the low ‘castes’, minorities etc. Vote for these morons and look forward to a nation not unlike an Orwellian dystopia where the Thought Police is out to get you.
I am a 22-year-old Muslim male. I don’t give a shit whether you are straight, gay or bisexual. I don’t give a shit about your religion. I don’t give a shit about your skin color. I don’t give a shit whether you are a man or a woman. All I ask is that you respect free thought and not get your panties in a bunch over stupid shit like movies, music videos and books. I believe in Allah and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) – I believe every human being can be judged by Allah alone. I don’t give a damn if you think Muslims tend to be a little extra violent compared to other people – look at the news, there is enough evidence to support that theory. If someone writes a book that demeans the word of Allah, write your own book or shoot a documentary that offers a point-by-point rebuttal. But no – that takes sense, brains and a desire to actually connect with people on an intellectual and civilized plateau.
That is too much to ask of political parties with religious affiliations. Remember to thank these people when the country goes straight down the toilet and a communal riot breaks out every quarter. Lawmakers and lawyers – what is the difference? They all believe in taking a big dump on the Constitution and wiping their assholes with your tax money.
God damn fear and hate mongerers. How about addressing things that matter? Healthcare, sanitation, education, labor rights, dowry harassment, poor roads, corruption in the Municipal Corporation and Law Enforcement? How about addressing real issues and leaving shitty authors alone?
Filed under: Opinion, Religion | Leave a Comment
Tags: Freedom of Speech, Rant, Taslima Nasreen
I was born & raised a Muslim in a strict Islamic society – the wonders of the barren desertland that is Saudi Arabia. As far back as I can remember, I was always taught about the Oneness of God, his Prophets, his Angels, the Book, The Day of Judgment and of course, Heaven & Hell. And I’m glad because I do think it makes me a better person.
Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting that religious upbringing alone can make somebody a better person. Also, I’m not implying that Muslims are superior to Hindus/Christians/Jews/Buddhists/Atheists/Agnostics/Deists/Pastafarians. You are free to have your own beliefs but it’s hard for me to pretend that your God (or lack of) had anything to do with the creation of this Multiverse. The bottomline is I stand a far higher chance of actually making it to Heaven than all you infidels. Of course, I do respect you all and everything you have contributed to the world since its very inception. After all, we are all God’s equal creations and we all have our unique gifts. God gave the Jews great aptitude for business. He gave Christians…uh, I am drawing a blank. He gave Hindus enough religious holidays to spend half the year on sabbath. And most importantly, he gave Muslims general bad-assitude (not to be confused with the terror faggots*) that is only rivaled by Russian Law Enforcement. I’m not going to deny the sheer awesomeness of Darwin, Einstein, Aryabhatta and Bill Gates but I bet if they tried to punch Saladin in the jaw, his beard would cause all their hands to crack into powdery coke-like dust. As far as Bad Asses go, you just can’t beat Muslims and I am oddly proud of that. If asked, even hardcore badass General George Patton Jr. would admit that the best he could get out of a swordfight with Saladin would be a memorable quote on death – and that is again not a bad thing because that dude could easily come up with better dying words than ‘Rosebud’.
Back on-topic, I remember back in the Fifth Grade – when most of us had first started fasting during the month of Ramadan – we would all compete with one another for the title of the Holiest Bad Ass in Class. Who had the guts to fast the whole month and not waste any time with the I-am-experimenting-by-fasting-alternate-days nonsense? Who had memorized the most passages from the Quran? Who had encyclopedic knowledge of 6-7th Century Arabia? It was an awesome time of spiritual awakening and it was the first time my non-Muslim classmates asked me about my faith. We shared revealing tidbits of our faiths. For instance, I was shocked to learn that Santa Claus is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible and he was just a cultural phenomenon.
Then, Sixth Grade came and half the class had learned how to pick their Dad’s $10 safes and the steady influx of BDSM & Tantric porn introduced the whole Sixth Grade to the wonders of multiple orgasms, 42DD breasts and 10-inch penises. Sex/porn was the topic of discussion 90% of the time and it felt awkward to discuss religion or spirituality during those times of raging hormones.
11-year-old Horny Hornerson: Dude, I am so horny, I could totally fuck all our teachers and make them scream my name.
11-year-old Morally Righteous Wingman: But dude, you would be committing fornication. Hell, even lustful thoughts about teachers old enough to be our mothers is frowned upon. Now rinse your mouth with soap.
11-year-old Horny Hornerson: Hey, shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. You suck. Faggy Fagzillacunt.
Every time someone suggested that masturbation might be a sin, someone would fart real loud so that the warning was lost in methane expulsion. By the time we made it to the Seventh Grade, every class of 30 students in my all-boys school had around 5 active homosexuals and this brought religion back into the mainstream. Everyone started looking for their religion manuals, “OMG, these faggots are all going to hell,” and self-defense training was on everyone’s mind.
Basically, if you were one of the shortest & skinniest kids in class, the probability of being dry-humped by a chubby PoS – or even worse, having your pants pulled down and having a penis rubbed against your ass – started to approach one. It was during this phase that I started developing the ‘mentally unstable’ personality as a warning sign – you try to fuck with me and I will jab this fountain pen right through your eyeball, capice? It was the only way to save yourself from public humiliation and it always worked. There was this kid in class who actually did flip out and jab a pen through a guy’s palm – after that, the molestation rates took a nosedive.
The above is totally off-topic and I only added it to give you a grief glimpse of life in an all-boys school. It’s horrible – don’t ever put your kids through it!
After the Eighth Grade, I returned to India in 1998 and life was pretty normal until a couple of fucktards thought it would be really awesome to hijack four commercial airliners , crash them into a couple of buildings and kill a few thousand people in the name of Allah. After that, shit hit the ceiling fan and I slowly started to realize what hypocrites some people are.
I don’t particularly care for Dawkin’s views on God but the general overview I got through a quick flip-through of The God Delusion is that the vast majority of religious people are some of the world’s most insensitive, uncaring, intolerant and closed-minded people on the face of this Earth. And I agree with that. It seems the stronger someone’s belief in God (the Inquisitions? 9/11?), the more likely they are to hate those who disagree with them and go around crucifying heretics and infidels. Right after 9/11, Imams in some mosques started praising the ‘freedom fighters’ in their Friday sermons. Some of them did it outright, some of them worded it with a little more care. Depending on what section of town you were in, it wasn’t uncommon to hear something on the lines of, “It is unfortunate that all these innocent people died but you can’t deny that American foreign policy is to blame. The blood of the innocent children of Palestine…”
Yeah right motherfucker – it’s a mosque and you need to preach doctrine, not your shitty political views. You are telling people that it’s okay to support global terror outfits because the victims brought it upon themselves? You are not a journalist and you have no business misguiding people – particularly those who can’t even read newspapers, afford televisions or even radios. It is mighty irresponsible of you to further your misguided agenda in a place of worship where people seek love & redemption, not vengeance. Even in Europe, it sickens me that the only Muslims who make headlines are the terrorist-apologist Imams and the angry mobs of protesters they attract.
The problem is that even more so than other religions, Muslims like to compete with their neighbors when it comes ‘being holy & pious’. It’s not just about who has the bigger Ganesh idol or the bigger Diwali fireworks show – Apostasy is a grave sin in Islam and Muslims fear that if they don’t sound Muslim-enough, their family, friends, neighbors and co-workers will lose respect for them and avoid them because they are abandoning Islamic ideals and merging with the infidels. I find it strange because most of my distant relatives that start and end every conversation with Allahu Akbar have no problem with demanding dowry, harassing their daughters-in-law, fighting to death with their siblings for every last penny they can muster from their collective inheritance etc. It’s more important to sound pious than to actually be pious – how cool is that? /Takes notes
The problem is that people who are most divergent from Islamic practices are the first one to raise a hue & cry over world issues.
‘Let’s kill the Jews, they are trouble mongers.’
‘It’s good, a couple of bomb blasts should awaken those terrorizing infidels.’
I am by no means a big fan of American Foreign Policy. Check this out from the Wiki article on Bowling for Columbine.
The following is an exact transcript of the onscreen text in the Wonderful World segment:
- 1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator.
- 1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed.
- 1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.
- 1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia.
- September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile. Democratically-elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered.
- 1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.
- 1980s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion.
- 1981: Reagan administration trains and funds “contras.” 30,000 Nicaraguans die.
- 1982: U.S. provides billions of dollars in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
- 1983: The White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.
- 1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties.
- 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.
- 1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.
- 1998: Clinton bombs “weapons factory” in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin.
- 1991 to present: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
- 2000-2001: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in “aid.”
- Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.
Now I don’t use this as justification for the Al-Qaeda’s actions. I am just an ordinary guy (with extraordinary headbanging and air-guitar skills) who has simple goals in life: become an independent film-maker, buy a quad-core CPU, rent a lot of DVDs and rip them all to my two terabyte RAID-5 array. While I have currently become somewhat of a recluse, I am by nature a social person and I don’t want to be judged by my religion/skin color/nationality/fashion-sense/unfortunate-hair. I am an entertainer, a motivational speaker and I approach life like a free bird. I don’t care who you are – as long as you aren’t a dumbass. Swing by, bring a gallon of Pepsi and a pack of cigarettes and I will entertain you with amusing anecdotes and borrowed jokes. If you are an attractive female, I will be gentlemanly and most definitely not spike your drink with illegal substances. It’s not that the thought never crossed my mind – but I choose to suppress the urge. I have had some really drunk chicks passed out in a heap on my bed and I never did anything to outrage their modesty in their vulnerable state – and it had nothing to do with them being ugly.
Live life and treat people for what they are – bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species. Nothing makes Person A any more special than Person B – except awesome sexiness/intellect/both. What separates us from other living creatures is a highly developed brain capable of logical reasoning, language, introspection, mastering cunnilingus, social interaction, appreciating fellatio, spouting ridiculous conspiracy theories and an ability to appreciate art, beauty, aesthetics and Samoan-dude-on-White-girl H.264 1080p 5.1Ch porn. Stop pretending that you have the answers to Life, the Universe & Everything or that your Faith eats All Other Infidel Religions™ for breakfast.
Learn to be a human being. Embarrass hate-and-fear-mongerers with whoopie-cushions. Hang out with your friendly neighborhood atheist – the people that we are first to shun. I have learned that apart from the obligatory general assholes that populate every possible human subculture, atheists can be (and a lot of them are) cool, scientific, logical, friendly, compassionate, slutty and generally open to unusual sexual fetishes – and that is the sweetest thing. Praise the Lord.
*I have got nothing against Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender people but faggot is an awesome word – it even rhymes with Bob Saget – and that is why I use it. My brother, the awesome Zeeshan Khan once said to me, “I don’t care if you fuck a shemale as long as you cum. Getting off is important and all that matters to me is that you are getting some.”
That is truly a most excellent thought and it can only come from the mind of a man who has achieved Zen-like status – and it is something we should all aspire to achieve some day.
Filed under: Life, Opinion, Religion | 4 Comments
Tags: Intolerance, Religion
So it’s been a slow month…
My personal health is all over the place and I can’t even think straight, let alone write something of value. And yeah, I am mildy depressed that Amazing Ben will be deleting all his best articles – essentially about his balls – because he now has a respectable job and all that shitza. I have no words of wisdom to share with you so I will just repost crap from The Superficial.
Firstly, I have an honest question: how many times am I going to see Paris Hilton’s breasts in my lifespan? The correct answer is: more often than I shave. Tara Reid claims the titles for both the world’s ugliest breasts AND midriff. Britney Spear’s ass makes news (again, and again, some midriff here, something about her slapping her mom and generally going apeshit etc) and also cracks telephoto lenses everywhere. I won’t even bother posting links of Lindsay Lohan’s breasts popping out (again), trying to score ecstasy (again), walking away from her latest drunken offense (again), getting drunk with her classic ‘I’m going to shit some bricks and drink some more’ expression (again), flashing her vagina (again)…it’s madness, I tell you. I try to update myself on the latest in celebrity ‘news’ and nine times out of ten, it has to be about:
- Britney Spear’s ass/breasts/vagina. Occasionally, it will be about her doing something batshit crazy – like marrying K-Fed, shaving her head, flashing her vagina or losing her microphone in there.
- Lindsay Lohan’s ass/breasts/vagina. Occasionally, there will be some news about her getting drunk for shits & giggles and it’s almost always served with a side dish of more breasts/vagina flashing.
- Paris Hilton’s ass/breasts/vagina. This just in – everybody has seen it and yes, it can cause heterosexual men in their late teens to notice a drop in their libido. Prolonged exposure to Paris Hilton’s vagina can also cause Erectile Dysfunction. Listening to her CD will drive you Tom Cruise-insane. Which reminds me,
- You don’t have to read it in the news but you can rest assured that every Monday morning, a 5-day-long timer starts rolling and you just know that Tom Cruise will say/do something totally apeshit crazy.
- Angelina Jolie adopts yet another baby and looks hot while doing it. At her side, you will find Brad Pitt looking no hotter than the hottest pizza delivery guy you’ve ever met. Seriously, why is Brad the only formerly-hot Hollywood megastar who isn’t getting better with age?
Which reminds me: what the hell is wrong with supposedly A-list celebrities? These people aren’t exactly role-models and there is absolutely nothing I desire to learn from them. None of them inspire me, most of them outright disgust me and most of them are the kind of Liberals that give Liberals a bad name – the kind that would cause a nationwide suicide if they had their way implementing National Policy. Are Scientologists using some kind of nanotubes to suck the brains out of every person in Hollywood? I am tempted to post about two-hundred links of the who’s who of Hollywood doing stuff that will make you want to drill bolts into your eyes.
The only cool thing I could find in the past week was this bit on Jon Lovitz beating the living shit out of that little shit Andy Dick. Yeah, that was cool – unfortunately, I still haven’t found a video of that and there most likely never will.
Thank you for putting up with this lame post. Now to annoy you all, I will post the latest entry from Courtney Love’s MySpace blog. Just because I love you guys so much.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
HOPE TO SEE YOU AT THE ROXY AND ONE MORE THING IM AWARE AS I EXPLAIN BELOW THAT NYC WAS AN HOUR LATE , NO TMY ISSUE, I COULDVE USED AN EXTRA 15 MINUUTES BUT WOPUL;DVGE LIVED WOUT IT I THINK TH EPUBCHING BLODDY PEOPLE FRENZY ENERGY OF NYC MADE IT AN HOUR. IN LA WHEN THE TIME IS REVELAED AND IM GUESSING HERE 10 MAX ITS 10. ILLBLOG FOR SURE THE TIME, IVE LEARNE DTHATHE HARD WAY AND IF YOU ARENT PREPED TO WATCH THE WHOLE SET NO MATTER WHO YOUARE AND ARENT THERE ON TIME IVE GOTA SAY TOUGH, THESE SHOWS ARE ABOUT US TOO AND WE NEED YOU THERE ON TIME FOR THE WHOLE CONTEXT. |
ecstaticFiled under: Crap | Leave a Comment
Tags: Celebrities, Crap, Rant
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