And here are a couple of articles to go with the image
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article5348715.ece
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/stephen-brenkley-a-sporting-spectacle-to-savour-and-an-inspiration-for-mumbai-1128240.html
From Moderately Confused (31/10/08)
They’ve stopped talking about the big bang experiment. Till yesterday we were pretty much flooded with stories about the CERN Scientists attempting to recreate the big bang just so that they could (in layman’s terms) “see what happens”. They received death threats. I was not surprised. Authorities suspect the threats originated from religious groups, depressed individuals, Mothers Against Accelerated Apocalypse (MAAA), the producers of Heroes, masked vigilantes and the average do-gooder… but I know better.
They originated from the offices of DC Comics.
After decades of dealing with the handiwork of Krona and the Anti-Monitor who put infinite earths into a crisis as a result of an attempt to recreate the big bang , a time-punching Superboy Prime trying to undo their work by replicating that effect and the occasional parallax infected Hal Jordan, the staff at DC came to two mind-numbing conclusions.
Somewhere in a rift between time and space All-Star Superman, Superman:Birthright, The Man of Steel, Superman: Red Son, Superman for All Seasons and The Man of Tomorrow are laughing out loud. “Take away our past as Superboy Earth 3 and our future as Superman of Earth-2, will you…. there you go… Alan Moore never wrote for DC! Hehahahahahahha!”
Then there’s guys like me who sensed opportunity. The world wasn’t going to end… only reality as we know it would change. I’d like to see a changed reality where my payslip has had an extra zero in it for the past 3 years. I could hound the firm for arrears and quit once I get it. People could finally rid themselves of embarrassing events that took place in the past. My experiment with an eyeliner moustache – never happened. Losing part of my luggage at a railway station in Bharuch – nope, I wasn’t there. My mother did not have the fright of her life and she was not with me on the “Super-Trooper”. My uncle’s kitchen never had swing doors, so the Dal incident involving my aunt didn’t take place either. Everyone is at peace with their past… or gets a shot at being Guy Pearce.
Anyway, the scientists flipped their big switch and nothing’s happened. Yet. Apparently, the small particles inside the Large Hadron Collider are picking up speed and we can expect something around mid-October. Sure, this means my annual appraisal may be rendered meaningless… but I figure there is still time for our Government and the media to get together and retcon, 1984 style, a bunch of things in national interest. For instance:
The state of the nation
The current state of the nation is largely on account of the inability of parliament to select a governance contractor. Extremely dissatisfied with the performance of the British (whom we had to kick out) we’ve been forced to govern ourselves since 1947. The Left keeps recommending the Chinese but since they were the ones who let the British into Bengal in 1757, no one’s listening to them. The Americans have expressed interest, the British are suing for unpaid dues and we’re suing them for theft, extortion, fraud, insider trading, graft (restaurant at Colaba named Churchill – coincidence?) and unpaid docking charges recoverable from the East India Company. Just when Parliament was about to hand over all forms of governance to Reliance Industries, the two Ambani brothers had a fallout.
Economy
We are rich… or we will be once our lawsuit with Britain is settled. After Indian mathematicians invented the Zero, they patented it.
Sports
During India’s second innings of the first test against Pakistan at Chennai in 1999, Sachin Tendulkar hits three consecutive sixes to get the 17 runs required to win the test. No one has called Sachin a choker ever since.
The world cup final in 2003 was a close finish. Though we still lost to Australia, Ricky Ponting scored a duck.
Milkha Singh and PT Usha came up with late bursts of speed in the dying moments of the race to finish third at their events in the Olympics. That increases our medals tally in the Olympics by two.
Cinema
Bollywood did not turn out any mainstream films between 1985 to 1995. All Films shot and released during that period were either experimental art-house movies or mass market made-for-video movies. The censor board was disbanded in 1986 after employees complained about the hazardous work conditions and the government realized that the films couldn’t get any worse. Former censor board employees now monitor civic cleanliness.
History
China has no claim to Arunachal Pradesh. The last time they tried to strike a claim we chucked them out. That got them so pissed they nearly stopped the Nuclear Deal with the US from going through.
I could go on but the real world version of me has to get back to work where he (till mid-October at least) has to face the everyday challenges of status reports and deadlines. Let me know how your retcon works out. Maybe you’ll end up as a contributor on this page.
This review of “Rock On!!” was on the online edition of the Hindustan Times. Its one of those rare(?) occasions where the movie review is a hell of a lot worse than the movie.The first few lines reproduced below for your benefit.
You can get satisfaction
Come, go off your rockers. Vibe to the Zeppelinish scene, ignite a purple haze, bang a thousand tin cans, heaven’s knocking at your door. Here’s a ‘today’ movie with slay-the-guitar riffs. And band member tiffs.
The cool news is that the Abhishek Kapoor-directed Rock On!! (did a numerologist insist on the two exclamation marks?) is hard candy. You love it, especially in the pre-intermission segment. And the uncool news is that you do have some massive reservations. It’s about as much pure rock as a woolen sock.
Who’s the reviewer? – Khalid Mohammed. But I suppose you figured that out already.
It gets worse. We’ve heard the songs on the radio. We know that the soundtrack is anything but rock. A decent reviewer could be serious and say “The soundtrack has an electric guitar, but lacks the punch of a good rock song and settles on being forgettable pop at best” … but Khaled has to come up with something like
And innagadda-da-vida can you call the Ehsaan-Shankar-Loy music ‘rock’? Only by pumping up the volume madly or comparing it to a wedding band’s. And the lyrics, man! Javed Akhtar, also glimpsed in a photo-frame, writes about Sinbad the sailor, laundry bills..taash se heart ka king….chandni ka ring.. na na na na. Na na is right.
Sad but true – I’ve read worse from him. God knows why the Pros want to sound like us amateurs.
Sure, I could come up with something witty … but that would dilute the seriousness of the article below. Lets just say that stuff like this makes a complimentary subscription to a tabloid worthwhile.
Mumbai Mirror – Sunday August 3, 2008
For those who came in late – Click here
Due to the rush of applications for the post, civic body now says candidates should have a score of more than 50 per cent in HSC
GEETA DESAI
The rush of applications for the post of rat killers has forced the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to raise the educational requirements of candidates. They should have scored more than 50 per cent in the HSC examinations. At present, BMC has 13 night rat killers but it is planning to hire 31 of them for now. A proposal for hiring 95 more rat killers is yet to be taken. An officer of the Insecticide Department of BMC said the move was to get good rat killers and avoid applications of SSC qualified candidates.
THE ‘WALK-IN INTERVIEW’
A joke is currently doing the rounds even among the BMC staff for the post of a night rat killer. The civic body plans to conduct a ‘walk-in interview’ for candidates.
The marksheets of the candidates will be checked as they enter the interview hall. But instead of an interview, they will then be taken to a site where their skills in killing rats will be put to the test.
They will be asked to kill rats and the entire event will be recorded on video.
A labourer on condition of anonymity said, “Killing rats requires a lot of alertness and since it has to be done at night, it requires extra attention. Also, there are times when rats are not visible throughout the night. Good academic qualifications will not determine the efficiency of a candidate.”
The guy who seems to make sense has to voice his opinion on the condition of anonymity. I’m not surprised.
My heart goes out to all the kids who aren’t doing too well academically. As if the “You can’t sell peanuts if you’re not educated” wasn’t enough, parents now have a rat catching job to benchmark futures with. I’m sure they plan on getting some sort of sophisticated equipment that requires the user to estimate the mass, speed of movement and probable escape pattern of the rat in question before it releases a mildly charged heat seeking missile into the sewers.
This from an older article… where the BMC raised the bounty on Rats to Rs 5 a head (or tail).
How to kill a rat
(By an expert rat-catcher for the BMC)
Rats usually step out of the burrows/holes late in the night. They generally move about not on big roads but in house gullies or small streets, and can especially be seen near any kind of garbage.
The trick is to first scare them. This can be done by flashing a torchlight on them all of a sudden. This makes most rats immobile for a moment; they are almost paralysed due to fear. That’s precisely the moment to strike, preferably with a good stick. But even there, your aim’s got to be right. You have to aim at the rat’s head. If you get the timing right, you’ve got your rat.
Fear Factor anyone?
DD News – our old and faithful Government Owned National Network News, is airing a documentary on the amateur porn industry and this website had a lot to do with it!
No, not really. We have an aggregate readership of about five people – HOWEVER, our ace commentator, occasional contributor, part time comic strip artist and full time documentary film maker – Bharath (the ‘Actionist’ on Gmail, WordPress & Youtube – or T.A.O.G.W.Y.) is the chap who made it… and got DD to air it. It wasn’t easy – as the mail he sent out suggests – and the All CAPS fonts are more likely out of relief and ecstasy that one feels while dealing with anything associated with the Government. Way to go dude. While you’re too modest to mention it, can you please let me know if this is the same film that won you the grant to shoot a film on self published Manga?
The film airs tomorrow night – the unholy asterisk at the bottom does mention the prospect of a last minute change – and I’m setting a reminder for it. A few questions you can answer once we’ve seen the film:
Enjoy!
IF ANY OF YOU CARE TO WATCH DD NEWS, PLEASE TURN ON THAT CHANNEL ON YOUR TV SETS AT 10.30 PM ON JULY 12TH.
MY DOCUMENTARY CALLED “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?”, WILL PLAY AT THAT TIME.
THIS FILM IS ABOUT AMATEUR PORNOGRAPHY, AND MORE SPECIFICALLY ABOUT ‘MYSORE MALLIGE’, AN AMATEUR VIDEO THAT MOST PORN WATCHERS IN INDIA LOVINGLY DESCRIBE AS THE BEST PORN FILM EVER MADE IN INDIA.
IT TOOK ME THREE VERSIONS AND TWO YEARS NEGOTIATING WITH PSBT (PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING TRUST) TO BE FINALLY SCREENED ON DD NEWS. NOT SUCH A BIG DEAL, BUT BIG ENOUGH FOR ME, FOR IT IS A RARE THING THAT ANY FILM OF MINE IS SCREENED TO A WIDE AUDIENCE.
SO, PLEASE WATCH IT…
BHARATH
Dear Bharath,
Doordarshan has scheduled What Are You Looking At? telecast for July 12th at 10.30 pm on DD NEWS *.
tulika
For the companion post (recommended) on how our dedicated reviewer managed to get his hands on this series of comic books click here or visit http://anirban1980.spaces.live.com
Ruse features detective Simon Archard and his ‘assistant’ Emma Bishop as they combat crime in the city of Partington, on the planet Arcadia. Partington is a city facing (among other threats) a gargoyle infestation- they fly around like pigeons and have eaten all the bats. Otherwise, Partington is a lot like Victorian-era London, Arcadia is a lot like Earth …. and yes, Simon Archard is a lot like Sherlock Holmes. He has his ‘razor-sharp’ mind, a network of agents (who may or may not know each other), a know–it-all attitude that borders on arrogance and the open support of Partington’s finest. Unlike Holmes, he appears to be a man of means, has his headquarters in a Cathedral, has volumes of books and old newspapers filed in a library and has the face and social skills (or lack thereof) of Bruce Wayne. He doesn’t carry a revolver and relies instead on a cane that apart from being used to counter a sword is seen to support a grappling line, acid and flash powder. Like Holmes, he confides in his assistant/partner (Emma Bishop) more on a need to know basis and on occasion, disappears without sharing his whereabouts.
Emma Bishop (the narrator) is a sorceress (Archard doesn’t know it… in fact nobody does) but she isn’t allowed to use her powers and on one occasion (conversation with an unseen person) refers to Simon Archard as her ‘student’. Go figure. She refers to herself as his partner, is a ‘proper’ Lady and performs an acrobatic save early in the first issue. Smarter than Watson, older than Robin, not a love interest (so far) and isn’t in awe of Simon’s powers of observation. I won’t put in any spoilers, but Emma seems to be the reason behind the title.
Its Written by Mark Waid. And its pretty Damn Good!
I may have bought the series by fluke and on the cheap (read companion post here) but that doesn’t take away anything from the quality of work on display. Where Waid scores is in getting Ruse to be anything but a Sherlock Holmes story in comic book form. My initial reservations about Ruse being a Sherlock Holmes rip off were put to rest in the first three pages, where Simon solves the murder of the banker in 3 panels and Waid doesn’t feel the need to get into the motives and the science of deduction. He chooses instead, to focus on Simon’s handling of the resulting hostage situation, Emma’s background as a sorceress and skills as an acrobat. Simon’s armchair exploits on other ‘baffling’ cases are largely restricted to the narrative or references thrown in by minor characters and the series continues (Batman style) on a more ‘villain driven’ story arc with plenty of action, witty dialogue and moderate detective skills present in each issue. The first story arc has the duo pitted against the baroness Miranda Cross – stranger in town with intentions of taking over the city via mind control.
The artwork is excellent (though I must confess thats not my area of expertise ). The landscape reading format (ie. you’re supposed to read panels from left to right across both pages before you move to the next row) takes a little getting used to. Mark Waid’s storyline moves forward smoothly and hardly any sections in the story appear unnecessary. The banter between the two protagonists throughout Waid’s run is one of the wittiest that I have ever read in a comic book (and that includes Buffy season eight). Waid’s ability to keep both Sherlock Holmes and Batman in the back of your mind while coming up with an original piece of work at the same time is commendable – the series has the look of a Sherlock Holmes novel but the adventure is more likely to appear in Batman’s resume. I would put this on a shelf right next to Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and while I make no attempt to compare the two (LOEG was supposed to be a limited series while Ruse was to be a continuing one) Alan Moore’s decision to leave out Sherlock Holmes seems to work in Ruse’s favor. Moore believed that keeping Sherlock in the ranks would take away the attention from the other illustrious members of the league (point well taken) and that creates the perfect spot for Simon Archard & Ruse – Victorian Era detective fiction with plot elements involving sorcery, mind control, vampires and vengeance – with a detective who believes only in science aided by a time stopping (but non interfering) sorceress. What Emma interprets as sorcery, Simon views as a combination of chemistry, magnetism and hypnosis and while LOEG climaxed on a ‘cordite powered’ airship Ruse’s first story arc has rather modest surroundings which are put to optimum use. My favorite set of issues had a ghost town, vampires, gypsies and a scantily clad Emma thrown in for good measure, dialogue involving impeccable powers of observation too weak to notice a moving train and the first appearance of the Consortium of Aggrieved Manservants – all while they are on the trail of Simon’s former partner Lightbourne, earlier presumed dead now among the living.
If I were to pick flaws in the series it would be the inconsistencies in Emma’s physical prowess (saves a hostage while jumping down and grabbing a grappling line in one motion in the first issue and has much less flattering acrobatic feats in future issues) and the degree of mystery solving involved, which IMHO is not consistent with the image portrayed in the narrative. Yup, thats about it.
Now for the sad part. I had a ‘missing reel’ moment after Chapter 9 thanks to unfortunate gaps in my purchase of EDGE comics (refer companion post here). Chapter 11 saw the city in ruins, gargoyles gone feral, an underwater lair and Scott Beatty replacing Mark Waid as writer. Mark Waid left Crossgen after 10 issues citing creative differences with Crossgen and was replaced by Scott Beatty (Batman). The banter between the protagonists didn’t appear in the remaining issues that I have in my possession. The series ran for 26 issues till Crossgen filed for bankruptcy. Issues 1-6 (Enter the detective) and 7-12 were also published in TPB form (so you need not buy more than a dozen issues of EDGE comics to get most of the series). Keep an eye out for Ruse#10 or EDGE #7, 10 & 13 for me please. I will hold you in high esteem.
Ruse has a wikipedia article on it. I looked it up only after I read the first story arc and that’s where I got most of the info on the creative team (other than Mark Waid… I know most of his work).
Written by Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, 52, Superman:Birthright, JLA, Fantastic Four, Batman)
Penciled by Butch Guice (Bunch of Marvel & Stuff including Micronauts, X-Men, Superman)
Coloured by Laura DePuy (Astonishing X-Men, Planetary, JLA, Serenity – Those left behind)
Inked by Michael Perkins (Judge Dredd, 2000 AD, misc. Dark Horse/Marvel/DC)
Wikipedia tells me that Ruse was nominated for 5 Eisner awards and won for Best Coloring, but doesn’t mention that 2002 was a rather competitive year… which included among the other nominees mentioned here, Spider-Man’s Morlun saga (winner: Best Serialized story). Here are the other nominees – winners in bold and marked with *.
Best Continuing Series
Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil (Lightspeed)
100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (DC/Vertigo) *
Planetary, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (DC/Wildstorm)
Queen & Country, by Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston (Oni)
Ruse, by Mark Waid, Butch Guice, and Michael Perkins (CrossGen)
Best Writer
Brian Azzarello, 100 Bullets, Hellblazer (DC/Vertigo)
Brian Michael Bendis, Powers (Image); Alias, Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man (Marvel) *
Grant Morrison, FF 1234, New X-Men (Marvel)
Greg Rucka, Queen & Country (Oni); Detective Comics (DC)
Mark Waid, Ruse (CrossGen)
Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team
John Cassaday, Planetary (DC/Wildstorm)
Butch Guice, Ruse (CrossGen)
Gene Ha/Zander Cannon, Top 10 (ABC)
Humberto Ramos/Sandra Hope, Out There (DC/Wildstorm)
Eduardo Risso, 100 Bullets (DC/Vertigo) *
Francois Schuitten, Brusel (NBM); Nogegon (Humanoids)
Best Coloring
Edgar Delgado/Studio F, Out There (DC/Wildstorm)
Laura DePuy, Ruse (CrossGen), Ministry of Space (Image) *
Patricia Mulvihill, Wonder Woman (DC), 100 Bullets (DC/Vertigo)
Jose Villarrubia, Fantastic Four 1234 (Marvel)
Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #15 (Fantagraphics)
Best New Series
Private Beach, by David Hahn (Slave Labor)
Queen & Country, by Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston (Oni) *
Ruse by Mark Waid, Butch Guice, and Michael Perkins (CrossGen)
The Sandwalk Adventures, by Jay Hosler (Active Synapse)
True Story, Swear to God, by Tom Beland (Clib’s Boy Comics)
anirban Little Fivers – The internet