Variety is the spice of life

While watching Jurassic park with junior (for the umpteenth time) there was one guy who looked very familiar. If you've seen the same movie several dozen times, obviously some level of familiarity has to seep in. But this guy in particular, the one who steals the dino DNA/embryo thing from the lab, looked very familiar. It suddenly dawned on me from where and then only i realized he is from Seinfeld, where this guy plays a character called Newman, despite having seen that series several times i had never actually written about it!! Arthritis of the memory may be!! Many of my friends have told me that compared to Friends, they prefer Seinfeld better. While those who vouch for Friends are settled in India not one of the Seinfeld fans are here at the moment. Maybe it comes with the territory. The series is probably the most Americanist of series I've ever seen. It is openly racist in many situations, especially the one involving a Pakistani hotelier who gets deported back to his n...

Wifey has enrolled Junior in a group called Bala Muktas. That group is run by a dedicated bunch of ladies who teach slokas and stories on our Puranas to kids for free. They conduct bajans and special performances at their homes and whomever is graceful enough to give them space. It is such a positive group that kids relish going to their sessions. What started as an online class during Covid times is now a thriving weekly session attended by at least a dozen kids along with their parents. Last week they had arranged for a recital cum drama kind of a presentation on Ramayana (till Paaduka pattabishekam part), where in each kid was given a short speech on the character they play. They have to narrate their part as a character sketch and the filler portions where supported by the teachers and rest of the kids into making it a mini drama with small acts. Each kid aced their role and the way they spoke without stage fear, the eldest of the kid being from sixth standard with majority of the ...

 I have read that one of the easiest signs that you are getting of getting old is the taste in music. One will begin to appreciate the same set of songs, that they might not have cared much about in their youth, and more so, detest the current crop of songs. I saw it happen with my dad, when he used to term Ilayaraja songs as "dapaanguthu" and would appreciate only MSV. In our household music was mostly silent for we never ever had a fixed time to listen to cinema songs unless they were being played out aloud in streets or in some music channel. I began to listen to music and my sense for appreciating songs from different languages actually blossomed and died in Bangalore. I maintain almost the same playlist that was formed during those days and very rarely does a song manage to squeak in. That playlist was an amalgamation of likes from several people known to me, who used my hard drive as a common repository for storing songs. Whenever i travel to office or on a long distanc...

 Of all the OTT's Netflix is hell bent on infusing drug culture as the way of life in India i guess. Every other series they come up with, not just glorifies the narcotics and its effects, it makes the police who chase the criminals as bad or even more eviler than the sellers themselves, there by giving more credit to the actual antagonists, painting them as better amongst the two evils!!  This series is so downright blatant in its attempt to make drug peddling common place that, right from first scene, the leading lady or at least one of the quartet, secretly peddles some local drug for curing impotence amongst her customers who orders home made food from her. The famous dabbawalas whom every management firm wanted to study for their greater than six sigma level of performances should actually protest and put a case against the makers of this series for defaming their good name and their very line of business as something so murky!! What starts as a within the apartment activ...

 Today only watched the movie and wanted to post the review right away illaati saami kutham aaidum. When the trailer of this movie was launched, like several like minded people i had cursed it to the extent possible, especially the way at which the hero proudly proclaims he has 48 arrears!! On top of that he gets to romance two good looking heroine, smoking like no tomorrow and of course the mandatory liquor drinking scenes, all coupled together to form such a cringe opinion about the movie that it was hate at first sight (or view in YouTube terminology). If i keep repeating the same flaws that have become common place across all the movies, i felt like repeating myself and had stopped posting about movies for a while. But after seeing several positive reviews about this one, was really curious to test the extent of rot that had set in the minds of people, that they were praising such a rotten to the core movie. I was happily wrong. In fact, the movie preaches exactly what i wanted...