Pretender

Its that time of the year again when I announce my latest crush, although mid life is hardly an appropriate time for this, I am exceptional. Ta Da! The Pretender was a cool series that I used to watch when I was in middle school (very early teens) and immediately liked the premise and the leads enough to never have forgotten it.
Fast forward to a few years later (ok...quite a few) and Hulu was hosting the entire first season of this Show expiring by New year eve. So I did the marathon watching and it was a joy.

For one thing, Jarod (the hero, pretender, genius) suddenly struck me as being amazingly attractive in my rewatch. Surprise gave way to reason when I considered that I had had my puberty this time around and hence noticed.

Come 2010, Hulu put up season 2 and I was hooked all the way until the season finale. Then I couldn't bear to wait till Apr & Aug 2010 for seasons 3 & 4. I needed immediate gratification. So I plunged into research and found out that there were 2 movies out after season 4 (which had only raised more questions and wasn't a logical endpoint to the story).
Age and erosion of story line was apparent (as was bad hairstyling advice) in the 2 movies which I was able to get my hands on but I watched anyway until the 2nd movie (which came out in 2001) concluded with a LOTR/Matrix melange with Jarod as the Neo/One.
Sigh...great expectations crashed and burned.

But yes the end result is that, Michael T Weiss from 1994-2000 (when he was in early 30s) is my new crush (note how specific I am of which timeframe in the life of the guy I have a crush on) and a testimony to the shallowness of my character that I don't nearly encourage or feed enough.
As a result of the strong interest in this very hunky person (did I mention the deep bass voice, dimples accompanying smiles with eye crinkling and cheekbone and jaw structure of a superhero? No? How remiss of me!), I have watched a made for TV movie(Mary Higgins Clark's 'Remember Me' where he is not the hero),2 episodes of Justice League (voice of Etrigan/Jason Blood) and Disney's Tarzan & Jane (animated, voice of Tarzan). All in the last 18 hours.
I'm dreading 'Jeffrey',the movie I have ordered that is in transit to me, where he played the romantic lead of the protagonist after whom the movie was named (yes, its 'that' kind of movie).
Like a car crash, I dont like it but I can't look away. Also the DVD of a cheesy looking detective movie 'Written in blood' (he is the lead) is also expected any day now...I am gamely going to get through it despite the worst hairstyle of all time on an otherwise striking man.

Phew...lets have some substance after all that fluff, shall we?
I loved the titles to the science articles in today's papers (not the wrap your groceries kind of newspapers) -
Y chromosome not stagnating, men not idiots
As shameful as it may seem and being a self confessed quisling to my gender, I have to admit that the smartest people (offputting academic successes are not considered; just the cool ones) I have met and liked are predominantly male. So I didnt think there was never any danger of men being idiots.
One track minded (a track that is fated to disappear?), for sure, but not idiots.
Rather than stagnation, I was worried more about complete vanishing of the 2 sexes biology of human kind which is not discounted with the new discovery that Y chromosomes are rapidly evolving. Also, if they evolve too fast for us (the women) to parallel, we may even reach a point where men and women differentiate as a species; Which will bring us back to parthenogenesis as the only way to foster survival (so sad!)
No immediate danger, I think. But then, change is the only constant [I hate that phrase. HATE IT.]

Doomsday Clock to be reset 10am EST today
This wonderful device has been at 11.55 PM since 2007 (maybe even from cold war era) for fear of nuclear annihilation of the planet and they are resetting it to 10 AM. Rejoice, world. Me...I will live each day as if it were the last (by over eating and copious escapist media) because too many nations are "Nuclear" without sharing a responsible outlook.
The official survivor of 2 atom bombings died in japan last week and SNL joked that he coined the phrase - Oh no! Not Again. [ROTFL]
But its quite likely that in my lifetime I may have to survive some sort of inter continental, high heat war/attacks regardless of which part of the world I live in. Anti missile missiles are being announced by the nations of the world (our desh & China...which I guess means NKorea, Iran and Pak also to state the obvious) on an almost daily basis and I think...this is an infinite loop isnt it?
Some enterprising soul will definitely have thought of creating the Anti- Anti missile missiles and pretty soon we will be seeing the positive x axis increase of N plotting where N is the power to which Anti is repeated. So I say- Be Afraid. Be very afraid.
Make it 11.56 PM on the Doomsday clock, ye fools. Start kissing people goodbye as many times as you can (or shake hands...up to you)

Half A Million Bathe In India's Ganges
Kumbh Mela is here again and I am too far away to even get a sprinkle of the gangajal on me...its all Hudson all the way with me. Makara Sankranthi is upon us, my people. Happy Pongal.
Even otherwise I encourage everyone to bathe. Its a good practice that keep man from being an anti-social animal.

TGIF!
Rain

My Rocking Life

If there is one aspect of my living in the land of milk and honey that is hands-down without a bad side, not even a gray lining and is 100% Agmark certified all Good, then its this – I can go to rock concerts here.

I got into rock at around age 13 and have stayed firm to that despite being comfortable with my other aspect of enjoying carnatic vocal and instrumental with all my iyer proclivity for it. Soon as my sister grew up, I had a partner in crime and she took to the genre of music like fish to water. Then we had a in-sync period where we would shut ourself in the room, block out all sources of light – natural or otherwise and headbang without inhibition to the raw and elevating sounds of Metallica and U2. Our parents knew about it, yet they were too scared to see us showing symptoms of possession, so generally let us do out thing uninterrupted.

Then the disciple took over from the Guru and went leaps ahead; she turned traitor to the cause of legitimate rock and became a boy-band fanatic like all the air-headed pre-teens. She decided that she didn’t think techno was too synthetic, embraced mainstream western music in all its commercial crassness and we started to go our separate ways since.

Here, I met Gowtham in September of 2006 and learned that he is one of ‘us’ [Us being the lost tribe of Rock worshippers who all died out when natural selection favored pop worshippers]. He told me that I had missed going to the Aerosmith open-air concert, right here at the steel city [AEROSMITH – I am not worthy!!!…*groveling actions*]. We then proceed to, as a group (having been joined by the ultra cool Avanthika) haunt the nearby concerts, thus providing me to strike off the following Gods of Rock from my list of “Perfomances to see before the artists die…” [I mean, C’mon they live lives of – Heavy Fuel a.k.a Sex, Drugs and Violence]

Guns and Roses

The debate of Slash vs. Axl Rose aside, this was a totally awesome experience and I was so thrilled to be right there when the strains of ‘November Rain’ filled the stadium. Me and fellow rock head Gow went all out and fell for ‘There was a time’ from the forthcoming Chinese Democracy and I will be happy to endorse that there is a whole lot of ROCK in GnR left to unleash into the mundane universe!

Nickelback

What is not to love about Nickelback? They are a quintessential basic rock band – heady guitar and drums sounds, Meaningful lyrics and a very good frontman. We had a totally wonderful time at the concert, despite us reaching there a full 3 hours after the concert began [thanks to Friday evening office traffic at downtown Forbes Avenue], our loss was missing Three Days Grace play. I wore my ‘Motley Crew’ rock Tee and got appreciation from the passersby and then I knew (probably for the first time) what complete acceptance by a crowd feels like!

That was the day I taught Aafiya to make the universal symbol of rock, which she is yet to master, and say “Rooooocckkkk!” with attitude, which she has down to pat :D

G3 – Joe Satriani

This one was not my idea. Admittedly I listened to ‘Rubina’s Blue Sky’ on some lazy Saturday afternoon in fm and introduced Joe Sat to my sister. I don’t accept any responsibility to the consequences which finally have now led to her becoming the High Priestess of G3 worship. Any how, Gow and Sow by their independent efforts sold me into going for this concert. My hesitation was incremented by the fact that the concert happened 2 weeks after my having imitated Jill [who came tumbling after] in my staircase. Nevertheless, I went, it was a different parallel universe where were almost no vocals and Guitar was all and I was glad for the learning.

Now I am all hungry to catch the following (In no particular order or associated priority) –

• Aerosmith
• Sting
• Bryan Adams
• U2
• Metallica

[At the mention of each of these illustrious names, the author goes back into grovelling slave mode]

These are just in my “MANDATORY” tag. I would love to catch other performances of significant bands and Individuals who I admire, during my stay here, given of course the requirements of - company to go with, travel to and from venue, reasonable ticket prices are met.

Let me wind down the post, by dedicating it to Gowtham who married a wonderful girl called Kavi on 6^th in Chennai.
Congratulations Buddy!
God Bless and hope you guys, ROCK!

Rain