Wodehouse For Dummies

Here's P.G.W explaining the fundemental difference between the Bard and himself.

I suppose the fundamental distinction between Shakespeare and myself is one of treatment. We get our effects differently. Take the familiar farcical situation of the man who suddenly discovers that something unpleasant is standing behind him.

Here is how Shakespeare handles it (The Winter's Tale, Act 3, Scene 3).
"... Farewell!

A lullaby too rough. I never saw
The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!
Well may I get aboard! This is the chase:
I am gone for ever.
(Exit pursued by a bear.)"

The Master's version:

"Touch of indigestion, Jeeves?"
"No, Sir."
"Then why is your tummy rumbling?"
"Pardon me, Sir, the noise to which you allude does not emanate from my interior but from that of that animal that has just joined us."
"Animal? What animal?"
"A bear, Sir. If you will turn your head, you will observe that a bear is standing in your immediate rear inspecting you in a somewhat menacing manner."
I pivoted the loaf. The honest fellow was perfectly correct. It was a bear. And not a small bear, either. One of the large economy size. Its eye was bleak and it gnashed a tooth or two, and I could see at a g. that it was going to be difficult for me to find a formula.
"Advise me, Jeeves,"I yipped. "What do I do for the best?"
"I fancy it might be judicious if you were to make an exit, Sir."
No sooner s. than d. I streaked for the horizon, closely followed across country by the dumb chum. And that, boys and girls, is how your grandfather clipped six seconds off Roger Bannister's mile.

Who can say which method is superior?

Chappell's 2 cents on leadership

The more illustrious of the Chappell brothers gives his views on captaincy and I felt they not only apply to cricket, but in other situations too.

"I've always maintained this, and I don't think it will ever change. Only one man can run a cricket team and that's the captain. You have got to be out there on the field to have a feel for all the things that are going on and to be able to make the quick decisions in order to change the direction of the game in your favour. If you're getting a message from off the field then it'll be too late - you should have already realised it, being out there on the field."

A real gem - if the leader himself relies on somebody else to make his decisions, God save the team.

"There are two things that I think are crucial to captaincy. The first thing is that once you realise that all the Ws and the Ls - being the wins and losses - are going to go against your name, then immediately you're going to be a good captain because you're going to make the decisions yourself. That doesn't mean you make them on your own; you might consult your vice-captain and the senior players, but in the end it's your decision. I've always likened it to a computer: other people will feed information in, but in the end you have to spit out the answer."

This is where Steve Waugh steps in.

"There's so much being spoken about the pressures on a captain; well, there is a simple way to alleviate that because much of it is placed on the person by himself. And the way to overcome that is to set your own levels and standards. If you are meeting your standards, then you needn't have to worry about what people are writing or saying. You've got to be fairly thick-skinned to do that. I didn't need to pick up the paper in the morning to read that I'd had a bad day as captain. If I wasn't the first one to know that, then I was a dope and I shouldn't have been captaining Australia."

Perhaps Dhoni can read this now and realize - which Dravid didn't do 2 years ago.

I would have posted the full discussion text from Cricinfo, were it not for one Mr. Sanjay Manjrekar spewing nonsense from every pore in between Chappell's views.

Anyways here goes for those who want to read it all: Click

Cine Quiz 5

This is a new idea I'm trying out - just 5 pictures - each a scene from a movie and the picture has been edited to make it a bit difficult to guess the movie. I want the movie and the cameraman for each of them.

1.

2.
3. This is an unedited pic - NOT the easiest of the lot.


4.

5. Easiest of the lot.

Any basic tamizh cinema fan would be able to get 5/5 in this quiz - As thalaivar says, idhu trailer thaan ma, main picture inime daan! :)

Good luck - as always, email me the answers at karthik.sriram@yahoo.com.

My Favorite blogs

Was cleaning up my Google reader and the only folder I didn't touch was my favorites. Just thought I could share my list of favs, so here goes (in alphabetical order):


1. Aishwarya.Rao

My school friend during my Primary - Middle school years - a old time family friend to my mother, this lady has an amazing sense of humor and wit. A B-School student now, finds networking sites to be notworking!

2. Ammanchi

SatyaRaj follower - as in, Lollu Unlimited. Keeps coming up with funny lines and nakkals. But kadavul kept nalla aapu with one poori kattai kayil edukkum pondaati - so Mr. Ambi is Veetile Eli, Velile Puli.

3. Balaji's Thots

This guy is 100% substance - a superb movie critic, this guy puts in a lot of effort to see all movies - ranging from the best of the best Kamal Rajni movies to horrible almost B-Grade movies and write reviews too.

4. Blogeswari

Perhaps, my best friend online - she is up there in terms of Nakkal, Nayyandi and humor. We share a lot of interests - Rajni Kanth, Tam Movies and music, our hates (fraud jaathi and the like ;-)). An Ad-world ka Baadshah, on the path to becoming an Ad film director (one chance for me with Shriya, Please!). Her other blog is also on my fav list for its super duper nakkal of some our common pet peeves.

5. C' EST MA VIE

Friend from SVCE, who I knew as Chimbu when we were at SVCE. Came to know more about him through Orkut and Gtalk. We also share a lot of likes and the most uncommonest of our common likes is MINNALE - we both know every dialog, every scene, every costume in this movie. Is a tamizh movie freak too and I really felt bad when I couldn't meet him in person when I'd been to India this april.

6. filthy, funny, flawed, gorgeous

Like rathathin rathame, Ammani is Akka-vin Akka kinda. One helluva writer and has a sense of humor which appeals to me.

7. FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

A senior from SVCE - he updates his blog as often as India wins a 20-20 match (or make that Sachin hitting a century and India winning - does that happen? ;-)). He is a weight loss guru and a very good friend from my days of bus route no. 31.

8. lazygeek.net

Well, who doesn't read this guy? The most popular tam-blogger I know of....

9. Lightning Strikes Everyday

Hawkeye - Perhaps the only blog I've been reading since September 2005 kinds - has a super duper layout to access old posts. His sense of humor in one word is Awesome and perhaps, is one person whose style grows on you a lot. Claims to be in Ross School Michigan, but you will find him talking about every other place other than Ann Arbor.

10. oLiyile

An extremely honest movie critic and extremely knowledge-able bloke too.

11. Ouch My Toe!

A very humorous guy - he needs no introduction!

12. Teesu is talking....

A frank and off the cuff blogger - very caustic on people/things which irritate her. Well, I don't want to be the topic of one of her posts, god-willing!

The Hypocrite called Dr. M.K

The political waters are starting to boil again. Tamil Nadu's Hon'ble CM, Dr. Karunanidhi, once again, for the umpteenth time proves that he is pseudo-secular (sickular?) as anyone in India. He has gone on to the extent of asking whether Rama was a civil engineer or some such crap. Why doesn't Dr. M.K have the same bravado attitude to ask the Christians whether Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a MBBS MD from Johns Hopkins as Jesus was supposed to have cured people from sicknesses and its believed that he brought back someone from the dead. If all this is believable to our venerated senior politician from Gopalapuram, why is Rama building the sethu bridge not believable? Even leaving all this, take the case of Islam (Dr. M.K really loves Islam as he fasts with them and calls Hindus as Thirudan when he is under the comforting company of 100 odd muslims). Certain sections of the Islamic society have misinterpreted the Holy Quran and are indulging in terrorism in India and Pakistan - has Dr. M.K ever spoken about this? NO!

My point more than showing deficiencies in other religions (the same way they exist in Hinduism), is to show the lowly vote-bank politics of Dr. M.K. And other supposedly learned people like Dr. Manmohan Singh, Dr. Chidambaram praise Dr. M.K as the architect of modern South India - What Shame!

Minnale Magic

If there was any Minnale maniac, Minnale freak, Minnale addict - whatever you want to call it - it is me and perhaps, this guy. This was one movie which has never bored me from the first time I watched in the summer of 2001 till date. I still laugh at Vivek saying "ennaku IG-ah theriyum" or still sing along with Azhagiya Theeye.

There ain't nothing big in the story or acting, but I guess the scenes in itself lend to endear the film - the scene at the restuarant ("I looove chicken!"), Maddy - Abbas confrontation scenes in the first 20 minutes of the movie, Azhagiya Theeye song (This is the first song I listen to in day from my MP3 player), Vivek comedies (the one at the kai-kari kadai - LOL), the last scene - overall a simple movie which has become a part of me. The BGM and music from Harris Jayaraj were pretty good and barring Kakha Kakha, Harris jayaraj hasn't been able to match up to his Minnale.

Some super duper favorite scenes in Minnale:

P.S: I Know at least one blog-friend who is going to hate this post - he he!

Sunday Matinee

Thanks to a good friend of mine, I got a DVD with a combo of, well hold your breath, Thalapathy and Nayagan! Well, that's a set of movies for which I wouldn't mind giving away two tickets to the US of A from Timbuktu :)


Anyways, got around to watching Thalapathy today and to put Rajni Kanth's performance in one word - Fantastic! I've always maintained that for an intense and underplayed role, any day, I would choose Rajni over Kamal. In this movie, Rajni, sans any of his usual 'style', comes as another slum dweller - he in fact, comes throughout the movie in some 3 - 4 shirts only. Full credit to the Magician from Madras, Mani Ratnam in making Rajni play a character which was right up to his strengths. And Santosh Sivan's amazing camera work - Since this movie has a Mahabharathaic origin, each shot has the Sun in it and the interplay of shadows reflects the moods and feelings of the characters in the scene - simply super shot composition and execution. I don't know how this movie was shot - with such accurate lighting effects and effects, I think they couldn't have more than a scene a day.... I simply loved watching this movie, for perhaps the 85th time. Also the still shown above is a rare one - but my personal favorite.


Lots of people like some other songs from this movie, but my favorite in terms of visualization and song is this ( I wish Shobana had also shown a glimpse of her dance skills - I generally don't see Bharathanatyam, but Shobana is one who really makes me see the art form):

Whats it with blogs and spelling mistakes?

Well, I'm not one of those walking talking Shakespeare kinds, but still, the number of spelling and grammatical mistakes in my blog shames me beyond no end. Perhaps, its my 'by-now' famous impatient, frenzied typing style which causes it or my long time hatred to read and revise what I've written (this started when I was in standard 4 and upon revising my social studies answer paper, I realised I had majorly screwed up my numbering in the 'map' question..... from then on, it was the classic Annamalai dialog "Indha naal un calender la kuricho vechukko LKS - inime answer paper revise panninena, un seruppaliye unnai adichuko" kinds.) And you people have been nice enough never to comment on my mistakes :)

LKS

The Will to Blog

For regular (if there are any..), my recent glut in blog activity is because of lots of new happenings - a new girlfriend - Lakshmi - of the 4 wheeled variety, an upcoming graduation in december and a bad attack of sinusitis have together conspired to make me live a life bereft of blogging. But me hoping to start once the sinusitis is cured.

LKS