Spot the runt...

A few days ago, I came across an old school pic of mine. A pic dating back to the time when I got ranked 38th in a class of 42 students, liked going to school about as much as Saddam Hussain likes George Bush and was invisble to teachers in general... ah, good old days, when life was simpler. I was still at my desk, reminiscing about the days gone by, the pic open in my browser window, when a couple of my colleagues happened to pass by. They noticed the pic and asked me about it. I told them that it was an old school photograph of my class and encouraged them to identify me in the picture. I was most surprised when they were unable to do so in 3 attempts each. It quickly turned into a competition of sorts and soon there were about half a dozen colleagues trying to identify me in the pic. As you may have guessed by now, they were all unsuccessful in their attempts. Their failure gave me the idea of putting up the pic on my blog and encouraging my audience to try to identify me. For the benefit of those who haven't had the good fortune of meeting me in person, I have also included a fairly recent pic of me. (I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity contest organizer :-)... So, let the games begin....




Yep! That's me.. and I do have an uncanny resemblance to one Mr. Brad Pitt... What? You don't believe me!!! Ok, ok... I'll admit it. That's not me. It is Brad Pitt. But that's how I'd like to look and in an ideal world that's how I'd look.. :( And not because he's incredibly rich and handsome, but because he's with Angelina Jolie... the most babeliscious babe of all times... ever... -sigh- .. Ok, now that we've got that out of the way we can get down to the serious business viz me...



Ok... this is really me. And you must admit, I do look quite a bit like Brad Pitt... two eyes, a nose, two ears.. the same items in the exact same numbers as Mr Pitt. I rest my case... Ok, now comes the most important part of the contest. Pasted below, is the school pic spoken about earlier in the narrative. Your job, ladies and gentlemen, is to identify the character from the pic above (the good looking one in the pic with the flowers... not the long haired weirdo) among the multitude of masses in the pic below. Good luck, ladies and gentlemen, and Godspeed!!



Ok, I can see that all's not going well with the identification process. So I've decided to give a few helpful hints that are specifically designed to make your task easier...

Hint 1: I am not a transvestite/cross-dresser.

Hint 2: No, I'm not the dude wearing the dark glasses!!

Hint 3: Click on the picture!! An enlarged version will magically appear making things infinitely easier...

Well, that's about as far as I can go without actually giving my identity away altogether. Happy hunting... and until later, cheers!! :-)

And the award goes to.....

I'm an avid movie watcher. I probably don't go to the movies as often as I'd like to but the magic of cable TV more than makes up for that little aberration. Now, I'm the kind of audience that movie directors' dreams are made of: undiscerning, not seeking any kind of intellectual stimulation through the medium and generally regaled by any drivel the directors may be trying to pass off as legitimate entertainment. In fact, I might go so far as to say that there is about as much chance of me hating a movie as there is of a straight guy (any guy, for that matter) not finding Angelina Jolie eminently desirable... yummmm... If every movie watcher in the world shared my sophisticated taste in movies every movie producer would be a billionaire, every director would be an Oscar winner and every movie would be a box-office block buster. Well... make that "almost every movie" because, believe it or not, there are movies which even I found intolerable!!! I know you are too shocked for words by the revelation, but trust me it is true. The rest of this narrative is dedicated to this select and very exclusive collection of movies that I hated despite myself....

a) "Dude, where's my car?" (2000)
- Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott (SWS) etc.
- Director: Danny Leiner

I'm a big fan of stoner and/or slacker comedy flicks and a bigger fan of SWS. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together and come to the conclusion that this movie had all the markings of being a big winner with me. But even a rocket scientist couldn't have predicted that I would come to hate the movie with every fiber of my being. So, what went wrong? My guess.. the director made the movie and then realized he forgot to add the plot. Then he thought, "Whoa dude!! I totally forgot to add the plot... Hey, maybe the audience will be as smoked up as I am and not notice the missing plot... Awesome!!!!...". Guess what Einstein, I did notice. My only question to the director, "Dude, what kind of manure were you high on when you made this movie?"

Note 1: IMDB classifies this "movie" as Comedy/Sci-fi. Dudes, you got be kidding...

Note 2: Director Denny Leiner did redeem himself somewhat with "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle", a most excellent and eminently entertaining movie. Obviously, the dude was high on some really high quality stuff when he made this movie.


b) The General's Daughter (1999)
- Cast: John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe
- Director: Simon West

Occasionally, just to assure myself that I haven't totally lost it, I put in Herculean effort and take a stab at watching what the "discerning audience" likes to call "intellectually stimulating fare". It was in just such a context that I watched "The General's Daughter", supposedly a murder-mystery. To me, there's nothing more infuriating than a director trying to pass off a pile of horse-shit as "an intelligent whodunit" and this scam of a movie was precisely that!! In my humble opinion, such directors should be force-fed some of the aforementioned equine u-know-what so they know exactly how the audience feels like after it's seen such movies.


c) Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
- Cast : Angelina Jolie... yummmmm...
- Director : who cares (OK, not that I care but surprise, surprise, it's our man Simon West again.... Man, how does he manage it!!!)

Before I start on this one, let me clarify on what appears to be a very obvious contradiction, viz. a movie featuring Jolie babe ending up in this list of infamy. Clarification: Angelina Jolie in the movie and as Lara Croft..... Awesome!!!! The movie itself... who cares. Which is exactly my point. With the movie featuring Angelina Jolie, there was almost no chance that I would be indifferent to the movie. But the director achieved the seemingly impossible when he made a movie featuring Angelina Jolie that I couldn't care less about. Simon West, you suck!!! You should probably take up an alternate profession as a used-car salesman in Detroit. The world (minus Detroit, of course) would be much better off.....


There are a few more movies and directors that make the cut, but the strong emotions evoked by Mr. West amongst the judges of the "I-suck-as-a-director" contest make it unnecessary to even consider other candidates. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Please put your hands together for Simon West. Mr. West, you really suck!! (thunderous applause)... well, that's all for now... see y'all in a bit (unless I slip into a coma watching one of Mr West's masterpieces) ... until later.. cheers... 8-)

Pushuka's Forecast for January...

I know... the title sounds totally unimaginative. Personally, I wanted to name the post "The Revenge of the Flying Panda" just for the heck of it, but then I thought to myself, "Pushkar, you spent the whole of last year lost in total frivolity. At least make an attempt to begin this year with some seriousness..." It's with this most noble thought in my mind that I proceeded to name my post. These are my thoughts (in all seriousness) on how January is going to shape up for all of us...

Indian cricket team lands in Pakistan amid much fanfare. Pakistan choose to bat first in the first test and Ganguly gets a start for India, confounding every single cricket pundit. Inzamam manages to run all his partners out and a frenzied mob invades the pitch. Surprisingly, Inzamam and Ganguly are the only players injured in the ensuing melee... Inzamam with a few scratches on his left cheek and Ganguly with two black eyes and swollen cheeks. Pakistani police find a total of 58625 distinct fingerprints on Ganguly's person, the exact same number as the crowd strength at the stadium. Police however, fail to make the connection and Musharraf blames the violence on "foreign forces" and calls for a UN resolution on Kashmir. The series is called off, ICC declares India the winner and India move to No 1 in both test and ODI ratings. The developments shock Aussie skipper Ponting who retires from cricket and joins the Australian extreme skiing team.

Google Earth comes up with enhancements that allow user to view useful statistics about a place in addition to a detailed map. The very first statistic thrown up with a map of Bangalore is that there are exactly 1,398,624,821 potholes on the roads of Bangalore. Karnataka CM Dharam Singh blames Infosys boss Narayan Murthy for the pothole situation... and for the leaking faucet in his bathroom. Meanwhile, former PM of India and current wannabe-Karnataka-CM Deve Gowda somehow manages to use the piece of statistic to bolster his campaign against the proposed international airport and a noted Kannada activist publishes a technical paper proving that Bangalore could not have more than 2013 potholes if its name was Bengaluru. IEEE hails the paper as "the most significant socio-political work in the last 100 years" and the author is nominated for a Nobel prize in economics.

A tape surfaces showing the US president George "Dubya" Bush cheating on his high school math test. Dubya goes on record saying, "I didn't cheat because I wanted to, but because the good Lord wanted me to. The previous night I dreamed that God spoke to me. He said, "George, you need to cheat on tomorrow's math test. The future of America and the free world depend on it. I know you would never want to do such a dastardly deed, but you're doing it for the world..." and that's the only reason I cheated, much as I didn't want to..." Dubya's approval ratings jump 30 percent to reach an all-time high.

Well, that's pretty much all I can see in January as yet. I didn't ask to be able to see into the future, but since I do have the gift I feel duty-bound to share my gift with the rest of the world. So you can look forward to more forecasts from yours truly in the future... until later.. cheers .. :)