Another BBC Classic

Only a BBC commentator could have produced this.

Don't want to worry England fans here, but Vaughan's facing Pollock with all the success of a man waving a wet piece of spaghetti at a passing pea.

For more, read the BBC coverage of the World Cup here.

Desi Superheroes

One of my all-time favourite movie scenes is David Carradine's superhero speech from the end of Kill Bill 2. The best observation in his monologue is that while Superman was born with superpowers, all the others had their powers thrust upon them.

Hollywood superheroes tend to be conflicted individuals. Under the mask and the leather tights, they are average-Joes who frequently doubt themselves. They often find themselves having to choose between their separate identities, and consequently hurt the ones who they love. Superman too, despite his innate super-ness, has problems due to the fact that everyone around him is different from him.

Why can't superheroes be perfect individuals? Ok, perfect is too strong... why can't they be in harmony with their inner selves? Why should I pay $10 to go see someone on screen who has the same issues in life that I do? It's all getting a bit tiresome. If you ask me, it's high time Hollywood looked eastwards for the answer (they always do, for their emo problems).

No, I don't mean Jackie Chan. I mean Bollywood.

Our desi superheroes are always 100% "super", inside and out. Whether catching the bad guys with a flying kick from 15 storeys up, or romancing the ladies with a saucy little thrust-and-gyrate number, they do it all with aplomb. There are no real emotional weaknesses there for anyone to exploit. The best a villain can do is kidnap the hero's mother every once in a while, but aside from the problem of who's going to wash his super-undies, that's not really an inconvenience.

Why is that? I mean, with all the psychiatric care they could need just a phone call away, why can't western superheroes be more Raymond-like? ("The Complete Man", you know...)

I think this has a lot to do with our superheroes' upbringing. They grow up with tales of mega-achievers all around them. And I don't just mean Hanuman leaping across the ocean and Krishna holding up a mountain on his pinky.

For instance, this particular Lollywood Tarzan never flinched when fired at...


... most likely because as a kid, he watched Dharam paaji do just that, all day long:


Imagine if he'd grown up watching Neo and Trinity instead. The man would've spent years studying martial arts, trained 10 hours a day to stay in shape, and worked at Infosys Bangalore to hide his hacker talents. None of that nonsense... he just ate plenty of mom's cooking (and a dash extra), and trusted the super-tough layers of fat to ward off stray bullets. Who needs jujitsu? Who needs to dodge bullets?

Another messy bit of business with superheroes is their "secret identity protection" plan. They're afraid that exposure will put their loved ones in danger. Well, as Govinda shows in this video, the trick to get around that problem is two-fold:
1) dress up the loved ones in superhero costumes as well
2) always dance together


No fear here!

I can go on and on... but let's just summarize with the three main reasons Desi superheroes are better than the rest.

They have style.


They have faith.


They know which laws of physics are REALLY true ("free your mind", eh?)


To the credit of the Hollywood chaps, let me say that they ARE indeed learning the lessons. And some of the results are outstanding, as evidenced here.




More of this, and the world will be a better place.

(p.s.: Sharan- dedicated to you. Hope you haven't given up blogging for good.)

Rationality and World Peace

A comment I posted on Scott Adams' 04/10/07 blog post on free will:

...
You're absolutely right about the world's problems being caused by people who're more certain than they should be. But I think the part you got wrong, is who the culprit is. It's not the leader ... it's the people who flock to him. They're the ones who had the opportunity to make a rational decision, didn't, and thus let the world go to hell.

It doesn't really matter if the leader believes his own baloney or not. Osama probably does. George Bush most likely doesn't. In both men's cases, it was their general public's willingness to believe them that caused all the ruckus.

"...You are free to do whatever you want. The catch is that you don’t have any control over what you want.": The term is irrationality. Human beings are known for it. The question is whether you accept it willingly. Assume for a moment that Hitler had a brain dysfunction which made him do what he did... that he couldn't help it. If he were tried in court, he would escape on an insanity plea. Who, then, was the criminal? The willing accomplice- the irrational public.

One may say that the public gets irrational for a reason. Germany's crippling poverty after WWI made the people irrational, which paved the way for Hitler's solution. America was severely scarred by the 9/11 attacks, which made the people irrational, which helped Dubya's Iraq plan along. Later generations may cite that as the excuse for our actions, but there's no denying that it was our action, our choice.

As long as people are irrational, there will be leaders like Dubya to take advantage. Which means there will be wars.

So my plan for world peace is to print 6 billion copies of Ayn Rand books and give them to every person alive. Do I hear any takers?

Another reason why I love Top Gear

I'm Baaaack!!!

Well, for those of you who were wondering where good ol' VB had gone, it's a happy day... because today all will be revealed.

As so often happens to desi folks who've lived away from the motherland for a year or two, I'd been missing home too much. Living in Michigan, among all the firangs with their BBQ chicken and their Budweisers, was getting to be too much. I couldn't stay away anymore from the chaatwallas, the tandoori chickens, and the borderline-sleazy music videos. So I moved...

... to Texas. Feels like home, y'all!!!

Yup yup, welcome to the 5th largest mini-Asia in the US- after California, New York, Hawaii(wtf???) and New Jersey. And welcome to Dallas, my town, home of the Everest theater and the Iyengar Yoga-Massage Center.

Some idea of how much one craves contact with home comes from the fact that during my lonely weekday nights, I've been scouring Youtube for NRI comedy acts. (Russell Peters was a flash in the pan. Here's the real boss - #, #, #). On my first free weekend here, I made a beeline for the nearest Bollywood theater and a temple.

Going to the temple, I discover, is the desi way of networking. It's where unclejis and auntyjis look for a good match for their ABCD daughters. One of my friends caught the religious bug last month, when he decided that he'd had enough of living alone, and a good obedient Indian wife would be a welcome addition to the furniture and appliances sitting around (kid you not). You might say that's way retro thinking, but then he also dances to 70's Hindi music and thinks Rafi was the 11th incarnation. To each his own I say.

Speaking of "to each his own", some of my office mates find it surprising that I don't have cable television at home. Of course, TV is to an American what beer is to the German, idly-sambhar to the south Indian, and drugs to the Dutch. Folks in the next cubicle speak of hooking up their 41 inch TV to their Tivo, then to their computer, then their satellite dish, and whatnot (I'm sure I got the order wrong). They speak of various cables and how to fit them together like surgeons discussing a particularly nasty appendectomy.

I rely on the magicians at Youtube & Google Video to supply me with my daily dose of entertainment. And for the longest time, I must say, they did a beautiful job. From my favourite Top Gear series to the latest Bollywood movies to an occasional indulgence in the Mentos-Coke genre, they had what it took to keep me happy.

But you can't escape Big Business. They're putting up their tollbooths wherever a bit flows online. Here's the latest scoop for the RIAA: royalties for Webcasts. The TV networks are also hard at work, slowly but surely removing existing content. And there aren't enough LonelyGirls out there to stem the flow.

A broken advertising model aside, I think the networks always had the edge, content-wise. Given a choice wouldn't you rather watch characters you're familiar with, who come back every week at the same time, and are presented in a slick, sexy format? Youtube instead has a multitude of 3-minute laughs to offer... some of them are indeed brilliant, but where's the continuity? Besides, flicking is easier than clicking (i.e. you've to work harder and longer to find good stuff on the net).

Wired magazine recently explained the Youtube phenomenon using the old analogy of a million monkeys typing away furiously. Where every once in a while you get a Hamlet. I think the networks are betting on the fact that their monkeys are a little smarter than the ones populating Youtube.

So, here's the 64-million dollar question: given that their current source of content is being squeezed, will Youtube (and by extension, Google) have to become a sort of movie studio to continue flourishing? Yahoo has already attempted to become a content provider, with disastrous results. Perhaps they were a little too early for the times. Will Youtube do better? How?

Google's $1.65bn pays off, as we find out...

... the cause of all man-made disasters and achievements. Here's the story, brought to you by the brilliant men who gave the world YouTube.

"Men With Cramps"
Introduction. Part I, II, and so on.

Is this worth 1.65 and seven zeros of investor money? I really think not. When Google removes all good videos from YouTube as a result of all the lawsuits, videos like these will be what we'll be left with. And then how will the GOOG stock do?

Pull out your money before it's too late, I say.