birds, planes and flying spandex perverts

One of the disadvantages of living in a country that is obsessed with football is that during the world cup or the European cup the country pretty-much comes to a standstill entertainment-wise (the upshot being that evening traffic is much reduced). Movie releases are postponed by months because the attendance figures in cinemas drop, and that is why, much later than the rest of the world, Superman Returns only opened here this weekend.

Usually I stay away from the first weekend crowd, because they’re too noisy and irate and walk in late, still talking on the phone no less. However, this was Superman, so I decided to risk an early Thursday show*. Guess what, the fire alarm went off just as the opening Warner Bros. logo came up. Lights start flashing, alarms blaring, projection shuts down.

(*Thursday/Friday being the weekend, but many people work a half-day on Thursday so there was a good chance most of the crowd I dislike wouldn’t be there until the later shows, and I was right.)

I had to wade through mind-numbing Coca-Cola and Fair & Lovely ads for this?! Luckily, a few false starts later, the nice new DC logo came up, and it was smooth sailing from there. To be more precise, smooth flying.

I don’t think I’ve conveyed quite how much of a cultural icon Superman is to an Indian my age. When I was growing up in the eighties, Superman (the 1978 Richard Donner film) was one of the first films I had ever seen in a theatre (moving to Oman later relegated me to videoland, but that medium helped to teach me much about cinematic form and language). Every year or so the film would be back in Indian theatres, and every time it did my dad would take us to see it. At the local raddiwalla, Superman comics were priced higher than other comics, even Archie. Spider-Man was on TV, but Superman could fly. He had that fantastic, soul-stirring background music to go with it (Spider-Man had some strange 70s rock thing and a funny theme song). I had a Superman suit when I was a kid (it was black. hehehe) and still have a photo of me trying to fake a flying shot (one of my legs was hidden behind a light-coloured headboard — it was pretty convincing). I still have that suit somewhere.

No, I don’t think it fits.

A long time has passed between those days and now. A lot of comics, a lot of movies, and a lot of comic-book movies (in the nineties I would never have imagined that we’d have any comic book superhero movies any more, and the future seemed bleak and dull and populated by Schwarzenegger sweat-and-gun-a-thons), two good TV shows about the guy and a plethora of Elseworlds interpretations (of which Mark Millar’s excellent Superman: Red Son, about a man of steel who is raised in Russia instead of the USA is my favourite, and a must read).

I was a little worried that the simplicity of Superman would not be enough to entertain me anymore.

Boy, was I wrong. Bryan Singer and crew have crafted an amazing piece of film. It stays true to what has come before it and yet, just as the previous films reinvented the character and created a lot of the mythology that we consider a part of the character today, Superman Returns does away with the restictive, old-fashioned collective idea of what Superman is and gets to the heart of the character, showing for what he is: complex, straightforward and most importantly, good.

SPOILER WARNING

They also cheekily take the film in a direction that should have fans howling, but again this subplot should only really offend those who cling to the Superman-as-ascetic-Jesus-figure notion (an incorrect one, if you’ve ever read the comic). This fan, for one, is very glad that the movie goes boldly, where no official canon, retcon-fearing comic-book writer every dares (but secretly wishes) to go, and they do it subtly.

END SPOILER

The film is a very quiet one (another quality I love about the old Superman, as well as Bryan Singer’s films), and except for Kate Bosworth’s well performed, but straight and bland version of Lois Lane (who, from comic to screen to radio to TV has always been portrayed as a bit of a nut), the entire cast (especially Brandon Routh and Kevin Spacey) put in masterful performances, aided by the classic John Williams score and the new John Ottman compositions.

I’m very tempted to go see this one again to catch what I missed, because I’m sure I missed a lot when I was just grinning like a little boy.

Excuse me, I need to go find a cape.

look behind you, a three-headed monkey!

Just back from seeing the entertaining, exciting and utterly soulless 150 minute trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, otherwise known as Dead Man’s Chest.

Yeah.

I really, really loved the first Pirates. It was like The Secret of Monkey Island only on the big screen, with one heck of a great central character in the form of Jack Sparrow, an epic scope and a wonderfully paced, dense storyline with real chills and spills. Pirates the Second has all that, and more: Jack’s back, the Monkey Island references are back (nobody tell Ron Gilbert, okay?), the plot just goes all over the place and is filled with thrilling action sequence after action sequence… except… except…

Well, it doesn’t really go anywhere. The entire movie is a collossal set up for the third, so while it is very entertaining and you’ll be grinning throughout, I for one can’t fairly judge it as being either good or bad without having seen the next one!

This unsatisfactory conclusion, of course, leads one to examine what is there in Dead Man’s Chest even more, and you soon begin to realise that Jack Sparrow has been reduced to a clown (note to writers/director/producer: we didn’t love him because he was quirky, we loved him because he was quirky and real), the villains are quite boring, every joke in the previous one has been given a dusting-off and a groan-inducing twist, and there just isn’t an engaging story to put it all together.

My favourite part of Pirates — heck, any pirate movie — would have to be the sense of adventure, the journey, the beautiful way in which it was portrayed that, hey, you know, these guys are on these ships and they have to sail them to far away places. In Dead Man’s Chest all of this is done away with (despite a two-and-a-half hour running time) and characters just show up at the next place they have to mess around with, most of which are done in CG. Doing so makes the entire thing seem fake. In Cure of the Black Pearl there was a minimal use of CG except for when they really needed it, and so the lush, natural beauty of the caribbean was brought out.

Not so in the sequel, which if anything suffers from an overdose of computer generated imagery. ILM is the best in the business. There’s no doubt about it. The latest WETA project looks like a TV movie from the 70s compared to their work. There’s a lot of good CG stuff here. If I was to look at any one of Davy Jones’s crewmen rendered seperately, if I got to see the wire mesh that made them up or the rigging or the texture maps while browsing the forums at CGTalk, then I’d be blown away. On the big screen, as a storytelling device, it just looks like a cluttered mess. There’s too much visual information. There are too many dangly bits and popping barnacles and coral things that the eye has no idea where to actually look, and so just ends up picking some part of the background to look at while the dialogue runs though.

As a scientific example of what is possible in today’s CG, it’s award worthy. As art direction, it’s a fiasco.

The cinematography, slave now to the CG gods, similarly takes a turn for the monochromatic. Gone is Curse of the Black Pearl’s multicoloured tropical chaos. Say hello to every shade of green and gloom that was left over from The Ring.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth the watch. The action sequences are marvellous. Some of the lines are snappy. Depp is great with the little work he has in this film, and Bloom shows shades of his good work in Kingdom of Heaven towards the climax, but Keira Knightley isn’t convincing (there’s this tired attempt at a love triangle that I hope goes away quickly), the plot never has the kind of weight and propulsion it needs to genuinely seem interesting. By the end of the movie you’re just getting revved up for things to get going, and they throw a cliffhanger at you that is anticlimactic because you weren’t that involed to begin with.

The best thing I can say about Dead Man’s Chest is that it tries very hard to break out of the mould set by the first film, and in that it succeeds fully.

The worst thing I can say is that it really hits home the fact that it was written by the same people as Shrek.

the seven spigots of interwubbing

I was somewhat skeptical when the alarmists started crowing about India banning major blog sites, and I was right — turns out it wasn’t a case of boneheadedness on the government’s part (this time), but on the ISPs’. Isn’t it fantastic that supposedly world-class companies like Tata and Reliance can’t block individual blogs, so have to get the whole domain?

If you, like me, can’t wait to see Casino Royale, then then this might tide you over until then (via Cinematical). Since I wasn’t interested to begin with, I had no problem looking at the trailer, and have come away generally impressed. Maybe worth a rental or even a visit to the cinema if the buzz is good. I’ve never read the books they’re based on, but it looks more like Bond and less like Banks, which is always a good thing. Alicia Silverstone’s squeaky sidekickiness notwithstanding (what happened to this girl?), it plays out well and doesn’t seem dumbed down despite the 14-year-old protagonist. The trailer is cut like most Amercian hold-your-hand affairs (complete with condescending movie-voice introductions), but with a cast full of cool people (Ewan McGregor, Robbie Coltrane, Bill Nighy) and scene-chewing Mickey Rourke as the villain, it’s probably not going to suck.
(note: trailer’s in English, but the site’s in German. Click on the “Stor” button)

OH. MY. FREAKING. THIRTY-THREE. MILLION. GODS. I’ve probably never mentioned this before, but Wes Anderson is one of my absolute favourite filmmakers, and the thought of him and Wilson teaming up again (Noah Baumbach and Anderson did The Life Aquatic), and then going to India — well, that’s it. This is officially the movie I’m most looking forward to in the entire world.

On a related note, have you seen this awesome Wes Anderson American Express ad?

Retro Gaming Symbology is finally coming of age. I wonder what kind of stuff will we be seeing twenty years from now, coming from kids who have grown up on Pokemon and Halo?

More retro-gaming inspired art.

Upon viewing this item I was reminded of the fact that motorcycles and cars are descendents of horses and carriages respectively, and that this, um, vehicle wouldn’t be a bad off-road, deep-jungle ride, if given the proper styling (make it more like a 599 GTB Fiorano, less like a Chinese Take-out box), a roll-cage (which is my main problem with quad-bikes — just because they’re descended from horses doesn’t mean you can’t change something — it’s called progress, you know) and some wheels for highway motion.

Real dogs vs. Nintendogs :
Real Dogs – 1, Nintendogs – 0

Finally, a USB hub that goes along with the rest of my crap!

the six shrines of interwubbing

The pilot episode of the animated version of The Amazing Screw-On Head is here. Watch. Now. NOW!

The poster for The Fountain looks good. In this day and age, we really should be getting more medium budget science fiction and fantasy films like we did in the 70s and 80s. Confession: I have never seen a Darren Aronofsky film. Anyone?

And here’s the impressive poster to Crank, which I’m surprised to say I’m looking forward to a lot (well, mostly because Jason Statham has so far never failed to deliver in an action movie).

Some of you may know that the Standard Operating Procedure for me regarding movies I actually want to see is that I try to stay as far away from all trailers as I can. American movie trailers suck. They give away everything. Most aren’t crafted with any verve or style, and they have a knack for making brilliant films look like crap, and vice-versa. I may watch 30 second teasers, I may drool over posters, but unless it’s going on in the theatre right before the movie starts, I stay away from all trailers. However, if you want to see the trailer for Magic Batman Vs. Magic Wolverine, go here. Apparently it’s very good.

Mazda is using some mighty special stuff to make their cars these days.

Yet another example of the urban Indian’s need to have all their shit noticed and hence validated by the White Guys.

Coming Soon: the Atkins DVD-R. 50TB? Is there anything but porn in that quantity?

Remember Boring Boeing? Sort of still there, but now with totally pimpin’ wings.

The Bodyflik. Because for every thing you can otherwise just do with your own hand, there must be a plastic tool.

In these days of tilting, twisting, vibrating analog motion-sensing wands, nothing elicits more lust than a well-crafted digital pad.

Of course, this thing elicits lust of a different kind (no, not that kind!!)

Brolly lights. I think I preferred the ones in Blade Runner.

Somehow the fact that right now there are fifty-three memory card formats out there and a reader for them doesn’t even faze me as much as it should.

This reminds me a lot of that Monty Python sketch from Michael Ellis.

In order to cut down on electricity consumption, the UK is outlawing standby modes. Hmm, I wonder how this ruling will affect those new ‘instant on’ computers that essentially use standby modes?

Not quite Sharks With Frikkin Lazers, Man! — but it’ll do for now. Anybody else somewhat nostaligic about the 80s G.I. Joe/M.A.S.K. style design and painted implementation of the graphic (compared to today’s 3D and photoshop monstrosities)?

I never really got into playing videogames so much as to require this place, but recalling how generally obsessed I was with the industry and game design in general back in my teens, I can understand why it exists. Also, I’m thankful that my motor senses aren’t so finely honed that I would consider playing and beating Halo on Legendary difficulty in one sitting, and that I now relegate myself to playing an hour of Final Fantasy X every other day. Of course, even if I did have the necessary motor skills, I wouldn’t really want to torture msyelf by playing through the design travesty that is Halo. Once — with cheats and trainers — was bad enough, thank you.

Team Fortress 2. Other than the fact that this game has been in development forever, finally, Finally, FINALLY someone breaks out of the gunmetal grey, uncanny valley to bring us an FPS with some really interesting graphics. The No One Lives Forever series is one of my favourites but still tries to have realistic character models, and while TimeSplitters was halfway there, and Painkiller was good but still not crazy enough, this is more of what I’d like to see in the uber-serious world of First Person Shooters. Good stuff.

And finally:
Speaking of the FPS genre, it is already rife with sexual symbology what with the constant representation of large disembodied guns waving around the screen, but this just takes it to a whole new level. (somewhat NSFW)

five fabulous flavours of interwubbing

It seems that Mumbai, as usual, just keeps on ticking. Trains services are back. Schools and Offices are open. People who don’t want to use the train are apparently being offered lifts by just about anyone on the street with a car or bike. The city was last on a list of ‘Politest Cities’ just a couple of weeks ago.*

* – This was based on three tests, apparently. Seeing if someone kept a door open for you, if someone picked up a paper you dropped and returned it to you, and if a store clerk thanked you for your patronage.

…Sigh…

Look, it’s a culture thing. In Mumbai — especially Mumbai — we consider that if you are able enough, you can and should be allowed to take care of yourself and your stuff, whether it’s a door or a piece of paper. Personally, I have seen both the first two events occur so many times in the city that I don’t even notice any more. It’s not special if someone leaves it up to you to open you own door, it’s not special if someone does it for you.

As far as the last test goes, that is something I find quite annoying, because over here in the ‘civilised world’ I get it at every single PoS, and it is always fake, Fake, FAKE. It was in the training manual for the poor minimum wage guy. It was drilled into his/her head. If anything, I feel sad that people are reduced to a set of rote instructions and actions that are supposed to denote politeness.

Give me the quick eye contact, the half nods, the silent, non-codified,non-standard, unique-to-every-transaction and person and place methods we use in Mumbai. Because that, for us, is genuine. No nakhra. We’re from Mumbai, we despise nakhra.

I think yesterday’s incidents prove beyond a doubt that when the shit hits the fan — really hits the fan — the people there would do things for each other that probably everybody should, but sadly nobody would. Forget that, even during very day life without the backdrop of tragedy, people you have never even said two words to will just do stuff for you that takes your breath away.

So, to conclude, Life Goes On. And so should we. Links:

Up Periscope! Is there a hybrid version with flexible solar-panel skin and regenerative braking systems?

The self-stirring mug. Does it come in an anti-clockwise version for the southern hemisphere? My main problem with this one (other than the obvious point that spoons give you so much more flexibility), is that it takes 2 AAs to power, and still only stirs. Fo that energy cost, why can’t it keep the beverage warm too? How about a frother attachment? My 5 dhiram drink shaker from Daiso has more features, and it doesn’t even require a battery!

When the travel tripod met common sense. Granted, a good solid tripod is an essential, but methinks kit like this will become essential for photographers who like to click stuff off the beaten path, or are just in a hurry (as most photographers usually are).

M$ nixes Win98 support. I still use it. It works okay. The trick is to use it as your OS and then only use Open Source software on it to avoid viruses and stuff. Loaded Xp on my work comp a month ago and it’s a really problematic system at the best of times, but some new software just only works with it right now. When I actually don’t have any projects pending that necessitates having productivity software on hand at all time, I’m going to have to comprehensively switch to Linux. Already use a liveCD of Mepis when I take my netcomp’s disk over to the other one to transfer files and clean it up, since XP won’t let me load new hardware easily.

This is cool in the dangerous-enough-that-no-helmet-can-save-you kind of way. Forget the snow, I want a road version!

Like the Irishman said, “I thought you were after the 100 pounds in my shoe!”

This billboard is quite nice. Of course, in this part of the world McDonalds isn’t considered a place to eat before lunch time (and their menu reflects that), so I still find the concept of breakfast there — especially the “breakfast burger” — disturbing.

And finally…
The Most Memorable moment from the Biggest Event in the Entire World.

…Now in playable form!

re: train bombs

I’m Okay (well, as okay as can be watching the news from 2000km away),
all the family I have in Mumbai is okay. Phone lines are jammed or
down, so things are a bit of a mess and can’t get in touch with people
except through the net of all things, but haven’t heard any bad news
yet.

At least, y’know, other than the obvious.

the four wives of interwubbing

Natalie Portman may be playing Indiana Jones’s daughter in Indy IV (no, no, not Fate of Atlantis, this is a movie). As if Ms. Portman wasn’t a Geek Queen enough with three Star Wars movies, V for Vendetta and the infamous SNL rap sketch.

I’m fine with it, as long as we get a follow-up trilogy of the young Ms.Jones’s adventures in the 50s and 60s. Seriously, can you imagine what the Indiana Jones movies would be like set in the swinging sixties?

Vince Vaughn playing Racer X in a big screen version he pitched to the Wachowski Brothers. Wrap your head around that for a moment. I never really warmed to the Speed Racer cartoon, but that was probably because I watched it after more sophisticated animé. However, if Vaughn keeps the somehwat campy, colourful look to the series and the Wachowskis try to make the race sequences like The Matrix: Reloaded‘s highway chase, then I’m sold.

I think there was a live action Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets) project around too. I remember that as an okay cartoon. Just get Alex Ross to do the production design like he did the DVD covers.

Wolfgang Petersen’s Batman Vs Superman didn’t happen. Roumors of the project keeps surfacing, but until then we’ll just have to be content with Magic Batman Vs Magic Wolverine.

Begin relentless salivation.

When you’re a designer with a kickass name like Duck Young Kong, you don’t waste your time designing sissy barbecues or gauche chaise-lounges. You design the most useful piece of injection-moulded plastic, like, ever.

Also by the same designer, this alarm clock.

Finally:
God. Yes.
More, please. And don’t just put ‘Islamic Art’ in it.

the third coming of interwubbing

Apparently Vin Diesel is not going to be Silver Surfer. That’s a relief. I have nothing against Diesel — I’m one of the few who actually liked The Chronicles of Riddick — but he was just the wrong choice. Look, just because someone is bald and has muscles doesn’t mean they’re a shoo-in for Silver Surfer. I imagine that a hyper-intelligent intergalactic herald of a planet-swallowing dude should be played more like Sonny from I, Robot (that was done by our beloved Alan Tudyk, y’know, and was the highlight of an overall enjoyable film).

In the same article they mention that Eric Bana won’t be coming back for the new sequel/remake of The (INCREDIBLE) Hulk (Sometimes referred to by the cool name Hulk Smash!). Bana is a good actor, but is not the best firt for the Hulk character, either in the first Ang Lee movie, or any more comic-like re-imagining (Eric Bana was the only thing worth watching in Troy, and I was quite interested to see him as James Bond, even though of all the hopefuls Daniel Craig was and is my favourite — have you seen Layer Cake?).

Perhaps it is time to go the Routh/Jackman route and get an unknown? Or, better yet, get Bryan Singer to cast any and all superhero movie characters. He has only made one bad decision (Halle Berry as Storm, but then, Halle Berry as Catwoman or Halle Berry as Bond–um–Person didn’t work out well either), and the rest of his choices have seemed daft to begin with but worked out fantastic in the end (McKellan as Magneto instead of, say, someone like Rutger Hauer).

Remember what I said about Betley SUVs? I was right.

While this mockup is very pretty indeed (and in a decade or so when self-lighting plastic displays will come in, it will be feasable for the mass market), it looks far too good to be a Mac. Sorry folks, they may be generally well designed, but they’re always completely boring to look at.

On the PC end of the spectrum, there is this. Hang on, wasn’t this what Plug & Play was supposed to be? I like the form factor, and as long as the thing runs alright I wouldn’t have a problem with such modular designs, but seeing that early GeForce FX cards required two AGP slots (and Dual Card SLI interfaces are the current hot thing) how long would it be before such a rigid system would be outdated purely because the volume and cooling requirements of the chips would not be met by the form-factor?

And finally…
Erm. Right. There’s so much Freudian stuff one can read into that one.

interwubbing the second

Make with the clicky.

Paper-thin Shape Memory Cellophane. I can’t wait for the day when I can make origami birds and horses that can actually move of their own accord. (this is similar, but not quite what I’m thinking of)

It baffles me that products like this exist, but most in-built computer file manager programs do not have data “shredding” actions. Your stuff doesn’t go away forever when you hit the Delete key, folks. Be careful if you ever sell your old hard drive.

My Windows Explorer was acting up for a few days, crashing, locking up the system for no reason, and since in XP pretty-much every fatal crash problem has no proper solution (the symptoms are so endemic that actually finding your particular problem is nigh-on impossible). So, instead of reloading the whole system I just switched to a third party file manager, FreeCommander. It’s very geeky, which I like, and does feature a “wipe” command forgetting rid of those unwanted files forever (well, nothing is permanent– I’m sure there are high-level data recovery companies that canunscramble deleted data, although if you’re doing something you wantkept that secret, you really shouldn’t be doing it on a computer).

On a related note, my condolences to Aarti, who lost her Outlook Mailbox data yesterday (I’ve suffered a similar fate once, and it was completely out of my control. Nothing quite like losing mail). Samir’s been trying to help her recover it, but data once deleted on these newer systems is not the easiest thing to recover with basic software. My advice:

backup
Backup
BACKUP

(Seriously, I have at least 3-5 copies of all my data on different batches of CD-Rs, DVD Rs and hard-drives somewhere, but that still means there’s a couple of gigs of unwritten, vulnerable data on disk that’s my current stuff. Shudder.)

These are pretty. “for the life with nudie sound.” mmmm…

My only question about this is, where is the mouse?

And finally:
Holywowwowowow

the death of inspiration

Fabian Bielinsky, the director of Nine Queens, has died. If you’ve never seen it, Nine Queens is a taut, gripping Argentinian movie about the machinations of low and high level confidence rackets told in a the span of a single day. The title comes from a the film’s principal job, the sale of nine very rare stamps by the film’s protagonists, one a seasoned veteran, and the other an up-and-comer who is begrudingly being tutored for the day by the vet.

If this sounds a little like the plot from Bluffmaster, you’re right. However, Bluffmaster is not a direct copy of the story. To say any more would spoil both movies, but I can imagine that Rohan Sippy saw Fabian Bielinsky’s film and wondered if and how it would be possible to make a plot like that work in an Indian film — and he succeeded admirably. Bluffmaster and Nine Queens share one scene, but the rest of the plot, characters, events and motivations are markedly different (therefore putting that one shared scene firmly into ‘homage’ territory, not a shot-for-shot ‘inspired’ movie).

I like to think of them as companion movies. Watch both. If you’ve seen neither, watch Nine Queens first. Nine Queens itself was officially remade into an American movie, Criminal* (which I haven’t seen, but by all accounts it’s okay).

(* No relation to Mahesh Bhatt’s Criminal, which was in fact a bizarre copy of The Fugitive, except that Tommy Lee Jones’s character was played by a woman cop in love with the hero)

A similar style of ‘remake’ — if one may call it that — occured between one of my favourite Korean movies (and indeed, one of Korea’s favourite Korean movies), My Sassy Girl, and last year’s Neal’n’Nikki. Again, the two share one scene and a somewhat similar plot structure, but diverge completely from there (and at the end of N&N, the plot even does a twist that seemingly was designed to surprise people who had already seen the Korean film.

I must say, I have absolutely no problem with this kind of ‘remake’ — half the stories I think up are in response to something I’ve seen or read. Sometimes you come out of a movie and say, “Well, if I were to make it…” and go on from there (Star Wars is apparently a copy of  Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress — damned if I care). Reaction to stimulus — any stimulus, be it from real life or from an existing work of fiction — is the root of much of creativity.

What I don’t like, however, is laziness. I don’t like shot for shot remakes of movies that their irritating directors pass off with shrugs of “there is no such thing as an original story” — Look, it’s actually a little painful to see a set of well-written, dare I say ‘original’ set of characters parading around the plot of The Usual Suspects (for a better take on The Usual Suspects‘s classic twist, it pops up in Anubhav Sinha’s Dus) or a director wasting good actors in her personal fantasy of making Dirty Dancing (and then doing it badly). You’re halfway there, why not go for it and do it right?

bearable flatness

If you’re Indian and you’re more than 20 years old, chances are your family didn’t have an oven at home growing up, and all baked goods were bought from the local Irani or — on a special occasion — Monginis.

Every house I’ve been in since 1991 has had a full featured cooking range with oven in it, yet I haven’t tried to bake anything in them since perhaps the late nineties. Ovens around the house have been used to store various extra pots and pans and other things. The microwave has an overhead grill element so I’ve used that sometimes, but it’s quite a pain since it takes forever to reach a good heat and has no temperature settings of its own. There is this small electric oven my mother bought ten years ago, but since that sucks up so much power it’s carefully packed away awaiting some future time when it will be put to good use as a towel warmer or something. Both the electric oven and the microwave also suffer from a small size, meaning that if I have to make pizza I need to cook each one individually (that’s 40 minutes gone right there).

The current apartment came with its own cooker but while I’ve put the stove-tops to good use I didn’t even bother — like, it seems, the previous tenant — to even turn on the oven. This is a bit of a sacreligious thing for someone who could probably live only on raw, grilled and baked goods forever, but I’ve never been much of a home baker other than the odd cake-from-a-box and the twice-yearly or so attempt at pizza (so far in the microwave grill).

Yesterday I figured I might as well clean out the oven and see if, after all these years, it actually works. Turned out to be in good shape, was relatively easy to light and use (the first oven I ever used had no light and its match-hole was waaaay at the back in one corner, which made lighting it a game of Russian Roulette with exploding LPG). It has its own rotary grill attachment with self-turning kebab skewers for even cooking (a nice touch), and an easy to light overhead gas grill.

In order to test the thing I whipped up some pizza using store-bought sauce (I found a brand that doesn’t taste like tin), cheese, zucchini, mushrooms and spicy sausage. For the bases I used Egyptian flat bread. I’ve even tried pitta bread and chapattis and they work fine as long as you don’t overcook them.

Which brings me to the only problem I encountered. Unfortunately in the hot oven, by the time the toppings were all cooked the edges of the (already cooked) flatbread had turned rock hard. It wasn’t too bad, seeing as everything that was under the toppings was soft, but not something I would like in a pizza. I tried another batch, and this time instead of the oven I just put the tray higher and lit the grill without a pre-heat. I tried the much thinner pitta bread with that, and it worked like a charm.

I finally have a working oven I can just chuck a bunch of stuff into. Thank God, all that cooking was cutting into my pr0n work time!

interwubbing 001

I figure I end up mindlessly reading newsfeeds anyway, so I might as well inflict some of the pain on my delightful reader(s).

Self Heating Dinners
Years from now, depressed and lonely bachelors everywhere will snuggle up to their warm, inviting curry-flavoured pillows.

This looks nice. I read a review, and it is refreshingly neither some kind of awkward Magic-a-la-Hollywood movie (it’s called The Illusionist, nor Edward Norton Does Shrek). Plus it has Jessica Biel in it, so I’m sold.

Edward Norton does Shrek. eeeew.

Wow. Zhang Yimou and Chow Yun Fat. Unfortunately, judging by how both Hero and House of Flying Daggers were handled, I’ll probably get to see this on DVD long before the theatrical release in these parts around 2012 (which will be an English dub anyway, so what’s the use?)

I get all hot under the collar about Ron Howard making a Straczynski-penned movie called The Changeling (a Garfield Logan movie! Woohoo! Sign up Adrian Grenier!), and then it turns out to be some kind of cheap little grey-toned thriller that will no doubt waste Nicole Kidman/Charlize Theron/Diane Lane (or other 35 actresses who have won/been nominated for an award) in a sleepy, underdeveloped character with the latest iteration of the Haley Joel Osment meme playing the creepy Son/NotSon. No doubt, with JMS writing, it will turn out that NotSon is the emissary of an ancient alien race who goes around seeding planets with their cosmic bingo-bongo.

I ask you, Ron Howard, isn’t it so much easier to round up a bunch of animals and turn them green in post? You’re the guy who made Splash, for Mary Mags’s sake!

Somewhere, deep down, JK Rowling just loves to watch fanpersons convulse.

Price of car and pedigree of brand are directly proportional to ugliness of resulting vehicle (and make no mistake, while this is a mockup, the eventual one will be a total eyesore. Hell, I remember seeing Cayenne mockups that looked
nice once). In other news, BMW X3, still no, no, no.

But, just to prove that there is an exception to every rule…
BTW, saw one of these, brand new, red and black, on the back of a shipping truck making its way from the airport. I hope and pray that the owner doesn’t wreck it before I get to see it drive by (3 out of 4 of the local Porsche Carrera GTs, including the black one I saw once, are now sadly in the scrap heap).

I love it. Does it have cupholders?

Love it more. Does it have a DAP dock?

Who’s yer daddy?

The Nigerian Carving Industry is more developed than I thought.

James Bond tech, when processed for production in the real world, always ends up looking like something from the Boys 6-12 aisle of the Toy Store.

A Bruce Lee Musical. Can’t be worse than Dragon.

And finally.

…I can’t wait for the pr0n version.