Main Bikaoo - On Sale
A camp treatise on the integrity of the individual in modern society. This one has its several good moments and some tremendous performances, is not to my mind in the same league of exceptional camp value as Mr. 100% - The Real Player or even Jawaani ke Gunaah.

I just listened to the latest edition of The Ricky Gervais Show: Ricky Gervais Guide to The Future. Hilarious as always. In this episode, Ricky, Steve and Karl ponder about how the future will unravel. In typical fasshion, the discussion degenerates into utter nonsensical drivel thanks to Karl Pilkington right from the get-go. As usual, Karl, the shaven chimp, steals the show. The funniest bit for me was when Karl gives us 5 prediction for the future a hundred years from now. I don't know how he comes up with this stuff just off the cuff. What a strange, strange man. Ricky as usual goes apeshit with his maniacal cackles. It's one of the most annoying sounds in the world, but somehow it adds to the hilarity of the whole thing.

I'm really pleased so far with The Ricky Gervais Guide to... series. The show was losing steam by season 5, and I thought that that was it for the series. But with this new format, there's structure and it lets Karl shine again. Still, nothing will ever match season 1: the season that introduced to the world the fucking maniac that is Karl Pilkington. I fucking miss Monkey News :(

Gonna start re-reading "Hitman - My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling", the autobiography of Bret Hart. This stems from the fact that he's signed a short term deal with the WWE, which begins this week. Seeing one of my favorites after a 12 year gap in the company and amongst the people who setup the Montreal Screwjob is guaranteed make me mark out.

BTW, any pro wrestling fans here? Even if its old school?

^Let me answer that question with an epic picture I found from some 10 years ago. I was in 10th.


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That's me on the left. rofl

I've got tons of these where we're doing wrestling poses. Apparently this was what I did all day long when I was in 10th.

Hahaha...

Oh fuck. Brings back memories of trying to look like Scott Steiner from the really old WWF Trump Cards. Pose-wise, i mean. Even now, there are times when i bust out a Razor Ramon (Scott Hall) jig off & on. Or the CM Punk hand taunt. :-p. I'm such a kid.

LOL @ adip.
Started to watch Stuck by Stuart Garden. Turns out I had this lying about on one of my hard drives all along. Will probably finish once I get home tonight.

133T4dip wrote:
I'm really pleased so far with The Ricky Gervais Guide to... series.
What kind of show is it? I'd seen one youtube clip with the three of them sitting around and talking to each other and the camera - is that the same one?

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is quite scathingly hilarious, for the most part - except for the times he throws in some extended WTF-ery filler. Of course, I suspect it'd be more rewarding if I was familiar with most of the tv shows he was reviewing. Then again, most of them seem to be total shit, so maybe I don't really want to be all that familiar with them. Gotta love the way his past as a games journalist shows through here and there - like when Paul McCartney shows up at the season finale of X Factor or something and the crowd goes wild and he says, "All that hysterical screaming reminds me of the airport level in Modern Warfare 2." Cut to 20 second clip of him gunning down civilians at the airport in MW2. Done with Season 4, starting on Season 1 now. Yeah, it's all messed up.

Also saw Go, which owes a lot to Pulp Fiction, with its three intertwined storylines and familiar setpieces, but unlike that movie's lethargic pace, Go (which takes its name seriously) charges off the blocks in no time, not bothering to slow down till the credits roll. Lot of genuinely funny moments and quite a bit of boobage, so time well spent.

Started reading The Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels, Ravi's recco. Read the first story, Stephen King's 'The Monkey', which disappointingly enough wasn't about a possessed penis, but was way creepy in a typical King way. In addition to the horror, he's quite adept at capturing the ugly side of middle-class American life, which makes most of his stuff all the more uncomfortable.

LMAO @ Adip's pic. Were you doing the People's Eyebrow or whatever before The Rock stole it?

^Haha... let me put it this way. Back then, if The Rock had died, I would have headed straight to Basavanagudi, and set fire to some bitchass vehicles. Such would have been my grief.

About the Ricky Gervais show, all it is is a podcast. I don't care for the word, 'podcast', but it's basically a downloadable radio show.

The story of the show goes like this. Back when Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant were yet to make it big with The Office, they used to do a radio show with XFM London. It had a somewhat regular format with Ricky and Steve talking about random shit between songs. It's pretty fun to listen to because they clearly didn't give a damn about keeping that job. Anyway, one day, the show's producer, Karl Pilkington starting participating in Steve and Ricky's discussion and the rest is history. You can't explain Karl Pilkington, he has to be experienced. When they ended the radio gig, Ricky still really wanted to give Karl greater exposure because he's such a crackpot. So he took the show to the internet, this time with no music and 100% drivel. It was instantly catapulted to much success thanks to Ricky's recently acquired fame from The Office and his frequent shameless plugs. But really, this show should be called The Karl Pilkington Show.

I finished The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Tahir Shah. I'm generally wary of travelogues on India because they tend to be total and utter bollocks. Too much time is spent with the author poking fun at the fact that a vast majority of Indians speak less than perfect english. This pisses me off immensely. These people are stepping out of their linguistic comfort zone in order to communicate with visitors. The least these assholes can do is to not make jokes about the fact that a masseur in Kerala or a grocer in small town UP doesn't speak like a fucking BBC newscaster. The authors who are the most guilty of this frankly bullshit attempt at infusing humour into their tired and shitty narratives are Alexander Frater (author of the abominable Chasing the Monsoon), Pankaj Mishra (author of the superlatively shitty Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, a book that has made me determined to slap Mishra first and only then talk to him should we ever meet, differences in size notwithstanding), Paul Theroux (though he gets over this in his later books) and Mulk Raj Anand (a wrter so bad that everyone in his books speaks atrocious english. Even the Britishers who are supposed to be speaking bad Hindi rendered into English.) Damn! Where was I? Ah yes.

I'm happy to report Shah's book suffers from none of this malaise. It's a fascinating story that reads like a mixture of a tall tale and travelogue. Halfway through it, you are caught between your knowledge and suppositions of just how bizarre a country India is, and wondering whether Shah is embellishing reality to make it more interesting. But it really doesn't matter - this not Lonely Planet and its purpose is more to entertain than inform and it does entertain spectacularly well.

After being very impressed by the magical prowess of an old family retainer at age 11, Shah hotfoots it down to India in the mid-90s to learn magic. He's sent to meet his family retainer's master the sadistic and mercurial Hakim Feroze who puts him through a grueling torturous routine that seems to have everything to do with taking the piss out of Shah and nothing to do with magic. Shah is happy to portray himself as a man of almost imbecilic but good-natured guilelessness with even his grand plan for revenge against Feroze backfiring horribly. He's soon sent for a tour across the country where he encounters several godmen and debunks and demystifies each one of their tricks to the reader - he knows better than to denounce these people before their masses of followers. This is easily one of the most enjoyable books I've read in ages - a far cry from the depressing and/or horrific fare I generally subject myself to.

Asmo wrote:
Gonna start re-reading "Hitman - My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling", the autobiography of Bret Hart. This stems from the fact that he's signed a short term deal with the WWE, which begins this week. Seeing one of my favorites after a 12 year gap in the company and amongst the people who setup the Montreal Screwjob is guaranteed make me mark out.

BTW, any pro wrestling fans here? Even if its old school?

Fuck! I must get back to watching WWE again!

133T4dip wrote:
Anyway, one day, the show's producer, Karl Pilkington starting participating in Steve and Ricky's discussion and the rest is history. You can't explain Karl Pilkington, he has to be experienced.
Heheh, what little I've heard of him reminds me a bit of my friend's colleague (referred to here as X), a woman who's famous for gems like these:

Friend: So, where were the first Olympic games held?
X: Hmm...Athens.
Friend: Alright,so...where were the last Olympic games held?
X: Haha...it hasn't been held yet, stupid.

--

Oh, and though it's a December viewing, I forgot to mention the episodic indie movie Stingray Sam, basically held together by singer-actor-director Cory McAbee. All members of his band The Billy Nayer Show/American Astronaut feature in the movie and for good reason - each 10 minute episode has around 3 minutes set aside for a song. The music style is all over the place, from melancholy country to rap-rock and all handled somewhat tongue in cheek. Ultimately fun, if quite random.

Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky)

This was a brilliant trippy film. The lead character is the son of a crazy couple that run a circus. He is sent to an asylum at an early age after witnessing a violent argument between his parents in which his mum splashes acid on his dad's crotch and the dad in return chops off her arms. The rest of the film is a surreal yarn in which he meets his mother as an adult and is compelled to use his arms as an extension of hers, even if it means he has to kill various women. In a way, the movie is like Psycho as told from Norman Bates POV. Terrific visual sense as well, similar to the films of Dario Argento.

Commando- Hunted Down!

Any Roberto Bolano lovers - 2666 is a bloody epic !!!
Also if anyone is interested check out the foll publishing houses:
1. Dalkey
2. Canongate
3. Serprents tail

All awesome houses from which I have brought quite a lot of books !