Musings From New York

Prepare to die!

Laughing!

The "Whaaaaa ...?" moment du jour

So I switched over to VH1 this evening ... what can I say, the 80's struck back! And they were advertising for a "Rock Honors" show, that sought to congratulate KISS, Queen, Def Leppard, and Judas Priest (as an aside ... 3 British groups. I think all 3 have been in the news recently ... Def Lep just released "Yeah!" - a covers album - and I'm sure Priest is touring & releasing. Didn't Queen just announce a new frontman? What has KISS been upto?!)

Anyway, back to the point (as another aside, perhaps "Beating around the bush" would be a better name for this blog ... but then I'd probably be paid a visit by the Feds). Where was I? ... Oh yes, the point!

The point was that the sponsors of this show was Pantene (for those unfamiliar, they make shampoo). Now I know that BIG HAIR is almost a given when talking about 80's bands, but please, for the love of all that is Holy and <insert diety of choice here>'s sake, don't have a hard rock show sponsored by hair styling products!

Aargh!

Update: VH1 seems to be as bad as Doordarshan. There are multiple sponsors per segment of the show.

Update 2: Don't you hate it that in these supposed tribute shows, the artist/ cover band ALWAYS plays the radio friendly hits? I mean Queen came on and played the usual ... We Are The Champions, We Will Rock You, etc. ... Godsmack covered Priest and actually played some "non-traditional" soundbites - Hellion/ Electric Eye, Victim of Changes, before moving on to Hell Bent For Leather & Breaking The Law (my two most disliked Priest songs) ... Watching Priest perform has inspired me to share with you the fact that at age 18, I "painted" (in ballpoint) the following on my forearms.

Update 3: Oi! No fair! The drummer of the Def Lep covering band is using both arms. Cheat!

Musings from San Diego

So as you all know, I was in San Diego for 2 weeks, on training. I spent a weekend there with Metal & Divya ... met up with Visa, Roy & Rags too. Saw Da Vinci code as well (see below). During that weekend, we visited a hand gliding club, where we walked amongst the crumbling cliffs, choosing to ignore large signs warning of impending doom! But no! The Tomb Raider in us refused to turn back! I managed to get a good shot of some bay (La Jolla?) that is now my desktop wallpaper (I live for such photos. Sad, but true.)

I also took a couple of photos of the meeting room in the basement of the hotel I stayed at - the Courtyard Marriott. This building used to be a bank once upon a time (a long time ago too; I'm talking 30's), and the basement has a couple of vault rooms. Petra, the Swedish intern mentioned earlier, graciously posed for a photo :-)

I managed to fly back stand-by, omething I'd never done before. It was a journey fraught with risk, as I ended up flying to LAX, and then waiting for my name to clear the standby list. Had I not made it ... I think I'd probably have been in the airport for the rest of the day hoping and praying to make a flight ... or ended up putting $600 down on a one-way fare back to NYC.

I left for Boston on Saturday afternoon, and spent the weekend with Andy at Haah-wud. Stay tuned for details of that trip!

Lots to write about!

I have a ton of stuff to write about - the trip to San Diego, the trip to Boston, and my initial thoughts on the Office 2007 Beta 2 (that I've been using for all of 12 hours!). Stay tuned!

Good news for Indian XBox gamers ...

I will now be able to kick your ass.

My Name is Erland

I've spent the last 2 weeks in training here in San Diego with Petra, a Swedish intern. We've been swapping cultural tidbits off and on, and she recently told me that Sweden celebrates Name Days. Apparently, every day of the week has one (or more) names assigned to it, and people are wished on their "name day". She sent me this explanation today:

The Swedish namedays is a list of names where each name is associated with a specific date. If your name is the same as the nameday of some date, you can celebrate your "nameday" on that date; it can be like a "little birthday" for you. Since there are much more than 365 names in use, nowadays each date usually have more than one name associated to it.

Namedays are not celebrated in all countries - in Europe nameday celebration is an unknown custom in most countries. Namedays are celebrated in Sweden and Finland, and in several countries in eastern Europe, including Greece.

A list of namedays can be found here.

Jan 8th's name is Erland. :-)

Duh Vinci Code 6/10

Dear Gods, what an interminable movie. It lacked everything I look for in a good thriller - actor/actress chemistry, good chase scenes, and above all PACING. This movie had none of these. The only reason I give it the high score that I did is that I like the backstory (religion hater that I am). I am so pissed off, I refuse to even give this movie a review. I will say the following in closing:

- For the first time, Ebert gave a movie a higher rating than me. The professional critic that he is, he tends to beat down on a movie more than me. I just want the explosions and half-naked women.

- Paul Bettany is an extremely creepy villain.

- What's with Tom Hanks' hair? It looks like a raven died on his head.

- Audrey Tatou is really, really wooden. The only other movie I'd seen her in was Amalie ... I really liked her in that movie, but come to think of it ... she was pretty wooden in that movie too, wasn't she? She's like the French Aishwarya Rai.

- Ian McKellen has had way too much exposure off late - Gandalf & Magneto. This is the first non-sci-fi/fantasy role I've seen him in (not to say there aren't others), and I find it a little hard to dissociate the image built up in my head with the actor. Also, he looks a bit like Peter O'Toole for some reason.

- Of course, everyone has to see this movie. I mean, it's The Da Vinci Code! That, I suspect, lead the movie to make over $200m this weekend.

Secular Integration

I'm all for it.

The future?

I was browsing through a local newspaper a couple of days ago ... something I haven't done in, oh, 4 years. Anyway, there was a reader's poll on one of the pages. The question, simply put, is this: what do you think of the major TV networks' initiative to put shows on the Internet. The answers were: 1. Bad idea - they should focus on improving the quality of current shows; 2. Good idea - TV networks are dinosaurs that need to move into the modern world; 3. Don't care - "quality TV" is an oxymoron (for some reason, I remembered that one verbatim!)

So that got me thinking ... what would be the best long term strategy? Its true that a lot of folks out there have portable devices: iPods, Archos Jukeboxes, what have you. Presumably, they're watching shows on these devices, rather than carrying portable DVD players, or restricting their viewing to TV only. So it's great for these kinds of viewers that more shows are going online.

But is it in the network's best interests in the long term? I would argue that such a strategy will lead to greater loyalty, which would translate into more eyeballs on new TV shows, and hence, more advertising revenue. Here's the logic: shows have dedicated & loyal fanbases. Often times, the size of the viewerbase isn't enough to justify the cost of production & distribution. Now with the internet, the cost of distribution is reduced to nominal values, and oftentimes, the burden of distribution can be shifted to 3rd party retailers (for example, Apple). So this leaves networks with a source of higher profit margins. Which in turn gives them money to a) produce more episodes of the show b) improve the quality of existing shows, and c) produce new shows.

Given that the viewerbase is thrilled that the network is making the shows available online, it's more than conceivable that they will be more receptive to new shows, right?

Win-win, eh?

Musings from San Diego

I've been in San Diego on a training course for Peregrine ServiceCenter for the past week, and will be here till Memorial Day weekend.

The little I've seen of San Diego has been confined to in or around the Mira Mesa locality, and scenic drives to one beach or another. This trip was the first time I'd seen a little more of the downtown area. The training course is just outside of the Gaslamp district, which is the fine dining & clubbing area of San Diego. I'll post some pictures soon.

Anyway, I'm spending the weekend with Prashanth & Divya, and hopefully Roy & Rags. I was hoping to go to Los Angeles, but that's fallen through. Not sure what else there is to do.