September 4, 2003

September 4, 2003

Exactly 20 years ago this day, I started my IT career in Cognizant. As 111290.

The career itself has been everything short of spectacular, but personal growth has been nothing short of rebirth.

As a child, as a student, as a professional, I was always outstanding. I stood out, for the right and the wrong reasons. 

I had my flashes of brilliance, the most predominant of which was my command over language. Followed by my ability to analyze, articulate, produce documents of high standards. Clarity and vision. Looks, height. 

But also, I do not know anyone else who had as many rough edges as I did. Loud, dominative, low in self esteem, a bit pushy, socially awkward, having boundary issues, temperamental, uncouth now and then, easily provoked, weak when emotional, at times unprofessional, impulsive... oh!

Had I lived in a small town or chosen a different career path that did not entail constant team work, or resigned after a few years like many of my female cousins following marriage and child birth, I would have lived with all my flaws and died with them, missing the opportunity to meet a better me. 

It has been thanks to the unforgivingness of this big city and it's IT crowd with it's zero tolerance, that would not let me get away with any attitudinal abberation and rejected one flaw after another, until I had polished all of my rough edges.

There is still the residue and that will melt away with time, but God alone knows, that who I am today is not the girl he had known 20 years ago.

Working in a team, however lesser than you, however pathetic in grammar, is quintessential to personality and character grooming.

Getting punched and kicked about by them a few times until you finally have their approval, is so key to consummate growth and development. 

I know a few who quit in rough weather, saying they didn't want to take orders, work for someone else, they didn't like living in big cities, etc., and I see they will never be fully cured of themselves. 

This career gave me money, trips to exotic places, my favourite city New York,...but the best it gave me was a better me. I must admit it, regardless of my lack of any fondness for this IT industry.

Personal growth apart. ..

The career itself - some was my bad, some, not mine. 

There were flashes of brilliance now and then. The clients were mostly impressed.  There was hardly any revision to any of my documents. 

But I couldn't bring consistency, focus and dedication to my work. I was distracted and disturbed because of one thing or another.

But there were the dregs of hierarchy and patriarchy that outdated men and managers carried from government offices to glass and steel modern IT buildings.

 

Misogyny. I was a very strong woman and they had to try and break me. I took 'transparent hierarchy' very seriously and did not practice 'subordination'. All of them would then gang up a try to bend me. 

Some managers needed a 'yes man' so they could deliver garbage to the client and wash their hands off, and I would side with the clients and say no to managers and their ridiculous project plan to deliver caps without the bottles to suit limited budget.

There were the leftists who wanted to freely piss on Brahmins and when I freely countered them, they ganged up too.

So there I was, an abhimanyu, caught in the chakravyuha of rogue managers.

Well, most of the rogue managers are behind me, the last 4 years have been smooth sailing and the coming years will be better hopefully.

(My FB post 3 years ago)

Saara Yeh Aalam Noorani Hai

A brilliant song. Representative of hindi film songs based on classical music. I was reminded of this one by another song - a new kannada music video that's totally classical. After watching it, I thought it had was a great composition and had harnessed all the genius and full potential of the classically trained singers, while allowing them to show their individual prowess. But at the same time I just knew it wouldn't become very popular. Just like this brilliant song from the RGV movie Shiva that never became popular. 

For a song to be loved by people, to be passed on from one voice to another towards popularity, it has to be hummable. And therefore within the reach and grasp of the common people. 

If you listen to this song, not one line is hummable by the ordinary untrained voice. And the tempo is uniformly fast. It never slows down to allow the singer to breathe. 

And that's not because it's classical based. 

Just think of kahan se aaye badra, or Jab deep jale aana - there are parts that are beyond the reach of the ordinary but there is the mukhda or the first few lines that are simple, slow and that can be sung by anyone. And how popular they are!

https://youtu.be/nmBL4PLts5M?si=zFfAvH_g0wKuEdQw 

21 (2008)

Watched ‘21’ (2008) on Netflix.

A heist drama inspired by the true story of MIT Blackjack team. 

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Ben (Jim Sturgess) a mathematics major at MIT is accepted into Harvard Medical School but it is unlikely he will get the scholarship due to fierce competition, unless he says something dazzling about himself to the panel. 

This means he will have to spend 300000 USD from his pocket.

At MIT, professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) notices Ben is brilliant at math and invites him to join his secret blackjack team. Using card counting and covert signaling, Micky’s team has been making profits at Las Vegas casinos. Micky knows that Ben has the potential to be a big player.

Ben hesitates and refuses at first, but joins, saying he is doing it only to pay his Harvard tuition.

During weekends, they fly to Vegas and Ben sees a lifestyle that baffles him. Luxurious hotels, glittering casinos, money, profits,…

They use masks and different makeovers, wigs, hair colour and disguises, to make them look different each time so they will remain off the casino’s radar.

Meanwhile, Cole (Laurence Fishburne), Head of security at a casino, has been alerted about a player making profits and has started watching camera recordings.

Ben’s success at the casinos and the money that’s pouring in makes him neglect his contribution to a project with his friends. When they confront him, he fails to persuade them to buy his story of being busy and they part ways.

During one trip to Vegas, Ben shows overconfidence, breaks one of the rules of the team and ends up losing 200000 dollars.

Micky, who had warned them he is not their father, nor friend, this was strictly business, is now very angry and insists ben pay back all the money due to him.

Ben refuses to, and convinces the others in the team to join him in continuing the casino business.

Micky follows them and tips off Cole about Ben.

Cole drags Ben away and beats him up.

When ben returns to MIT, it’s a train wreck.

He is not eligible for graduation because Micky Rosa has pulled the plug so another professor is no longer willing to ignore Ben’s absence at his course. When he enters his dormitory room, his money, which he had stolen in the roof above is all stolen. The money he had been saving for Harvard med.

Ben approaches Micky, apologizes and asks that they may continue like before. 

They go to Vegas and win big money. When Cole spots them, they all run with the bag of chips. Micky asks ben to hand him the bag of chips just before he jumps into a limo, but realizes that the bag has coin shaped toffees and not chips. The bag of chips is still with Ben.

It turns out Ben and Cole had made an agreement that Ben would hand over Micky to Cole who had been outsmarted by Micky before when Micky used to gamble in the casinos himself.

It is understood that Cole gives Micky a good thrashing.

As per their agreement, Cole would allow Ben to keep his earnings, but Cole takes away all the chips at gun point leaving Ben with nothing.

The movie ends with Ben’s friends with whom Ben has reconciled, playing at the casinos, making profits, as part of Ben’s team.

And ben recounting his antics to the scholarship director, dazzling and dumbfounding him.

I hated Kevin Spacey in this film. it probably meant he did a good job of acting but such a hateworthy wretched character! A predator, blackmailer, exploiter in the garb of a teacher.

Lines noted…

‘Why don't you ask her out?’

‘I am already dating someone’

‘Your right hand doesn't count’

‘It does the way I use it’

‘Winner winner chicken dinner’

Face cards - In a deck of playing cards, the term face card or court card is generally used to describe a card that depicts a person as opposed to the pip cards. They are also known as picture cards, or until the early 20th century, coat cards.

‘I can't just go to Vegas on weekends’

‘Why not, MIT's on cruise control for you, you've already gotten into Harvard med, what do you have to worry about?’

Cruise control - Cruise control is a system that automatically controls the speed of a motor vehicle. The system is a servomechanism that takes over the throttle of the car to maintain a steady speed as set by the driver

‘The best thing about Vegas is, you can become anyone you want’

‘They've got this new computer software that reads people's faces’

‘Win like a man, lose like a man’

‘You know what's worse than a loser? Someone who won't admit he played it wrong’

‘Jeffrey, my brother from another mother...’

‘Cauchy was the first to make a rigorous study of the conditions for convergence of an infinite series. And was concerned with developing the basic theorems of the Calculus as rigorously as possible. 

Isn't it true Cauchy stole from his students? 

Vladimir Stupnitsky, a student of Cauchy's who accused Cauchy of stealing his four volume text on this analysis and publishing it under a pseudonym’

‘You should get that eye looked at’

(black eye) 

‘I scored the prettiest girl in school’

#westerncinema

The Interview (1998)

Watched ‘The Interview’ (1998) on Netflix.

An Australian film starring Hugo Weaving, Tony Martin, Aaron Jeffery.

A film that demonstrates how law can mean travesty of justice, how law can be the antithesis of justice, and how law can be a hurdle in the way to justice.

Edward Fleming (Hugo Weaving) is roughed up by two cops Steele and Prior, who break into his house and dragged to a police interrogation room.

They question him about a missing car. Fleming is scared, he pleads innocent and begs them give him food. They don’t, and Prior intimidates and threatens him while Steele acts good cop. 

As the interrogation proceeds, Steele mentions that the owner of the car is missing, in response to which, Fleming provocatively suggests the person may have been murdered.

He asks for a lawyer. The lawyer arrives and asks him to maintain silence, to say nothing.

But after the lawyer leaves, his confidence grows. When questioned by the cops, he demands to be given food. 

They put an appetizing spread of food on his table and he starts talking. He confesses to have hitchhiked and then, after being picked up, he says they drove to a desolate place and he brutally murdered the guy. He further says, he killed 5-6 other in a similar fashion and dumped their bodies someplace where they could not be found.

Just when Steele thinks he’s got the man, recordings of the confessions and all, he summoned by his superior Jackson who tells Steele his interrogation was video recorded since it began and due to threats and intimidation used during the questioning, the proceeding in the room are inadmissible in court.

Fleming tells Jackson his entire confession was a lie. He wanted food and gave the police what they wanted to hear so they would stop harassing him.

Steele knows Fleming is a criminal but fails in persuading Jackson to give him a chance.

As Steele and Prior look on, Fleming walks away with a mocking grin on his face.

Steele hands the recordings of the confession to a media person, not caring about the consequences, knowing he would be fired anyway.

Hudson, the officer in charge of the ethics committee talks to Steele one on one. Steele accuses him of personal grudge. Hudson turns the recorder off and insults Steele, abuses him and tells him he make sure they will get him.

Unknown to Hudson, Steele records Hudson’s voice, planning to use it to defend himself.

The movie ends with Fleming hitchhiking somewhere.

Lines noted…

‘We're all what our parents make us, Mr. Fleming’

‘There was this lean-to in the field...’

Lean-to - a shack or shed supported at one side by trees or posts and having an inclined roof, a roof of a single pitch with the higher end abutting a wall or larger building

‘The toe cutters. They are here’

Toe-cutters - The term toe cutter is Australian slang for a person who lives by torturing other criminals, then robbing them. As the name implies the torture usually involves painful removal of the digits or in some cases the complete foot

‘The shadowers are sitting outside. 2 crew of 4 round the clock’

Shadower - a spy employed to follow someone and report their movements, a secret watcher; someone who secretly watches other people

‘You were careless, slipshod’

‘Typical cowboy response’

#westerncinema

Monument of Love

It's not Taj Mahal, its Ram Setu. The greatest monument of love.

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After learning of many great love stories of the world, you wonder, what could be the greatest thing a lover can do for his/her partner? 

Build a freaking bridge over an ocean?!

Such was the love of Ram for Sita, which no ocean, no ten headed Rāvan, no million strong armies was able to bound. 

If there is any true monument of love, then it is Ram Setu.

Spy Game (2001)

Watched ‘Spy Game’ (2001) on Netflix.

A Tony Scott film starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.

Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is an undercover CIA agent who has been arrested in China by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as he was trying to free a female prisoner from an army prison in Suzhou, in an unsanctioned operation he started in his own personal interest. He will be executed in 24 hours if the US government does not claim him and bargain for his release.

In CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a group of CIA executives gather to discuss the case. The President is due to visit China for a major trade deal and if they claim Tom Bishop as their man, it could jeopardize the deal.

They summon Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), Tom’s Bishop’s mentor, in order to understand the details of Bishop’s history. While appearing to be looking into his arrest and the next steps, they actually seek to learn something in his history that will give them the pretext not to abandon him.

Nathan knows these men, their cunning and their machinations. Its his last day at work before retirement, there are less than 24 hours left and Bishop is being tortured even as they are speaking about him.

He must outsmart these men and circumvent the system to have Bishop rescued…

Interspersed in between Nathan’s agile moves in CIA to realize his rescue plan are flashbacks of Bishop’s work in Vietnam, East Germany and Beirut.

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Lines noted…

‘When I was a kid, I used to spend summers on my uncle's farm. He had this plow horse that he used to work with every day’

‘It was a tip of the sword deal out of Beirut intended to be clean and efficient in a place that was anything but. By 85 the place was a nightmare’

(An American idiom commonly used in military operations to mean the first soldiers to go into a war zone)

‘Sheikh Salameh was our target. He ran a large terrorist faction that had taken out a number of American targets including at least one of the embassy bombings. That left 212 people dead. Mostly civilians’

‘His cover was as a photojournalist. Bishop did a day-in-the-life spread on the doctor that we got printed in the Times’

‘Will you join us?’

‘Maybe just for a minute. I don't want to be a third wheel’

(A third wheel is someone who is unnecessary to a group and is tagging along. In this case, the group usually consists of a couple and the third, superfluous person)

‘We have some fucked up barometer for success don't we?’

‘Give me bottom dollar’

Bottom dollar - the last of one's money; all of one's money; a sure thing. This idiom describes something that is sure or certain to happen.

Dear John Letter - A Dear John letter is a letter written to a man by his wife or romantic partner to inform him that their relationship is over, usually because she has found another lover. The man is often a member of the military stationed overseas, although the letter may be used in other ways, including being left for him to discover when he returns from work to an emptied house. It is usually sent after time-away on holiday.

#westerncinema

Peace Comes After War

Wrong. Ramayan and Mahabharat wars were fought. They had to be. Part and parcel of life. There are dharmic and adharmic wars, yes, that discrimination can and should be made.

Pacifists are morons. Usually low IQ or diabolical leftists.

My Baby

26 Feb 2016

Missing my baby. Seeing her in my dreams everyday. On the verge of crying...

Saree Love

Feb 26 2017

Sharadhi's love for the sari. Just like her aunt's when she was a little girl... 

That Red Man in a Nuclear Reactor Accident in Japan...

26 Frb 2018

Over an year ago, I read, on fb, of this youth who suffered fatal burns in a nuclear reactor accident in Japan.

I was warned of disturbing images and yet I clicked the continue button and immediately regretted it. 

There was the picture of red flesh resembling a human body that had been freshly skinned. 

All of the limbs had been suspended from the roof of the white bed only the torso and head were on the bed. The limbs looked longer than they were because of how thin they had become with the layer of skin gone.

The insane hospital had kept him alive in that state for 80 days, instead of letting him go. He was allowed that privilege after pleading for it.

I was in California at that time, and all alone in my hotel suite, with no white lights but dim yellow lights. For a few days after, I continued to feel dull and depressed. 

I don't know why, but last week, with absolutely no provocation, the memory of that image came back and stayed for a while. What made it worse than before was, it was a family member in that state. Don't know how and why my mind conjured up such an image. But I felt sick again. 

The thing about having good memory is, you are unable to dislodge even unpleasant and disturbing images from your mind and the result is, recursive suffering. 

Or, is everything alright with me?

Small Town or Big City?

My uncle. My favourite person in the whole family. God give him long life.

For all those who flock to big cities because they offer ample opportunities for growth, education and recreation, here is someone who lives in a small town and lives a very big life.

I had read in an article years ago that most of living in big cities only means having access to abundant options, though very little or no actual availing of those options. How often do you attend the music concerts in the townhall or watch a play in the theater or attend the book club or cycling or gardening club, or go to lalbagh or cubbon park, the availability of which made you choose this city over others for permanent settling?

This uncle lives in a small town in Coorg and has a dozen events or plans up his sleeve, spread over a number of domains. 

He exemplifies the saying, don't try to add days into your lives, add more life into your days. 

And what more, unlike other men in the family who delegated the wife to the kitchen and washroom, he took his partner along with him and educated her in every domain he dabbled in. A true gentleman. 

For security reasons, I will not reveal further specifics about him...

Jallikattu

Right wing or left wing, national or anti-national, will never ever support Jallikattu or the similar sport in Spain. 

Its barbaric, morbid, dangerous, voyeuristic and cruel. A mockery and trifling of animal life.

War of the World's (2005)

Watched ‘War of the Worlds’ (2005) on Netflix.

Sci-fi by Steven Spielberg based on a novel by H G Wells.

Lots of sound of fury. But significance absent.

The same old fear of the unknown and never ending chasing and dodging dressed up in new gear. 

Giant metallic tripods tall as skyscrapers with probes, who annihilate everything in their way and drink human blood. All of US army tanks and airplanes cannot destroy them and when they fall of their own in the end, it is because of microbes in our blood, for which their immune system is unprepared. 

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Usually dystopian movies, movies of catastrophe are a pain to watch. Grey and dull and desolate and squalid. 

This one has some interesting litter. Debris from plane crash. Engine and wheels and the body with all the seats intact and wings spanning the large area...the kind of debris you haven't seen before. 

But in the end it seemed pointless. Without meaning and purpose and motives explained. 

It was just one long chase. Running running running and then, just like that, being saved, without having done anything about it, without fighting, without even understanding what it was for, what just happened, what hit them…

---------------------------------- 

Lines noted…

‘What's the matter?’

‘Got a splinter’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘On your porch railing’

‘Lightening doesn't strike twice in the same place’

‘I have been around death plenty. I used to drive an ambulance in the city. You know the people that make it? The ones that don't flatline before the hospital? It's the ones that keep their eyes open. They keep looking at you. Keep thinking. They're the ones who survive’

#westerncinema

Saving Snakelings

Last week, I was in Gaza on a UN mission.

I saw a boy wearing torn clothes roaming on the streets with a teddy bear 

I asked him, "Are you a Muslim, Jewish or a Christian?"

"I am hungry" he said, "How does religion even matter in such a situation? Make humanity your religion."

I was deeply moved and gave him a packet of chicken biryani.

The boy asked, "Is the chicken Halal"?

360 Degree Feedback. IT Industry Could Learn from Uber

An FB post from Feb 2018

Uber, a taxi services company is far superior to any software firm/scum. (Look how well they rhyme.) 

A few days ago I received an email from Uber intimating me that my rating was 3.5 out of 5. 

Curious, I read on. 

Just like customers were allowed to rate drivers, drivers were allowed to rate customers. 

The messaging was so subtle. 

'it may be the small things like the way you close the door, or slam the door unthinkingly, polite treatment of the driver, etc. Higher your rating, slower the wait time for a future ride ... And so on. 

This is 360 degree feedback in the true sense. 

Ratings from both customer and driver accepted, no questions asked. 

The underlying principle is, the rating may be based on reality or perception. 

If it is reality, make corrections where needed. 

If it is perception, then do what it takes to change the perception.

Most of the software firms don't have 360 degree appraisal. Meaning, mangers get to evaluate their team members but team members don't get to rate their managers. 

Even where there is 360 degree feedback, it is a sham. Mostly. 

Most of the managers get away with the help of their 'connections', having acquired them over a number of years they have spent in the firm.

To understand why you should be allowed to rate your managers, you must know two bits about these managers. 

Most of the managers, at least in the services industry, became managers because they couldn't become anything else. Most of them. 

If they were excellent in technology, they would have become tech leads and then architects. 

If they were good at analysis and understood businesses and processes, they would have become business analysts and consultants. 

Since there was nothing they excelled in, and spoke poor to okay English, they became managers - supervisors. All you do then is to learn how to use a few tools and remind other people to do their work, while you... 

(mis)Manage, demand subordination, play politics, engage in power struggle, favouritism, pass the buck, cheat the client, show delinquency in establishing processes, discredit performers, misogyny, tight fisted during appraisals... 

Their nuisance is unending. 

Like I said, a taxi service business is better than software scum.

Make Up or Break Up ?

Priya Rajvansh. 

A handsome woman, if not beautiful. 

And in that song, 'milo na tum to hum ghabraye milo to aankh churaye', the make up and costume make her look like a smudge, a mess, a cosmetic surgery gone wrong. I can't bear to watch it and since the sound of it brings up her repulsive images, I can't listen to it either.

Second Best (1994)

Watched ‘Second Best’ (1994) on Primevideo.

A British film based on a novel by the same name.

A grim, bleak and sad movie. I wouldn’t say poignant or moving, just a sad movie.

The gray climate of England doesn’t help in the uplifting of the mood.

Graham (William Hurt) is a 42 year old unmarried man who wishes to adopt a son. James (Chris Cleary Miles) is the one he chooses. 

Where he lives in England, the adoption process is a long drawn one, where an agent from the children’s home will supervise the meetings between prospective father and son and decide whether the adoption must go through.

While Graham is making the best effort, its not easy, because James is a troubled child because of memories from childhood, and memories of a father he absolutely loves, and is unable to let go of. The father was taken away by the police after he was allowed to spend some memorable quality time with his son.

Graham himself hasn’t had a normal childhood. His parents loved each other a lot but they were so full of themselves that they barely had time for him. Because f this, Graham is not very expressive of his feelings; in fact, he hasn’t experienced deep or intense feelings because of the distance there always was between himself and his parents and the little or no opportunities that the small town offered to socialize.

Graham clings to the memory of one time he spent with his father on a beach and loves his father entirely with that memory and nothing else. The father is bedridden with stroke and he cares for him.

The film shows how the two, Graham and James, get to accept one another. Graham gropes his way towards the child, coping with emotions he hasn’t quite felt before. While James must get over the resistance he feels to loving someone else as his father, especially after his own father had exacted a promise from him that he would love him and no one else.

A miserly and taciturn screenplay that hides more than it reveals, or reveals in scraps. Even in the end, it is not clear what it was with James’s mother, what led to her dying in the bathtub. 

The theme of adoption provides enormous scope to portray the coming together of an adult and a child, each trying to win the other’s heart, trying to accept one another; it could have been very touching, moving. But it ends in what seems like a very reluctant compromise…like a debt that had to be paid, there being no choice.

For all it's critical acclaim, I was waiting for the movie to be over.

Lines I noted…

(about adoption) 

‘Sometimes, you have a child of 9 or 10 who is stuck emotionally at 2 or 3 because he may have been caught up in social services' favourite game - pass the parcel’

‘You do realize that as a single man, you'll only be offered the older, most difficult to place, emotionally disturbed boy?’

‘The department will allot someone to assess you in your own home’

‘8:59 on the dot, I take up position behind the reinforced counter screen’

‘Married bliss! Doesn't it want to make you throw up?’

‘I'd expect you to look after me when I'm old and decrepit. You realize that's the only reason I'm doing this don't you?’

‘The sense of being beholden to me, must be very painful to you’

‘Did you know that the moon moves further away from the earth by a foot every 20 years?’

‘Anything is possible Jamie, except feeling nothing’

#westerncinema

Empire Records (1995)

Watched ‘Empire Records’ (1995) on Primevideo.

A movie that should never have been made. Hollywood worse than Bollywood movie.

A bunch of young boys and girls in a record store, Empire Records, each one either a perverted or a maverick, wasting themselves. 

As the movie begins, one of the workers who has been allowed to close the store for the first time, discovers by snooping around that the store is about to be purchased by Music Town, a nationwide music store with many franchises. With the hope to save the store from being taken over, he takes 9000 dollars in the cash register and drives to a casino in Atlantic city, hoping to double the money in gambling and initially wins but loses it all in the end.

In the end, they save it by organizing a benefit party and collecting donations by selling food and drinks, and aising money

In between there is a scheduled store event, the Rex Manning day. Rex Manning, a former 80’s pop idol arrives in the store, signs autographs for a throng of visitors, while trying to promote his new video. And there are some random events, a store worker tries to have sex with him and then runs away, another actually takes him to the bathroom and does it, there is a shop lifter, there is a mock funeral… 

A complete waste of time.

Liv Tyler looks pretty. She is perhaps the only likeable character in the movie.

Renee Zellweger plays Gina, the licentious one who takes Rex Manning to the bathroom and get him to bang her.

The song 'Video Killed the Radio Star' by The Buggles, is the one that inspired ‘Koi Yahan aha Nache Nache’

Lines I noted…

‘My wife left me for another woman and my girlfriend forced me to leave at gunpoint’

‘She hates me’

‘She hates me too. But I have enough sense to hate her back’

‘I'm your typical nutty teenager from America’

‘You chose rap and metal and Whitney Houston. Someone like you needs to diminish their criminal impulses, not magnify them. Maybe some jazz or classical’

‘Did you compare the percentage of teenage male Rex Manning fans to homosexuality amongst teenage males?’

‘The long arm of the law has embraced our friend Warren’ (the shoplifter) 

‘Sometimes reputations outlive their applications’

‘My beatnik father turned this into a record store’

Beatnik - a member of the Beat Generation

- a person who rejects or avoids conventional behavior, dress, etc.

Beat generation - members of the generation that came of age after World War II who, supposedly as a result of disillusionment stemming from the Cold War, espoused forms of mysticism and the relaxation of social and sexual inhibitions.

- members of the generation that came to maturity in the 1950s, whose rejection of the social and political systems of the West was expressed through contempt for regular work, possessions, traditional dress, etc, and espousal of anarchism, communal living, drugs, etc

#westerncinema

Drive (2011)

Watched ‘Drive’ (2011) on Netflix.

Ryan Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver, also a mechanic, who moonlights as a getaway driver.

It’s strange that the movie did not give the driver, the protagonist, any name at all. Though all the other characters have names.

Yet another crime and heist movie. Made a pain in the ass by reticent narrative. (Why not go completely reticent and not make the movie at all?) it’s mostly a silent movie with one or two dialogues dropped in by accident.

After a point I stopped caring what was going to happen.

So this driver becomes close to the wife of a criminal who is in prison. Irene is the woman played by Carey Mulligan. When the husband whose name is Standard, is released, he is bullied to commit a robbery by some men who he owes protection money while in prison. 

The Driver chooses to help by becoming the getaway driver, out of his soft corner for Irene.

But during the robbery, the store owner shoots Standard. Also there is a second car nearby wanting to snatch the stolen money bag. Driver drives away. It turns out some Jewish mobsters his employer is connected had planned the heist. The money belonged to someone from the east coast Italian mafia who had stashed away all that cash in a store. The Jewish mobsters in Los Angeles had learnt of it and tried to steal it. Now the Jewish mobsters must eliminate the driver and anyone who is linked with it, so they will not be able to lead the east coast mob to them.

Anyway, the driver manages to be a step ahead of them and kill them all, T-bone the mobsters car in a beach from the highway, fatally stab another, and drive away, leaving behind Irene and her son, having ensured their safety.

Some lines I noted…

‘My name is Standard Gabriel’

‘Where is the deluxe version?’

‘Chevy Impala, the most popular car in the State of California’ (and therefore least noticeable, which is why driver chooses this car for his shady activities)

‘What's a Jew doing running a pizzeria?’

‘They call me a fucking kike’

Kike - a contemptuous term used to refer to a person of Jewish religion or descent

‘2000 heists a year in this city, he has to pick the wrong one’

‘Nature's miracle once more 

Will light the world 

But this light 

Is not for those men

Still lost in 

An old black shadow’

Ryan Gosling while shooting puts on a rubber mask that has been molded to have the features of the star he is doubling for. Interesting, didn’t know this.

A T-bone accident is one where the front of one car or truck crashes into the side of another vehicle. Broadside accidents most often occur at intersections when one of the drivers fails to stop at a stop sign or traffic light, or otherwise fails to yield the right-of-way to the other driver.

#westerncinema

Murphy's Law of Aunties

Murphy's law of Aunties

Those aunts and cousins whom cancer and sugar claimed were absolutely harmless relatives who always minded their own business and never came in your way. 

The bitches, the evil aunt and her battalion of daughters who told on you and smirked and watched the fun as your father caught you by the hair and jostled you, will live up to a full hundred years.