Yatha Shishya Thatha Guru

Saw Ekalavya over the weekend and felt exactly what I had felt after seeing Black, that when a filmmaker goes in trying to make a great great movie, he might end up making a decent movie but the effort shows on screen. So many scenes look contrived and you end up almost feeling sorry for how hard the dude tried.

And then I remembered that Sanjay Leela Bhansali(Black) was Vidhu Vinod Chopra's (Ekalavya) assistant.

Music: Delhi Heights

I hate punjabi music. Ok, make that noisy balle balle stuff thats on TV in India all the time. I remember that all through college it was impossible to escape the Punjabisation of India in general and Bhangra music in particular. Only one thing could have saved us, Daler Mehndi should have been shot or at the very least jailed, immediately after Bolo Tara Ra Ra. If that had happened the Bhupis and the Mikas wouldn't have dared to come out and inflict their music upon us. Someone in the punjab police, who was surely as frustrated with balle balle as I am, made a valiant attempt to frame Daler in an Immigration scandal. Alas, the frameup didn't work and even if it did it would have been a case of too little too late

The saving grace for punjabi music is Rabbi 'Bulla ki Jana' Shergill who has composed the music for 'Delhi Heights'. If you haven't already come across the music on TV listen to it here. In particular I liked the title track 'Dilli' as well as 'Tere Bin' & 'Kitni Der Tak'. Like in 'Bulla Ki Jana' the fusion of Indian/punjabi/sufi music with rock elements in this album is really neat. A rediff article rightly points out that some of the riffs seem inspired by popular western music (Deep Purple and Mark Knopfler to name a few) but I couldn't care less because the music is so fresh. If, only if, Rabbi had been born before Daler.......

Economist Screensaver

The economist has come out with a screensaver with most of the key info you would need about 66 of the most important economies in the world. Its terrifc and best of all is absolutely free. You just need to complete a registration form. Download the screensaver here.

A midday snooze...

... is very healthy according to a recent study done in Greece.

People who take at least three daytime naps a week lasting 30 minutes or longer cut their risk of dying from a heart attack by 37 percent, according to a study by a team of U.S. and Greek researchers.

Read the full article here. As people who know me well would vouch, I am nothing if not a visionary and almost always enjoy my afternoon siesta every saturday and sunday. Now I only need to figure how to take one more nap during a weekday. Any Ideas?

Am I in the wrong job? - Eepybird.com

If you are a tube freak you might come across these guys already. I came across these guys from eepybird.com today. These guys do shows all over the world, have been written about by the WSJ and BW and have appeared on the The Letterman Show.

The first video on their website drew more than 1,000 hits an hour(even though they told only one person about it) & the video of experiment #137 drew 7.5 million hits. Today I saw them do expereiment #214. And what do they do? drop mentos into diet coke bottles!

Thats what they do for a living. Drop frigging mentos into frigging diet coke bottles! If you are a latecomer like me, dropping mentos into some sodas (particularly diet coke) makes the soda splash out like a fountain.

Using this, the guys perform spectacular fountain experiments and even choreograph them to music. The fountains are very impressive. Below is one of their more popular videos on the tube.

Super Bowl Ads 2007

I have always held that american ads seriously lack humour. For all their hype the superbowl ads this year did nothing to change my impression.

The saving grace were a few ads from Budlight. Expectedly they topped all the ad rankings including the one by TIVO (based on actual viewership I think). Here is one of them.