RIFLE RANGE BOY

Only one side of the story... The truth is the multifaceted knife which slices the finder of the real truth which ultimately stays elusively mysterious not yearning to be discovered but sneering at those who attempt to....

Online edition of India's National Newspaper  Sunday, Apr 03, 2005 Pages from the past There was more to Gemini Ganesh than just being a star of the silver screen, finds his daughter JAYA SHREEDHAR. Last of the Triumvirate: Gemini Ganesh with Vyjayantimala in a still from one of his films. HAVING lived with my father all my life, I presumed I was privy to everything about him. Yet, there were several things I could never figure out. How had he managed to live with a breezy unorthodoxy bordering on the bohemian, yet have his feet planted firmly on the ground? Where had he learnt the Houdiniesque skill to wriggle in and out of emotionally knotty relationships, largely unscathed? Why did it seem like he was always one step ahead of retribution? How come society winked indulgently at his "excesses" while reserving stern castigation for the rest? All I can say is that he led a charmed life. Contradictions Home was a jumble of seeming contradictions. My grandmother...

When we were growing up, we were told by parents and teachers (especially Sunday schools) alike to stay away from from dark music. How were to know to know what is dark music and what is acceptable. I finally came to the conclusion that all noise from musicians with long hair, loud Gothic non melodious sound emanated from shirtless bands with masks were out of bounds! (a simplistic view of the world). That deprived most of us from the music of great bands (are they really great like?) like AC/DC, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith etcetera, etcetera.... Fast forward 30 years to the future, with the comfort of reclining chair, non-arthritic fingers, the power of keyboard and cyber submarine cables, all the songs that we missed can be listened again and again. Not only that, we can gets its lyrics. Only now can we appreciate its true lyrics. All this while, I thought it was just gibberish and senseless yelling of self proclaimed artistes with croaking and constipation releasi...

And all got me is this lousy  badge, to tell me that  I am narcissistic! Still better than my wife's CF (Control Freak)!  So there I was, on a Saturday afternoon loitering around in an up-market bazaar on Petaling Jaya because my daughter just decided that she simply had to be at this place like this place was the greatest innovation since sliced bread! The bazaar was a collection of canopy covered stalls selling various items that one can just do without, predominantly of dresses (which were made from not much of material, quantity and amount wise) and cute handicraft souvenir items like the one on the left.  Even one of the attendees was dressed like she was strolling along in Oxford Street for New Year sales in crimson red suede long coat in the tropical environment of Jaya One! It was as if the patrons were loitering with blinkers oblivious to reality of our climate and third world status! The site was actually an avenue for small time on-line...

AUGUST 4, 2011, By Lucy Craymer New Zealand Film Archive/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesA still image from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The White Shadow.’ Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, “The White Shadow,” thought to have been lost, has been found languishing at the New Zealand Film Archives. The first three rolls of the 1923 melodrama have been discovered in the Wellington, New Zealand, archives, where they have been held for safekeeping since their original collector Jack Murtagh died in 1989. It remains possible that the second half of the film is also in storage but yet to be restored. The Film Archive described the film as a “wild, atmospheric” melodrama starring Betty Compson in a dual role as twin sisters, one angelic and one soulless. David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and author of “The Films of Alfred Hitchcock,” called the discovery “one of the most significant developments in memory for scholars, critics, and admirers of Hitchcock’s extraordin...

Of late, the mainstream media seem to be bragging of how in two instances, two multilingual cops saved the day. One helped a senior citizen to write a police report (conversing in Hockkein) whilst the other helped to negotiate 2 warring factions who were at logger-heads via his skill in Hockkein. Big deal, kudos to the police for being community friendly, bullocks! It might work in the 50s and 60s, but in 2011, 54 years after independence? Two bona fide Blue I/C holders and Malaysian citizens communicating like a chicken talking to a toad? You cannot blame the education system as Malaysia boasts of 98% literacy rate. I remember a friend of mine relating the following true story in the 1960s in the interior of Kelantan (Kuala Krai) where and when literacy was low and many births were recorded by policemen for birth certificate notification purpose as home deliver was norm. This old farmer went to the police station proudly to register his first born son. Being illiterate that he w...

Still talking about Shammi Kapoor and his movies, here is another a-go-go type dance in a song which bears a surprisingly similar tune to the one strummed out by The Beatles 2 years previously! A pure coincidence?

Thanks to GR for sharing this. Real food for thought! See what of mess this has led to.. It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea... It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to choose one. The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower. The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel. The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her "services" on credit. The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel pr...

This is one of my all time favourite songs of the 80s. We can see what makes the average working class English people in the 80s tick. Working for the weekend, burning all their wages on Friday and Saturday nights on booze and chicks (a hug, peck on the cheek and more, if you dare), lying in a stuporous state on Sunday and doing it all over again from Monday through Friday seem to work just fine for them. They know that the state would take of the nitty-gritty fine prints whilst they live their lives lively and discover their inner self and venture into the arts and art of living. Then came the immigrant wave of the Empire's subject with their values and their perception of life and how it should be lived. This immigrant suddenly were controlling the cash and dictating terms and demanding due recognition as per human rights demand. "Oh, bloody hell, you don't bite the hand that feeds!" and off they went looting and vandalizing.... (1982) Dexy's Midnight Runner...

Malaysia’s Penang state After a slump, an early engine of globalisation is thriving again Aug 13th 2011 |  PENANG  |  IF YOU are going to have a heart attack, have it in Penang. So one might think, to the see the hospitals in George Town, the capital of this north-western Malaysian state. Patients are flocking in. Ted Mohr, the head of the venerable Penang Adventist Hospital says that he will admit 70,000 medical tourists this year. The hospital specialises in heart procedures and it will perform roughly 23,000 of them this year, including 550 open-heart operations. Such is the demand that the hospital is doubling its number of beds. Mr Mohr gives two main reasons for Penang’s success with the coronary crowd. First, it is relatively cheap. Open-heart surgery that would set you back $100,000 in America costs only about $10,000 in Penang. Second, Penang’s hospitals are as well-equipped as many in the West. Penang was founded as a free port by the British in 1786. Occupying...

Another British invasion group that attained decent commercial success in the music world before the Americans took over!   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kinks Even though they belted out so many melodious tunes over so many years, they were never really up there amongst the stars. That is probably because they are British and not sexy enough for the masses. Or maybe you have to die young or be in the news for all the wrong reasons to stay on top (like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean or Amy Winehouse). If you want to slip into a time warp to Kinks' music, check this out !

Thanks to the friendly neighbourhood DVD peddler (now he is nicely housed in an air-conditioned 'everyday low prices' local mart), we have the opportunity to view plethora of genres of movie at the comfort of our home without having to wait for it to be screened at our local cinemas. Some of it may not even make it to our silver screen as it may not appeal to the masses, hence not profitable to its owners! One of my current action heroes, Jason Statham - the broody sour faced TNT packed sculptured body with martial skills to complement who has a string of followers after the Transporters trilogy and many other action packed movie where he did many of his own stunts - starred in a new action killer cops and cop killer flick called 'Blitz'. You cannot expect a highly cerebral charged storyline in this action flick but is an outlet to be awed of the whiteman's tenacity and skills in stupefying his audience (should it not be spectators as we are impressed with the visu...