Notice

Will be electronically unavailable for a couple of days. Shifting to a new appartment.

Masochist Exercise: Fountainhead

After giving things a lot of thought, I've realized that I've changed quite a bit as a person over the last 10 years. I'm definitely not the man I was 10 years ago. As an unprecedented act of masochism I'm going to re-read Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. I had nothing but loads of bile & gripe juice the last(also the first)time I read it in 1997. I couldn't stand it when her character's wings were ripped off by her childishly cruel pen/mind. Another novel that had a pathetic character was Somerset Maugham's Razor's Edge. But Maugham's stuff was 20,000 leagues apart from the Rand's stuff.

The reason for re-reading Fountainhead, is to celebrate the completion of a 3D model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water Building (a.k.a. Kauffman's House). The architect loser in Fountainhead was said to be modelled after Wright. Wright was also an interesting character in real life. He was more of a wash-out architect, who towards the fag end of his life was responsible for some strikingly modern buildings. The only people who will disagree with the last sentence are the teachers of architecture and the guys at the Frank Lloyd Wright trust/ estate/ buiding conservatory. Art is subjective.

I'm eager to see the new things I rediscover this time, even though Fountainhead is a fucking tedious read.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence [Live]

Ryuichi Sakamoto composed & performed this moving theme song to the movie "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence". There is also a song sung by Sylvian set to this piece, its titled Forbidden Colours.

Brown Puris

Brown Puris (slightly over golden brown stage) remind me of cane toads.

Hair Raising Issues

Woke up accidentally about 3am today morning. I found that I enjoy life more when I'm alone and waking up in the wee hours of the morning while everyone is in bed, gives me an inexplicable burst of energy. Today I decided to apply it to work that lay yawning before me. But before work, I spent a couple of minutes in front of the mirror. Its official I have a couple of grey hairs. I also may be balding. I like my hair, its 7 inches long measured downward from the point where the back side of my head joins my neck. I'm ok with the balding and greying (I'm an animator and its a tedious life). However I'm not ok with both of them assaulting me at the same time.

From a genetic POV, I cannot predict whether I'd go totally bald or grey. My paternal grandfather was completely bald by 27. My father started balding and has mysteriously stopped. On my mother's side, the males had their hair intact but it just turned white in their middle-age. Where do I fall?

I think the only reasonable way out is to dreadlock my hair. Dreadlocks would essentially lock my hair in place. The dreadlocks will overwhelm any apparent balding effect. But this could take about 2-3 years for full effect if I dread it naturally. The artificial method of back-combing & waxing is out of question. Till then & later, I can scare away the children and adults around me. Maybe I should adopt the saffron sadhu look, so I don't scare off clients. I could walk into meetings with packets of Kalkandum and pass it around like prasaadam.

The Running Man

In the early 90's I was exposed to anime and some phenomenal stuff at that too. What attracted me to it was the attention to details. One could follow shadows into the furrows on a character's brow; split screen action shots and many other gimmicks. If you've seen the cartoon series Samurai Jack one can see each and everyone of these cliches in one episode. Today the anime scene sucks and can be compared to Bollywood movies- garish in use of colours and unrestrained melodrama.

The Running Man was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Its split up into two parts and uploaded onto youtube by someone considerate. Yoshiaki Kawajiri was also behind the Ninja Scroll series and the 'World Record' episode in the Animatrix. Enjoy the wonder that was yesterday's anime.

Part 1
Part 2

Genesis - Carpet Crawl

Then:

Bearded chap singing is Phil Collins!

Now:

This clip has annoying audience voices in it, but the quality of sound is pretty good. You can see the cops standinng guard in the front. It must be cool to be a cop at concerts from a voyeur POV. This a reunion tour of sorts, why can't these chaps come to B'lore?