Fireball XL5!

You can never say what you might stumble across as you go down the memory lane, can you? I was talking to my younger brother yesterday when suddently our conversation veered towards a show we both had watched as kids - Fireball :-) (This 60s show in the US was shown in the 70s in India) Bro was determined to hunt around the net and sure enough I found 2 mails from him in my mailbox in the morning.

One was video of the title song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXGGuqXB8h4

And the other mail contained the lyrics. We both were in a vernacular medium school then so we had never been able to figure out any lyrics beyond the single line "My heart would be a fireball" but it was fun to read and sing them now.

If you remember watching this serial, here are the lyrics for you:

I wish I was a space man.

The fastest guy alive.

I'd fly you round the universe, In Fireball XL-5.

Way out in space together, Compass of the sky,

My heart would be a fireball, A fireball,

Everytime I gazed into your starry eyes.

We'd take the path to Jupiter, And maybe very soon.

We'd cruise along the Milky Way, And land upon the moon.

To our wonderland of stardust, We'll zoom our way to Mars,

My heart would be a fireball, A fireball,

If you would be my Venus of the stars.

Here's to 2 of my childhood dolls who were named after the lead pair - Steve and Venus :-)

2012

Haven’t we seen this before? A family that is no longer together – dad has neglected wife and children, wife is living with another guy who is trying hard to win over the kids and kids have mixed feelings for their biological dad. Ring a bell? Oh yes, such a family was at center-stage when the Martians came calling on earth in Tom Cruise-starrer “War of the Worlds”. Well, we have a similar family running for its life in the latest the-world-is-gonna-end flick from Hollywood – 2012.

So we have Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) who has tried, albeit unsuccessfully, being a writer. It has cost him his family and now he works for a Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov. His wife has found a new friend, Gordon, who is a plastic surgeon. The movie begins when Jackson takes his children on a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park where they find a pond that has boiled off the surface of earth, radio show host Charlie Frost who is shouting himself hoarse about the impending Apocalypse and the Federal types who come crawling out of the woodwork when Jackson and family get too close for comfort.

Enter the Mayans who have predicted that the world is going to end, come 21st December, 2012. Frost tells Jackson that the government is busy building modern versions of Noah’s arks where only those with deep pockets will find a berth. Jackson finds it hard to believe him but after he drops the kids back to their mom and reports for duty, something happens that convinces him that Frost was telling the truth. By then all hell has begun to break loose - alongwith earth's crust!

If you are looking for a story in this movie, you will be in for a sore disappointment. But if you are looking for eye-popping special effects, you are in for a treat. Right from the solar flares that are boiling the earth’s crust to the cataclysmic earthquakes that tear open the very earth over which cities are built sending the skyscrapers into gaping holes – the special effects are absolutely stunning!

As far as the cast goes, Cusack seems like an unlikely choice for a protagonist in a Apocalypse-Now movie. Danny Glover manages to look clueless as the President of the US of A. Oliver Platt (White House Chief of Staff) makes you wanna throttle him for his cold logic and ruthlessness. And I have no idea what made the casting team choose Jimmy Mistry as the Indian scientist – his delivery of Hindi lines caused peals of laughter in the theatre.

I will remember this film for 2 things - the doomsday special effects and the Russian billionaire’s pilot Sasha who with his rugged good looks and Russian-accented English was simply Yum! ;-)

Currently I am reading "Red Sand" by R. Karl Largent. I was floored yesterday when I came across the Russian word for Sugar - Sakhar. Just to double check, I googled today and here's what I found - http://travellingtwo.com/resources/centralasia/russian-shoppinglist

Of course, the pronunciation could be different but this is exactly the word that we use in Marathi for sugar - "साखर". The word in Hindi is "शक्कर" and all these seem to have come from Sanskrit "शर्करा". :-)

I had been to Vashi yesterday for a client meeting. On my way back I decided to try my luck with BEST. I should have known better. 15 minutes' of wait and the bus that I needed wasn't in sight. People all around me were getting into shared cabs. But somehow I have never managed to grasp this concept of sharing a cab with total strangers.

There was a cab waiting nearby and I saw a woman and her teenaged son talk with the cabbie. But they didn't get in. I was getting late so I decided to check if the cabbie would drop me. Yes, in India, at least in Mumbai, we do have to ask the cabbie if he will be so kind as to drop us to our destination. Since the distance was quite large, the cabbie happily nodded.

Just as I was about to get in, the woman asked me where I was going. Actually I didn't mean to be rude. But somehow I heard myself saying "I am not sharing". What I had meant to say was "I cannot share". I cursed myself as I settled in and the cab drove on.

I have resolved that the next time I find myself in similar situation I will smile and say that I cannot share because I need to pick some people up. The last thing this city needs is more people speaking rudely like me! :-(

I cannot make myself watch news these days. They keep showing the horrific images of 26/11. :-( I could barely make myself read about the families of the cops who laid down their lives - afraid that they must have been left to fend for themselves. Thankfully, most of them have been taken care of very well. Of course, nothing can replace loss of a loved one but it is heartening to know that most of these families are on a sound financial footing.

Of course, the government and politicians are doing what they do best - ignoring the very people who are putting their lives on the line daily for us. Don't believe me? Check out Amul's latest hoarding. It truly is a Monumental Shame!

The Appeal - by John Grisham

I have always loved John Grisham novels. And this one reminded me of the movie Erin Brockovich. ‘The Appeal” begins when the Mississippi jury is on the verge of returning a verdict on a much-publicized fight between David and Goliath. On one side is a giant of a chemical company that has been accused of polluting a small town's water supply by its irresponsible dumping of carcinogenic waste. And on the other is a 5-people firm that is representing one woman in that town - whose husband and child have died of cancer – at the cost of half a million dollars’ debt for its 2 owners.

David wins again when the jury slaps $41-million on the chemical company. Its CEO, however, is determined not to let the company go down in a flurry of class-action suites. ‘The Appeal” tells the story of how he sets to go about it with the help of a corrupt senator.

Though the review on Amazon accuses Grisham for his one dimensional characters, I suspect that he hasn’t been very far from truth. And the truth is, as more often than not, horribly unpalatable!

The Icon - by Frederick Forsyth

Here we go again! The bad Russians are up to some mischief and so the good guys, of course, the Americans are more than determined to thwart them. This, in a nutshell, is the plot of Frederick Forsyth’s “The icon”.

Be forewarned! The cast of characters on the American, British and Russian sides at the beginning of the book does give you an idea about how difficult it is gonna be to keep track of all the “ov”s that will soon crawl out of the woodwork but it’s still difficult when you actually start reading it.

It all begins when an ultra-secret document called “Black Manifesto” is stolen out of the party headquarters of the popular Russian presidential candidate Igor Komarov. The document contains all of Komarov’s plans for the minorities of Russia when he is elected to power – in short, a blueprint for genocide and ethnic cleansing. A damning evidence, if ever brought to the world’s attention!

In a bizarre twist of events, the Manifesto does come to the attention of the Brits but they along with their CIA buddies are barred from taking any “overt” or “covert” action by their governments. Time for an ultra-subvert Operation! Enter Her Majesty’s Secret Service chief Sir Nigel Irvine and Ex-CIA operative Jason Monk. Jason has had an experience of running a spy network in Russia and so is Irvine’s only choice for this mission. Does he or does he not subvert Komarov?

First, the pluses! It’s pure enjoyment to read about how spy networks are run, documents exchanged and messages conveyed in the espionage world. It’s also engaging to read how Jason’s seemingly unrelated actions are part of his overall plan of subversion and the final drama that is played out on the streets of Moscow on New Year’s Eve. And then there are some references to the real-life Soviet mole Aldrich Ames who was burrowed deep into the CIA.

The negatives? Well, I did warn you about the huge cast that you might find difficult to keep track of – especially the Russian names. Then the narrative keeps shifting between the time Jason ran his spy network and the present – it jars at many places, especially if you have 2-3 days’ gaps between your consecutive readings.

Hey, but if you can live with these, then you gotta read “The Icon” :-)

I was reading an interview of someone from NASA yesterday. It was frightening to read that this guy receives about 20 emails a day from all parts of the globe from the people who genuinely believe that the world is going to end on 21st December, 2012 – like the woman who asked him if she should kill her 2 daughters and herself or the woman who wondered if she should kill her dog to spare him suffering later. What is the world coming to these days?

Leave aside all facts supporting and opposing this whole hoopla. At the bare minimum logic level, there are 2 possibilities – with a 50-50 chance. One is that the world will not go up with a bang in 2012. So here we are on the morning of 22nd December, 2012, all ready to party – because the day happens to be a Saturday and also because the world didn’t end. This is a Happy Day scenario and no one in his or her right mind would want to end it all now when there is at least 50% chance of us all waking up to this day.

Now on to the grim one – that the world will indeed cease to exist after 21st December. It’s not going to happen in just one or two countries. If at all it is going to happen, it will happen all over the planet. So there probably isn’t much that you, me or even the President of the United States of America can do to avoid this – except to live whatever time is left for us to the fullest extent possible. Life is no bed of roses for most of us but doesn’t it make sense to spend whatever time we all have in finding more roses than thorns? Let’s use this so-called Judgement Day for bringing about positive change in our lives – laugh more, take that long-dreamt-of vacation, eat more ice-cream, watch more sunsets, listen to more songs and sing along even if off-key, read more books and so on. If at all we are going out, let’s go out with a bang folks!

And please give some credit to the brightest ones amongst us – the scientists! Who knows, by the time 2012 rolls over they would have figured out a way to avoid it all :-)