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When I first saw the preview of the movie Fight Club, I told myself that “oh, I don’t think I’d be interested in seeing this movie as it looks like a fucked up movie.” So I never made it a point to see it. Then over the past several months multiple people - and some of them people who’s opinion I respect - told me that I have to see this movie. They told me that they can’t tell me anything about it and I just have to watch it. They did tell me that it had a slight cult element to it, which did get my curiousity piqued enough.

So I finally borrowed the DVD from a friend of mine - and it sat on my desk now for a couple of weeks. I put it on a couple of times, but everytime I would begin to watch it, something or the other would come up (generally an IM from someone while I’m watching the movie on my computer since like the guy in the movie said… I only need a single-serving movie player - a movie for one…so the computer works just fine thank you…) and I would never really get to watch more than the opening scene.

Well, tonight, I came home - no scratch that - back to my apartment and popped in the movie and saw it straight through in one sitting. And here is what I really think… I think that is one of the more fucked up movies I have seen and I would put it up there with something as stupid as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (can you tell that I dislike movies by Quintin Tarantino and I’m glad that hasn’t made another one in recent times?). What a stupid freaking movie. I cannot think of enough words to kind of pick it apart as well as I would like to.

The guy was a freaking psychopath. And yes, everyone in the world has problems of their own and everyone has things about their life that they like or dislike. I am less disturbed about the movie. I don’t as much of a problem now with seeing people blow a hole through their head with their brains splattering all over or with people beating each other into a pulp… TV and the news has done a wonderful job of de-sensitizing us to the horrors of the world. That is now entertainment for some people. If people can watch stupid shit like WWF and call it entertainment, then heck showing people getting their brains blown off as a form of amusement isn’t far behind now is it.

What *really* bothers me about this movie is the fact that some people actually thought of it as a good movie. Had they described it to me as a “disturbing” movie, I would have been okay with it and probably not been so harsh. But there is a significant different between good and disturbing. It is okay for a movie to be disturbing — because it makes you think. Some people actually told me that they learnt things from this movie. I am afraid to think what they learnt if they called it good and not disturbing.

I’ve now maintained for a long time that the mind is fragile — that’s something I’ve not written about in detail on public blogs — yes there are still things which don’t make it out in to a public forum. It is had enough for people to keep their thinking straight and honestly I just don’t have faith in the ability of the person on the street to be able to look deep enough into a movie like Fight Club in order to figure out what they really should take away from it.

For me, the only thing this movie did that was positive was that it re-affirmed my conviction that the greatest thing to fear is losing the ability to think rationally and your grip on what is perceived as reality. But I knew that already, and I don’t think I needed Fight Club to remind me of it again — I see enough instances of it around me everyday.

P.S. After I wrote this blog I was putting the DVD away and noticed one of the quotes on the inside cover. It said: “…a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone crunching violence that actually thinks it’s saying something of significance” — Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times. Now… if that was the best thing the makers of this movie could pick to quote from the L.A. Times, then gee, I couldn’t say it any better myself.

Flipping through the inside cover of the movie…it seems clear that the movie was intended to be provocative and my reaction to it was in line with the reaction fro a lot of other people who put it more eloquently than I did — but the sad fact is that I don’t have a sense of humor about this stuff any more. It would be humorous if you still believe that “it’s just a movie,” but when you know that there are people out there who are deranged enough to even believe what they see in a movie, then it’s not funny any more.

Some of the choice quotes that are included in the cover of the movie (really, I did get these from the cover..):

“I would deliver a long tirade against it if it weren’t such a dog — such a laborious and foolish waste of time …” — David Denby, The New Yorker.

“Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat’s Romance is to inteliigent women — an insult” — Gregory Weinkauf, New Times, LA.

The big thing with movies and theatre and the art of story-telling is the ability to move people, to be able to impact them deep within, simply by means of a story. A story which stays with you and makes you think. And in fact I realized a little earlier today that I have to write this review soon since otherwise, I would keep thinking about this movie till I did!

The Bread My Sweet is not a Hollywood production with a gazillion dollar marketing and production budget. Like the famous Enrico Biscotti of Pittsburgh Strip Dictrict, The Bread, My Sweet has aroma of home made-baking to it. It’s one of those movies that you’re glad you actually went to see because what it does best is tell a story and it tells a story in a wonderful way.

The acting is superb and very down to earth. The setting is even more down to earth, especially for those of us who know Pittsburgh and all the familiar sights of the Strip district – Enrico’s, De Lucca’s Stambooli’s, The Pennsylvania Macaroni company, the Pittsburgh skyline…. All brought to life in a way which actually gave Pittsburgh a sense of character that I have never seen before.

The Bread My Sweet is just one of those movies that you just have to see to understand how powerful it can be and can draw you in to be part of the life it portrays. I think it was wonderfully done and it deserves to be a movie that gets a lot-of-word of mouth publicity in order to make it hugely succesful as this is the type of movie that in my humble opinion, deserves a couple of awards or something. Can I say any more good things about it??

Italian for Beginners had rave reviews on Yahoo! Movies when I checked it out a long time ago. Unfortunately, it never made it to Pittsburgh for a long time (it was playing in NY, LA and SF, go figure…). Yesterday, while I was on my way to meet a friend, I happened to pass by the Cinemagic Squirrel Hill and noticed that it was playing there. So I just had to go catch it before I missed my chance.

There have always been times when the theatre has been sparsely occupied on a Sunday night for a movie. But this time was the first time had the privilege of watching the entire movie completely by myself. Somehow, the big sreen thing didn’t make that much of a difference. I would have been perfectly happy watching the same movie on my laptop with my headphones :).

But, anyhow, the movie itself was actually very good. It’s a Danish movie, with a trickling of Italian thrown in here and there (duh, obviously) and with subtitles in English. The movie did a great job of setting up the lives of the people portrayed in the movie. How each person had gone through some personal tragedy which affected them deeply. It did a good job of allowing the viewer to relate to the characters being portrayed.

But after such a spectacular setup one cannot help be disappointed when the movie ends on a rather abrupt note. It was a happy note for sure… and an obviously good ending for the movie, but it was just so predictable that it sort of left me wanting more.

Of course Giulia was the cutest looking thing you could imagine in the movie :). Overall a good movie and highly recommended viewing.

Weekend before last, I was in California in order to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business Conference on Entrepreneurship 2002. So of course, since I was in the bay area and I have a lot more friends that than I have in Pittsburgh, we had to go drinking.

Several of us - friends of mine either from highschool or Carnegie Mellon met up for dinner at Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto. As always I was very impressed with the food there and we had a great time. The food was great (garlic fries… yum… hey I don’t have to worry about anyone smelling my breath!). The place is great and it’s decent, casual and not as pretentious. (I have a real problem with the hoity-toity places since I can never be comfortable there!). So we stuffed ourselves and then decided to go drinking at Left at Albuquerque’s also in Palo Alto.

Now, Left at Albuquerque’s has this contest. It’s called the Route 66 contest. My friend and i were there the previous night to witness it. The way it worked was that you buy this fish-bowl sized margarita for eighteen bucks and then you have a race with all the other people who are competing. And whoever drinks the entire margarita first, wins a sixty-six dollar bar tab. When we were there the previous night, the rule was that you had to use just one straw. No one straw doesn’t imply one person of course. So as long as you use one straw multiple people could help finish the margarita. Since I had to be up at the conference at 8:00 AM next morning, we just observed the fun, but didn’t participate.

So the next day, after Gordon Biersch, there were about seven of us. And we figured, heck, we could easily with that Route 66 contest right! So of course, we all arrive at Left and Albuquerque. The contest starts kicking off. We buy a Route 66 Margarita and are all lined up ready to go and that’s when it hit… the guy changed the rules on us!! The rules for tonight were - one person, one straw Gulp! (literally!). Now the previous day I saw the bartender pour the contents of that margarita glass into a picther. It was a full pitcher! About six drinks in there. Yikes!

Anyhow, now common sense and rational behavious told me that Manu, you’re being idiotic if you decide to go forward with something that is just bound to make you sick. It’s stupid. It’s silly. It’s just a down right bad idea. But then again… I’ve never done enough silly things. I need to do more silly things. So I said what the hell… I’m going for it, come hell or high water!

Luckily for me my adversaries were two girls sitting at one end of the bar. (I say luckily now, of course at that point I was thinking holy shit, if I lose to the women I’m going to make a complete idiot of myself!) Anyhow, so the bar tender lined us up and counted us down. And I began to suck down the margarita. One after the other in big gulps. In the mean while I hear everyone yelling and screaming, but I had no clue as to what they were saying. I wasn’t looking at how fast my competitors were going. I was just sucking it down! About two-thirds of the way throw I felt a soft pat on my head! Turned out that my competitors saw how fast I was sucking up the margarita and decided that there was no point in even trying. I had just alittle more to go when I stopped drinking. Everyone’s asking what’s going on… and I said “Do you mind, I do need to breathe!” Of course by then my head had a severe brain freeze as well. But I was able to suck down the last bit and win the sixty-six dollar bar tab for all my friends!

Needless to say that was my final drink for the evening! After all the yummy foos with which we’d stuffed ourselves, downing an entire pitcher of margaritas in less than a minute and twenty seconds, doesn’t feel real good in the stomach. The alcohol didn’t bother me as much as the sheer volume of food and liquid in my system! (yes, I did have to loosen my belt thank you). And yes, my friends were a little shocked that I was falling over drunk after the amount I had drunk. It was kind of sad… because I think I just about got a buzz, and nothing more!

Eitherway, between Gordon Biersch, Left at Albuquerque and a great group of friends it was definitely an evening to remember and I’m sure one that my friends won’t let me forget!

When I started this section on reviewing things, I said that I would review people too. Well,Ive never done it yet. The first person that I am going to write about is Richard P. Feynman. I’m sure some fo the regulars on sneaker.org have already noticed the barrage of quotes and references to books and things by Feynman on here. But before I get started, I’ll point out that I am writing this not because I think of myself as “Feynman-fan,” but solely because I cannot express well enough how much respect I have for this one individual as a person (even more so than as a physicist) (In fact, you’re invited to check out my recent rant on The Fan Syndrome to see what I think of that…)

Unfortunately, I never had and never will have the chance to meet Richard Feynman in person (he died in 1988) and so my only exposure to his work and his person has been through is books and books about him. Therefore, the opinions I have developed are based on that information.

I think I first read Feynman’s book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman when I was twelve or so. I don’t have an exact recollection of when it was, but that time sounds about right. I read it again a couple of weeks ago — because I remembered how much I’d enjoyed reading it, but had forgotten a lot of the details. And reading it agan was about as enthralling as the first time. I think what fascinated me about Feynman at that time was how smart this person was and yet at the same time, so down to earth and so cool. So unlike most “smart” people. It is where I first learnt that there is a place called MIT. A place called Princeton. A place called Cornell and a place called Caltech. It is what got me started to think about whether I could one day go to a University of the same calibre.

This time when I read Feynman’s book, I wasn’t as much in awe of the great Universities or the amazing achievements he had (Not because they aren’t amazing, but because I already knew of them) but more so in awe of Feynman as a person. A person who truly had a great mind. A mind which was open, and always thinking. A mind for someone who could talk not only about why things are the way they are at a sub-atomic, heck a sub-neucleic level, but also talk about why things are the way they are in society, religion, culture and life.

Thought I cannot be certian of this now since I don’t remember well enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Feynman’s books that I read when I was an adolescent played a significant part in shaping my views on questioning everything and trying to learn as much as possible.

All I can say is for anyone who likes to think, you owe it to your mind to read Feynman. And to Richard Feynman - Thank you.

I’ve discovered a new favorite fruit. Fresh Kiwis! It’s really an amazing little fruit Now of course I only took a liking to Kiwis because of the Mad Mex Kiwi Margs that I’ve written so much about already. But recently, for my New Year’s Eve party I decided to try Kiwi Margs at home and so picked up two packs of Kiwis from Sam’s Club of all places. And man were the Kiwis good. Really good. So good, the *I* actually peeled them myself to eat them.

Apparently, Kiwis are very nutritionally rich as well and are essentially overall “good fruit.” Plus, they make a damn good margarita

Okay, I’ll admit it up front. I’m a gadget freak. Not just any gadgets… electronic gadgets. In my book, if it’s not ggo something to do with hardware or electronics, it just ain’t cool. But that said, I don’t like “owning gadgets” as much as I enjoy checking them out — because if I own them, then I can’t look at the new stuff and the cooler stuff that’s out there and in this business, things change quickly! Very quickly!

I’d been out of the consumer electronic space for a while and so recently got an excuse to jump back in a take a closer look. The excuse of course was that when I returned to Pittsburgh from New Delhi, I was TV-less, since we needed a TV at the office to hook up to the video conferencing system and of course to hook up to the Nintendo! Besides, I think by now everyone knows that I’ll never get something new as long as the previous thing is still functional (every once in a while I’m half hoping that my notebook at home dies on me so I have an excuse to go get one of the new slim and sleek ones and dump this brick… but alas, I keep managing to fix it everytime so far!)

So I’ve spent my free time in te past week looking at gadgets and gizmos. Very cool gadgets and gizmos. I checked out the Phillips 42″ Plasma TV, the Sony 57″ High Definition TV (Wide screen, projection), the Sony VAIO SuperSlim notebook, several DVD players, receivers, decoders, and of course speakers. I like speakers. Speakers are cool. Speakers make a BIG different. And trust me… Bose may be the most outrageously priced speakers you will ever find, but they are a class apart. There is no doubting it.

It’s a little late right now, but I’ll update this post soon with the links of some of the stuff I checked out. Toys are cool

The last time I was in LA nearly about a year ago, I drove past a place called Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe on Sunset Boulevard right by Sunset Strip. For some reason, that place stuck in my mind as a landmark and so this time I decided to actually go check it out. And as far as restaurants go, it was a lot more like my kind of place than some of the other places I ate at while in LA.

I prefer the more laid-back and fun atmosphere for dining any day as compared to a high-falutin, snobbish restaurant. For starters the food at a high-falutin restaurant is generally not my type… I’m not interested in eating escargot (I head a good one once — why do they call them escargot? Because no one would eat them if they were called snails!) or eels, or calamari or any sch stuff that is considered exotic. Chicken is about as exotic as I get! My problem with the more exotic foods is totally psychological… the image of the animal being eaten comes into my head and totally turns me off. Except in the case of chicken where I have succeeded in conditioning myself to dissociate boneless chicken from the image of an actual chicken with its head being cut off — note I said boneless!

Anyhow, so as I drove from one end of Sunset Blvd to the other I decided on a whim to actually stop @ Wolfgang Puck’s for lunch. I liked the atmosphere. Nice and lively and definitely non-stuffy. The bartender served a good Sapphire Tonic with the pre-requisite two limes (you’d be amazed at how many leave out the second lime). They were reasonable priced for California standards. Service was quick and the Spicy Chicken Pizza that I ordered was actually really good. So everything was going really well, except as it always happens, I got a small piece of bone in my chicken But still once I got past the bone crunching in my teeth, the Pizza was great, the food was great and the atmossphere was great. I’d definitely go back there again and hope that the bone was only an unfortunate oversight which won’t repeat itself!

hmm.. I guess if there was no bone, Wolfgang Puck’s would have gotten a full thumbs up. But I think I’ll have to give them a partial thumbs up for now!

Oh and on a similar note, another place I dined at in LA was a restaurant called Typhoon (see the article about Typhoon I found on the web while writing this blog…) at the Santa Monica County Airport. Cool location — right off the run way so you can see the private planes taking off and landing. The food was a different story altogether. My friend actually ordered (and ate them for that matter!) Frogs Legs! They also had a whole section on the menu titled “Insects” — yup that’s exactly what I was looking for. Most of the more — I was going to say exotic, but I think eccentric would be a better choice — eccentric foods are always deep fried… I guess once you fry it, it all tastes the same… be it frogs legs, ants, cockroaches, crickets and whatever else people eat — I had read far enough to already kill my appetite!

The food at Typhoon was not to my liking — I guess after seeing the menu and seeing the things both on our table and others I doubt anything would have been to my liking that evening! So at most I can give it a thumbs flat.

While I was in LA, two friends of mine invited me to accompany them to a party — so I can see what partying is like in LA. Being halloween it was a costume party of course. So my friends show up dressed in glow-in-the-dark afro wigs and calf-length trousers… both husband and wife were dressed as Mozart! Along with them another friend who was wearing a clown mask and a huge afro-wig. So when I stepped into their car at in the foyer of the Beverly Hilton, needless to say quit surprised! But my surprise would soon be outdone by the amount of time, effort people at the party had put into their costumes.

The party was itself held in a warehouse converted to a loft in downtown L.A. And from what my friends told me, the area wasn’t one to be caught in after hours. The loft/warehouse though was ultra-cool. Very open, minimal furniture, large Proxima projectors — talk about big screen TV. Very smply but tastefully done.

And this party was kind of like the party which kept on going… at first there was one room, which was large, but nothing surprising. But then, you walk into the back and it opens into a whole other area! And that wasn’t it, there was an open-air area too. By now I though I had seen all of it and then later in the evening doors to other “party-locations” seem to appear out of no where! It just kept going on and on and on!

The women at the party were literally drop dead gorgeous, especially dressed in their mostly skin tight and skimpy outfits! Ones which deserve special mention are: the one dressed as an FBI agent, one as Lara Croft, “the naughty nurse” and even someone who came dressed as a shower! But in my ook the award for the best costume goes to Superwoman and her sidekick the Superdog (or Superbitch?) both of whom were adorned in their appropriate costume. Superdog of course was an 8 month old german-shepherd mix — Maya (got the dog’s name, but not the owners!)– who was very friendly and was literally boogie-ing on the dance floor with everyone!

It’s been a long time since I went to a real party. In fact the last one that I can remember going to and having fun at was actually my own party back in Delhi which is the subject of an article in itself. Anyhow, it was good to finally get back into a scene which is totally full of fun and no restraints. I’d go back to LA just to go to another party like this. Definitely the highlight of the trip!

For the past week, I have been in Southern California, mostly in Anaheim and then in Beverly Hills. When I arrived at LAX on Monday, Hertz didn’t have any cars available even though we’d made reservations (anyone remember the Seinfeld episode about this! ) Anyhow, but when we finally got a car, it came aith an unexpected extra. As I opened the trunk to put in my bags I immediately noticed a unit mounted in the trunk which said “Magellan” - GPS! Made it waiting for the car all worth it.

So for the past week, I’ve driven over 250 miles up and down SoCal from LA to Anaheim, to Hollywood, to Santa Monica, to Beverly Hills, Bel Air and to Venice Beach. And in *every* case - all I did was punch in my destination without thinking… the Magellan GPS system did the rest. Finding restaurants, hotels and pretty much any services… all a breeze. GPS truly rocks. A huge thumbs up!