Notes from my Treadmill

 

The wonderful thing about living on a university campus is that you have the space for a lot of outdoor activity. It’s really nice to be able to step out of your home into the woods and take off on long walks or cycle to the lake. While I enjoy doing those things, I also get to enjoy a more consistent and rigorous workout at the campus gym which is freakin’ amazing considering it’s free. Over the year I’ve been going to the gym I’ve sort of come up with a regime that suits my needs and here a few pointers from my calorie burning missions.

The only motivation for exercise shouldn’t be losing weight. If you concentrate all your energies on that aim, it becomes more than often a frustrating endeavour and you’re likely to give up very soon. That’s because it’s always important to understand that weight loss is a gradual process no matter what the home shopping people will tell you. Setting your weight targets is a good thing and gives you focus, but make sure you appreciate the other benefits of exercise. It’ll increase your stamina, tone your muscles and make you feel energetic. Don’t be disillusioned if you don’t have the curves or the abs you were looking for right way, because exercise makes other positive changes to your body. You will love the way your posture improved, and leaner and stronger limbs.

Finding something that works for you is important. Don’t get taken in by what’s fashionable right now, or promises quick results. Clichéd as it may sound, everybody is different so make sure you pick a form a exercise that fits your schedule, makes you feel good and you enjoy doing. The key is to like what you do, whether it’s organized exercise, sports or yoga or a combination of things. Always start out slow and then increase the intensity as you go along. Keep pushing yourself to achieve more out of your time at the gym.

Buddies are not just for swimming. Working out together with your friend, sibling or significant other is twice the amount of fun and helps you stick to your workouts. Find someone you can work out with. This way you’ll have someone who’ll be in the same boat as you, getting the same joint aches and the urge to just curl up and go to sleep sometimes in the middle of cardio.

Invest in gym wear, it’s worth it. Buy yourself some comfortable and stylish track pants and t-shirts. Looking good makes all the difference. That doesn’t mean you have to blow away tons of cash on expensive Adidas and Reebok gym wear. You can get affordable gym wear from Urban Yoga and West Port. Shop during clearance sales. Urban yoga clothes are especially good for the summers because they are completely sweat absorbent and keep you very dry.

 

Get a good beat working for you

One of the things that helps me workout is music. It gives you a beat and rhythm to work out to instead of a boring count of 1, 2,3. Compile a ‘gym mix’ of songs that you like and order them in a way that synchronizes with your workout. Ex- Fast beats for cardio and running, rock for weights and lounge music for yoga. If you can make it work, you can try listening to an audio book while you work out as well. Suggestions for a good gym play list include Beyonce, Britney Spears, Sean Paul, DMC, techno, trance etc.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

It’s important to remember, working-out is not a panacea for health. Always remember to eat right. Avoid junk, high sugar and empty calorie foods and snacking between meals. Trust me, the momentary pleasure you’ll get out of them is so not worth it. Crazy dieting or starving doesn’t help either. If you’re going on a diet, make sure you’ve done your research to meet your food group requirements.

Never let excuses of lack of time or facilities keep you from trying to be fit. You can achieve a good workout in as less as twelve minutes a day. If you can’t afford or make time for a gym, take brisk walks, go running and research for equipment sans exercises on the web that you can do at home on your own.

 

Look Who’s on Twitter!

 

The Twitter Brower: flowingdata.com

 

Obama is on it, so is Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Vanessa Hudgens, Ryan Seacrest, Tina Fey, Robert Pattinson and a lot of other important and less important people.  Who needs paparazzi to tell us what celebs are up to when they can do it themselves in 140 characters or less at that. When Shakespeare said ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, You know now he was talking about Twitter, the micro-blogging service where you can find people posting updates, networking, promoting, looking for jobs, getting fired from jobs and having fun sometimes. There are even fictional characters like Shawn Spencer from USA’s Psych twittering online.  

I joined Twitter many months ago out of sheer curiosity and then let my account gather dust. It seemed so silly to keep posting updates about what I am doing to a bunch of strangers. But in a vague moment of boredom a few weeks ago, I made a post and pretty soon, I realized I liked it. Now I make an average of three posts a day sometimes two in ten minutes. I think for the first time, I would stick to a social networking site after the initial enthusiasm wears off. 

My past experiences with the social networking scene have not impressed me to the degree, where I could think of it the way a lot of journalists do. Orkut was fun till it got mildly creepy with pretty much anyone and everyone wanting to be your friend for no visible reason. The ‘frandship’ requests alone were enough for me to renounce my account with little regret. Plus I’d found Facebook by then and it seemed like a classier and more private alternative to being on Orkut. But then it became so over loaded with features, that you dreaded logging in, lest someone had challenged you to  some inane game  or quiz that didn’t make sense to begin with. It’s become the legitimate spam portal where anyone can push anything into your face.  The only reason I am still on it is because I love my friends and I have to find some way of keeping in touch with them.  Plus it’s sort of uncool not to be on it, even if I check my account like say once in three months.

Twitter is like the ultimate no frills Facebook. It is less complex, more creative and definitely cooler.  It’s fun to think of the mundane daily activities in the form of witty, staccato sentences, and I think that’s really what people enjoy a lot more than the connectivity. Co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone was on The Colbert Report the other night, and he said “Twitter is like the messaging service, we didn’t know we needed.”  I have to agree, since it is exactly the kind of messaging service I’ve been looking for. Free, fast and done through a key board.

More than the technical features of Twitter, it is the social dynamic which is more interesting.  Why do we take so much trouble to worry about our privacy and then write about what time we got up or where we’re gonna go for dinner? It’s almost like most of the time; we’re trying to make our lives appear more interesting than it actually is or just making a performance out of things, because there is a hypothetical audience out there for it, reading about us. 

It’s probably the reason why there are so many celebrities on Twitter, after years of telling the media to leave them alone that too. Biz Stone says its because Twitter is a simple and quick way of controlling information about yourself and that’s why it attracts so much Hollywood traffic. Plus it also acts like an improvisation of word-of mouth in a way, allowing you to promote stuff as well and create a closer bond with the fans.  My Space and Blogs require a different kind of structure of information and moderation which they may not have the time or inclination for.

Micro blogging has been around for some time now and Twitter takes it to a whole new level by bridging it with cell phone activity and that’s probably appealing to a lot of users, given the number of special applications cell phones have come up with to facilitate Twitter on cell phones.  Android came up with Twitteroid. Adobe has come up with TweetDeck to bridge Twitter with Facebook, a web application that I am trying out right now and liking.

I don’t know whether to get too excited about it all, because a lot of good things on the web have taken a turn for the worse, simply because they became too popular for their own good. I hope the same doesn’t happen with Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

How Technology can Breed Complacency

Posted for the TNTJ  March Debate on what traditional skills are we losing?

For some time now, new media has been heralded as the second coming of journalism worldwide. Everybody marvels at RSS news feeds and tweets and blogs, and celebrates the slow death of the newspaper. While this immense explosion of web journalism is something that is phenomenal for many reasons, it has its pitfalls.

One of the primary issues with new media journalism is credibility. Even as more and more people are turning to the web for independent news and commentary, the question of credibility does give them pause. Who is this random blogger who reports from his or her community and why should I take his/her word?

It’s a shortcoming that web journalists have been trying hard to overcome, and have succeeded partially. Perhaps the fact that bloggers are getting more recognition as good journalists will help the case.

In a way it’s related to the loss of a few traditional news gathering skills. The technology available to journalists have led them to circumvent any real field work, or face to face interaction. While this is completely justified given the short deadlines they work under, its given rise to a lot of surface scratching and incomplete research, where we’re only as knowledgeable on a subject as Google allows us to be.

The visible amount of carelessness that creeps into a lot of writing on the web in terms of typos, incorrect or lack of attribution, grammar and rudimentary editing is another reason why web journalism lacks the kind of credibility that print or television enjoy. Good and accurate writing is not as dismissible as many think just because it’s on the web. It’s a serious issue which bloggers should ideally take note of and pay attention to.

The Lands of Perpetual Recession

A Sangham Meeting in which the weekly finances get discussed

 

  

It’s recession; people are losing jobs and crunching on their expenses. That means no more eating out two days a week or putting off buying some random new shiny that you saw last week. Why because it’s what you’re supposed to do. Thank the stars you’re still in school, so you don’t have to worry about losing a job maybe only finding one after it gets over. For now you’re safe, safe enough to write about things like this than worrying about your next meal.

 

 

 

 

But what if your entire life was to be spent in recession. Waiting it out and waiting to die are one and the same thing and deprivation takes on a whole new level.  That’s unfathomable really. It’ll blow over right. Those large financial corporations and banks will get things up and running in no time. They’ve screwed up before, they’ll fix it as well. It’s why we give them our money, our future hopes and dreams, that house we want to buy and the car that comes with it.

In the arid lands of Medak in  India,  rural  uneducated women are doing the same thing. Every week they turn over their hard earned and microscopic savings to people who they believe will take care of it for them. Who will open savings accounts for them in the nearby post offices and give them the financial skills to operate it. For these women, these savings are not about a swanking new SUV. It’s about escaping generations of debt that has pushed them into years of wage labour without a better future in sight. It’s about being able to free their tiny areas of mortgaged land so that they have something to leave for their children.

Rural poverty is something we can all pretend to understand. It’s all about using the right words, the sympathetic gestures and the apt amount of   righteous indignation. But it really startles you when you confront it face to face and you find yourself not sympathising so much as grappling with the sheer deprivation that exists in the heartlands of every country.  These are the people that globalization and the bandwagon that goes with it missed out on. Yet they bear the costs without a tangible benefit in sight. Their village water resources are bled dry to fuel cola company plants for urban consumers. They’re the ones left hanging dry when IMF reforms force states to rollback on their aid, so that capital can flow into the cities and give them the much desired structures of glass and steel.

Travelling across the Medak region of  Andhra Pradesh in India about 170 km from the capital and IT hub of Hyderabad, I met many women who come under what is understood as the ultra-poor category which as defined by the World Bank includes people who earn less than  1 US $ a day.  These women are part of the pilot ultra-poor programme started by the SKS foundation, the NGO wing of SKS one of the largest micro finance institutions in the country.

Operating from Narayankhed in Andhra Pradesh, it covers four hundred odd families across a hundred villages in the region.  Under this program, single women who are the only earning members of their family without any financial assets such as property or live stock are given grants to acquire an asset like a buffalo or a goat to supplement their income from farm labour which gets them around Rs. 40 a day ($0.791) for 15 days in a month. 

Using the livestock for milk or labour assures them a secondary source of income and a minimal saving that ranges from Rs.10 ( $ 0.198) to Rs 50 ( $ 0.988) a week. They deposit these savings with a field assistant from SKS who records their weekly income and expenditure and advises them on health and financial decision making. It’s a two year intervention which is due to end in a few months following which the women would ideally have two sources of income and saving capacity that could improve their standard of living.

A house visit in progress

 

 

Talking to these women is an enriching experience. They open up easily, ready to pour their troubles to anyone who’ll listen. They’re not necessarily looking for any help, only someone who’ll patiently listen. It’s a common lament across thee three villages I travel to. Summer is a particularly tough time, as the cattle don’t yield a lot of milk and there is a dearth of employment in the farms. At these times, they get by on reserve stock of food grains from last year and manage to make ends meet by selling stone from residual quarrying, gathering and selling firewood or collecting leftover harvest from threshing.

 

Meeting these women leads me to believe, how wrong our approach can sometimes be. To understand them as hapless and oppressed in our romantic imagination of third world poverty, without any agency of their own is a great disservice to them even if our hearts should be in the right place. They’re strong and resilient people who try and make better existences for themselves and their families even when the odds are heavily against them. Even in the face of the heart wrenching poverty that they face, I find it difficult to pity them or feel sorry for them because they’re so full of grit and determination to change their lives for the better.

 

It also leads me to think why financial capitalism has no place for people like these. If it did, we probably wouldn’t be facing this colossal economic bust. A lot of micro-credit and finance  studies have shown that while the largest of corporations default on  millions of dollars of debt that get written off year after year by  banks and firms, the poor are often much more dependable and low risk clients who pay up their loans with efficiency. Why then can’t they be offered financial services suited to their needs that can make all the difference to their basic existence? They may not understand or care about mutual funds or stock markets, but it’s a pretty safe bet that they understand the value of money more than anybody else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intelligible Television: More New Shows and not all impress

Reserving judgement on Castle paid off.  The second episode was impressive and more than compensated for the average pilot.  In ‘Nanny McDead’, Castle and Beckett investigate the death of a nanny whose body is found tumbling in the basement dryer of an apartment building. What ensues is your regular crime drama route with cheating spouses and obsessed lovers before our duo nail the guilty. It’s entertaining because of Nathna Fillion ’s apt comic timing that cracks you up at the most serious moments in the episode. If he keeps it up and which am hoping it does, Rick Castle may just join the elite and yet endless number of wise cracking and devilishly charming crime solvers that we disapprove of but can’t help liking. Side note on nannies on crime shows? First Psych, now these guys.

Things get more interesting on Dollhouse.

Castle is promising with dead pan humour and one liners

Dollhouse continues to simmer with untold mystery as Echo (Eliza Dushku) becomes a blind woman to infiltrate a religious cult, suspected of being a cover for trafficking activities in last week’s episode. Laurence’s ( Reed Diamond) dislike of Echo and his fears that she is following the same path as the elusive Alpha become more evident in this episode, as he attempts to trap her in a fire by knocking her unconscious. 

Another interesting development is the budding relationship between Victor (Enver Gjokaj )  and Sierra (Dichen Lachman)  who are drawn to each other despite having no idea of what attraction is. The show has managed to maintain a steady momentum and according to show creator Joss Whedon, it’s about to get so much better. This week’s coming episode brings our star even if slightly malfunctioning active face to face with Paul ( Tahmoh Penikett) in what should be an interesting setting. Check out more juicy spoilers and news on what’s next on Dollhouse on E Online!

On the subject of new shows, I caught a slew of them over the last few days and some of them I am definitely putting  on my RSS feed while others, not so much.  The Canadian show, The Listener about a telepathic paramedic played by Craig Olejnik, who uses his gift to solve crimes is strictly okay and doesn’t really do much for me. The pace of the episodes is a little too sluggish and it doesn’t have a very definitive hook that could set it apart from the any number of crime series on television. The same can be said about The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,  a BBC and HBO joint production which has premiered in the UK and is dues to be broadcast in the US. Based on a series of novels that go by the same name by Alexander McCall Smith, the show is about Botswana’s only female detective, Mma Ramotswe played by Jill Castle. The plot is a tad simplistic and reminiscent of crime fiction for children ala Enid Blyton. But some might enjoy it precisely for it’s simplicity, because its a throw back to  a ‘follow the suspect’ sort of investigation instead of the complex procedurals that we get to see most of the time.  In the first episode which is 55 minutes long, Mma Ramotswe solves three parallel cases and jumpstarts her near to bankruptcy  agency.

If you though Fringe was ridiculous you’ll simply love Better off Ted where they freeze employees alive, a new sitcom on ABC about an unscrupulous mega think tank and it’s ethically plagued R & D Chief. Jay Harrington plays Ted, a single father and corporate hot shot who along with a healthy mix of managerial and lab staff makes everything and anything from uncomfortable office chairs to pumpkin bio weapons.  It’s funny and brilliant and absurd and I love it. Portia de Rossi, Malcolm Barrett, Jonathan Slavin, Andrea Anders and Isabella Acres co star.

 

Talking Movies: The Dark Knight- To Understand the Reason of Unreason

 

Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight

 

So, I finally caught ’The Dark Knight’ after letting it sit on my PC forever, and boy was I glad I did. The sheer brilliance of the movie blew me apart and then reassembled me. Talk about justice, righteousness and dubious morality of the so called ‘civilized’. Poignant questions that a mad man poses to the outlaw vigilante.

 

I know you’re supposed to watch such movies for the cool effects and the IMAX camera work and of course Batman. But enough had been said on those things already and I am not really into the whole superhero mania. Batman’s dark aura and visible moral ambiguity make for the perfect Film noir and it shows in the grey and black tones and the gravelly voice. Literally and figuratively speaking, The Joker makes a splash of colour with only his bizarreness and turns Bruce Wayne’s monochromatic world upside down and inside out.

 

‘The Dark Knight’ raises a lot of questions on issues of control and rules. The Joker mocks the convenience of people’s goodness and their will to be upright citizens as and when the occasion is conducive to such behaviour. When the rules are off, he demonstrates how easily they can shed the trappings of morality and altruistic humanity to look out for themselves. 

Heath Ledger has really given the world his best work as the Joker, who hides behind the mask of dark humour and unleashes anarchy, refusing to abide by the dictates of logic or plan.  His argument about how the worst forms of cruelty go unquestioned simply because they can be justified on grounds of public interest makes us pause and think.

Aaron Eckhart also impresses. Both as Harvey Dent, the righteous DA of the mythical Gotham City and as Two-Face, the reckless, revenge driven villain who seeks his vengeance on those who’ve  wronged him using flipism i.e. (an ostensible normative practise of making decision  by flipping a coin).  He exhibits the futility of trying to be good in a flawed system. A philosophy which is similar to that of Batman himself who works outside of law, to help uphold it. Christian Bale does an admirable job of portryaing the flawed but larger than life Batman, who struggles with the collateral damages his actions cause.

To watch this film simply as a superhero cult movie would be a great injustice to it.  Even if it does have predictable resolution, it speaks of larger ideas- of the rationality that lies underneath madness, and the fragility of human morality.

 

 

 

Intelligible Television: Bones that become soggy….

A still from The Bones That Foam: Brennan and Booth at the jungle themed dealership!

 

Bones is back after a staggered and ruptured hiatus with last night’s episode  ‘The Bones That Foam’.  If you haven’t inferred anything from the obvious title, the bones of a car salesman are foaming and disintegrating  at an alarming double digit percentage per hour and the quirky team at the Mythical Jeffersonian only have a few hours before their evidence dissolves into green slime.

It’s the turn of fact-obsessed Vincent Nigel Murray played by Ryan Cartwright to be Dr.Brennan’s intern from the bag of rotating, quirky grad students. His fascination with out- of -context trivia and Cam’s exasperation with the same are amusing as ever as he attempts to regain focus at his task by recalling how many pair of chopsticks the Chinese dispose annually (900 million!)  The punch line really is when Cam asks him if those are individual or pairs! Brennan’s attempts at learning how to manipulate while interrogation  from Suites are hilarious as is her debut in the holding cell, where she pulls off the worst bad cop act in history, much to the amusement of Booth.  Lead actor, David Boreanaz’s direction is adequate.

The sub-plot of the episode is average at best, and the storyline feels a little thin. Also, the sparse  use of Angela and Hodgins is not very satisfying. The lack of their comic  and bitter sweet exchanges is something, I hope the writers work on rectifying ASAP. On the whole, no complaints but it could have been better.

Intelligible Television:Winter Line-up, Dollhouse and why I am liking it..

It’s been a bad year for television and not just in a budget cuts, recession way. Many of the new shows which premiered this fall expected to be runaway hits, fell flatter than their non-existent storylines, with a few not even making it past their third episode. The only visible smash hit off the year, The Mentalist is nothing more than a grim, sophisticated knock off of the quirkier and definitely better Psych while Privileged, yet another tapered down and PG-13 take on rich and famous and completely fabulous teenagers who can’t seem to get through high school without everybody sleeping with everybody else has been left hanging in the air with no green light for a second season yet.

Shows that premiere in winter are seldom given the kind of hype that Fall line-ups receive. You’re already thinking, they’re on now because they weren’t good enough to be on in September along with the other new shiny on TV.  But Dollhouse has been the entire buzz for quite some time before it went on in February. Yes, it is one more high budget, sci-fi show based on an utterly ridiculous premise that the people at Fox seem so adept at coming up with. But just like the other super absurd show on Fox, a little marvel of directionless yet interesting writing I like to call Fringe, it has me hooked.

 People who can be made and unmade for specific tasks and engagements through a process of imprinting and then wiped clean when the job gets done: That’s what  Dollhouse is all about. Eliza Dushku plays Echo, one of the ‘actives’ of the dubious company with a sketchy past that has driven her to having her memories erased and becoming a blank slate or the Tabula Rasa. She floats around in her spa like residence, swimming and doing yoga and gliding clueless by her other inmates when she’s not being transformed into a K & R negotiator or a safe cracker by a narcissistic genius scientist, Topher (Franz Kranz). Throw in a Fed obsessed with finding the Dollhouse, a mysterious, Frankenstein ‘active’ gone wrong whose out for Echo, and a former cop with ethical dilemmas turned bodyguard to empty headed Echo who can’t help being a trouble magnet even if the poor thing can’t remember it and you have quite a show on your hands. Oh also, the thing about our doll- her slate is not quite so blank. She’s assimilating bits and pieces from each of her assignments and no one has realized it yet.

       

Eliza Dushku in Dollhouse- She can be anyone you want!

 

Dollhouse is not exceptional, but it impresses. It’s a welcome replacement for Friday nights, and helps me miss Psych just a little less. The plotlines are engaging and manage to throw the occasional curveball that’ll have you arch your brows a bit. There is an element of mystery and the episodes are fast-paced and interesting.  The second episode ‘The Target’ where Echo gets hunted down by a psychopath in the woods is my favourite so far. It manages to rely less on special FX and has some good old fashioned action stunts to make up for the lack of zing and neon lights. Bottom line, it’s good stuff.

Castle, which premiered on ABC this Monday starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic is a crime show about a bad boy author and a  prudishly cold homicide detective who partner up to solve a copycat case based on his book.  Think Brennan and Booth, but not really and you’ll get a sense of what Castle is about. Rick Castle is our rakishly, irresponsible (he hands a glass of champagne to his under age daughter, convincing her to generate wild stories about teenage years to tell her offspring someday) uber-successful author who doesn’t care for the rules, having just killed off the lead character of his books, much to the chagrin of his ex-wife/publisher and is going through the convenient writer’s block that has his upcoming book nine weeks over-due. Enter Kate Beckett, homicide detective, who has read every book he’s every written but is not a fan of him or his ways. Pit the stiff- upper lip crime fighter with the  ‘ I only speak in sexual innuendos’  crime author and you have a partnership that simmers and bubbles over with sexual chemistry unlike the carefully restrained and amusing even if , antagonistic bickering of our Bones duo.

The crime plotline is secondary at least in the first episode. Given that Castle has found his muse and next lead character in Beckett whom he intends to stick with for the purposes of ’research’ , it is likely to stay that way. The show is promising because of it’s ‘ I love to hate’ lead character even if it may not have the most engaging sub-plot. Hoping that it finds the right angle of humour if not substance, I think I’ll reserve my verdict until the next instalment.

Reaper comes back for a devilish second season

In other news, Reaper is back with a much awaited second season, taking the place of afore mentioned Privileged on CW. So, Sam is the son of the Devil. It’s official! A fact that doesn’t seem to bother him nearly as much as it should.  He’s found a possibility of getting out of his deal as bounty hunter after meeting a soul whose managed to get out of hell for good. Soc has an Asian step-sister, he has a completely inappropriate crush on and Ben is finding romance with a renegade demon who’s after Sam. Yup, seems just about right. The episodes so far have the same mix of quirky humour and action that made me a fan last season. Satan is temptation himself, playing his part to perfection as he goes about spreading evil because it’s fun and the trio manage to lead their directionless lives and sending souls back to hell, when they’re not goofing off work.

All in all, the winter line-up seems a little more interesting than Fall and hopefully with the reduced clutter of reality junk and other shows, some might actually get the  chance to develop into wholesome entertainment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intelligible Television

Hey, here I go again.  Starting one more of my famous segments. I know it’s a little weird that I keep doing that given that there are no comments to show anybody is reading what I write.  But then, you know… Blogs are anyway about seeking attention, or so I read in The Hindu once.

So I watch a lot of television, and I mean a lot. But the thing is, Its not really on TV as such.  Its largely American shows that I download from the internet. I kinda gave up on Indian TV a long time ago. Right about the time, I started college and went to stay at a hostel. Having no TV of your own, forces you to resort to finding other means of entertainment. The momentous discovery of utorrent has probably been the most defining point of my life. Given the sacharine dipped, melodramatic fare that is served to you on Star Plus and Sony, I think I made the right choice in switching loyalties to ABC, CW, CBS, NBC and Fox. Call me unpatriotic, snobbish, west -obsessed, or whatever. I think a selected and emphasis on selected here, portion of American primetime programming is really phenomenal compared to the staggering, repeat motion sequences of our soaps and reality shows.

For one, these shows are seasonal and weekly. You don’t need to agonize over missing a day or sit glued to the television all year long. Secondly, they actually have something of a plotline, not just families in over-the-top clothing, sitting in their living rooms and talking about themselves. They also have more genres of programming. Not everything is a love story or a family soap. There are investigative series, teenage dramas, sitcoms, variety shows, comedies and such.

So given the obvious advantages and my own aversion to soppy content, I have now regularly timed myself with the fall season of the US. Ask me about season premieres, returning series, hiatus, holiday specials, cancellations and I can tell you exactly what they mean. Ask me who’s playing Tulsi on Kyunki.. I won’t have a clue.

So here’s a list of the shows I watch- Desperate Housewives, Fringe, Priveleged, The Big Bang Theory, How I met your Mother, Bones, Psych, The Colbert Report, Saturday Night live and 30 Rock.  So here’s what I am going to do henceforth. Taking inspiration from some of my favourite television blogs like RTVW and TV aholic , I am going to try and do some reviews and commentary on these shows. While part of it will be as proffesional as I’ve learnt from three and half years of journalism, sometimes I’ll just engage in some feel-good gushing.

So watch out this space in case you’re looking for any help in deciding your schedule.

Lighten up would you!

 

 

Catch a glimpse of Amy Poehler rapping while Seth Meyers and Sarah Palin get into the groove on SNL: http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/19/palin_snl

Finished watching Saturday Night Live just now. I’d put it on download today afternoon as a matter of routine and forgotten about it , but got very excited after coming to know that Sarah Palin was going to be on the show. If you’ve been following the show, SNL has been poking quite a lot of fun at her expense. Tina Fey who has an uncanny resemblance to the vice-presidential nominee does a killing impression of Palin which by now has become famous on YouTube and other places on the net. Her “I can see Russia from my window” bit alone has had everyone talking. E News (yes they talk about things like that sometimes, . Hollywood gossip is not just about celebrity babies!) actually did a bit on whether Hollywood with its liberal leanings and Obama fan following was taking the vitriol against Sarah Palin too far.

 

I wasn’t very surprised to know she’d be on the show. They did have McCain on too, a few weeks ago when Ashton Kutcher was the host. So my verdict, did she impress. Yes and no. Sarah Palin the concept hit the nail through and through. Sarah Palin the person, err… a different story all together.

 

The cast and guest stars did a wonderful job. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Alec Baldwin-  all of them. Amy Poehler’s rap song where she’s pretending to be Palin is so completely hillarious. Tina Fey’s signature impression of course did not disappoint. The sketch of her as Palin addresing a press conference where she says how nice it is to be talking to both the ‘liberal media elite’ and the ‘media regular elite’ was classic.

 

But the lady in question came across as stiff, insipid and pointedly uncomfortable, a contradiction for a woman who prides herself on being all folksy and regular, just like Joe the Plumber, her Frankenstein creation. McCain had been more likable on his old man sketch, funnier and more natural. But as Sarah Palin chimed and grooved along with Seth Meyers on the Weekend Update segment, it seemed like she was trying hard to fit in with ‘all the cool kids’.

 

But what I really admire was the ability on both ends to have a laugh at their own expense without taking it to heart. It is gratifying for me to know maybe freedom of expression still has a chance in a world where people’s patience is very short with personal jabs. It is getting worse in India where the slightest attempt at satire on part of the media threatens to spew into violence and retribution. It happened in 1999 when the body of a senior cartoonist from Outlook was found dumped by a highway. All over some unflattering caricatures of Shivsena Supremo, Bal Thakarey in the magazine.

 

That being the extreme of course, I find an over sensitivity among Indian audiences and opinion leaders today that sometimes reminds me of whiny children who complain to their parents about someone picking on them. Humour is a far stretch, innocuous comments taken in the wrong spirit have led to some bottle smashing and mud slinging and heated letter writing before you can say ‘what just happened?’ The case of the Saamana feature which made fun of  Maharashtrian politician Narayan Rane’s status in the Congress likening him to a new bride is perhaps the most recent example. A caricature along side showed him in bridal attire. The paper’s office was attacked and vandalized and some signature Indian effigy burning took place, all this over a badly done Photoshop job.

 

Yes, it is wrong to make racist, sexist or castiest jokes, and maybe its impolite to get very personal about public figures. But there is also some genuine comedy to be found in this conflict that is not always offensive and certainly doesn’t trivialize the issue. It is not easy to be laughed at.  But just because someone fails to see the humour in a situation, is it fair to deny others the right to do so. I would simply say, lighten up people- either grow a sense of humour, or a thicker hide.