Brown Motion

Described as a tragicomedy this is a film about life in Poland's Jewish ghetto's during Hitler's occupation. It is also a film about creating something from nothing. It is about survival in the face of the harshest odds. Robin Williams as Jakob in the lead is supported by other interesting characters like Liev Schriber, Alan Arkin et al. What begins as an accident in Jakob wandering out after dark and getting confronted by the Gestapo turns out to be the trigger for the plot. He is summoned to the HQ for a false reason of being out after curfew hours and while in the HQ he hears the German radio broadcast of the Soviet Armies approaching close to the border. He is sent back to camp but gets locked out and has to sneak back through the rail yard in order to avoid being shot. Here he stumbles into a 10 year old girl that has been made to jump the train by her family who is going to the gas chamber. Together they now squat in a bombed out building. Jakob has to now fe...

A new Bond movie you say? I was there. Newest installment of the Bond franchise is called 'Skyfall' and it was amusing. Was it worth every penny? May be not. But hey its all relative. What I found particularly amusing is that most Bond flicks these days are titled incoherent. Like the only connection (not a spoiler) I could find to the title was this old house in the English country. What? Getting back to why I think the sky is falling though has to do with the preponderence of stuff that mankind is churning out and the manufacturers having a hard time making you buy theirs. Its getting too crowded out there. Customers are confused and marketers are trying very hard to get their attention by announcing its their Last Chance to get IT or Else! If our Thanksgiving sales are an indication people go out there every year as if this is their final opportunity to experience what shopping and spending borrowed money would look like. So marketing experts use gimmicks like p...

In a satirical piece an American magazine had once quoted “New Starbucks Opens in Rest Room of Existing Starbucks”. That is almost reality for us hopped up (save this term for beer drinkers) or should I say Caffienated public. See I am so stoned I used the wrong spelling (thinking i before e but alas caffEIne is the other way round). We are so overdosed we cannot remember when we had a shot, so like a junkie we seek it out and get another one.. just in case. Alcohol has some serious competition. Starbucks partnered with the Tatas and went and opened its first store in Mumbai. They have big plans to sell coffee to a natively tea drinking public. Just making a statement - lifestyle is what they want to sell - in some retarded marketing lingo - not the coffee. Anyone can sell coffee. Used to be a time when the Japanese used the idea of caffeine intake and developed a whole Zen lifestyle around it - called it the Tea Ceremony. Spent hours preparing and serving and enjoying it. N...

Used to be you could get traumatized. Although the exact meaning of that is unclear one can sort of begin to understand if one were to say witness a shoot out at your local pizza parlor leaving everyone including the cook bleeding or dead. More sauce than you care for. That can leave one traumatized I think. These days I am betting that people are feeling tabletized. Not in any small part due to consumption of all manners of tablets (or pills or gels or capsules or berries or the next wonder drug) but because of all these pieces of glass that suddenly everyone's uncle from Haiti to Vietnam is manufacturing. I mean have you seen the crop lately? From the quintessential iPad and its various incarnations with or without lightning striking your fancy there is simply way too many jolts from the all the advertising surrounding these fancy new screens. On the Surface it would appear to be good old fashioned competition but by the time you actually understand the Playbook its quite...

These days matters pertaining to the edge are aplenty. What with the Fiscal Cliff being numero uno on US news channels? I mean a cliff has an edge would you say? Then again there is the discussion of the EU on the 'brink' of collapse. Somewhere else we see institutions on the 'verge' of a cataclysmic failure (this can relate to variety of automobiles and their failing components to monetary morass amidst large scale governments and institutions). With all this 'on the edge' conversation its hard not to feel lightheaded. Hence I try to replenish myself with all manners of food and beverages every chance I get. Most recently having imbibed some very sweet and spicy Musact produced in the south of Australia, I uncorked a Mead Wine (I have had these before given my propensity for anything sweet). This one is made from honey as the sugar providing ingredient. This too met the expectations in these days of exp being largely missed. Wall Street has some as do...

I went. To the Mission. Its a neighborhood undergoing gentrification if you ask the politicians to describe it. I found the ambience borderline unpleasant but with some distinct and interesting latin artwork on the local homes - there was no latin just some paitings and murals typifying the style of Latin America. Some blocks I crossed seemed rife with its share of street hoodlums and shady individuals with the decay that comes of being a neglected part of town. The reason I embarked on the trip was to sample what is called Goan /coastal Maharashtra cuisine. Goa is a portuguese establishment on the west central coast of India and today one of its state. Logistically and culturally a food scene defined by the bounty of the ocean along with rice and coconut as well as with tropical fruit constitues the meal and the preparations. The place I went to was called Gajalee (I am told they have sister or parent - being the original - concerns in Bombay too). The word signifies infor...

As titles go I must admit I am clueless with those that adorn the folks of the armed forces. First what's with the armed bit - why not leggy forces? First thing you do when in danger is run (to fight another day) - for that you need strong legs. Flight is often a better way to end a problem. If you must fight you might need arms. That can have variety of consequences. Depends on the arms. Ideally you do not want to get into a situation involving fights. But its hard to explain to someone obsessed with arming their forces. You mostly need cunning. That does not need arms it actually just needs a head. A good one at that. Speaking of forces - these are beyond me since I spent my childhood mostly learning about silly ones like gravity, nuclear and some others that I cannot remember. Armed was not one of them. If push comes to shove and their is a fight we get into the whole discussion around who's fighting and who is administering the fight. Much like a boxer fights...

For Want of a Nail so goes the old rhyme - For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail. In today's bizzaro world the NAIL can be replaced by WOODY. That part of the male anatomy that inevitably seems to get into a hot tub (ahem) - Nailing another individual so to speak! The 'Kingdom' in this rebranded metaphor would be Human Civilization in general. In the latest installment of power wielder shenanigans we were greeted with everything from the venerable British Broadcasting Corp and its erstwhile popular showman to Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (the 'I' is now seriously in doubt) to a Chief Executive of a Defense Supplier called Lockheed Martin - all falling prey to their vulnerability around not bei...

Americans by their very nature do not like long lines. You will thence not find one to get a train ticket (train what?) or an airplane reservation or a ghaslet (a crude form of crude used in developing nations) line or a burger line either. There is one exception however. Tis called Black Friday. Here all rules are out the window and even the most advanced and apparently affluent society resorts to primitive hunting tactics. First there is lines - like the ones that would make an Apple eventee proud (oh - of course the apple product launch related lines are merely a passing fad so not included for purposes of comparing true cultural hoopla). Now here the commonest of common man along with so called Affluent deal seekers (hey who does not like a good one - or so one would think) will arrive at wee hours to mob a store and even go to the extent of camping overnight if the store somehow decides to open at a realistic hour of say 5 AM. This is then followed at times by a rush to see...

I have been doing so since 20 years ago - each year to give my time. Pro Bono as Grisham would say but I am not fighting in the court of opinion. Rather I simply give my time. To plant flower beds or clean a sidewalk; to fix a house (rather than destroy it with limited knowledge of tools) or to sort an errant computer problem or two or sit and chat with errant kids that need diserranting. Foster kids or kids with no money - things like that. That is by far most rewarding than any job I have done in corporate America. Or any corporate for that matter. It does not pay but that is not expected. The joys of sharing an intangible and to see the outcome that is very tangible does wonders to one's morale I say. Through these events I have also met and developed some friendships with like minded yokels - at least in the giving arena (don't really know what their thoughts about corporates are). As far as the last weekend (where in I was still recovering from an arduous trip to...

Ah to be in Hawaii again. The ups and downs I refer to jokingly are or were experiential as I spent a week on the sunny isle of Oahu or the Gathering Place. Ironically a rolling stone gathers no moss and so it was with moi. With all that walking along the shores and ridges and high mounts I did indeed not gather any moss but certainly gathered a fresh set of wonderful memories. The missing ingredients being the better 90 percents (as in wife and daughter) but oh well. They were traipsing through some scenery in Asia. Beginning with a Monday arrival I was able to get the rear limbs wet on Ala Moana beach, our former stomping grounds when we lived on this isle a couple decades ago. Then it was a quick bus ride and a half to a famous Malasada joint called Leonard's on Kapahulu for some amazing doughy goodness - Malasada being a portuguese invention and precursor to the donut. Its simply fun to stroll along the streets and see the Hawaiian language spelled out on s...

I am not given to sentimental chit chat perhaps or maybe there is something more sinister afoot but I don't get this cliche in modern journalism. What the heck does the phrase or the three words really mean? Our planet is struck by variety of natural and man made disasters with fair regularity that would make Metamucil proud. Once an event like that occurs there is some serious reduction in force - literally where mortals lose their lives. Now how the sudden outpouring of thoughts and prayers begins is beyond me. Could it be one of the reasons why we are getting dumber by the day? Our thoughts and prayers are focused on too many distractions. So I say mind your own and go forth and things will actually work out alright. Thoughts and prayers don't actually mean anything and just sort of sound cute in the news I suppose. That is why radio and TV including the NPR recently resorted to one of their own sending his thoughts over the radio waves (without asking me esp as I am...

It would appear on close inspection that although the calendar says fall the weather in Northern California around the first week of November is downright summery. It happened twice in a row. Last year this time it was equally beautiful - I know because we were here. And so on in the past few. It was quite the Twain's Quip (About the Coldest Winter) altering weekend this one! This Saturday was 72 degrees in the City by the Bay and the skies were a perfect azure. Since the remainder of the family is out of town traveling I decided to satiate my hiking bug by suiting up and traversing some trails I had in mind to trample. So I started out on the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula and hiked along its north - NW edge up and down (both in distance and elevation). After coming up from the beaches of Crissy Field (named after a WWI Major and the fact that it was an airfield in the day) I hiked up the hills to reach the 75 year anniversary celebrating Golden Gate Bridge. ...