Withered in Chicago..

Back from Chicago. I am now officially looking for a big city that's land locked and is not located on the shores of an ocean. And yes, I count lake Michigan as an ocean because its just plain stupid to name a water body as large as that , a lake. I have visited San Fransisco , Boston , NY City , now Chicago, Orlando. Okie so the last one doesn't count, but I have to show the numbers to make my point, so I'll keep it there. Apart from the ocean view, there are very many things that are common to these cities and especially the downtown areas. Each has a couple of really really HIGH rises, which invariably have an observatory on the 86th, 91st ,106th floors, take your pick, with a breathtaking view of the surroundings for nocturnal and general viewing pleasures. Each has a huge public open space, NYC has central park, Chicago has Grant Park which the respective locals claim to be the best ever in the history of mankind. Each has a boat cruise that goes around the city inducing ohhhs and ahhhs from the unsuspecting commuters for the absolutely amazing skyline that the city has to offer. And all of them claim to be the hubs of culture and trade, every last one of them people. The unseen, namely the LA's and San Diego's and Seattle's might be no different either. But I guess its the subtle differences in this similarity that attract the hoards of tourists to throng to these cities. NYC has its times square. San Fransisco has its Golden Gate Bridge. Chicago has its Navy Pier.
I just can't stop myself from making this comparison now. Even if this just stems from my inner vice in proving that why India is better. Indian cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangaloroo or whatever its name is ,are poles apart from each other in all respects. Though each of them is a cosmopolitan with people of all backgrounds calling it their home every one of them has its own distinct localized influence. May it be with the dialect, the food, the commute or the people themselves. Mumbai has its bhel puri, bambiyaa slangs ,and the infamous locals. Delhi has its chole bhature, its clean hindi obscenities, and the deadly blue line buses. Kolkata has its macher jhol, nomoshkaar, and the trams. So on and so forth. They are all so different and so rich in their own distinct cultures.

Coming back to Chicago though. It indeed is a beautiful place and I liked it a lot. The current visit was an official trip but it also was a reconnaissance mission on behalf of my strategic command post in jersey city, read my wife. The foot soldier had gone to scout for locations to plunder in Chicago and the foot part was proved right to the T. I am literally half an inch shorter than my original height due to all the walking that I have done in that one afternoon and evening. I stand now at 5' 11 and a half ''. Yes I am not a 6 footer now.

PS: Neha dearest ignore the strategic command post line, you are no tyrannical general. I don't know who wrote that part. I love you!!

Aftereffects...

The concert proved thoroughly entertaining, so thorough in fact that I couldn't pen down the experience for a week. Now that the week has passed and the stars have aligned in their pristine glory for an auspicious date and time, I forge ahead with typing down all of it.

I have already forgotten quiet a few details , so I might make up stuff, just to add to the excitement.

It was a late Saturday afternoon on a quiet sunny NJ day, when I began the road trip down to lets call it Bryandale NJ because I don't seem to recall the exact name of the place and I don't have the inclination to actually look it up. Because there in an obvious chance that I might lift off on a tangential journey from there on and never come back to edit this post again. So the show was supposed to begin at 6.30 in the evening, but the utter enthusiast (read over zealous and stupid) that I am managed to reach the place a good hour and a half before. Now my fellow concert goers had informed me that I should expect bunch of people camping in the parking lot besides enormous SUV's of this country blaring Bryan's songs on there stereos. To my utter surprise it was all true with just a minor glitch , they were playing songs of some thorogood guy rather than Bryan who happens to be a big rock N roll star from the yesteryear's. WTF, I thought, we are at the wrong place and its good that we were smart enough to come early. Now we can still reach the right place without being late. It turns out we were at the right place and Bryan was supposed to play AFTER this thorogood guy. So in the spirit of the concert I tried to wade through my minds library for any songs that might resonate with the name thorogood. None. Deep breaths, breathe in, breathe out, don't panic. You might still be able to salvage this. I tried to listen in to the songs that were being played across the parking lot, and after a few agonizing minutes I could make out the sounds of a couple of songs, most notably, Bad to the bone with flash of a leather bound Arnold Schwa$@*#&& , whatever his surname is, stepping out of a dilapidated bar in T2 and Moving on Over with no such flashes. Hi Fives and punches in the air. I won't be sitting like a jackass in the concert. There were serpentine queues on the entry gates, me being the head of one of the serpents thanks to the lead time. We were at the concert arena well before Bryan had ever thought of singing in the first place in his native Canada. Lawn chairs secured, sleeping bags rolled in front, umbrellas over our head, did I mention Mr Sun himself had come down half a distance just to scorch people that day, we were all set. Bring on Mr Thorogood. It took a good part of an hour for any live action to start on the stage but around me there was no dearth of action. Plenty of kids crying, guys getting drunk already and women who should never have worn anything less than a circus tent parading in skimpy clothes. Ohh the horror. But the actual action turned out to be pleasantly melodious with guitars riffs flying through the air and pounding drums getting the beat going raising my rock crazy spirit. A fitting opening act, I must say, to the amazing music that was to follow. It cemented my belief that a live act far supersedes anything recorded and even if you are listening to it for the first time in your life. Enough said.

Finally Bryan arrived on stage with There ll never be another tonight and the crowd erupted. The set list went something like this:

Can't stop this thing we started
I need somebody
Kids wanna rock
Life is an open road
18 till I die
Let's make a night to remember
Back to you
Summer of 69
Everything I do
Cuts like a knife
Baby when you re gone (with the person from the crowd)
Its only love
Heaven
Only thing that looks good on me
Run to you
Straight from the heart
All for love

In fact this is the precise set list because I was typing it down on my blackberry during the concert. The gifts of technology I tell you. I was singing along throughout minus the time I spent typing that is. Bryan did his customary "call-a-person-from-the-crowd-and-make-her-sing" routine, which has been duly noted in the set list. Damn I am good!
In all a divine experience which I would definitely like to repeat with other monks of the business namely, St. Metallica, Guru Iron Maiden and others in the upper echelons of Rock divinity. The setting would have been complete if I would have come back and played a couple of the above mentioned songs on my guitar, but alas the sleeping monster in me awoke and St Bryan had to migrate to my dreams.

PS : The thorogood guy actually has a name. He goes by George Thorogood and is accompanied by the Destroyers. And he is thoroughly good.

Bard and Bryan.

In my perennial hunt for the weird on the net and the world in general, I came across this. Its added on my personalized google page as a daily dose of Shakespearean Insults. I sincerely do not understand 99% of them , but then an insult is not meant to be understood in the first place rather its meant to be thrown at you in disgust and its supposed to hurt you. I quote the Bard :

"Thou caluminous dismal-dreaming flirt-gill!"

Now it doesn't sound that bad does it, nothing that could make your blood boil and seep out of your ears in the form of molten lava. Thats the beauty of language. Whats one linguists heaven could be the others hell ,so on and so forth.

Speaking of another kind of language, the language of music. I am off to a Bryan Adams concert tomorrow night. As it happens to be the case ,my first post on this blog was inspired by a Bryan Adams number. So all the madness on this blog over the last 2 something years could simply be blamed on him. Looking forward to having a good time.

Bored

What does bored to death mean? Let's see what it could possibly imply :

1) That you are bored and you wanna die. Okie now here I have justed picked up the keywords of the question, put them in a mixer added a few other words like that,and etc. and just let the motor of the mixer do the sentence formation. So this is obviously as correct an explanation as the answer to one of the essay type questions in your civics paper.

2) That you were killed by a hole drilled in your body. Now that sure is quiet a possible meaning in a horror flick. But lets not get into imaginary perverts and their drilling machines. Its too gory a picture.

3) Another one from the mixer. The person sitting next to you in a train is a chatter box and he has been going on and on ,like all chatter boxes have the legal right to do, about how his job sucks and his wife is cheating on him and the neighbors dog shits in his lawn and so an so forth and the only ray of hope, as you see it, to survive from this excruciating mental torture is to die and go to heaven. Okie hell for you. Yes we are getting close.

But lets not get too close to the actual meaning lest we offend the phrase and it in turn accepts one of the above mentioned explanations and in the process dies.

PS : I am bored to death, whatever that means. You happy now Mr. Phrase?

Observe

After reading umpteen blogs, I have finally come to a conclusion and thus the reason for the infrequency of my blogs. I don't observe enough. I just don't notice things happening around me.That and a copious amount of laziness. yupp, thats about it.I degress though, people on the other hand have mastered the art of observing and taken it many a nothches higher by adding the garnish of their imaginations on it and keybording it down into some darn funny blogs. I have always considered myself a "funny guy" per se and it really hurts my ego to know that my capability of tormenting people with my raunchy humour is being laid to waste just by the virtue of my being non observent. shame on me. So off I go about denouncing myself and dusting out those non - observent eye glasses of mine.

I observe so I blog :

1) That I can time how late I am for work by observing the clock. No that would have been a horrible PJ. Actually I can time it by observing the position(you pervert!!), ok distance of a fine young lady from the PATH station. Of I catch her at the entrance I am spot on time, if on the outside steps then I will be missing that 3rd bagel from the street vendor, if while crossing the road then there goes my 7th position in the line for the office coffee machine...so on and so forth. And okay, I am obsessed with food.

2) That just today I saw a guy tearing out a small piece of paper from the road side flyer for writing a number. Buddy haven't you stolen enough post-its and spiral notebooks from the office stationary room to start a dollar store of your own. Its a piece of marketing dammit , don't treat it as your personal stationary.

3) That the steel rimmed shades that I have been much proudly donning lately are favoured more by the opposite sex. I have spotted atleast 7 different ladies sporting them. I stopped counting thereafter just out of shame.

4) That more often than not, I end up having a walkathon with my fellow un-suspecting commuters who are merely crawling to and from their way home. And I treat it as a personal challenge if a person walks past and ahead of me, promptly overtaking him even if I have to make a dash for it, thereby re-establishing my supremacy on all people walking.

5) And now to epitomize by observing qualities, it has come to my notice that lack of a keen eye on my part is solely attributed to the blackberry that dangles from my belt, which more often than not is in my hands with my eyes fixated on it reading the antics of one Mr Jason Bourne in Honk Kong and thereby vanchiting (pardon the parallel slaughter of 2 great languages here) me from the amazing experiences of the NY subway.

PS : All the people who don't use the NY subway have real dull lives.