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Ok, I am starting to lose my touch with titles on blog posts. That title is so lame. So let me first explain what this post is about.

This post is not about callipygian features. It’s about allegiances and disappointment, specifically my allegiance to the the Old Lady of Mount Road and the disappointment resulting from reading her newest stable-mate.

There was a point, even after I came to the US that The Hindu was the place I’d go first for my news, soon after I walked into the lab in Ohio. And you could argue that I lost my fan-boy like blind following when I found a report in The Hindu about a “100 days” celebratory event for Saamy.

Then, sometime last year I found out that The Hindu had a new stable-mate. This paper, Ergo, is circulated apparently in an “all-color format” and has been described (on its website) as a free sheet targeted at young, salaried professionals of Chennai initially “targeting the IT corridor”. I found that the web edition had a proper RSS feed and almost immediately I added it to my Google Reader feeds.

Then suddenly, the feeds stopped and started again after a gap of a couple of months.But from the feeds, I think that the content leaves much to be desired. With headlines such as “Nicole Kidman poses nude for magazine“, “Jordan set for fifth boob job“, “Christina Aguilera back in shape” and “Gemma Molloy off to party with Hefner“, it looks like Ergo is positioning itself as a supermarket tabloid or what could pass off as one in Namma Chennai.

First thing, who is Gemma Molloy? Apparently she is an Australian model. And Michael Jordan has man boobs? And Cuba, did you get an eyeful of his Airness’s man boobs when you did all those commercials for Hanes? Oh, they are talking about Katie Price? Whew!

Jokes apart, it looks like most of the entertainment news is recycled trash from TMZ or Perez Hilton. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but what’s the point of doing it in Chennai? What’s the core value that this “tabloid” is shooting for? Dumbed down news to the email forward creating, fast food chomping BPO types? Now that would sound like a sound business plan to my father. To me, going by what I see online, it seems like the editorial team’s priorities are muddled.

I am not sure if Page 3 Australian celebrities are worth newsprint acreage in India. I am not sure even Hollywood page 3 celebs are worth it. Wait, am I wrong? Do people in India really care if Kim Kardashian took a public shower in a bikini top and a sarong, which the people from thesuperficial.com very kindly brought to my attention last week (I have thesuperficial in my feed reader, solely for the illuminating commentary about Amy Winehouse’s skin ailments, honest!).

If recycled trash was the first thing that strikes me, the last straw is this gallery that showed up on the Ergo feed today. It made me do a double take and wonder if this was a feed from Ergo or one of those Kollywood type websites that post publicity photos from movies that never get made publicity photos that almost always show skin. You know, the one’s that make you think later that the pictures were probably from one of those movies that ended up as soft porn?

I went back and looked at the About page and found this line -

The team was handed total editorial freedom, with just two riders: to follow the “rule of the land”; and keep a check on issues pertaining to taste.

Well, there is no law that prevents “galleries” such as the one that I linked above, but I thought it was in poor taste for a publication that is a stable-mate of The Hindu.

The website itself looks like it is still in beta, though a footnote in the About page indicates to the contrary. For quite sometime (when the feeds weren’t being updated), on the main page, the link to their feeds took me to The Hindu’s main page. The section naming doesn’t make sense (Featured story 1 and Featured story 2?). This Podcast link leads to nowhere, though there are podcasts available (there is an error in the Wordpress category id used in that link). Frankly looking at all of this, I think the beta testing was a sham and the design looks amateurish.

I would be willing to look past the website because I am willing to make the assumption that this was intended to be an offline till someone decided that they should have a web presence. It is stupid to give the online edition step-motherly treatment, but India being India, I guess that happens.

However considering that the website design is credited to a company owned by someone who is considered by many as a doyen among Chennai bloggers and that the “Editor, Publisher and Printer” for Ergo used to be a notable Chennai blogger at one point (if it’s the same person!), I am appalled.

Even then, if someone tells me that the offline version is better, I’d be inclined to believe. The restaurant reviews in the Saapad subsection are pretty informative, considering that I haven’t lived in Chennai for sometime. The Lifestyle section has had some interesting articles that make for nice light reading. And the Entrepreneurs sub section that aims to bring new business models into the open is a brilliant idea.

So if all of those articles (that I read and appreciated in the online version) found a place in the offline paper, then it is all good. However my visibility is limited to the online format alone and frankly if I were to go solely on the basis of this underwhelming online evidence, Ergo is doomed. While I want to root AGAINST that, I don’t think I will win that bet.

That week in ‘05 was the best time I have had, ever. We soon drifted apart, but I never forgot. Last year, when we met again, I was with her. I realized how badly I missed being with you. And you told me to go to hell. But I am glad I persisted! Thanks, darling.
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Some say he has go faster stripes on his back, and that he’s the love child of God and an Aston Martin v12. Yet others say that his genitals are on upside down, and that if he could be bothered, he could crack the Da Vinci Code in 43 seconds. While we all know that he is also known as The Stig, but do we know if THIS (picture courtesy Autotrader.uk) is THAT Stig?

This brilliant picture was shot yesterday somewhere in London. Apparently the photographer used a big flash and rendered useless the Stig’s trademark black visor on this crash helmet. Sadly though, speculation still abounds. Continue reading…

• At the outset, I am relieved that in Gowarikar’s version of 16th century Indian history, Rajputana women did not giggle every five minutes.
• The fact that this story is mostly fiction is very evident. While Gowarikar’s statement of disclosure makes it clear that this is not the only version that he came across while researching the subject, it’s a pity that people in India are mostly stupid.
• At the rate at which Akbar forced his opponents to make a trip to Mecca, wasn’t there a danger that all these people might run into each other and plot his downfall over mutton biryani and a nice strong hookah?
• And was poor Birbal edited out of the movie? What about Tansen? Todarmall hogs screen space! Continue reading…

Ten days ago, Lekhni tagged me and urged me to essentially recycle 5 of my old posts. Normally I don’t do tags. I mean, unless there is potential for me to play the fool and essentially evoke a few laughs even if the joke’s on me. With this tag, however, the laugh potential seems to be rather marginal, but then I remembered something else.

I realized that I was closing in upon a milestone. By the time this post is online, it will be 5 years since I started blabbering. My first post was posted on Blogger on the 10th of February, 2003. And barring a few months early on and around 100 days in late ‘04 and early ‘05, I have been posting rather regularly.

Looking at Lekhni’s tag, I realized that she had given me a good chance to take a retrospective look and to reminisce upon these five years gone by. But the problem with my blog is that, as my erstwhile tagline goes, it is the record of an egoist’s road trip through life with cricket, music, books, cars and movies for company.

Which means that this blog is about me and me alone. So, as the days go by, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember the odd posts that one has “written” relating to some of the keywords of this tag. Also, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that I took an oath, with myself as witness, that I wouldn’t post anything personal here. So the odd heartbreak has almost never found an outlet here, even if some friends (both online and IRL) have heard me obsess over it.

I have come to a conclusion that wherever I think I won’t be able to fit within the confines of the tag, I will bend the boundaries to my whims and fancies. Hey, this is MY blog and I do what I think is right. Also, my ego prevents me from sticking to the “1 post per keyword” rule of this tag. I will hence go ahead and regurgitate multiple links wherever possible. But let me just make the basic rules clearer to everyone. Continue reading…

As a new year begins, one’s tempted to do something different. So one’s decided to start the new year with some anecdotes.

1. Some people collect stamps and some collect footwear. I collect headgear. Or at least I think so, if possessing 12 hats is any indication. My oldest is a (West) McLaren Mercedes team hat that I picked up at a store off Elliots Beach in Chennai before I moved to Ohio in ‘01. My latest acquisition is an official (Vodafone) McLaren Mercedes hat (with Lewis Hamilton’s signature sewn on to it) , this time procured from the Team McLaren store (thanks Yakkow, for making the calls!). Another prized possession is a Nike Team India hat (to go with my Team India practice jersey) that some friend picked up at Macy’s a few months ago. Continue reading…

YouTube link

YouTube link

Could you or your paymasters at the Incompetent Council of (insert bawdy phrase referring to people who pay attention to certain cavities of the female body with their own oral cavities) please let us all know, exactly WHAT resolved, “beyond a reasonable doubt that Harbhajan Singh directed that word at Andrew Symonds and also that he meant it to offend on the basis of Symonds’ race or ethnic origin.”. Also while we are at it, can we quit being “politically correct” and use THAT word instead of terming it “that word”. Continue reading…

THALAIVAR?????

Rediff’s Rajaneesh Vilakudy says,

If top industry sources are to be believed, Shankar will work with Rajnikanth in Robot, which was planned to be shot with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead and as producer. But the project apparently did not work out owing to ‘creative differences’, with Shah Rukh himself confirming the separation.

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