Pendant Lights….dint know it would be such a tough one.

I am not much of a shopper. Yes, Chairman Mao would be proud of me. I seek a wide variety in people, thoughts, music and the fine arts but not things like clothes, milk, bulbs, toilet paper, chips, salsa, shoes, magazines. Watches are an exception though …time is …off the essence you see.

So a non shopper like me , for reasons best knows to subterranean bluesmen, was tasked with buying and installing pendant lights in the high seating ares of the kitchen. How difficult must this be…right. You can imagine my plight when I went about doing shopping the usual way (amazon, bnn, Alibris, overstock, yada, yada), only this time i added a major twist. I decided to try the brick and mortar and the E. WOW. Apparently the 4-C’s of the diamond has a version for the damn pendant light industry as well. This is about the time when I was about to give up when I remembered what Ole Ben Franklin had said about choices “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” OK so I trudge along. Apparently the 4C’s 0f buying pendant lighting are actually 2 C’s, 2 M’s an L an F an S and another F: Color, Couture, Material, Mood, Luminosity, Fall, Spread, Fixture.

Tired? This was the tip of the iceberg, to put you in a moral and emotional dilemma all the above are available from local artists, large corporations, specialists in Europe and ‘course the quintessential Chinese.

So with a well thought out decision tree in mind I set to explore the pendant land.

• Color : This is so completely dependant on your personality, do you like green pendant shades if you have blue walls? well your choice really, I have blue walls, so I thought a naval orange color would be such a bad choice. And What the hell kind of color is ambush blue?? I did not find naval orange but a close shade of orange was ok.
• Couture : Tiffany, Old School, Tropical, Classic, there are about 32 of these. I wanted contemporary, i guess that’s what they call “plain” nowadays
• Material : Laps were either made of some metal or glass.. or so I thought. Brass, Pewter, Wood, Amalgamated paper…Taiwanese rice paper…. whats left? whale blubber? I choose glass.
• Mood : Oooh mood. Normally when I sit down to eat breakfast, there are only two moods, how the f am I going to get through this day? or Thank god for another day. Apparently there is warm, sensuous, smooth, tropical (wait a minute isn’t that already a part of couture?) What the hell am I buying? I choose crisp
• Luminosity : I thought this was how bright your bulb was? NO NO NO..stupid, that’s wattage… this is how “lit” you want i.i., do you want to hide the direct light or do you want the direct light to fall? Light falling on food isn’t a bad thing right? I skipped this one.
• Fall : How high or low do you want the laps to fall, this is a great variable, i thought to myself.. Medium?…there is low, high and ultra high. 
• Spread: Who? how??  How far from the spot do you want the light to spread? Laser? or flood lights? I made this one up.
• Fixture : Very important Ceiling or Wall. This I thought was the most relevant questions. Ceiling was my prompt well prepared answer. I got the chills, reminded me of the time I got my name spelt gith in 3rd grade.

Guess what I forgot a Major C at this point “COST”. The damn things was $800  a piece and I needed three of them. Ok so back to the start of pendant light search. Now I am ready for a whole lot of choices, discounts, free shipping, warranty, the sales persons hair color, the makers golf spot or g spot. I can hear Dio saying to me “Hanging from the cobwebs in your mind… its the light that gets you down….”

By the way, there are even pendant specific internet models, this one is the best http://www.simplypendantlighting.com/ they have these things listed by price!! By the way no two stores categorize it the same way. Happy pendant light shopping, yet another category gone haywire.

Perumal Chetty Pencils :-(

I walked into the local coffee store and noticed that they were peddling (yes peddling) locally made pencils at $9 for two pencils. Apparently the fine art of pencil making is dying as most of the 14 billion pencils that are produced each year come from factories that use advanced compression techniques and synthetic wood substitute to hold the lead. Most of these pencils come from Brazil or China.

This bought back strong memories of  Perumal Chetty pencils, their B’s and Hb’s were almost as legendary as To B or not to B. Unlike the run off the mill pencils that are made from recycled wood shaped into two semi-cylinders to hold the lead in the middle, these were made from single willow, i.e., the will was first made into a cylinder, a tiny hole dug into the middle and lead “poured” into the  hole to solidify. Then these pencils were coated with coloured powder. Fairly advanced for its time. That’s how they paint Harleys these days.  However given all the top of the line techniques now way were they ready for globalization.

I googled to see if I can still find this pencil, they were such a pleasure to write with, apparently the company that made Perumal Chetty pencils shut down 6 years ago :  

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2002/03/18/stories/2002031800100300.htm

Sad demise indeed, Thanks for all the English I, English II and countless other academic and not-so academic endeavours.

More on pencils :

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question465.htm

The death of the unconventional musical orgasm

What is common to the following:

• Guns and roses : Sweet child of mine
• Metallica : Nothing else matters
• Orff : Carmina Burana
• Thaigaraja : Yendaro Mahanubhavulu
• Shankara Bharnam : Brocheva Revarura
• Chitti Babu : wedding bells
• Hariprasad Chaurisiya : Rivers
• Bob Marley : Redemption Song
• Miles Davis : Sketches in Spain

Other than the fact they are awesome awesome pieces strung together by superior musical talent….. All these pieces have unconventional musical orgasms embedded within the songs and that’s what makes them great.

Two concepts obviously beg for definition: “Unconventional” and “Orgasm”

“Orgasm” in music is that piece in the song that deviates from the regular path  / structure to give the listener an adrenalin rush or a “high”. There cannot be a narrower definition as different individuals with different mental composition are simulated by different deviations…Duh… that’s why you have genres in music, however the concept of orgasm is fairly universal.

So whats “conventional”. Its easy to get to embed an orgasm into the music. Here are a few conventions:

• Crescendo followed by a pause: This is one of the most tried and tested techniques. Lynard Skynard and Fleetwood Mac mastered it, Hindi movies are filled with it, even Shiv Hari in the song Chandini (remmebr the cresendo of “maine is dil pe likh diyaa teraa naam…. then pause… then “chandini o meri chandini”) tried a go at this. Bach and Tchaikovsky and more recently A R R milked it like hell !!!!
• Just plain crescendo : Another tried and tested techniques. Hindi movies are filled with such samples : Koyee kahe kehata rahe, Tu cheez badi hai mast mast, Nach Baliye….Rolling stones (Start me up, The who (most of their songs especially Teenage Wasteland and Pinball wizard)
• Change in tempo (mostly towards Allegro): Highway Star by Deep Purple, Sanata was a guru here, Floyd still milks this and most of the pallavi’s in Carnatic music revel on using this concept to demonstrate the players expertise
• All of the above

To me most of these techniques are fairly conventional, don’t get me wrong, you still have to be a good enough musician to pull these conventions off. Good musicians at best provide conventional orgasms, great ones ..well… go unconventional. Sorry folks though most of the world believes Stairway to Heaven to be the best rock song ever, and I love it a heck of a lot, it is still conventional, the solo raises tempo, and crescendo.

So what so unconventional about my list at the beginning of this blog? My attempt to explain…

Using, “pass over notes” and regular notes in the blues scale, Slash provides an amazing solo intro and an another great solo somewhere near the third minute. Neither of these solos have any allegro or crescendo. Then Slash succumbed to going conventional for the last solo, no one is perfect, we can forgive him for that.

Kirk Hammett, in Nothing else matters, provides one enduring lead towards the end of the song lasting less than 45 seconds. No fast tempo, no major deep purple kind of licks.

Carmina Burana, at first looks like is filled with crescendo, give it a second look (or hear), its the chorus and not crescendo..O fortuna…velut luna….all controlled well placed deviations

Shankarabharanam, Brocheva probably one of the best pieces composed for motion pictures down south, uses multiple pauses to create an illusion of change in tempo, just brilliant.

Bob Marley??? and here??? Sure, don’t underestimate the musical genius of reggae or Bob. In the redemption song, the complex chord structure is enough to give you a high.

…and Miles….what can I say about Miles or even BB King that you already did not know? 

Get the picture?

Its important for people in the music business to understand this concept. Why do people still listen to the oldies, just for that reason, there were awesome riffs, solos etc…. Unconventional orgasm is almost dead, available just in rare spurts here and there.

Now that Indie music is on the rise (thanks mainly to the Internet putting the record labels in a fix), I only hope things get better. Indie music thrives on trying to get unconventionals to the mass. There is a risk here, as I indicated earlier, not every one gets tickled by the same music. That’s why I personally believe a committee approach is better for the music business compared to the current, single manager, single talent hunter concept. Its near impossible to predict a hit single or album, but if you really try and listen to the orgasm embedded in the song, you atleast increase your chances of producing a hit(s). And for gods sake… put an end to conventional pop…people?

Here are some of my predictions (indipop and otherwise) that became hits 

• Strings : Anjaane
• Shaan : Tanha Dil
• Life in a metro the entire sound track
• Sound track of Don 2
• Sound track of One Tree Hill
• Ryan Adams as an artist
• Unkle Kracker & Train
• Bare Naked Ladies (most albums)
• Gajini
• Rabbi ( a little conventional at times)

I am glad that Indi-pop and Indie music are alive and kicking… I believe they are the ones,  and not the large Labels, that will produce the next slash. Also evident from the soundtrack awarded at the Oscrars (www.oscar.com).  I just hope they revive “good-music”, since Music and business in the music business are always at logger heads and the overall quality of music is neither here nor there.

With the explosion of Radio, the public is more thirsty for music software that ever before, its time for the Indie labels like Times Music and others to step-up, nurture talent and provide the required “orgasms”. By the way, I am happy and impressed with Phat Phish records for Bulla Ki… can we see more…

So how can you nurture talent? That’s for another Blog

For indie buffs here are some good grooves

www.narada.com

www.petrolrecords.com

To an old friend: You were a pretty good guitarist in college, I always thought you’d go unconventional, wonder what your music is up to these days.

An Indian Super Bowl??? Please na.

Now that you have IPL and hopefully the still alive (ICL…remember the one that the Zee started???) have started the Pro-Sports business in India, may be there is hope that one day …this lifetime…. the winner of the IPL plays the winner of the ICL. A true advertisers delight.  

What? Hey, that’s what the Super Bowl is all about. It’s the winner of the American Football Conference playing the winner of the National Football conference.  

First things first, IPL is supposed to be modeled after the Soccer leagues particularly the English premier league. The soccer leagues model are a top down model, i.e., from a capitalistic perspective, the league was formed first, then came the teams, then the players and so on and so forth. The structure is intrinsically capitalistic, go and get the best talent money can buy, and hope that the audience will pay for it.  With enough brow beating (like the recent Bombay vs. north Indian debate) and emotional advertising, fence sitters could be turned into fans. This model works on the assumption that the supply of players is from the international arena, and the prices are pretty much…well “auction-able”.   The inherent issue with this model is that the richer team tends to win. Now, for gods sake put the “under dog could win any day” funda to rest for second. Once a team starts a slump it takes quiet a bit of time for it to to turn around. In a capital-intensive business this could be dangerous. Evidence: the English cricket team, dozens of soccer teams and the perennial Arizona Cardinals.

Now, the NFL is what I would call bottoms up approach. Teams existed before the leagues were formed, local ties were deeply established, fan base well set. Then leages came in and then all of them merged to form the NFL. There are teams in the NFL that haven’t won many games for years yet they are financially solid for this reason. Reason? Local Sports fans turn to their sports team for solace, how else do you explain the tripling of the team values (Cowboys, Eagles, Pats, Redskins etc… ) between 1998 and 2005, when the great dot com burst and the 9/11 episode happen in that time-frame?  At the last count Dallas and Redskins crossed the $ 1BN evaluation mark. One of the primary reasons I believe they have managed to keep some equality going in the NFL is the way players are recruited and allocated to the teams.  Every April NFL picks (or shall I say “drafts” keeping with the military connotations of the game … I believe Normal S’koff used a Hail Mary during the IRAQ war. whatever) a bunch of new comers primarily from the college football circuit. They are ranked and then drafted; the best get picked in the first draft, and the next in the second draft and so on. Now the first draft picks are sent to the team that performed the worst the previous year, this way they can ensure that all teams get a shot at getting good talent. Not so capitalistic in the land of capitalism eh? For more info on the deals look up concept of Free Agent on google). I know your next question: So why do certain teams win and certain ones loose? That’s brings me to the story one of my bosses told me earlier in my work life…Lovers Beer anyone? In this game no matter who plays , all players loose. The point is: you can have the best of talent, but with poor management and culture there is only so much you can get done. All this is for another Blog. 

So where does U-19 come in? Well I believe, like the rest of the industries, Indian cricket does not have to go through a learning curve and can implement learning’s from others that have walked the prickly paths. U-19, now that it has come to the limelight is going to have a huge media following, televised matches, ratings and all that. IPL could draft a certain number of players that come out of U-19, assuming that these kids do not want to do college etc…rank them and allocate them to the IPL teams that faired poorly the previous year.  The current international player rooster is ok to give IPL a kick-start, but for a country like India, local teams with local players may bring home more success in the long run. For a true super-bowl to occur BCCI will have to legitimize ICL, unimaginable at this point, but there is enough room for more…now and in the near future. Two local teams are more fun than one. New York has two teams (Giants, Jets), San Fransisco and  Oakland (like Mumbai and Pune) have a team each, the state of Florida has three or four teams. There is no reason why ICL should not be assisted to grow and get us to an Indian version of the Super Bowl, then who the hell needs a world cup every four years???

Imagine… Manickchand with title sponsorship, Kingfisher official airline, Mallika Sherawat or Rakhee Sawant having a wardrobe malfunction and the old faithful Pentagram or Indus Creed or Pentagram doing the half time show…Looks good, let’s probably get Manickchand out of there….

Bottom line its good to be in cricket business in India, I bet a minimum 500% return on investment in a 10 year time frame. Cant wait for the IPO of one of these puppies.

By the way, I am not much of a cricket fan. Just cant help enjoying all the hooplah!!!

Tare Zameen pe

I am not a movie buff, especially not hindi movies. However one extremely cold winter day, when I was snowed-in thousands of miles from Bollywood, I decided to battle temperatures nearing -30 degrees C, to go to the local India store and rent a couple of hindi movies. One was Tare zameen pe (TZP) and the other was On Shanti Om (OSO) . I must admit, neither was disappointing. Prompted me to over do it till it feels good, so I went and got another couple of ‘em Shoot out at Lokhandwala and Jab we met. That’s about all the Hindi movies I will be watching this season I guess.

I thought I’d write this review about TZP and OSO because there was something about these movies that made me smile and feel cool about what Bollywood was doing.

First about Tare Zameen Pe: Its a well made movie that just fell a few points short of the “awesome mark”.  Its a story about a dyslexic child, played by Darsheel Safary, that no one quiet understands is dyslexic. Parents, teachers, friends and neighbours alike shun this kid. Parents send it the kid to a boarding school where he is almost at the risk of being expelled, not to mention the kid itself going in to near manic depression. In comes the character played by Aamir Khan as a replacement art teacher, supposed to be have been a dyslexic himself in his younger days. He understands the kid, works with him and tries techniques that get the kid to come to terms with his disadvantage and gradually overcomes his disabilities.

Here is why the movie is cool: 

• Awesome sets, very realistic, the place where the kid gets his solace seems real and true. The school settings are all so close to perfect.
• The school scenes, reminded me of me, distractions outside the class room, inside the class room, secret joy in being punished and standing outside the class etc…. I still remember running out of my fift standard math exam, after doing just enough to pass, so that I could go otu and play “french cricket”. write to me if you dont know what this is.
• Bollywoods discovery or should I say my discovery of Tisca Chopra. Very well played middle class house wife in bombay character. She reminds you a bit of “Rajini” (Priya Tendulkar) a bit
• Ishaan’s acting is just amazing, Normally kids roles in Hollywood are filled with overacting “Papa aa gaye, Papa aa gaye” or “Mummy Mummy mujhe chocolate do naan”. No offence meant to Karan Johar, but the kids in Kuch Kuch hota hai were also pretty painful to watch.Ishaan played difficult role quiet well.  Its very difficult to act dyslexic, especially for a 9 year old kid. Its such a fine line which if you cross, makes you look like mentally retarded, there is a big difference and this kid seemed to have understood it and played it to the T. Decent music : Meri Ma may have the staying power to be in a top 10 list for a while
• Controlled melodrama : Its so easy to have made this movie into a massive tear jerker, but the emotions were tightly controlled

Here is why the movie falls short of awesome:

• Poor charecter / name build up : Come on, the next morning after watching the movie, I don’t remember Aamir Khan’s screen name or any of the teachers names, or for that matter the mother’s or the brother’s name. Mrs. Breganza in Baton Baton Mein had less than 15 minutes of screen appearance, I still remember her. Ishaan is well done though.
• Ishan’s paintings could have been much better, I have seen how talented nine year olds can paint in Indian Schools

My defining moment in the movie: Aamir Khan picks up a box with Japenese lettering and uses “situational persuasion” technique to illustrate his point to Ishaan’s Dad. The Dads acting in this scene as he moves from disbelief to realization is very well done.

The women folks I know immediately started the conversation of who could have played Aamir’s character better. SRK? Abhishek? Saif? other yahoo’s. Not a debate that I particularly care to participate in. Aamir did a decent job in this lets just leave it at that. 

From a formula perspective, It’s a clever choice by Aamir Khan to uses pathos and logos as primary medium to convince you to like it, its almost like the movie Border or Gandhi, has anyone told you they did disliked either movie? Nothing wrong with that. I got more than my dollars vasool. I am sure this movie will win or has already some awards.

Watch out for OSO, Did I mention I just wanted Dhoom and Don 2? …Later