There be changes made

"There'll be a change in the weather and a change in the scene
How is that?
I'm gonna start wearin' leather and change my routine
I'll wear dark glasses maybe a toupee
I'll get down and boogie and become risque
I'll start wearin' make-up like jackson and prince
You'll see me ridin' in my mercedes benz
Nobody wants you when you just play guitar
There'll be some changes made tomorrow
There'll be some changes made"
Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins
Neck and Neck

There has been a template change. New wine in an old bottle. The old commenting system using Enetation proved to be the last straw. The Enetation commenting system has completely conked out and I was spurred into action.
The old blogger templates used tables (which were quite lame) and outdated HTML standards. The new templates use stylesheets which are infinitely better for making edits painlessly (once you set things up) and there have been a lot of improvements by blogger, e.g. Each blog has its own page. Not wanting to be a Luddite I have made the changes.

In the old Blogger days they had no commenting system. I guess even Blogger did not realise what blogging was going to turn into. Their initial commenting system was quite poor. Thanks to Google's cash and some really irate users, Blogger completely revamped their commenting system over the past few months. I think it is currently among the better commenting systems out there. The switch has resulted in a loss of the old comments and I have not yet figured out how to support both systems. In the past it has been quite irksome to read blogs that have two sets of commenting systems and you don't know which to really use. I don't want to add to that sort of ugliness that is already quite pervasive but I am looking for some ideas to fix this problem (obviously, in a painless way).

Indian Buffet

The quirky taste of Indian restaurants in the US

1. There will always be a knife and a fork, but never a spoon.
How do the others get by without a spoon? It is hilarious to watch some Indian nut struggle with simply a knife and a fork.

2. Despite knowing that you are Indian, the waiters will always talk in English or worse, with an American accent.
You have to persist in the native tongue for quite some time before the waiter agrees to drop talking in English in his thinly-disguised North or South Indian accent.

3. All finger food, but never any finger-bowls.
It can be argued that if you get by the limited cutlery in 1., you will never get to this point. If you do manage to wield the knife and fork, thanks to the sheer effort involved, you will end up hungrier at the end of the meal than before. Indian food should be eaten with your fingers because it always tastes better that way.

Any more?

Half Knowing myself

0.5 Self Knowledge

The great thing about blogging is that you can always brag about yourself. I have often bragged about stuff on this blog over the past two years; this Sunday for the first time, I felt that I did something that was really worth bragging about. Sometimes, when you look back upon past achievements - even if you still are proud of them - they don't seem as wonderful as they did at that time.
This Sunday, I completed the annual Dexter-Ann Arbor Half-Marathon. Long ago, I read a tagline for a Boston Marathon poster that said:
"You will know everything about yourself in 26.1 miles"
It inspired me - the economy of it - imagine getting to know everything about yourself in just a little over 4 hours. So a logical step would be to try the distance with a 50% discount. The curious aspect of running marathons is that you never run the full distance while training. You go up and then down, slowly building stamina but never test yourself till D-Day.
On a bright sunny Sunday morning, I found myself at the starting line in Dexter. All I had to do was to run home to Ann Arbor. Unlike other runs, you get the specially designed Dexter-Ann Arbor Run T-shirt only if you complete the half-marathon. Only in homo sapiens would observe 2000 of its members running around and almost getting themselves killed just to get a T-shirt. This year's T-shirt was a panel of comics designed by a local artist which poked fun at some aspects of running (one panel below).
It was definitely fun, but far from pointless. There were people recovering from cancer. People who gave up smoking. People who gave up drinking. A man on a wheelchair. A women running with a prosthetic leg. Like most other people, I was running for fun, but also to prove to myself that I could do it (and have something unique to brag about!). After the 21 km or 13.1 mile run, the tagline from Boston was right. Marathons teach you a lot about yourself. Running for 2+ hours with an elevated heart rate makes your body think it is in mortal danger. It's just your mind (whatever it is) that makes you keep going. You can't help but think about the obvious metaphors for Life - pacing, preventing burnout, saving up for the final burst of speed, sticking to the job, the uphills and downhills, the people you meet on the way and those that fall behind, and the importance of training. I ran ten miles at a great pace, but the last 3 miles were the real test. The sun felt hotter than ever before and my legs seemed to be as heavy as lead. Then you begin to get slightly delerious.

Arms (to each other): Is this torture worth it? Hell! Let's stop!
Legs: Next year, man!'
Brain: Banish those thoughts! It's not worth giving up when you have finished 75% of the race.
(A few minutes pass and then the body wants to revolt against the brain's dictates.)
Feet: I think I'm cramped. These feet are not rated for running more than 5 miles at a stretch and we are at 10 miles right now.
Lower Back: This is killing me. Can't we stop now?
Brain: No! You are a bunch of losers.
Legs: Brain, what do you do anyway? All you do is sit there and give orders!
Brain: Look, I am making a sacrifice too! I am ensuring that you guys get most of the blood. Can't you hang on for a few more minutes? I promise that you will get a lot of rest once we are done. Toughen up, guys!
Arms, Lower Back, Butt, Feet, Legs (in unison): Aw! Shut up!

Finally, you see the finish line loom in the distance and almost automatically you seem to be running faster and faster. Your legs hit the timing mat and you have FINISHED your first Half Marathon!

It has taken about 3 days to completely recover from the aches and pain from the 2 and a quarter hour run, but hell it was worth it! Perhaps, the only reason why people like to run is chemical. I have never felt such an endo-morphine induced 'high' as I did on Sunday. Can't wait to get started for Chicago.
***
One T-shirt caption read: More and more women are running the country.

Save Maharashtra

Save what from whom?

Tom Friedman's last bestseller is: The World is Flat, in which he writes about a New World Order. He says that in the last decade, through the spread of the Internet, underwater high-speed cables and satellite communication - the playing field of the world is being levelled. He says that America and other Western countries HAVE NO CHOICE but to compete with an highly-educated class of people from India, China and Eastern Europe. There will be no borders and mediocrity is not going to be rewarded because your job could be easily done by someone else across the globe.

While the world is fearing Asian domination in the decades to come, we have people like Parimal Sondawale who still seem to be waging senseless battles. I agree that Maharashtra, and India as a whole, needs to be saved, but saved from parochial Parimal Sondawales and their like.

SC-Amway!

Standard Operating Procedure:

1. You are an Indian graduate student walking in a mall, or in a Walmart, or in a grocery store trying to buy stuff on sale; you see an Indian couple or a man in his late 20s from a distance.

2. A minute later, you are only a few feet away and the man smiles and says 'Hello'. Seeing an Indian face and given your good and friendly nature you respond.

3. Then his hand shoots out, "Hi, I am XYZ". The hand seems to beg for completing the handshake and you have to shake his hand and make the obvious reply, "Hi, I am Hirak".

4. 90% of the time they will say, "Wonderful! What a nice name! What does it mean..."

5. Then, you spend the next minute explaining what your name means and unknowingly open the gates to more questions.

6. Now, you are asked- where you are from and what you are studying - and five minutes have gone by in conversation you don't want to indulge in.

7. Then, he starts talking about himself and says that he graduated 2-3 years ago and this is wife - EFG and he is now working in ABC company.

8. He then slips in the fact that he also runs a 'small business'. He will NEVER mention what he exactly does.

9. After this ten minute conversation, it is assumed that both of you are now best buddies and he will a) give his card and b) try to exchange phone numbers.

10. End of conversation. He promises to call; you shrug and move to get the chips that are 1$ today instead of $1.39.

A few days later, you will get a call from the same guy. He will shoot the breeze for a few minutes (thus wasting precious minutes on your cell phone) and after while let the cat-out-of-the-bag. He is looking for 'talented, bright young people like yourself' for a 'fantastic limited-time only business opportunity' that he is already a part of. He wants to give you a chance to make 'easy side-income'. He then invites you to a meeting later in the week.

The fantastic limited-time only business opportunity is some variant of an Amway pyramid-scheme called Alticor, Quixtar, etc. A pyramid scheme involves you selling some household products and taking a percentage of the profit. If you get others in the scheme you will get a percentage of their percentage. Everyone is told that at first you will not make much but, after a few generations of such hookups the effect will multiply and soon you will be so high up in the pyramid that you can even afford to retire and relax. The money accumulates in your account as people below you get more and more people to join; raising you higher in the pyramid. All you need is drive and determination and a year of hard work. Not to mention a 100-300$ charge for 'membership' and the 'training' material.

You can't imagine how many people are sucked into such schemes on the promise of easy money. Once stuck, you automatically become an associate (read: accomplice) and the only way to get out is to suck more people into it. How the proponents of these schemes play on the psychology of people is worthy of admiration. To the people who want to quit, there is a whole array of tapes on 'being self-motivated' and 'how to avoid getting discouraged by people who don't know better' also at a cost.

It would not take more than a few minutes of thinking to see why such a scheme is flawed. But people still cannot shake off the idea that there is something to be made and with relative ease. I see more often than not that, it is a person recently married, who wants to make that little 'extra' or a person recently graduated and now is working who wants a little 'extra' perhaps to get married who get stuck in such schemes. If business was so simple why did everyone not take up this idea?

I wasted a few hours one evening listening to man rave about Quixtar after quitting his high-paying, extremely satisfying job so that he could take care of his kids and not have to work at all. I questioned their logic and then mine. What I was doing there in the first place? I was lured into going by this guy, who met me in the Mall with this wife. I was trusted him since he was from Pune, an engineer from COEP and spoke in Marathi. That evening when the 'great business opportunity' and its hare-brained plan was revealed, I felt sorry for him and thought of sending him this link: The truth about Amway! Who was I to tell him that anyway? To each his own.

Now, I can smell them off by a mile. The moment an unsolicited Indian hand shoots out, I say to myself, "It's the Amway folks again, it's time to go".

Store Wars

Store Wars - Episode I

Great link for those who have nothing better to do: Store Wars

100 Things To Do Before You Die!

100 Things To Do Before You Die!

Things to Do List

I turned 25 today! It has been 7 years since I have been: eligible to vote, buy porn magazines and legally do what the heck I want.
It has been 4 years since I have been legally allowed to marry in India and drink in the US, so what's the big deal about 25? The insurance companies seem to know better - a male cannot be trusted to be responsible till he turns 25. I have now crossed that last threshold of maturity and wisdom that accrues by age. I will not only pay a significantly smaller amount of car insurance to State Farm, but by all accounts (apart from my parents) can now call myself a 'mature adult'.

After being accepted in mature adulthood, I must stop and think about the quarter of a century already gone and reminisce upon some of the things I have done in my reckless youth. Overall, it was splendid and I have very few regrets. Though, I really wish I had spent a night in jail as a teen for some minor misdemeanour. What an anecdote that would have made. The quixotic arrogance of adulthood at 18 seems laughable now. At 18, I felt there were just a couple of things more that I needed to know and I was set. Now, I realise how wrong I was. I now know there is so much more to know. There is much bullshit around. To most of life's questions people don't have answers. Black may not always be black. Humans may not always behave like humans. Despite all the evil men, the injustice and inequity there out there there is hope and people with a sense of justice.I still believe in what Hemingway said:
"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for."
I think about the future and especially, the next quarter. I shudder at the thought that I am already halfway to 50! I am not a worrier to the extent of
Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole, though sometimes I might sound like one. Marriage, fatherhood, scaling the ladder, keeping up with Joneses, mid-life crisis and other mundane things are predicted and expected of me. I would hate to see my life simply moulded, fitted and looking like another in the line of products from an assembly line. The inevitable will happen, there is no escaping that.
Perhaps, if I was younger I would have become a 'rebel-for-the-heck-of-it' and shunned the above. I cannot tell what kind of cards Fate will deal in years to come, and life could be the opposite of the one predicted. In any case, life should be lived without regrets and there are a bunch of Things I Wish To Do Before I Die and I have now started writing them down on 'The List'. For a lark, I looked up some of the lists other people have made and they threw up pretty interesting stuff. On the Forbes site, I found a great quote:
Jose Marti named the things that every man ought to do before he dies, the list did not include "Liberate a country." The hero of Cuban independence named three
more important tasks: Plant a tree, write a book, have a son.
Some of the most common aspirations of people in addition to Jose Marti's tasks were sky-diving, running a marathon, making a round-the-world trip, learning to play an instrument, and learning to ballroom dance. Surprisingly, none of them had the barometers of 'making it' i.e. becoming wealthy, successful or being famous. There were things like 'teach someone illiterate to read', 'give to charity - anonymously'. On one of lists was the not-so-unbelievable, but still funny item - Forgive my parents. Hah! I want to truthfully know how many of us are ready to do that so soon. I have added it to my list, and hopefully I should get around to doing it by the time I am 50!
I have had no real regrets so far. I have slept under the stars, play an instrument, driven across the breadth of the US in a car, seen Clapton and Dylan live, showered in a waterfall and done many wonderous things, but 'there are miles to go'. Even if I 'try' to do all the stuff on the ambitious 'List', I know - it will be a life without regrets.

On 'On Bullshit'

On 'On Bullshit'

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each one contributes his share."


Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton writes on a pervasive topic of our times - Bullshit. It is a well-recognized concept, but hitherto inadequately studied or characterized. On Bullshit is written and bound like a serious John Stuart Mill-like essay like 'On Liberty' and is a part-serious, part-fun and mostly bullshit essay on 'bullshit'. Franfurt discusses its origins, relations to other sorts of B.S. and ends with its reasons and causes.
In the end, he proves that in most cases the danger of being sincere to ourselves reduces to bullshit.
" ... in this case, sincerity itself is bullshit."

Caution:
A hilarious read that won't take more than 20 minutes to read but doesn't offer much to the serious reader in terms of substance (yuck!), but that I guess that is the nature of the topic! Those specializing in its production will be flattered to note that what they have been passing off as crap till now is a subject worthy of serious academic study.

Inglish

Inglish??

Gurcharan Das is a die-hard optimist when it comes to the free-market, or the potential of India. Some of his views are rather unconventional. In a previous issue of Outlook magazine, he coins a new term: Inglish = Indian + English, in place of the 'Hinglish'. A more accurate term for the language.

He writes in Outlook:

'One day, I expect, we will also find Inglish's Mark Twain, the writer who liberated Americans to write as they thought. Salman Rushdie gave Indians permission to write in English, but Midnight's Children is not written in Inglish, alas! And this is not surprising for the young Indian mind was not decolonised until the reforms of the 1990s.

What exactly is Inglish is not easy to define, and needs empirical research. Is its base English or our vernacular bhashas? If it's the latter, then it is similar to Franglais, the fashionable concoction of mostly French with English words thrown in that drives purists mad. Or is it support English, with an overlay of bhasha? I think it is both. For the upwardly mobile lower middle class, it is bhasha mixed with some English words, such as what my newsboy speaks: "Mein aaj busy hoon, kal bill doonga definitely." Or my bania's helper: "Voh mujhe avoid karti hai!" For the classes, on the other hand, the base is definitely English, as in: 'Hungry, kya?' or 'Careful yaar, voh dangerous hai!' The middle middle class seems to employ an equal combination, as in Zee News' evening bulletin, "Aaj Middle East mein peace ho gayi!" Three Hindi words and three of English.

In contrast to this vibrant new language, the old 'Indian English' of our headlines is an anachronism: 'Sleuth nabs man', 'Miscreants abscond', and 'Eve-teasers get away'. In the ultimate put-down, Professor Harish Trivedi of Delhi University contemptuously says, "Indian English? It's merely incorrect English." '

The original article was written to protest the ban on English in primary-medium schools in Karnataka and how this might affect the ability of children to learn English correctly. It is scientific fact that languages learned as a child and as an adult are stored in different areas of the brain. Note, that this does not imply facility with language necessarily diminishes with age (examples: Conrad and Nabokov). He correctly states that, everybody knows that English is a passport to a better life. He goes on to predict that soon with India's large English-speaking population and adoption of Inglish across all levels, English and its correct pronunciation will be defined as it is done by Indians. 'Natives' taking over the Queen's English. What poetic justice!

However such a thing will never happen. I agree that certain words, idioms and expressions translated from the vernacular languages will be integral to English in a few years (eg: verandah, bungalow, etc.) but, Das's Inglish with "Voh mujhe avoid karti hai!" will never be English or Hindi. Like the proverbial dhobi's dog, it will belong neither here not there. Despite him putting down the elitist-sounding newspaper headlines, it is interesting to note that Das choose to write in pure English rather than in Inglish. If you talk to the Inglish speakers; they are not satisfied speaking Inglish but want to learn English, and will learn it and speak it correctly; although, with a thick Indian accent (to show the pervasiveness of vernacular sounds). All would like to speak and write in English correctly, given a chance.

At the same time I expect, there will be a 'return-to-roots' call and an opposite push for purity of vernacular speech. I can already see a number of us (the convent- educated, culturally- americanized, linguistically-anglicized lot) wanting to master our mother-tongues. Languages that don't deserve the neglect of the past decades as the educated class jumped on the English bandwagon. We are all better-off with retaining the best of all languages and given our natural facility for learning languages it's not a far-fetched thought.

Inglish is not going to be language but will always be a bridge for people moving in both directions. But neither the dhobiwalla's upwardly-mobile son nor the convent-educated wannabe Urdu scholar is fooling himself about its bastard origins.

HTG2: Not to Panic!

Guide to the Movie version of the Hitchhiker's Guide
It's really hard to make a movie based on a book that is simply not just famous, but a major cult classic and please everybody. A sort of book that inspires a generation of nerds to name their products: Trillian and Babelfish, automatically raises the bar. With such books: some are pissed because the movie is not true to the actual story in the book; others complain that it is just like the book and the director did nothing special. In my opinion, it's not really the authenticity to the author's work that matters so much, but how much it matched our own imagination. Anyone who has read the book has developed some concept of what a Vogon looks like, how it might behave, etc. and you will like the movie if the director did a good job depicting it with respect to your concept of it. I saw the movie last night and despite my initial doubts about the actors and the director I was not totally disappointed. Those who see the movie without having read the book will love it, because it is that sort of book - wacky and weird.

Casting:
Stephen Fry was perfect as the voice of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and using Mos Def, a black actor to be Ford Prefect was a stroke of genius. That Sam Rockwell (Zaphod Beeblebrox) had to be an over-the-top American was a no-brainer. Martin Freeman was quite the bumbling, neurotic, panicking Arthur Dent that I had imagined and you can't but help falling in love with Zooey Deschanel who plays Tricia Macmillan or Trillian. However, Marvin the Paranoid Android with the GPP (Genuine People Personality) was the show stealer.

The Movie:
It was comforting to note that Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay and was quite deeply involved in the production of this project (He is listed as one of the executive producers). That should rest fears about being true to the author's original vision. Garth Jennings, who I called as an unknown, did a good job using the special effects for some of the weird ideas in the HTG2 and I must applaud him for the selection of music. Though I thought that the 'Thanks for All the Fish' song was kinda lame. So much money can take you only so far and I suspect they had a major budget problem; which explains some of the casting and low-quality of visual effects. The movie does not deserve to be completely panned and it does do a decent job given the constraints of budget and talent. It's kind of hard to make fantasy movies in a post-Lord-of-the-Rings-era. Peter Jackson has set such a high standard that few movies even with big budgets will be able to match.

Bottomline: Movie is alright. No reason to panic!

Breaking Rules

Breaking Personal Rules

Yup, I did it! I used a highlighter to mark in a book. Till the day before, I have never made any sort of ink mark in a book. At the most, I allow myself discreet marks in pencil in the margin. I have often castigated people for their barbarous practice of leaving their inky pawprints in books. Their comments for future readers reek of patronization - 'Hey, this was really funny, okay?'

Of late, I have fallen prey to the joys of using a highlighter. I use it primarily for marking out stuff in printed out copies of journal papers. It is really useful if you have to revisit the material and it is a more efficient use of time to have the good stuff marked out. Most sentences and words are redundant and repetitive (you shouldn't be reading this!) and wielding the highlighter like a rapier I reduce pages and pages of stuff into what can be condensed in a few short paragraphs.
So I got carried away the day before, and a few hours later I have this book full of fluoroscent green marks all over. I was horrified!

'Technically speaking, I was well within my rights since this was a 'textbook' and highlighting can be an indispensible aid for efficient and quick review.'
'Couldn't you have used a pencil?'
'Ya, but what's a plain ole' pencil got compared to the razzmatazz of the highlighter?'
'There you go again - rationalizing your behaviour.'
'Anyway the deed is done, the rule has been broken.'
'So, is nothing sacred anymore?'

How many roads must a man walk down?

How many roads must a man walk down?

It since many years since the BBC TV series came out and now finally, after being in the works for quite some time: HTG2 or often called the trilogy in four parts - The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now available as a movie. It is directed by an unknown (at least to me) Garth Jennings and starring another unknown (you don't know him too, so stop acting!) Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent. I am starting to panic!

It is being released on April 29th in the US and was released today in the UK. Why didn't the promoters release it on April 2nd? We might never know, perhaps we should ask the mice once they are done making the question. Poor Douglas Adams won't know anything.

Almost there ...

Almost There...

Fifty years ago, on 12th April, 1955 at a press conference held at the University of Michigan, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr announced results of the study on the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk. Salk had developed the vaccine in 1952, but that was only half the story. The vaccine needed to be tested rigorously. Using advanced statistical survey methods public trials were conducted on 2 million children starting in 1953. The testing methods used for the polio vaccine were so well designed that all future drug and vaccine tests would use it, or a variant of these polio-tests.
It did not take long for the government and the public at large to grasp the fact that polio eradication was no distant dream. I don't know how much of the American evangelistic polio vaccination fervor during the 50s had to do with the fact that the much beloved F.D.R., the greatest American president since Lincoln, had suffered from it. Incidentally, his charity paid for most of the initial research and testing of the Salk vaccine. By 1964, in less than nine years after the adoption of the Salk vaccine, there were only 121 cases of polio are reported in the U.S.
However it took Albert Sabine to develop an oral form of the vaccine (introduced in 1963) for polio vaccination to really take off in the rest of the world. The new oral vaccine was also 'live' and thus more effective as immunized people could 'infect' others with immunity instead of being immunized but still carriers as in the Salk vaccine.
The timeline of polio vaccination has been vastly different in Asia and Africa, which still have incidents of polio. India always reports the most number of polio cases in the world each year. It might seem to be a small figure per capita but some children will never be able to walk again.


more photographs

Only in 1995, following China's example, did India institute a 'National Polio Immunization Day'. Better late than never, the national immunization days were the most successful health program ever launched in India. A British study concluded that the community awareness of the immunization campaign was better in the most difficult to reach areas where infectious diseases like polio are prevalent compared to the more accessible areas. Immunization programs, in particular national immunization days, often are the most successful programs in reaching pockets of high-risk children, who otherwise do not receive the full benefits of other basic primary health care services.
This year, the country recorded only 12 incidents of polio. This was a marked decline from the 225 cases recorded in 2003. In 2004, the count was 85 - the first time India did not have the dubious distinction of having the largest number of polio cases in the world.

Almost there but fifty years too late!
I am really happy with the progress made in the last decade but pained by the fact that took us so long to implement a program almost forty years after the vaccine was proven to be effective. Such delayed reactions have cost us dearly, to speak nothing of AIDS. It has more to do with the mindset of people in India than the fact that we are still a 'developing' country. I think we have used that excuse more often than required. Though some people are making valiant efforts, the official position and effort have been less than encouraging. From www.avert.org,

"However it is still debatable as to whether there is sufficient commitment to combating the epidemic at government level. Many Indians in positions of power refuse to accept that their country faces a grave threat from the epidemic. And as the epidemic spreads, the battle against AIDS is mired by a lack of consensus on the extent of the pandemic, the "right strategy" to combat it, and how to deal frankly with sexuality."

This time we won't have fifty years to respond.

Garden State

Garden State: In a state of confusion

It's been a hard day's night,
And I've been working like a dog,
It's been a hard day's night,
I should be sleeping like a log,
But when I get home to you,
I find the things that (we) do*,
Will make me feel alright
- The Beatles

*the things that (we) do = see a movie

It's great to come back home after a long day staring at a computer screen to stare at another screen. This time to watch a movie. Today's movie was last year's Sundance Festival hit - Garden State. Zach Braff stars in, directs and writes this slightly off-beat movie.

Andrew Largeman is returning to New Jersey after nine years, for his mother's funeral and tries to pick up the threads of his past life. He meets the gorgeous Natalie Portman at a psychiatrist's clinic and falls in love with her from the moment he puts on her headphones to listen to 'the song that will change your life' and - it does.
What has now become quite an avant-garde cliche - the movie is full of wide-angle lenses, scenes shot with the camera on the floor, time slows down, then speeds up after Zach takes the pill. To me, it was a poor imitation of the classic Trainspotting. The movie is quite sarcastic about life in general and Largeman(Zach Braff) numbly makes his way, oblivious to almost everything - thanks to a lifetime's use of lithium and other drugs. Now home and away from the kitchen cabinet of drugs he tries to feel and Portman shows the way. (I wish all girls, as good looking as Portman, fell in love so easily).

There is more dark comedy -
In one scene, he meets an old friend, who asks him how his good his policeman act was. Zach looks at him - the former junkie now turned cop and weakly smiles. It was hilarious. In the beginning, we see a lady angrily demand 'How come you don't have bread?' to which Zach replies '...this is a Vietnamese restaurant we don't serve bread, we serve noodles...'

The movie promises much but fails to deliver. The highly improbable story gets boring and then takes a much too familiar escape route of simply being cute and cliched in the end. Seems like Zach Braff started with one great idea and then clearly couldn't keep it up. Still worth the promising start and bearable middle, after that - stop watching and stare at a better screen before you are disappointed with the Garden State as it nosedives from dark comedy and satire into a chick-flick end.
***
Roger Ebert was quite kind compared to James Berardinelli's less than enthusiastic approval.

Google Update
Gmail turns 1 today and they had a cool drawing on a napking showing how Google goes one step more than what is theoretically possible.
Still on the wishlist is having the ability to make groups on the contact list.

Also Google is now in the soft-drink business with a new product.
Google Gulp



I love Google because they are so innovative!