Writing this blog as I sit at Starbucks by the window – unfortunately all the comfy chairs that I like are occupied and so this was the only alternative. Right on the other side of the glass pane, every so often there are people standing in order to smoke. It’s kind of ironic, since one of the things I had put on my list of things to bitch and moan about recently was smoking and smokers!

My grandmother used to smoke about two packs a day. My dad probably still smokes about two packs a day. So you would think that I would be used to smoking and that it wouldn’t be that much of a bother. Having now spent close to the decade in the US where luckily there is some respect for non-smokers (unlike India, Europe and a lot of the rest of the world), my tolerance for smoke and smokers seems to be bottoming out.

This past weekend I was out with some friends for dinner and drinks to a bar where I literally had to leave my mouth open and breathe through my mouth because the smoke was making it impossible for me to breathe normally. But that’s more me than the smoke or the smokers since I’ve realized that I actually cannot tolerate smoke more than a certain degree very well. My nose just doesn’t think it’s supposed to function well in a smoky environment and contrary to the orders sent down to it from the brain, it just goes on strike.

But that said, I so have a basic problem with smokers. Why is it that smokers feel that it is their right to keep throwing their butts all over the damn place!? Regardless of how educated or well to do a person might be. When it comes to smoking, they seem to have no qualms about throwing their cigarette butts right where they are standing. Walk outside any building and you will see a collection or smelly cigarette butts all over the damn place.

Secondly, why is it that smokers thing that they are just so freaking cool… maybe they think that just because they smoke the exhaust of their lungs is sacred and thus it is their duty to make sure that they direct the “holy-smoke” directly towards someone who isn’t as lucky to be able to produce their own holy smoke.

Oh… and how can I not talk about the smell. The noxious smell of smoke in someone’s breath or in your own clothes after you’ve been to a smoky place. Ugh… disgusting. What’s especially bad is when the next morning, as you wash your hair you can smell the remnants of the previous nights smoky excursion.

You could take the most beautiful woman and all she has to do is put a cigarette in her mouth and start to light up and it’s an instant turnoff. (Ironically, I seem to see more women smoking than men these days)

My grandmom stopped smoking finally after a series of illnesses which required that she stop smoking. But I definitely didn’t make it easy on her when she was smoking. Her birthday presents were usually little table-top placards with anti-smoking slogans on them. They said:

Kissing a smoker, is like licking an ashtray.

Kiss a non-smoker and feel the difference.

Cancer cures smoking.

Ahh… I guess I’m done with my rant about smoking… I’ve had enough discussions with my dad over it, since I won’t go into his room any more when I’m home, since it put plainly, stinks. I guess my only refuge will be when I eventually move to California where I can go to a bar and get a drink, without coming out smelling like someone sprayed hydrogen sulphide all over me and my clothes!

When I first saw the preview of the movie Fight Club, I told myself that “oh, I don’t think I’d be interested in seeing this movie as it looks like a fucked up movie.” So I never made it a point to see it. Then over the past several months multiple people – and some of them people who’s opinion I respect – told me that I have to see this movie. They told me that they can’t tell me anything about it and I just have to watch it. They did tell me that it had a slight cult element to it, which did get my curiousity piqued enough.

So I finally borrowed the DVD from a friend of mine – and it sat on my desk now for a couple of weeks. I put it on a couple of times, but everytime I would begin to watch it, something or the other would come up (generally an IM from someone while I’m watching the movie on my computer since like the guy in the movie said… I only need a single-serving movie player – a movie for one…so the computer works just fine thank you…) and I would never really get to watch more than the opening scene.

Well, tonight, I came home – no scratch that – back to my apartment and popped in the movie and saw it straight through in one sitting. And here is what I really think… I think that is one of the more fucked up movies I have seen and I would put it up there with something as stupid as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (can you tell that I dislike movies by Quintin Tarantino and I’m glad that hasn’t made another one in recent times?). What a stupid freaking movie. I cannot think of enough words to kind of pick it apart as well as I would like to.

The guy was a freaking psychopath. And yes, everyone in the world has problems of their own and everyone has things about their life that they like or dislike. I am less disturbed about the movie. I don’t as much of a problem now with seeing people blow a hole through their head with their brains splattering all over or with people beating each other into a pulp… TV and the news has done a wonderful job of de-sensitizing us to the horrors of the world. That is now entertainment for some people. If people can watch stupid shit like WWF and call it entertainment, then heck showing people getting their brains blown off as a form of amusement isn’t far behind now is it.

What *really* bothers me about this movie is the fact that some people actually thought of it as a good movie. Had they described it to me as a “disturbing” movie, I would have been okay with it and probably not been so harsh. But there is a significant different between good and disturbing. It is okay for a movie to be disturbing — because it makes you think. Some people actually told me that they learnt things from this movie. I am afraid to think what they learnt if they called it good and not disturbing.

I’ve now maintained for a long time that the mind is fragile — that’s something I’ve not written about in detail on public blogs — yes there are still things which don’t make it out in to a public forum. It is had enough for people to keep their thinking straight and honestly I just don’t have faith in the ability of the person on the street to be able to look deep enough into a movie like Fight Club in order to figure out what they really should take away from it.

For me, the only thing this movie did that was positive was that it re-affirmed my conviction that the greatest thing to fear is losing the ability to think rationally and your grip on what is perceived as reality. But I knew that already, and I don’t think I needed Fight Club to remind me of it again — I see enough instances of it around me everyday.

P.S. After I wrote this blog I was putting the DVD away and noticed one of the quotes on the inside cover. It said: “…a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone crunching violence that actually thinks it’s saying something of significance” — Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times. Now… if that was the best thing the makers of this movie could pick to quote from the L.A. Times, then gee, I couldn’t say it any better myself.

Flipping through the inside cover of the movie…it seems clear that the movie was intended to be provocative and my reaction to it was in line with the reaction fro a lot of other people who put it more eloquently than I did — but the sad fact is that I don’t have a sense of humor about this stuff any more. It would be humorous if you still believe that “it’s just a movie,” but when you know that there are people out there who are deranged enough to even believe what they see in a movie, then it’s not funny any more.

Some of the choice quotes that are included in the cover of the movie (really, I did get these from the cover..):

“I would deliver a long tirade against it if it weren’t such a dog — such a laborious and foolish waste of time …” — David Denby, The New Yorker.

“Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat’s Romance is to inteliigent women — an insult” — Gregory Weinkauf, New Times, LA.

The big thing with movies and theatre and the art of story-telling is the ability to move people, to be able to impact them deep within, simply by means of a story. A story which stays with you and makes you think. And in fact I realized a little earlier today that I have to write this review soon since otherwise, I would keep thinking about this movie till I did!

The Bread My Sweet is not a Hollywood production with a gazillion dollar marketing and production budget. Like the famous Enrico Biscotti of Pittsburgh Strip Dictrict, The Bread, My Sweet has aroma of home made-baking to it. It’s one of those movies that you’re glad you actually went to see because what it does best is tell a story and it tells a story in a wonderful way.

The acting is superb and very down to earth. The setting is even more down to earth, especially for those of us who know Pittsburgh and all the familiar sights of the Strip district – Enrico’s, De Lucca’s Stambooli’s, The Pennsylvania Macaroni company, the Pittsburgh skyline…. All brought to life in a way which actually gave Pittsburgh a sense of character that I have never seen before.

The Bread My Sweet is just one of those movies that you just have to see to understand how powerful it can be and can draw you in to be part of the life it portrays. I think it was wonderfully done and it deserves to be a movie that gets a lot-of-word of mouth publicity in order to make it hugely succesful as this is the type of movie that in my humble opinion, deserves a couple of awards or something. Can I say any more good things about it??

Italian for Beginners had rave reviews on Yahoo! Movies when I checked it out a long time ago. Unfortunately, it never made it to Pittsburgh for a long time (it was playing in NY, LA and SF, go figure…). Yesterday, while I was on my way to meet a friend, I happened to pass by the Cinemagic Squirrel Hill and noticed that it was playing there. So I just had to go catch it before I missed my chance.

There have always been times when the theatre has been sparsely occupied on a Sunday night for a movie. But this time was the first time had the privilege of watching the entire movie completely by myself. Somehow, the big sreen thing didn’t make that much of a difference. I would have been perfectly happy watching the same movie on my laptop with my headphones :).

But, anyhow, the movie itself was actually very good. It’s a Danish movie, with a trickling of Italian thrown in here and there (duh, obviously) and with subtitles in English. The movie did a great job of setting up the lives of the people portrayed in the movie. How each person had gone through some personal tragedy which affected them deeply. It did a good job of allowing the viewer to relate to the characters being portrayed.

But after such a spectacular setup one cannot help be disappointed when the movie ends on a rather abrupt note. It was a happy note for sure… and an obviously good ending for the movie, but it was just so predictable that it sort of left me wanting more.

Of course Giulia was the cutest looking thing you could imagine in the movie :). Overall a good movie and highly recommended viewing.

Weekend before last, I was in California in order to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business Conference on Entrepreneurship 2002. So of course, since I was in the bay area and I have a lot more friends that than I have in Pittsburgh, we had to go drinking.

Several of us – friends of mine either from highschool or Carnegie Mellon met up for dinner at Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto. As always I was very impressed with the food there and we had a great time. The food was great (garlic fries… yum… hey I don’t have to worry about anyone smelling my breath!). The place is great and it’s decent, casual and not as pretentious. (I have a real problem with the hoity-toity places since I can never be comfortable there!). So we stuffed ourselves and then decided to go drinking at Left at Albuquerque‘s also in Palo Alto.

Now, Left at Albuquerque’s has this contest. It’s called the Route 66 contest. My friend and i were there the previous night to witness it. The way it worked was that you buy this fish-bowl sized margarita for eighteen bucks and then you have a race with all the other people who are competing. And whoever drinks the entire margarita first, wins a sixty-six dollar bar tab. When we were there the previous night, the rule was that you had to use just one straw. No one straw doesn’t imply one person of course. So as long as you use one straw multiple people could help finish the margarita. Since I had to be up at the conference at 8:00 AM next morning, we just observed the fun, but didn’t participate.

So the next day, after Gordon Biersch, there were about seven of us. And we figured, heck, we could easily with that Route 66 contest right! 🙂 So of course, we all arrive at Left and Albuquerque. The contest starts kicking off. We buy a Route 66 Margarita and are all lined up ready to go and that’s when it hit… the guy changed the rules on us!! The rules for tonight were – one person, one straw Gulp! (literally!). Now the previous day I saw the bartender pour the contents of that margarita glass into a picther. It was a full pitcher! About six drinks in there. Yikes!

Anyhow, now common sense and rational behavious told me that Manu, you’re being idiotic if you decide to go forward with something that is just bound to make you sick. It’s stupid. It’s silly. It’s just a down right bad idea. But then again… I’ve never done enough silly things. I need to do more silly things. So I said what the hell… I’m going for it, come hell or high water!

Luckily for me my adversaries were two girls sitting at one end of the bar. (I say luckily now, of course at that point I was thinking holy shit, if I lose to the women I’m going to make a complete idiot of myself!) Anyhow, so the bar tender lined us up and counted us down. And I began to suck down the margarita. One after the other in big gulps. In the mean while I hear everyone yelling and screaming, but I had no clue as to what they were saying. I wasn’t looking at how fast my competitors were going. I was just sucking it down! About two-thirds of the way throw I felt a soft pat on my head! Turned out that my competitors saw how fast I was sucking up the margarita and decided that there was no point in even trying. I had just alittle more to go when I stopped drinking. Everyone’s asking what’s going on… and I said “Do you mind, I do need to breathe!” Of course by then my head had a severe brain freeze as well. But I was able to suck down the last bit and win the sixty-six dollar bar tab for all my friends! 🙂

Needless to say that was my final drink for the evening! After all the yummy foos with which we’d stuffed ourselves, downing an entire pitcher of margaritas in less than a minute and twenty seconds, doesn’t feel real good in the stomach. The alcohol didn’t bother me as much as the sheer volume of food and liquid in my system! (yes, I did have to loosen my belt thank you). And yes, my friends were a little shocked that I was falling over drunk after the amount I had drunk. It was kind of sad… because I think I just about got a buzz, and nothing more!

Eitherway, between Gordon Biersch, Left at Albuquerque and a great group of friends it was definitely an evening to remember and I’m sure one that my friends won’t let me forget!