Bring it on pop

It may have been good or bad but it was familiar. As I watch 2008 fading in my rearview mirror, I feel like I am waving an old friend goodbye. Lots may happen in my life but not 2008. It's gone and will never come back. Time is a shrew you can't tame and this year I feel its passage more than ever. And now as I read my balance sheet for 2008, I am glad I am alive and so is everyone I love. I know I have been luckier than many and I am grateful for it. So here's to your health and happiness in 2009. Bring it on Father Time.

Art doesn't come easy

For some reason, Norman Maclean's words in A River Runs Through It, comes to me this morning. And I quote: All good things, trout as well as eternal salvation, come by grace and grace comes by art and art is not easy.
No sir, it doesn't come easy at all. Neither do words.

The inscrutable Japs

I know a smattering of Japanese, like I know a bit of German. If you have ever read Commando Comics, you would too. Achtung, Nicht Schiessen ... that's two German words for you and Aieeeeeee ... that's Japanese. Seriously.
The Japs, they are a fascinating race ... and so inscrutable and unique. I mean who would make an art of deforming plants or talk to electronic pets. You have to see Takeshi Kitano's Brother to understand a little more about how obsessively disciplined the Japanese are about everything, including violence and Jap Karma. Don't watch it if you don't have a stomach for graphic violence and you will not learn any Japanese because it is in English. Banzai, that's Japanese and it doesn't mean growing orange trees in flower pots ok.

Paradise city

Mumbai's scars are still raw. Was in the city for a day, the first time I have gone back since the attack. Everything seems normal till you bring it up with friends, cabbies, waiters, just about anyone. It's like stoking simmering ember, the rage and the tears well up again.
Went to watch some old friends in concert at Not Just Jazz By the Bay, just about spitting distance from the Trident. The band played Paradise City for Mumbai and I could see people with tears in their eyes. The song never made more sense to me and it never seemed clearer that it's going to take time to mend Mumbai's broken heart.

It's torn at the shoulder

Famous Blue Raincoat plays in my head today. It is a Cohenesque day ... magical and melancholic in equal measure. There is something about this twilight stage which we call the end of the year. Never is the passage of time more stark than when a year calls it a night. It's a time to forgive, forget, hope, pray and Cohen. Famous Blue Raincoat plays in my head ...

What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I am glad you stood in my way ...

Top coppy

"Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?"
Ever since I watched Clint Eastwood growl those words, I have been sold on the badge and bullets genre. There is something about a good cop movie ... here are my favourite cops in no particular order.

Bud White: This was before he won an Oscar for wearing a short skirt in Gladiator. Russell Crowe as the brooding Bud White who doesn't always play by the book. White has a beef with creeps who abuse women and doesn't quite shy away from using violence to counter violence. LA Confidential is about good cops and bad cops against a setting of debauchery and stardust in tinsel town and Bud White is the toughest knuckle on the mean streets.

Frank Serpico: Sydney Lumet's masterpiece on corruption in the NYPD is one of the greatest cop movies ever. Al Pacino is Francisco Serpico, the ramrod straight cop, who exposes the corrupt underbelly of the force. The entire department turns against Serpico, leaving him hanging on to his life and sanity. Pacino, in one of his greatest roles, was described by a critic as "tiny terror".

Harry Callahan: "Go ahead, make my day," growls Harry Callahan, legs akimbo, hands ready to whip out that .44 magnum. Clint Eastwood, walked straight out of the Spaghetti Westerns and into the sewers of San Francisco as Dirty Harry, the original urban cowboy. Harry is an equal-opportunity bigot, a cop who bends the law to enforce it. Eastwood is rivetting as the narrow-eyed, tough talking gun-slinger.

Frank Bullitt: The uber cool Steve McQueen is Lt.Frank Bullitt in the most iconic cop movie of all. Set in 60s San Francisco, Bullitt has McQueen assigned to protect a Mafia squeal on whom the mob has taken out a hit. The movie features one of the greatest car chases ever and as the laconic Frank Bullitt, McQueen delivers a sparkling, alpha male presence.

Donnie Brasco: Johnny Depp was never more slicker than playing Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco the undercover cop who infiltrates the Bonano mob in Brooklyn. Depp is pitted against Pacino who plays Lefty Ruggiero a small time hood who is Brasco's entry into the mob. It's tough to outshine Pacino in a mob movie, but Depp does it effortlessly with plenty to spare.

Will have a worst cop movie list sometime ... stay tuned.

At the altar of dreams

The culvert where the road curves before going its merry way still stands. For you it's a block of concrete, for me it's the altar where a million dreams were laid out ... some fulfilled, some long shattered.
We spent many a teenage evening around it, wondering where life would take us. Would we be rich, would we find love, would we die trying. We were many, all in different stages of existential confusion. We smoked, argued, fought, won and lost our way to adulthood. The culvert stood mute witness to some boys turning men and some just bobbing with the tide. As I drive away from my childhood, I see a bunch of young boys settle down on the culvert, laughing, ribbing, dreaming. I watch them in my rearview mirror, new dreams being set on cold concrete.