The Dead Zone

Currently Reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

And so we've arrived here in the dead zone. No more football. Spring training for baseball is still two weeks away and the season won't start until April. That's a long time to pretend to be interested in basketball and NASCAR. I suppose I could always pretend to be following hockey too but let's face it, we're in Memphis. Who would care if I was interested in hockey or not? No one ELSE here is following it :-)

I was checking out CC's blog the other day and I got a kick out of her entry about my reading list. Yes, it's true I'm currently reading Moby Dick. Why? I dunno, just felt like it. I've read it before and I was in the mood to read it again. In the first chapter, first page in fact, Ishmael talks about how when his mood gets to be in a certain way, he longs for the sea and heads out on a merchant ship (though this time he decided to try a whaling ship instead). Me, sometimes I'm in the mood to read literary classics.

If you check out my reading list for last year, you'll see I sort of rotate what I'm reading. I spread it around a bit between more modern books, sci fi, and the classics. I don't usually read more than a few in any given category in a row. If I do, they tend to get boring. It's rare that I'll even read several books in a series in a row though I do that if the books are short or I get attached to the characters or plots and need to see how things turn out.

And for the record, even if CC didn't read the full version of the Count of Monte Cristo, honestly, that's ok. Dumas put in so much unnecessary stuff it's almost like he was TRYING to bore readers before they got to the good parts :-)

Hey did you catch the weather reports lately? Did they show what's been going on in up-state New York? Holy COW! There's one corner of Lake Onterio where they've gotten over 10 feet of snow! That's not just since the start of winter or even since the start of the year. That's just in the past week or so! For most of us, that's a bit hard to get a handle on. 10 feet, that's just a bit shy of the height of the ceiling in my living room! And if you're in a standard house or apartment with 8 foot ceilings, well, that's up to your ceiling and then some.


Have you seen the movie The Guru? Probably not. Most people haven't. I'm not sure when it came out and when/if it ran over here in the US but it shows up from time to time on cable. It was on USA this weekend. Damn funny movie.

It's about a guy from India who moves to the US to try and become a movie star. He ends up in New York and goes to auditions, accidentally ending up working with a cheesy little porn studio. He's also working as a waiter for a caterer. They're working this high society party with an India theme and it's supposed to feature a guru who comes in and does some spiritual readings and so forth but the guy gets drunk and passes out SO our hero steps in and takes over. It looks something like this . . .

What folks here might not realize, and which might explain why not so many people have heard of it, is that it's a parody of movies from India, especially the ones that feature music video style scenes, like this one . . .



Having seen The Guru, it's almost impossible for me to watch any of the Bollywood films without snickering a little. Even when we eat out at Bombay House I can't help but think of The Guru. They often run videos and movies from India on the TVs there.

You must admit though, it is rather unique :-)