Hit the road Jack

Two movies here's looking at you kid has seen recently and really appreciated are 'Ray' and 'Walk the line'. Maybe its his love for music from the golden era or his childhood dream of becoming a rockstar, but these two movies has really captured some mind space in the past few days. The fame, the adulation, the groupies, the drugs, the creative blocks that sometimes lasts for years, fickleness and immaturity that is conveniently ignored as attributes of genius.... can there seriously be a better career?

Here's looking at you kid thinks that most superstar careers follow similar paths right through to stardom. The childhood struggle or trauma, the escape to music, the initial struggle, the second-thoughts just before the first superhit, the stardom and the consequent tumult in family life, the getting used to fame and subsequent abuse of it, the fall in creativity and the resurgence. The road to superstardom is standard. There is no standard end to their careers however, some like Cobain, Hendrix etc are lucky and die due to substance abuse in their glory years and are forever etched in rock journals as legends, the others gradually fade into oblivion as new styles of music divert public attention, and are remembered only by a select group of true fans. A fight against racial segregation may have given Ray Charles his temporary resurrection, just like the concert 'Bangladesh' gave George Harrison his, but lets face it, an hour of fame remain still just an hour even for the greatest superstar.

Here's looking at you kid uses this occasion to repledge his undying (albeit fading) allegiance to the original superstar Elvis!

Looking for a guy named Charlie!

Dada told me about the uproar on the movie 'Tango Charlie' yesterday. Let me disclaim at the onset that I have not seen the movie yet. But since I would rather go on a date with Aishwarya Rai than see that movie, there is little possibility that an infinitesimal increment in the Bollywood coffers would be driven from my pocket. Although it has been my tendency to justify anything on the grounds of human folly, somehow this incident has irked me. Probably because I've had Bodo friends, and they come across as good civilised people, with certain quirkiness inherent in every community, but none have ever exhibited any nefarious design on my ears. And Bodo girls, like all other good girls, like attention, manipulation and gifts. But earlobes is stretching the imagination a little too far, even by Bollywood's standards.