Sir Jugalot - The Knight in Rusted Armour!!

One of dear old Juggie's alter-ego's : Sir Jugalot is an all time-favourite strip of mine!!

It belonged to the ol' - fashioned era of story-telling :- superbly drawn characters with fine attention to detail and a knock-your socks off funny story line. It was later adapted into a mini-series featuring the other "avatars" of Jughead Jones. To read more about this particular story click on the following link: "Jughead's Fantasy".

I couldn't lay my hands on the entire strip.....but did manage to come across one particular panel, featuring the endearing "villian" - MIGHTY MELVIN The Fire-Breathing Dragon.

The Good Life

I came across this song in a book. It is from the Greek Island of Crete, appropriately sung at a wedding. No great lyrics...no hidden meanings.....just a straight-forward, homely number.

Kaloperasi meaning "The Good Life"

Little by little the Lords sends the rain,
Then comes the quiet snow,
Cold in the mountains,
Snow on the hills.

But the man who has a well-roofed house,
Fruit in his storerooms,
Oil in his jars,
Wine in his barrels,
Wood in his yard,
A girl to kiss as he sits by the fire,
He doesn't care what the north wind brings,
Rain or Snow.

My situation......described to perfection!!

CULINARY CHRONICLES (Part 1) : No Rain on my Thanksgiving Parade!!

Come November, and I get bitten by the cooking bug! Suddenly I feel this insane need to slice and dice, sauté and simmer, grill and bake and (if things go horribly wrong) singe my eyebrows and turn the kitchen into a disaster-struck area!!

Thanksgiving.....the perfect time to get the ball rolling. I know it isn’t a part of the great Indian festive parade, but I like the concept of loud, noisy families coming together over a table creaking under the weight of a magnificent turkey, meltingly smooth mashed potatoes, ruby-red cranberry sauce and the wonderful assortment of pumpkin pies, cakes and other such finger-lickin’ goodies!!

Since I didn’t feel upto the task of tracking down the elusive turkey…I settled for the ubiquitous, ever faithful chicken.

My menu for the day:

~ Ham 'n' Cheese Stromboli

~ Apricot-Glazed Roast Chicken

~ Savory Bread Pudding with Mushrooms and Parmesan cheese

~ Green Leaf Lettuce, Pomegranate and Almond Salad

~ Warm Pumpkin Cake

After making an absolute nuisance of myself and speeding up my mum's aging process, I managed to whip up a pretty decent fare. I wish I could say the same for my photography skills!!

Browsing through the eye-catching and aesthically stunning visuals on Epicurious and Yahoo! Food left me with the grave misconception that I could achieve their lofty standards.

Needless to say.....I should be relegated to the big, black hole where all misguided wannabe photographers go after their pitiful attempts to "capture the moment"!!!

The entire clan is left twiddling their thumbs while I click a dozen odd snaps. The crisp lettuce is fast turning limp and the chicken looks up at me dolefully.....as if to say "Why god! Why me!?!!". My ex-photographer of an uncle shakes his head in supressed mirth and asks me whether I want the chicken to get into a hot-pink bikini and pout seductively for the camera. H-UH!!

That's family for you!!!

Photo-Session over, it’s time to dig in…no holds barred! And everyone does so……with gusto and scant regard for etiquette and patience. But as long as everyone is enjoying themselves……I feel GO-OD!!

This was the first session of the Culinary Chronicles. More...many more to come. Heralding in the New Year will be the new, improved....butter-ball version of yours truly!!!

Epicurious.com - Thanksgiving EYE-CANDY

The Thanksgiving Parade.....

Run, run as fast as you Can

Move over Voldemort, there’s a new villain in town. Unseen but omnipresent, more real and a million times more terrifying. I am talking about Fate...Kismet...Providence. Call it what you may, but that’s what the young protagonist of “Just in Case” by Meg Rosoff is running from.

Saving his baby brother from almost-certain death should have made 15-year old David Case feel like a hero…but it unleashes a new kind of terror in the teen’s over-active imagination. Two seconds…two seconds is all it would take to turn every-day humdrum life into a virtual minefield of catastrophes.

His mind’s eye is fogged up with mental images of death (including his own) and disaster. Falling down a manhole, a car crash, killer bees, floods, alien invasion……everything from the ordinary to the bizarre whirl through his head in horrifying succession. A doomed youth, poised on the brink of disaster. That’s what he has become.

And then he comes up with an idea. An idea to trick fate which is pursuing average, ordinary, suburban David Case. He decides to change his identity.

Enter Justin Case. The new, improved Justin seems to be a worthy contender.....able to meet fate headlong with a dash of more courage than his predecessor. Along the way he acquires a new dress sense, an imaginary greyhound and seemingly eccentric but loyal friends.

But the feeling of impending doom never loosens it’s hold. It colours his very existence, his thought-processes, his emotions and his turbulent hormones. It plunges him into (mis)adventures and even makes him go through the agonies of unrequited love.

Adolescent angst is hard enough to deal with but when accompanied by a sense of imminent misfortune……it is a painful package. You want to avert your eyes, and yet you can’t. Very rightly put by Justin’s friend Peter Prince...it is like watching a train crash waiting to happen.

The beauty of this book lies in the clarity and precision with which every thought racing through Justin’s mind is dissected. His pain is a live, breathing thing and you want to either give him a warm comforting hug or slap him out of his melancholy!

If you are looking for a light-hearted read, this isn’t what the doctor prescribed. It is bleak and painful, laced with dark humour.....but it has to be read for it’s flawlessness and sheer rawness of emotion. And before you write it off as a morbid drama.....I would like to add that it has a very satisfying ending.

There is an important lesson amidst all the chaos. We can’t change fate, but along the journey we can enjoy the gifts that kismet has to offer.....namely undiscovered talents, the love of family, the comfort of friendship and the strength and courage to stand up and fight, whatever the odds.

"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted."

Think cutting wit....think Groucho Marx!! The man with the greasepaint moustache and fake eyebrows has left behind an entertaining legacy, which almost always manages to tickle your funny-bone!!

Here are a few of his choice gems:

1. From the
moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with
laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.

2. I don't care to belong to a
club that accepts people like me as members.

3. I find television very
educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a
good book.

4. I thought my razor was dull,
then I heard his speech.

5. In Hollywood, brides keep the
bouquets and throw away the groom.

6. A man's only as old as the woman he feels.

7. A hospital bed is a parked taxi
with the meter running.

8. Alimony is like buying hay for
a dead horse.

9. I read in the newspapers they
are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday
from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn't educate America if they
started at 6:30.

10. I was
married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

11. If you write about yourself, the slightest deviation
makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.

12. Outside of a dog, a book is
man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to
read.

13. I wish to be cremated. One
tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our
contract.

O-BENTO!

Totally unrelated to the context of my blog, but couldn't resist posting it. This picture of a Bento-Box, with it's aesthetically arranged ingrediants was a visual treat! To know more about the bento-culture, visit : Cooking Cute.

Why do Great Gals Say Goodbye?!?

I was reading an interesting column as to why ladies get a wee-bit turned off after the first date.

Here's the guy…congratulating himself on his (debatable) charm and thinking......CHA-CHING!! Ok, I have hit paydirt and she is the one!

But the moment he calls up (after doing the customary two-day wait), all geared up for a second date.......all he gets is Voicemail!...and soon it's pretty clear that the Great Gal ISN'T GOING TO CALL BACK!

What went wrong?

Well, according to the scribe, there could be 10 main turnoffs. What tickled my funny bone were the cheeky terms assigned to the poor guys!! I tweaked the article a fair bit and added my two-bit opinion. Here goes:

Great Gal Turnoff # 1: Showboat Sammy
You’ve got a fantastic bank-balance, the spiffiest car in town and if the Good Lord is feeling really generous…a sprawling white villa on the French Riviera!! But droning on and on and ON about it on your first-date.....not exactly a crowd-pleaser!

Great Gal Turnoff # 2: Messy Mohinder
Your money may talk….but the “just-out-of-bed” persona? Does it really work for you? Unless you double up for an A-List celebrity, no gal is going to lose sleep over the unkempt, bushman-on-holiday look.

Great Gal Turnoff # 3: Rude Rajiv
Treating the service staff like dirt and expecting them to perform like trained seals…not nice…not nice AT ALL!!

Great Gal Turnoff # 4: Cheapie Charlie
Foot the bill or Go Dutch….but don’t expect the gal to pick up the entire tab on the first date. (Why do I sense the feminists flinging their burning bras at my window???)

Great Gal Turnoff # 5: Still-Married Manav
Marriage.....separation.....divorce.....definite terms, no room for ambiguity. Dating does not equal cheating on your unsuspecting wife. Be honest and upfront from the start.

Great Gal Turnoff # 6: Hands-on Harry
Don’t give an Octopus a bad name!! Read the signals well and clear before treading into your date’s personal space!

Great Gal Turnoff # 7: Stereotyping Sahil
Ask a gal a question, she answers .....and you nod knowingly. Then you make the all-mighty blunder of imagining that.....Ok, she is THAT kind of a girl.
You aren’t a seer, atleast not yet!!

Great Gal Turnoff # 8: Distracted Dave
She’s spilling out her life-story, and there you go hopping behind the nearest potted palm, answering your cell-phone.....which by the way, rings…EVERY FIVE MINUTES. Phone etiquette aside....not a good move, pardner!!

Great Gal Turnoff # 9: All-Business Barry
It’s a date, not a million-dollar deal to be cracked! Business and Leisure.....two different departments, keep them separate.

Great Gal Turnoff # 10: Nervous Nikhil
Put that fork down ALREADY!! Stop twitching and shooting shifty glances at your date. Truth be told, she must be as nervous as you are. Acting like the chemist stopped peddling your Calmpose, is not going to work in your favour.

So that’s it……the prototypes which turn a seemingly successful first-date into a disaster area. How far they apply, is beyond my limited understanding.

To each his own I say……what drives one woman running for the hills, would probably have another hearing wedding bells!!