Movie review: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Ridiculous at times, risque to the core, juvenile humour some may claim, the new Harold and Kumar sequel is every match a terrific hilarious film as much as the first one.
What it is, is a roller coaster experience for nearly 2 hours, filled with the crazy sort of things that can happen only in a Harold and Kumar film. Racism (or rather, the quirky and smart way the protagonists deal with it) make the movie likable.
What you can expect to see in this movie 1. Meatball sandwich in Guantanamo bay 2. Bottom nudity 3. A KKK ritual 4. Cyclops in bed 5. Lovemaking scene with a bag of weed 5. GW Bush smoking and joking about the government.
The C&O Canal National Historic Path is built along the Potomac river, covering a distance of 184 miles from Cumberland, OH to Georgetown, DC with a now-unused canal (with locks for ships to go upstream). 61 miles from Georgetown, you cross a bridge into West Virginia to a quaint town of Harpers Ferry. It was these 61 miles (and a little after that), that 169 men and women started to trek in one day on Saturday, April 26th.
Pre Hike: Aditya and I had really not trained much. However, the week before, we did a 16 mile hike in Palisades, and came out smiling, not the least tired. I decided that I was going to attempt the 100K now. The rationale was, I can do 50 for sure, so there is no merit in trying that. Let me atleast start off the 100, and as long as I can do more than 50, I've crossed my previous record.
I reach DC around 11pm on Friday, stay with Sonny's friend Kriss for a few hours. Around 1:30, we get going, and reach Thomson Boat Center a few minute before 2am. It's somewhat empty yet. Fills up quickly in the next hour.
The hike begins: After a short 'important instructions', at 3am sharp, the walk begins. Most people set at a furious pace. "They will slow down a little bit, but this is really the pace they will walk at atleast until day break", we hear. "Have you done this before?" I ask. "Never completed it. Went as far as Brunswick (55mile mark)". I felt bad for this guy who had to bail out when he was 'almost there'.
Sonny and I are walking 16 minute miles. First break is in about 4 hours, a water station.
A little after 7, we reach the water station. It's daylight now. 10 more miles to go before the breakfast halt. A bit hungry (and power bars and cereal bars are hopeless), we are off. A mysterious craving for bagels keeps us going. At one point we take a short detour to see Great Falls. There is a bridge that looks over these beautiful rapids of the Potomac.
Breakfast: 22mile point is breakfast. One third of the trek done. Bagels (yes!), just a little coffee, some time to rest, and we're on our way again. "We did 1/3rd the hike. now just gotta do it twice again".
The day is a hot, humid day. The temperature is about 80 degrees, with very little wind. High humidity. It is boring to walk the next few miles. As we approach Edwards Ferry (where the 50KM trek used to begin), Sonny slowed down. His knees and thighs had started bothering him quite a bit. We had treked together all this while, but now he was sure he wasn't going to go thru the whole 100K. I had to pick some speed if I wanted to make it past the cut off points. My solo journey began.
Lunch: At White Ferry, 35 miles. The day was hot, and this area wasn't much shaded. I ate, looked at my feet (no blisters yet, although a callous on my big toe). I think it was after 2. "It will be nicer once it gets cooler in the evening". Sonny dropped out at this support station - he came in just as I was about to leave.
Pumped up with lunch, but humid and hot, I started listening to the iPod. I had a half finished 'Dortmunder' comic caper, so that kept me going until the next support station.
Point of Rocks: Uneventful and boring. It's cooled down though, much nicer to walk. I started listening to Porcupine tree, the tempo and the pace of the songs and the drums adding some adrenaline to my system. I decide to start jogging a little as I walk. From that to Brunswick (55 miles), I alternate between a trot and a jog. It is getting dark and has started drizzling. More of a mist than a rain. Closer to brunswick though, the rain increases. Thankfully, I had a sweatshirt hoodie.
Brunswick: By this time it is raining. The trail is wet, and it is dark, which means you have to watch what you do. I am walking with Dan had met him earlier, a mile or so before brunswick. Should I bail out or should I keep going? I rememer the guy from this morning, who had bailed out at this point the previous year. "If I wanted to be smart and not damage my body, I should have given up at point of rocks. Now that I have gotten this far, might as well get the bragging rights", I say.
Dan and I decide to continue. It's dark and rainy, and would have absolutely not done it alone. Every step of the way, we curse our adrenaline, jump over puddles, cringe at our slow progress.
The Bridge: Is a little while after the 60 mile (96km) milemarker. We are totally exhausted now. I've run out of water now, but there is a volunteer under the bridge who refills my water bottles. We cross the bridge and there is another volunteer in a car who asks us how we are doing, whether we'd like to just get in the car and reach Bolivar center. The rain has increased, but hey, it's just 1 mile more. I'm not giving up my walk just now!
The Last Mile: Up and down a mountain, on a road to Bolivar. This is a steep town road. The rain has turned into a downpour. We are completely drenched. Sploshing with every step. It takes us about 30 minutes to do this mile. We reach Bolivar Community Center shortly before midnight. The volunteers cheer us in, Aditya comes over to greet. I get the '100K' badge.
After: The day didn't end there. A nurse looked at my blisters and said they weren't really bad. Aditya gets a fresh tshirt for me and some food. Joyee is in there too. She and Aditya have walked 50KM. We get a ride to Shady Grove. It's 2:30 am by the time I get in bed. More than 24 hours awake, out of which 21 had been spent in walking!
Epilogue: The hike has support stations staffed with extremely helpful volunteers. They feed you, even bring you food while you sit, sympathetic to your condition. They help you with blisters and other emergency if needed. Bike patrols along the trail will refill your water bottles and arrange rescue operations if needed. This hike cannot happen without them.
I picked up the Confessions of an Economic Hitman from NYPL's audio books.
This book came out a few years back, the timing was perfect, even the people who had initially supported war on Iraq were beginning to realize how the war had been about oil and resources all along, not about an effort to weed out an unjust ruler and human rights. I had seen it on bookshelves at Borders back then, intended to read it. The US State dept had officially denounced it as conspiracy theory, the Washington post hated it, but the populus loved it. After I watched 'Syriana' in Jan '06, I had thought about this book yet again.
John Perkins, the author, spent his time as an economic hitman, and felt remorse and decided to come clean. While this seems a little cloying, a little time on the internet showed that Perkins had spent a substantial time before the book, after his career as an economic hitman, to try understand the South American culture and people which attracted him so much.
In his own words,
Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.
The book illustrates a system where a handful of people with the know-how manipulate predictions and support a 'western form' of corporations to provide what is accepted as an 'economic growth', where corporate profits translate to economic growth, but where more and more locals in developing nations lose their freedom to the Corporations.
The system revolves around US aid to developing nations to develop infrastructure, where the development contracts are given to US corporations (the actual money is kept within the US). The developing nation spends most of it's GDP on repaying these debts, without any real money entering the nation itself. The nation thus becomes an puppet. Perkins mentions that if the economic hitmen fail, then CIA sponsored hitmen are brought in to take a public figure out of circulation, and if that fails as well, soldiers are sent to fight a battle (Perkins points out Iraq was such a case)
The book is an easy read, mixes up anecdotes, yet, contrary to it's back cover, does not really indulge unnecessarily into heroics, spicy sex stories or conspiracies. Rather it does a good job of keeping the book interesting, yet subtle, leaving the reader to form his own opinions . The Epilogue is very suggestive, where the author prods the G* nations to forgive the third world debt (as a supporter of Live 8, this touches another topic which I've felt strongly about).
The author's website is http://www.johnperkins.org/
A lot of people have been asking me for our wedding pictures. My original plan was to consolidate the amateur and the professional pictures and then select a few to upload to give someone a 'quick synopsis' of the wedding, but meanwhile, here are all the pictures we have so far.
Here's the link .../
http://www.housingmaps.com/
Gmail tip
An awesome tip from Akshat:
OK, I know how all of us love to use GMail. Yesterday, I found out a
tip that I think will be useful to everyone.
Usually when you log in through http://gmail.com, you get a browser
session that is secure only for the period of login, which means that
your password is not unencrypted, but after that, once you're in your
account, it's all unencrypted, which means that your IT department
*could*, if the wanted to, read everything that you send or receive.
If, however, you log in through https://gmail.com, the login session,
even after logging in, is encrypted, so your IT department will never
be able to see what goes through. This is definitely a plus.
Receiving shipping updates thru email for UPS items
Receiving shipping updates through email for UPS items:
1. Open your e-mail client and create an e-mail message addressed to totaltrack@ups.com.
2. If you are tracking a single tracking number, enter it as the subject line or within the body of the e-mail message. To track multiple shipments by e-mail, you can enter up to 25 UPS tracking numbers in the body of an e-mail message.
3. There is no need to create a subject for the message.
Makes the life infinitely easier than having to find the email that contained the tracking number and then clicking the link to it to monitor the progress.
Hilarious spelling mistakes
I actually received this email on another group (a marathi cinema group) i subscribe to. Hilarious spelling mistakes !!
HELLO FRIENDS,
I M SWATI SARAPH AND I M VERYMUCH FOND OF MARATHI MOVIES .I ALMOST SAW THE GUD MARATHI MOVIES.RECENTLY I SAW "ADHANTARI" .ITS REALLY GOOD.I NEVER WATCH COMEDY MOVIES IN MARATHI COZ I THINK COMEDY IS NOT DISCENT AND GUD.I SAW THE MOVIES LIKE...SHWAS,UTTARAYAN,AKALPIT,DEVRAI,BINDHAST,DHYASPARWA,SAAT CHYA AAT GHARAT AND ONE MORE DOCUMENTARY TYPE MOVIE OF MOHAN JOSHI AND RIMA LAGU (I FORGOT THE NAME)...IF MARATHI DIRECTORS WILL TRY TO MAKE MOVIES ON SUCH DIFF AND REAL SUBJECT THEN THE SHOWS WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY HOUSFULL.COZ TODAYS GENARATION WANT SUCH KIND OF MOVIES AND NOT THE SENSLESS COMEDY.TODAYS MARATHI YOUNGSTERS THINK IN A DIFF WAY AND THEY WANT THE REAL AND GUD ONE.THEY DONT WANT TO COMPROMISE REGARDING THE QUALITY.SO I THINK MARATHI INDUSTRI SHOULD THINK OVER IT.AND REGARDING THE SONGS ..THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SONG FROM NEW MOVIES WHICH WE WANT TO SING OR HERE.ITS BETTER TO MAKE THE MOVIES WITHOUT SONG .IF WE WANT TO HERE THE SONGS WE HAVE TO HERE ONLY OLD ONE
AND I HAVE TO SALUTE THOSE SONG MAKERS COZ THOSE ARE THE GR8.I DONT HAVE THE WORDS FOR THAT.I WOULD LIKE TO SUJJEST THAT INSTEAD OF SONGS TAKE "kavita's" LIKE IN DEVRAI.IT WAS REALLY GUD AND HAVE DEEP MEANING.
I THINK I WROTE TOO MUCH.I LOVE MARATHI CULTURE.I LIKE MARATHI MOVIES ,DRAMAS, SONGS, POEMS, KATHAKATHAN, LIVE PROGRAMS,....LOTS OF THINGS.BUT HARDLY I GET THE GUD
ENTERTAINMENT FROM MARATHI MOVIES.
MAY BE I M WRONG.SO IF I MADE A MISTAKE PLEASE FORGIVE ME.
REGARDS,
SWATI.
Akshat just introduced me to this group - Flamenco guitar by Miguel Espinoza and Tabla by Ty Burhoe
Listening to the first song right now, reminds me of Shakti
Kajal fwded this link about an escaped convict hanging out at virginia tech right now. Read more at
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060821/ap_on_re_us/hospital_guard_killed"Officials canceled Monday's first day of classes for the more than 25,000 students at Virginia Tech as a precaution."
wow, pretty interesting stuff happening here ..
i can imagine some new desi grad student writing an email to his family
hello mummy-ji and papa-ji,
Our first day was cancelled because there is a criminal loose on campus. We've been told not to get out of terrace view, which is not that big a deal since we never get out of Sunder Lane anyway. They say the criminal can easily mix with other students, but then I dont understand why they have to close grad school. After all, it would be easy to find an outsider if he were to get in a class filled with desis and chinese students talking about how they want to suck up Srdhini for an RA in computer networking ...
ps: okay. i admit. i have too much time to spare today
Prasu's reply: and here is mom's reply to that email:beta, be very careful... stay with friends all the time... ghar mein kundi band karke baithna... saare khidkiyan bhee check kar lo... jab school shuru ho jaaye to seedhe class jaana aur seedhe ghar waapas aa jaana... don't loiter around anywhere... mein aaj hee mandir jaake prasad chadhati hoon... sab thik ho jayega...ps: ok, i do have work to do, but couldn't resist replying...Bond added: another totally scared parent:"bete, you have another admit from !@@#$ school also correct? why don't you go there. If whole America is like this (full of criminals) why don't you come back. You have a very nice job any ways..."
