Posts from — January 2009

1. GWB, Ratan Tata, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood and Rajiv Gandhi (You could add Raffu to the list as well)

2. Waheeda Rehman, Harsha Bhogle, Sharmila Tagore, Sushmita Sen and Vivek Oberoi. (You could add Padma to the list as well)

3. Sonali Bendre, Gul Panag, Arnab Goswami, Pooja Batra and Shweta Menon. (Add Padma, Anshu and Manishwa to the list as well)

4. Shekhar Suman, Sridevi, Geeta Bali, Valmik Thapar and Supriya Pathak

5. Yuvraj Singh (Cricketer), Aamir Khan, Sonu Nigam, Ahmed Khan (Choreographer) and Aftab Shivdasani

I came across this.

Had I shown a tag like this to my wife, I would be have been assigned washing a tubload of petticoats everyday for the next six months - all hand wash, no machine wash, no tumble dry.

India’s national airline, Air India sacked nine air-hostesses for being overweight.

Air India has begun shedding flab on its domestic network. Nine airhostesses of the national carrier received the bad news over New Year  with a month’s salary in advance – their services had been terminated with immediate effect for being overweight.

Now, you couldn’t expect anything better from an airline which has a portly Maharaja as its mascot.  If this was the US, you could have expected billion dollar lawsuits – which would have quickened the process of Air India going bankrupt.

Now, it is beyond my comprehension on how weighing a few pounds extra could affect the duties of an air-hostess – except if one assumes her job is to be pleasing to the eye. And why are the stout male pursuers still in service? If airline officials feel that this is a fitness issue- and the overweight will not be able to manage the emergency drills, shouldn’t all fat people – including fat passengers be banned from flying?

If there is one profession where being overweight does affect duties – it is the security forces. And today, 90% of India’s policemen would resemble a sack full of potatoes. Why haven’t they been given their termination letters yet?

And when does the day come when one can sack ministers for being overweight?

Okay, let’s see how many of these you can work out. Use Google if you would like to – I can’t stop you anyway.

1. He had a “Dutt” embedded in his real name, but conveniently dropped that part for his screen-name. He however played a character in a film – who had his “real name”. The film was rehashed into the recent YRF’s Bachna Ae Haseeno. Which actor, which film?

2. His reel-name made people think he was a Bengali, but this filmmaker was actually from Karnataka. He shares his surname with a leading actress of today. Who? And his real name?

3. Who the hell is Basavalingaiah Hiremath?

4. He was born as Dileep Kumar and married Saira Bano. Who?

5. Actor A couldn’t use his real name in films as the first name was already taken up by Actor B. Actor B’s real name was Yudhisthir. Who were A and B?

Just as the world prepares to give George W. Bush a fitting farewell – with Hit the road Jack running in the background, his father – former CIA Head/President George Bush Sr. has dropped a bombshell.

George Bush Snr., the former president and father of the current White House occupant, today urged his second son to seek election to the Senate next year in Florida. “I’d like to see him run,” he said. “I’d like to see him be president some day.”

And you thought the worst was over.

Star Plus hasn’t run out of ideas – yet. It still keeps churning out newer reality shows – but this time with a twist. Apparently, a new show to be in air soon – Arre Deewano Mujhe Pehchano will have a donkey as the judge, instead of the usual Reshammiyas and Sidhus.

Kavita Kaushik will be anchoring the show along with a live animated character Ghadhashri. As the name suggests it is a donkey, which will scrutinise each gag and gives his expert comments in place of judges.

So, what’s new you might ask. Don’t Himesh, Abhijeet, Annu Malik et all look like asses? Worse, they even bray like them.

The World Question Center has a simple question that has sent the world’s biggest thinkers into an essay writing spree.

WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?

What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?

It obviously is a question that would tempt me to write an essay. But there are plenty of global thinkers who have already done so. If you have the patience – unlike me – to go and read through each of these opinions, you’ll find ideas ranging from the utterly simplistic to the bizzaringly bizarre. The best of the world’s brains have different ideas on the one thing that will change everything – artificial intelligence, laboratory earth colonies, molecular manufacturing, ET, mastering mortality, radiotelepathy and the muting  of Himesh Reshammiya.

Okay, I made the last one up.

But if you ask Manishwa the Great – there is one thing that could change everything – make the world an easier place to live in.

A cure for PMS.

Go on, throw the bricks. 

If you haven’t seen a Buffalaxed video yet, you have missed quite a bit of the fun.

So what does getting Buffalaxed mean? The Urban Dictionary calls it: The art of taking an Indian (or any other non-english) music video and giving it subtitles for what it sounds like in English.

And why is it called Buffalaxed? Simply because the art of subtitling was started by a Youtube user called Buffalax. His real name happens to be Mike Sutton and the first of his videos – a weird interpretation of a Prabhu Deva video – loony bun is fine, Benny Lava was a massive hit. Soon, the idea spread and there are now hundreds of Buffalaxed videos all over the web. Do a search for “Buffalax” on youtube and you’ll find tons of these videos.

But there were objections too – Some felt that the video was done in “good fun” while others worried that their culture was being mocked. And then MTV jumped in as well. In a series called “Lost in Translation”, MTV Buffalaxes western videos (as well as a few tamil and telugu ones) for its desi audience. Check them out:

The Benny Lava Video that started it all.

MTV gives it back with Alane.