How To Open a Show and other such notes ...

Yes I have not blogged. Possibly because nothing of note has occurred. There have been several world incidents that have happened that I could have dropped pearls of wisdom on, but somehow ... meh.

But actually have a topic today - and its a fun one. I recently started watching the third season of the vampire drama - 'True Blood', and although I had self-admittedly thought I'd gag before I saw anything that had more vampires or werewolves in it ... I'm sort of ... umm, intrigued. Hooked - no, I'm not hanging at the corner of my chair waiting for the episode to air in America so that I can run amok on update sites online ... that love I think I have and can possibly only ever express for 'Dexter'. But 'True Blood' is interesting in the more 'wtf' type way, where they seem to be throw in new surprises, characters, twists, turns and oh-my-gosh moments with the regularity of an alarm clock set to go off every 1 minute.

But my post is not about 'True Blood'. Its about its opening credits - and hence, other show opening credits. I love the TB credits - they're wild, spooky, just plain nutzoid and yet pack enough of actual meat in it to make you WANT to see the show. So I decided to put down a list of show credits that have actually MADE me watch their show. For the sake of simplicity, have avoided really old references and stuck to American shows. (I know I know - i just think they invest more in the gloss factor)

PS: This list is by no way exhaustive - if you think I've missed a genuine gem - comment!!!

10) The Ghost Whisperer

Super crap show, and it shows how even a really spooky title sequence can't save you. Even with Jennifer Love Hewitt. In fact this title sequence could have even gone up a few notches if they had just taken her off it.

9) Rome

Yes yes, I'm a sucker for all historical dramas, and 'Rome' was no exception. I totally loved the little dancing figures on the wall, and interspersed with everyday life of Rome, it totally 'caught' you (if you're a history geek) or made you change the channel.

8) The Tudors

Ahem. I can repeat most of the stuff said in the previous entry, but in addition, what made the 'Tudors' opening credits really fun were the little snatches of corruption, religion, sex and death that they casually slipped in. You knew this was going to be one sinful treat - and oh, just in case the point wasn't made - Jonathan Rhys Meyer as the cherry on the top.

7) Weeds

This is a little difficult to explain. And I also have to confess that I knew what the show was about when I watched the opening credits for the first time. But there's this marvelous stepford wives quality to the sequence that totally compels you to at least give it a chance. Of course the breathless singsong just adds to the mystery. (Sorry couldn't add the video here - but you can watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W6dOEdEAAQ&feature=related) And the really cool thing about the Weeds credits is that from the second season onwards, they managed to guarantee people not hitting the fast forward button on the credits by getting different people to sing them.

6) Carnivale

They left nothing out of this one. An X-Files meets history meets grotesque circus meets mythology with a healthy dose of tarot and bloodshed thrown in for good measure. My only possible issue is that they probably had too many things to fit into it.

5) 6 Feet Under

Beautiful. Lilting music and morbid visuals neatly unite in a strangely sanitized colour tone to completely get your curiosity revved up.

4) Mad Men

This one is fungus. I know, the first time you see it, you're like what??? This is such naan-sense. But believe me, if anything grows on you quicker than body hair, its this opening credits sequence. Is it the ghostly music ... unsettling black shadow falling ... the funky ads ... the sudden percussion ... or maybe its just the beautiful simplicity of it all. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo. And once you're done with that, see the Simpsons spoof at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmM7Jh2Y3k&feature=related.

3) Desperate Housewives

(Shoop shoop) Am ducking to avoid the onslaught of beer bottles and coke cans that may be thrown at me for bringing in DH into this pristine list. But believe me - nothing cracked me up as much as the first time I saw the 'Desperate' rendering of housewives down the ages as captured in this totally funny opening credits. They pretty much capture the changing role of women - in their housewife role, and I am hard-pressed to think of another opening credits sequence that relied on humour to introduce their show.

2) True Blood

Well - it did start off my post right! Well, not surprisingly its been made by the same guys who also made the opening credits for my No 1 choice. Unlike my core issue with Carnivale, which was that it sorta 'overspilled' out on exactly what the show could be about - 'True Blood' does nothing of that (even if the show kinda sorta well ... doesn't stick to that bargain!) I can't even begin to list my favourite shots - the opening one of the strange creature in the water, the one hungry eye of the alligator ... the extremely disturbing one of the dead rodent on the road and of course the deep discomfort one feels at the juxtaposition of all those church scenes and the baptism with the raunchy strip club shots. But truly - bloody and beautiful.

1) Tadaaaaaa ... anyone who has ever had a conversation of over 2 minutes with me would know this ... DEXTER!!!

Sigh. In how many ways do I love thee. Watch how a serial killer takes his breakfast and marvel at the violence in our everyday life. There's still a grace and almost lyrical quality to everything he does, which makes it almost difficult for us to tear our eyes away from his fingers. Aah. THIS is truly poetry in film. Enjoy.

That's it folks. There were other contenders of course - but then this is my blog and my favorites :-)

To close, a HILARIOUS viral I came across which I think is worth its weight in pre-Victorian literature ... Jane Austen's Fight Club. See - you're already laughing!!! Cheers. Sush

Amsterdam Dag Twee

Day Two was the day of artistic discovery and kaaaal-ture, as we had 2 major items left on our shopping list in Amsterdam - the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. After having already abandoned plans to see the Anne Frank House (tickets were sold out almost 2 DAYS before - and this is even though its possibly the only museum open on weekends till almost 930 pm) and seeing that the 'waiting line' stretched round the building twice - we decided that we would be better off leaving this for another trip. And oh - so advice to all Amsterdam-travellers? Book your tickets for any type of museum / show / restaurant / bathroom ONLINE! If they offer it online, take it and book it. You'll easily save around an hour, unless of course you're one of those type of people who think that waiting in lines helps you 'breathe in' the city.

Crowds outside the Van Gogh ...

It stretched on for a good 1 1/2 hour wait ...

The Rijksmuseum was just as wonderful as I expected it to be - there were 2 1/2 whole floors just for Rembrandt, one for Vermeer and some buds of his, and an entire viewing room for the 'Night Watch'. Before you start viciously scrolling up and down for pics, let me break it to you gently that cameras weren't allowed inside - so you're just going to have to take my word for it that it was goddamn wonderful and totally inspirational :-)

After that was the Van Gogh - and at this point, I will need to disclaim myself from a previous post ... I didn't expect much, but I was totally floored. Just as the Rembrandts make you inch closer and closer to see all the little details you missed, the farther you move from a Van Gogh, the more you appreciate his tortured vision and often for me at least, it felt like an unexpected discovery.

The one thing you'll miss seeing here is 'The Starry Night', which can be found at the MOMA in NY ... but there are enough others to gorge on. We had the toughest time at the gift shop - I think ol' Vincent just had a knack of making paintings that could look good on T-shirts, kitchen utensils, mugs, bandanas, cushions, lunch boxes ... almost anything actually.

From here it was time to say tata to Amsterdam and take a train into nearby Delft to meet some close friends of ours. Now Delft is actually the home town of another of my favorite painters - Vermeer, and is currently where the 'Girl with the Pearl Earring' resides - first painting, then book by Tracy Chevalier and then movie. The book fictionalizes a supposed love of sorts between Vermeer and the girl who is depicted in the painting (see pic below) and is entirely set in Delft.

Its a supremely pretty town, and almost everywhere you turn there was a pikchur to be taken. Combine that with great hospitality (thanks Nirali & Kedar! much muaah), fantastic dinner (my first brush with Ethiopian food - would totally recommend it to anyone who's craving Indian food but wants to seem foo-faa eating exotic food :-) and a cute movie (Toy Story 3d - much fun and almost as much fun as the first 2 parts) ... I think it was a recipe for a great Sunday evening!

The Dutch version of town square ... this picture is of the main Church ... main maane since Delft used to be the old capital, if any of the royal folk pop it even today - they are buried in Delft. So fairly important place this is.

Their town hall.

Gaurav noticed the extremely pretty door - the blue potteryish type work is Delft's most famous export ...

I think the only surviving part of the old town wall - beyond this the moat that surrounds the whole of Delft, and of course the canals that weave in between ...

Ha ha. 'Don't even think of parking here' ... would have just liked to do so to see exactly what he does in retaliation.

Simply so pretty ...

... and so ends our trip to the lands of the nether. A special thanks to ...

(Kedar & Nirali - I think you have something on your nose :-)

Cheers and till something else happens.

Sushma

Amsterdam Dag Een (Part Twee)

Picking up right from where I left off, we followed the canal cruise with a satisfying meal (yes, yes - even vegetarian me was quite content, so pls stop sniggering all ye meat-eaters) after which we wended our way to THE Experience - the Heineken Experience.

Now usually I pride myself on having rarely succumbed to over-marketing ... but truly, this was one experience which was totally worth it. Its a fairly shameless 'drink heineken, buy the t-shirt and drink from the glass' venture, but they have succeeded in ensuring there's enough fun spread through the whole shindig for you to actually go out and say - wow, wouldn't mind doing that again!

The Amsterdam main train station ...

Of course before that, a quick test - can you actually figure out what this clock / instrument is doing / measuring? I spent a good 5 minutes staring at it and stopping traffic - but I still couldn't actually get what it was doing. Y0u can find it perched on the main station building.

And now the pictures from the Heineken Experience ... interesting piece of trivia for fans - the 3e's in Heineken are in fact not plain-jane, but have been slightly turned over on their backs to give the impression of 'smileys' ... check it out!

The first part of the experience is this lovely quaint-ish bar type area where you see a movie about how Heineken came into being blah blah ... BUT it was totally not blah-blah. Fun, witty and the video runs in such a way that it looks like your bartender is telling you the story. (Below)

Followed by words of wisdom ...

Can almost put a lump in the ol' throat ... until you realize he's talking about making beer.

Sniff. I want to live in a time when alcohol costed 16 cents (little lesser than Rs 10).

More words of wisdom ... now do you get it when i say that these guys take their beer seriously??!!

We were then taken through the entire beer-making process ... the giant vats in which they are heated and all the ingredients are added ...

Just outside are the stables - for some reason Heineken brews beer and palo-s horses. Couldn't see any 'obvious' connections (or maybe my mind just doesn't want to :-)

And now - the fun part! I think the funnest thing in the Heineken Experience was the 'Brew You Ride' where you actually stand on this platform (as part of the ride) and through this interactive video, they actually 'brew' you ... so at random times water is thrown on you, the temperature of the room suddenly increases, and the platform jiggles and shakes. So I can't obviously recreate THE ride, but managed to catch a fair bit of it on my camera. Enjoi!!!

Of course after such a tiring ride, you just HAVE to have a beer. So a chotu beer is served (all complimentary of course) in this very cute tasting room. And after the beer, what else are you supposed to do but simply chill out? The Heineken Lounge follows.

After some rather obvious marketing gimmicks - make your Heineken video, picture, shirt, underwear and dog collars and literally anything else they can sell you - then you have the actual Heineken bar ... where everyone gets 2 beers! It was a tough challenge for my husband (I don't like beer - though I did have the chotu one and one more here) to quaffle his 3 beers - but he bravely soldiered on and found all the beers a home in his stomach.

Our 4 beers stand tall.

After then making some mandatory purchases at the gift shop (ahem ahem - we are tourists!!!), we then headed out of the Experience into broad daylight, our tummies and minds swilling with beer. The next stop was to deposit our luggage at our modest accommodation for the night booked on bookings.com, which listed our room as 'cosy and comfy' = read 'small and cramped'. When we reached our hotel, we realized that we would have to literally suck it up on the comfort front, since the hotel name was written on an A4 sheet of paper and stuck up with tape on the glass door. Never a good sign. We mentally prepared ourselves for a night NOT at the Ritz and walked in, only to be politely informed that they were overbooked. The usual name-calling ensued, but the gentleman at the reception was firm, and assured us that he would be putting us up in a much better hotel nearby.

Of course being Indians, we never believe that anyone really means it when they say something like that, so with sullen faces and pursed-up noses we pulled up at our alternate place of stay, ready with the choicest selection of local gaalis. But gulp - sure enough - it was actually a nicer place! A nice bar cum reception, bigger rooms, flatter TVs, and a softer bed greeted us - learning? Believe these Dutch guys when they say something - they usually mean it.

After this welcome piece of luck, we wandered out to hit the streets of Amsterdam - in the 'colorful' sort of way as we walked around the red light districts and more 'famous' parts of the city. But as a friend had dismissively told me and to which I now firmly agree - you've seen one prostitute, you've seen 'em all ... so we just saw the characters who had turned up. Loud Americans, desi honeymooners looking suitably horrified in that shy come-hither way with one another, Indian families complete with children in prams (I swear ... WHY WHY WHY??!! Its a red light district for pete's sake!!!) and the usual drunk undergrads.

Although I'm sure I may be asked for pictures from my regulars, it seems the managers of the above-mentioned business establishments (read: sex shops) are fairly intolerant of pikchur-clicking tourists, and many a Canon have found themselves swimming in the canals. So you'll just have to rely on mental pictures :-) But did take a couple of odd ones.

Baba coffee shop (yes - the more tolerant variety of coffee shop) complete with little Ganesha statues (just above the entrance) to namastey visitors in. Charming. Wonder what the VHP would have to say to this little display of Indian hospitality.

Random pic. No one gave poor Bar Second Chance a second chance. Hee hee.

Din-din was at this 2 floored Chinese place which was so packed to the gills, that they brought us our starters, main course and dessert at the same time. But what totally sold me was that they even had an entire vegetarian menu - so would totally thumbs up the place.

Pictures from around town. Some lovely old buildings.

The rest on another post. Whew. Cheers folks.

Sushma

(PS Am in testing since there seems to be some issues with the Blogger videos - let me know if they don't play. Aargh. Technology :-)

Amsterdam Dag Een

I've always found the question silly. You know which one - the one about 'Where is your favorite place in the world?' ... but finally I think I know what the answer is. I used to think Santorini (chintu Greek island populated by lots of hot men) was a nice place to chill out in ... I once remember thinking that the Andamans was pretty great ... but now I've realized the truth. The place needs to be more than just a chillout zone, it needs to be more than a vacation spot, it needs to be more than an exciting adventure, it needs to be a place where you're inspired to work, play, have fun, explore, learn and most importantly - be yourself ... it needs to simply be MORE. And for me, I always thought that list started and ended with Bombay, but there's now a new addition - and that's Amsterdam.

I assume that after such a senti intro, its kinda redundant to reiterate the fact that we had a great trip :-) It was totally draining (I assume my frenetic plans might have had something to do with it) but we really did get to see quite a bit of Dutch-land, and had a lot of fun along the way as well.

It started with a trip to Eindhoven on Friday night, which is sort of midway between Aachen and Amsterdam. Its a fairly nice city, very modern-ish since large parts of Eindhoven were destroyed during WWII. It's more famously known as the home of Philips, the light bulb guys. Spotted no particular historical eye-candy except for a large Church which did look all pretty in the night.

We also wandered down the central walk which looked no different in complexion than others on a Friday night - filled with drunken undergrads, overdressed chickitas and gawking tourists.

Sadly though, the copious amounts of alcohol consumed ensured that we got up much later than planned to make our trip into Amsterdam. Combined with the fact that they had no direct trains ONLY on that day into the city, we finally crawled into Amsterdam only by around 2ish in the afternoon. But as they say, a plan is a plan, so we trotted onto the first item on the Dutch agenda.

Amsterdam is a city of canals and houseboats, so its horribly mandatory but kinda charming to do the much reviled 'canal cruise' through the city to check out the sights.

Little difficult to appreciate from this view, but the idea is that when you're sitting in the cruise, you can see this sorta 'oldish' pov in your direct line of view. Guess in the night it should look fairly nice ...

A set of flats - yes, flats - complete with living rooms, bedrooms etc etc ... pretty sure I wouldn't recommend for anyone with a wee touch of the seasickness :-)

Drat the Chinese!!! They're everywhere!!!

Don't know if you can make out - but if you use your x-ray vision, you can clearly see a huge ship which is actually a ship museum of some kind. Amsterdam is potty about their museums, you'll find a museum in the same frequency you'll find a coffeeshop (the regular kinds, not the 'fun' types :-) - a potty museum is possibly the only thing they don't actually have. Hmm. I smell ... a business opportunity.

Canals, canals and more canals. The boat guy executed some fairly alarming 90-degree turns and u-turns with fair nonchalance, but I guess he could do this ride even if he were smoked up to the gills. Which he possibly was I guess ...

There's tons of stuff to see on the waters ... the bachelor party (movie below - apologize for length, we sort of drifted out of view), the various boathouses (and believe me, its just brilliant to look inside and see complete HOUSES with offices and bathrooms and kitchens ... phew)

Some more pictures from around the canals ...

Loved the houses in Amsterdam - an arthritis patient's nightmare most definitely though - they are long and thin. So its nothing unusual for your house to have a living room on one floor, a bedroom on one, another on another level, and then an attic.

Ha ha. Pliss not be parking your boat here. Many thanks.

The obscene line outside Anne Frank's House in Amsterdam. It seems you sometimes need to wait almost 2-3 hours to get in.

The main Protestant Church ...

A giant yellow clog shoe boat. Too cute. Sort of like owning a yellow Nano.

Phew. That's it for this post. Tons more pictures and videos on the next. On the media front, have been listening to the new 'Lafangey Parindey' soundtrack ... quite funky and interesting, and seems like a fun film. Would definitely recommend a dekko / suno. We also saw the new Park Chan Wook film (the guy who made the Vengeance trilogy including OldBoy remade as Zinda) 'Thirst' ... was a little tired of the vampires theme ... nowadays it seems any film has some sort of lycanthrope or bloodsucker thrown into it to get the teenage girls in the audience swooning. But was worth a watch - interesting plot line since it makes the resident vampire a Father as well (church-walla) and there's a fairly hot chick in it, who actually has a substantial role to play. A little morbid at times, and also since its dubbed, it doesn't have the possibility of Oscar-winning lines like this one ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAfueVPMNwM

Oh well. You can't have everything. Cheerio guys.