All lines are busy – please call later

I received a call this morning from an acquaintance who spent the first what-seemed-like- innumerable-minutes explaining to me how busy she is. She has a full time job and has to come home and cook and clean. And commuting to work is such a headache. The ramble went on and on with me not listening to a word past a point. In fact I was reading the paper when she called (yes I have time to read the newspaper – I am so un-busy!!) and I went back to it uninterested in her busy lifestyle and unable to focus on it.

Oh in case you’re reading and thinking, 'is he talking about me?' you can heave a sigh of relief because I’m not. My opening character of this piece clearly doesn’t have the time to read my postings, so I don’t send them to her. Heaven forbid I give her more to do. However, if the thought did come to your mind, the next time you’re trying to come up with an excuse, think of something a little more original.

It annoys me to no end when someone who hasn’t been in touch for a while, hasn’t returned your call(s) and/or email(s) decides to get in touch with the classic ‘I’ve been so busy’ excuse. Unless the excuse is followed up with some compelling reason that has caused him/her to be busier than the rest of the working population, I really don’t buy it. I would rather be told ‘sorry but calling you back wasn’t a priority’ or ‘I did see the caller id but I wasn’t in the mood to speak to you and then it slipped my mind’ or even ‘you are at the bottom of my list of people to call – that’s why it took so long’. I may get offended but I’m sure I’ll get a laugh out of it.

We’re all busy. I have a full life and I’m not talking about going to work, cooking and cleaning. Those are just things that I’m forced to do. It’s all the things that I want to do that me really busy. And considering that I just resigned from my job, starting next week I’m going to be even busier!

I’m so irritated with the ‘busy’ word that I’ve now started substituting it with ‘tied-up’. Which, depending upon how the conversation is going, can lead to some very interesting visions.
“Sorry I haven’t been able to speak to you in the past month but I’ve been tied up. In fact I just got free!”

New Yorkers pretend to be the busiest people in the world. It seems like everyone is running to get somewhere and they’re always running late. Most of the people I’ve met here are ‘extremely busy’ but upon probing, their lives seem no more hectic than mine (a lot less actually most of the time). As much as I’ve grown to love this city, I’m also convinced that the majority of the people here are completely self-obsessed and think it’s almost embarrassing to be in regular touch as their secret of not being busy will be revealed. When I first moved here and I’d meet someone new, I’d be like ‘lets meet up sometime’ and we’d exchange numbers or email addresses. Silly me, I’d even try calling or texting, not knowing that everyone’s too busy to call or text back. I was beginning to get a complex, but then I found out that this is how you’re supposed to act over here. Sadly I think New Yorkers are some of the loneliest people in the world.
On a happy note, I also came across people who have a mind of their own and don’t care about conforming. I can proudly call them my friends.

I’d love to end this piece by saying something preachy like ‘our family and friends are the most important things in our lives and we should never be too busy to be in touch with them’ or ‘we can always get another job but its hard to replace a good friend’ or ‘running after money could result in people running away from you’.

But I’m not gonna ….

Of Mice and Movies

Recently I came across a mouse in my apartment. Which I found out, is not an uncommon occurrence in New York apartments. I had suspected that these creatures did make an appearance but I had never actually seen one for myself. So when I got out of bed a few night’s ago to get a drink of water and turned on the kitchen light I saw IT. We completely took each other by surprise and scared the s*** out of each other. He began running for cover and I muffled up a scream and jumped around a little, not knowing what else to do. A few seconds later, I saw it disappear into a crevice and I made my way back into the bedroom without the drink of water. My heart was pounding and I got under the covers and quietly went back to sleep.

The next morning I called the building superintendent who sent the exterminator who set up traps and did whatever else he was supposed to do. Gave me all kinds of tips on how I could prevent mice from returning in the future. But I haven’t seen once since and I’m really not one for following instructions.

Anyway, the only reason I tell this story is so I could have a clever-ish title for this posting!

So now I’m going to move on to movies.

Is it just me or did Hollywood hit rock bottom with the quality of movies last year? I mean if you look at the Oscar nominations for the past year, you have ‘Michael Clayton’ a mediocre ‘thriller’ at best which you forget as soon as you leave the theatre. ‘No Country for Old Men’ a much hyped movie about a maniac who goes about killing everyone. ‘There will be Blood’ – highly pretentious with an eye on the Oscars (just like ‘Babel’ was a couple of years ago). ‘Juno’, a heartwarming movie about a pregnant sarcastic, cynical and funny teenager, which deserved to make the money that it did, but an Oscar nomination? And finally ‘Atonement’ which I guess had all the ingredients to please the critics so I’m going to let this one go.

I was having a discussion about the recent mediocrity in Hollywood with a friend of mine and we both were of the opinion that they should have just cancelled the Oscars. “Sorry, but this year there will be no Academy Awards because we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and still not coming up with great films. See ya next year … hopefully!”

I watched the latest Indiana Jones a couple of weeks ago. This was one movie I was really looking forward to and was extremely disappointed that it had received such poor reviews. So even though my interest had dwindled considerably, I eventually decided to go watch it. Maybe it was my lack of expectations, but I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I thought it had all the ingredients (masala) I was looking for. It had the pace, the adventure, the humor and the whole look! Loved it! Of course no Oscar nominations for this one though!

Another movie that I really enjoyed in the recent past is called ‘The Visitor’. A small film with no big names performing in it. Highly recommended. Don’t miss it.

Sadly, these are the only two movies that I’ve actually been glad to have watched this year. Slim pickings my friends. Is Hollywood running out of ideas? I sincerely hope not because we so look forward to original films from LA. And if Hollywood is running out of ideas, where is Bollywood going lift its ideas from (sorry couldn’t resist that)?

And I cannot end this ‘movie write-up’ without talking about one of my most favorite films that I watched once again this week – ‘Fight Club’. Every time I watch it, I seem to get enthralled by it even more! Of course the credit for the movie has to go to the book written by Chuck Palahniuk. I remember our book club in Bangalore read the book and watched the movie and all the women cringed. The men, on the other hand, thought it was the greatest! I never thought I would use the word ‘brilliant’ to describe any performance by Brad Pitt. He should be kissing the director's feet that he got to do this movie, by far his best. And Edward Norton, as always is outstanding. This movie probably has the most amazing and memorable dialogues that I’ve come across. My favorite line in the movie - the things you own end up owning you - Tyler rocks! And the entire premise is SO original, and if you think about it, SO pertinent. This is one movie that you either GET and love or DON'T GET and hate. There is no middle ground. Okay, I’m going to stop gushing now…..I just want to say that I even bought the script for this movie (the things you can buy on the streets of New York City!)

I could go on and on about movies but I’m going to stop before I lose each and every one of you.
I’m stopping.
I’ve stopped.
THE END (credits rolling).

NYC Subway Spotting!

It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. I was in the subway headed towards downtown, meeting some friends at a bar. Santa got into the train and made his way to the empty seat right next to me. I looked at him and smiled.
“You’re the skinniest Santa I’ve ever seen”, I said.
“It’s almost 2008 dude,” he replied, “Santa has to be in shape”.
I couldn’t agree more.
“So, what would you like for Christmas?” asked Santa.
“World peace” I replied, completely dead pan and we both laughed out loud.
We arrived at the 14th Street station and Santa got up.
“Santa needs a lot more beers. Ho! Ho! Ho!” he announced and got off the subway.
It was around 10 pm and thankfully there were no kids around.

This was last week. A South East Asian couple was sitting directly in front of me. He had his hair down to his shoulders and she had it as short as a boy’s. He wore earrings in both ears, a bracelet, necklace and several rings. She wore no jewelry. Thankfully he wasn’t wearing make-up and neither was she. Every 30 seconds they kissed each other. They shared the same iPod. They were dressed almost exactly alike – black Tshirts with cut off sleeves and tight, tight jeans. When I got off the train it was time for the 30 second kiss.

African-American male. Probably in his 30s. Sleeveless Tshirt and shorts. Arms and legs completely covered with tattoos. Wearing at least 10 different kinds of beads around his neck and a few around his wrist. Not a care in the world.

Overweight couple. Daughter wearing pink. Definitely tourists!

Indian IT nerd – glasses, mustache, Lee jeans and clunky gym shoes. Probably new in the city. Hopefully 6 months here will make him more stylish. More likely to move to New Jersey.

Big homeless man sleeping. Long hair, long beard. Unkept, unclean, uncared. Noone around him because of the unpleasant odor.

The Jackson 5 impersonators. Father and four sons (supposedly) – big Afro hair, unbuttoned polyester shirts, songs from the 70s. Made quite an impression on the commuters and quite a packet I must say!

A group of office colleagues returning from a sporting event. Drunk, loud and obnoxious. They could very well have been my friends and I in any part of the world!

The three white bald guys - same height, same size, looked exactly alike – triplets or generic white men?

The Hispanic mother and daughter that kept laughing about something the entire time. They would say something in Spanish and burst out laughing. There were bouts of giggling followed by unashamed loud laughs. I had no clue what was so funny but it definitely made me smile.

Never a dull moment in the New York City subways. Just keep your eyes and ears open!