Thursday, April 9, 2020

November + December 2019



1
Debra Messing was also born on August 15, just a few years before myself!


30
There is a Blossoms (Mayim Bialik) poster on the wall in the Crazy Joe Davola scene of Seinfeld!


December 
2
Madonna and Sean Penn got married a day after I was born! LOLZZZ I am married now! :)
Also, was the guy who shouted “You’re breathtaking” at Keanu Reeves a Seinfeld fan? This was around the time Keanu gave people a ride near Bakersfield. Cue Space to Bakersfield, please, as I had done last night, to lull me into a good Sunday night’s sleep.

12


24
Finished with this ennui-filled idiotic place. Adios, 2019! On to new things! 2020, here I come!

Friday, November 1, 2019

Ack-tober

1
Jane Leeves was integral to the resolution of Seinfeld

4
Founder’s Day, Lawrence School, Sanawar.

Also, George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) was born in Motihari, Bihar, India! TIL thanks to KBC!

5
A Life Afloat is epistemological, but not too much in its current state. Perhaps more so in the second volume that I’m beginning to work on de novo (TBBT).

7

Phil Hartman, RIP, was in Three Amigos.

23
Andre Braugher was in City of Angels

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Sept-ender, and an assignment for getting hired






September


3

5
Netflix FTW!

10


30
Apothegm and aphorism.

End of a roller coaster month.



Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Awesomax August

Yeah, I claim that portmanteau: awesomax!



August
7
Fed up.


8
Gotta explore.


9
Joanna Lumley was born in Srinagar! Saw her on the Doctor Who Comic Relief Special, foreshadowing a female Doctor.

12
Phil Hartman was in the SNL sketch that spoofed the Fay caning in Singapore.
Kelsey Grammer’s daughter is the voice of Summer in Rick and Morty.

20
Back and hating it. Gotta ensure participation in SRCP by Comedy Central. Last date is today. Speaking/writing/thinking like Rorschach.

22
Bastizzz organization being pitched for here; I just filled my ITR today! Spirals…


23
Richard Vernon did voice work for the Radio Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.



26
One more week to go…

31
And done!



From: Aradhye Ackshatt
Sent: Wednesday, August 7, 2019 10:32 AM
To: 'Aradhye Ackshatt'; 'saumya.axat@gmail.com'
Cc: 'ackshatt@gmail.com'; 'ackshatt.a11@fms.edu'
Subject: RE: Jan 19

July
4
Independence Day: the Movie
The swine returns from the land of the freebies and the home of the depraved



Ulysses contd.:
“You’re looking extra.” – how much social media speak occurs in Joyce? Did it seep through pop culture and permeate the internet?
Success for us is the death of intellect and of the imagination.
Is “time is money” really Roman?
“…aftercourse of both our lives.” “I’ in the first person is used here. Who is talking, and about whom? Bloom about himself and Stephen Dedalus?
Even the act of pushing up one’s spectacles is described allegorically: “…steadied them to a new focus.”
Contumely: insolent or insulting language or treatment







10
Hold up! Shut the front door! What what what? Ghost World, the movie based on the comic book, has a Mohammad Rafi song as its first track on the OST:


11
I saw John Mahoney’s tribute video mention Tin Men, and a spiral of wiki walking from watching an episode of Frasier (in which Mahoney gave an acclaimed performance) led me to the movie.



16
A timestamp spiral on Twitter while updating my Gmail signature for Canada


17
The West End adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is the most expensive mounting of a production, yet it failed to win over critics, even though it also had A R Rahman – India’s de facto virtuoso for decades – scoring the musical. {A Life Afloat}


18
John Lithgow played Don Quixote! He had Bob Hoskins (of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fame) as his Sancho Panza.


23
Keanu Reeves has played the Buddha/Sidhhartha in Little Buddha


26
Mystery Team was the debut for Aubrey Plaza.


29
Derek Jacobi narrated the audiobook for Farmer Giles of Ham by Tolkien.



Wednesday, August 7, 2019

July Fly By

July
4
Independence Day: the Movie
The swine returns from the land of the freebies and the home of the depraved



Ulysses contd.:
“You’re looking extra.” – how much social media speak occurs in Joyce? Did it seep through pop culture and permeate the internet?
Success for us is the death of intellect and of the imagination.
Is “time is money” really Roman?
“…aftercourse of both our lives.” “I’ in the first person is used here. Who is talking, and about whom? Bloom about himself and Stephen Dedalus?
Even the act of pushing up one’s spectacles is described allegorically: “…steadied them to a new focus.”
Contumely: insolent or insulting language or treatment







10
Hold up! Shut the front door! What what what? Ghost World, the movie based on the comic book, has a Mohammad Rafi song as its first track on the OST:


11
I saw John Mahoney’s tribute video mention Tin Men, and a spiral of wiki walking from watching an episode of Frasier (in which Mahoney gave an acclaimed performance) led me to the movie.



16
A timestamp spiral on Twitter while updating my Gmail signature for Canada


17
The West End adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is the most expensive mounting of a production, yet it failed to win over critics, even though it also had A R Rahman – India’s de facto virtuoso for decades – scoring the musical. {A Life Afloat}


18
John Lithgow played Don Quixote! He had Bob Hoskins (of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fame) as his Sancho Panza.


23
Keanu Reeves has played the Buddha/Sidhhartha in Little Buddha


26
Mystery Team was the debut for Aubrey Plaza.


29
Derek Jacobi narrated the audiobook for Farmer Giles of Ham by Tolkien.



Thursday, July 4, 2019

June Toon Tune

June
5
Always by Steven Spielberg was Audrey Hepburn’s last role.


7 [ongoing]
{Ulysses (Joyce), from a few pages in}
A little Newtonian physics in Ulysses, a rumination on weight by Bloom.
A voyeur he is, no doubt about that. No denigration towards Joyce – Bloom is a character he created, nothing more.
Gem of a line: Hate company when [it’s] you.
He (Bloom) seems to have kept a valise lent by one of his friends, Bob Cowley.
His father was fond of Kate Bateman (promoted by P T Barnum, no less) when she acted at the Adelphi in London.
Same line: he was born in 1966.
Italian seems to be the second language in this part.
People singing Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
A little stream of consciousness in flowery language while reading his paramour’s letter.
Coombe, a Dublin landmark, is mentioned twice – but in the same, rather unflattering, context.
Buddha is compared to Jesus (Ecce Homo).
Christianity’s sacraments are dwelt upon, mostly unfavorably except in the choice of wince over other types of beverage.
Under the bridge – reminds me of the RHCP song.
Who is the man in Latin, and, perhaps appropriately, a paragraph on eunuchs in choirs.
Confessions, and their furtive futility.
A “quest for the philosopher’s stone” at the chemist.
“The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck.” – Truthat (the usage of an)!
“Clever of nature.” Indeed, Mr. Joyce.
The repetitive ‘I’s that will be thought (and/or said) by Molly Bloom at the end are foreshadowed.
A very brief critique of college advertising.
“Always passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.”
The funeral procession proceeds through Dublin.
Mr. Dedalus badmouths Mulligan, possibly with good reason, and threatens to “tickle his catastrophe”, whatever that means to Joyce.
“It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom”, regarding the sun. Lolz :D
Some rhyming of stones and owns bookend Bloom dwelling upon death.
Quite a few morbid thoughts, including about cadavers.
Simnel cake is a marzipan plus dried fruits cake.
Hindu widows – given recent events, this strikes a deeper chord in me than it would have barely a quarter of a year ago. Time-life. Who knows? The future is unpredictable. My wife could be forced to join ranks with DM, if they were to fall in the same category through my demise. What ways the world weaves.
V & A Museum springs to mind due to the Pink Floyd showcase: Our Mortal Remains. More of the death theme today. Seems like a pallid undercurrent.
Book, rook; priest is toady so he croaks for the recently croaked. Named like a coffin, too.
“Once you are dead you are dead.” Couldn’t be any more precise.
A couple of characters attract Bloom’s relatively fleeting attention. Coitus is hardly ever far from his mind, even among graves. The graveyard (rather, the ground beneath it) is dwelled upon by a character, literally, while Bloom thinks about it grotesquely.
“Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.” Every moment buries its predecessor.
“Silly superstition that about thirteen.” Even my apartment complex doesn’t have floor number 13 – triskaidekaphobia, as I said yesterday to a relative. That reminds me, my family has grown in number.
“If we were all suddenly somebody else.” – Common wishful thinking.
“Out of the frying pan of life into the fire of purgatory.” – How differently Tolkien used this phrase in The Hobbit!
“Out of sight, out of mind.” I’m (only instinctively) sure he wasn’t the first to coin this phrase.
A few euphemisms, and thoughts I cannot place in context offhand.
Cheese = corpse of milk. Zoroastrianism referred to, for their rituals for the dead. Significantly moribund thoughts.
A character Menton-ed before walks by with Cunningham, reminding Bloom of some other character and Molly’s interaction. Courtship?

{TBC in July}





15


27
cri de Coeur

29
Almost, biopsy and chintz – alphabets in alphabetical order
Chintz is from Hindi, btw.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

May Merry Way


May
1

A hover of trout – a collective noun courtesy a Nat Geo mailer

3
Michio Kaku spiraled in and out yesterday and today – first as a co-passenger in Miniverse (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6776808/ ) and now as one of the luminaries who uses Hitchhiker’s Guide terminology in his works. Am I wrong in saying his name sounds female? Perhaps I am getting zapped between him and Ms. Kate Micucci.

15
Hayao Miyazaki has worked with Toei Studios, who created Interstella 5555, Daft Punk’s Discovery album’s animation.

Maybe it’s time I got back on the Japanese culture trail, beginning with Haruki Murakami. The factual Harari does not appeal to me – I shall resume Pynchon as well. Joyce’s Ulysses is open in a tab, as almost always.

Exegete

16
A spiral for Thursday, courtesy Joyce
“Want pure fresh water. Thursday : not a good day either for a
mutton kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a
pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling.”

Never read (but may have heard) an alphabet recital like this
“Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee double
you. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry.
Mine. Slieve Bloom.”

17
Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog) is referenced in Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit – Will Travel.
Apropos the Thames meander, rowing is both hands on one oar while sculling is one hand on each of a pair of oars.

La boheme > abbesses in the video > Paris Metro’s deepest station > edicule (dragonfly entrance)

In Breaking Bad, when Walt does donuts in and sets fire to his new car, Boots of Chinese Plastic plays.


20
Spiral shows up: TV Tropes’ Chekov’s Gun page is linked to by Lauran Thoman’s piece on GoT Season 8 Episode 5 The Bells: http://collider.com/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5-problems/#wildfire


21
https://what-if.xkcd.com/42/  42 spiral! J The little joys of life…

Cannery Row spiral through the Monterey Bay aquarium < Acrylate resin casting < Bromine (illustrative and secure) < bromo < theobroma


Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Tender April

April
1
I share Cliff Pickover’s birthday! Just 28 Years Later…



TIL from Stephen Fry in America: ‘quark’ is a James Joyce word. Also, I’ve mispronounced archipelago since childhood :D

2
Stephen Fry beat Ricky Gervais’ When the Whistle Blows in the fictional BAFTAs in Extras.

6
Cannery Row, another ongoing spiral J

11
I was reminded by a good friend yesterday that I also share an exact birthday with Nipsey Hu$$le

30
Tolkien later lamented, 



"The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."

Thursday, April 4, 2019

March On

1
Vidocq inspired Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, possibly Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, and is mentioned by Herman Melville and Charles Dickens! I would like to follow in the footsteps of such a great list of classical authors.


Mahashivratri and the lead up to 4/20 begins

Dame Helen Mirren portrayed the Queen in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. She was also in 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and did voice work in HHGttG in 2004.


6
Alistair MacLean’s The Last Frontier has already been (loosely) adapted to film as The Secret Ways in 1961. I’d very much like to have Wellesian or Kubrickian auteur control over a version I make of the intriguing novel, which I read circa 2000.

14
I wonder which edition of The Salmon of Doubt I have. Will check when I remember this while home.

20
The Dam Busters – Pink Floyd The Wall movie – trench run in Star Wars: A New Hope

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Sluggish Feb

4
Jon Favreau was in Harold Russell’s last movie. HR got 2 Oscars for the same performance: 1947, The Best Years Of Our Lives.

16
Time passes and 6hourism deepens. Also, I would like to see the YTV version of Watership Down.

20
Readomania added to Blackbird and Penguin Random House