Angry Birds

“What are you doing on the phone, Appa?”

“I am playing Angry Birds.”

“Everybody is playing it. Even Aachi is addicted to it!”

“Yeah. It is fun. Want to try? You just attack the pigs by slinging the birds at them.”

“Why?”

“Because, the pigs ate the birds’ eggs and the birds are angry.”

“Pigs don’t eat eggs, do they?”

“Hmm. I don’t know. I think pigs eat everything.”

“Anyway, it is silly.”

“Okay. So, what do you want to do?”

“Will you paint with me?”

“What? You would rather create something than addictively bomb and destroy green pigs?”

“What??!”

“Never mind. You paint, I will watch.”

Steyn vs Tendulkar

Hundred number 51 wasn’t easy for Tendulkar having had to survive through Dale Steyn’s fiery spells of relentless swing bowling on the third day of the ongoing Test match against South Africa. But it ranks very highly on his extraordinarily long list of awesome knocks.

What an outstanding display of cricketing skills this contest was. As Steyn bowled ball after ball of accurate late outswing deliveries, Tendulkar countered by some excellently judged leaves and playing with soft hands when squared up. And squared up he was on more than a few occasions, with the ball either missing the bat or finding the edge and dropping short. In my two decades of watching cricket, I haven’t seen such an outstanding display of sustained outswing bowling. Steyn was remarkably accurate and consistently got the ball to swing from different lines. While Tendulkar faced and survived without ever dominating more than two-thirds of the deliveries bowled by Steyn on the third day – Tendulkar faced Steyn’s entire first spell of the morning  uninterrupted –  he was too hot to handle for the other batsmen with four wickets falling at the other end. This battle between Steyn and Tendulkar was more than worth the sleepless night I endured to catch it live and yet another reminder as to how exhilarating Test cricket can be.

Sehwag, Tendulkar and Akhtar

Sehwag narrating a fun incident on the field involving Sachin Tendulkar and Shoaib Akhtar -

Movie: Kick-Ass (2010)

Having no idea about the movie except that it was an action comedy based on a comic book series and based on Netflix’s guesstimate that I would most likely rate it four stars, I watched Kick-Ass last weekend with low expectations and boy was I pleasantly surprised!

It starts off slowly with Dave, a high school nobody, bothered that ‘thousands of people want to be Paris Hilton and nobody wants to be Spiderman’, deciding to don a costume and fight crime as ‘Kick-Ass’. A couple of mishaps and millions of hits on YouTube later, he gets caught up in the revenge plot of superhero ‘Big Daddy’ and  his daughter ‘Hit-Girl’ against supervillain Frank and his wannabe villain son Chris aka ‘Red Mist’. From then on, the movie coasts forward, alternating between super funny and ultra violent, and ends literally with a bang. The action sequences are brutal, stylish and over the top, borrowing heavily from Tarantino, especially ‘Kill Bill’.

The highlight (and apparently a point of controversy) of the movie is ‘Hit-Girl’ - the foul-mouthed, brainwashed, well trained 11yr old assassin. She takes a bullet at point blank range and goes for ice cream afterwards; she orders weapons while drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows; she is thrilled to get a switch blade as a gift; she handles weapons like toys. Mouthing crude expletives that would put rappers to shame and brutally massacring villains, she is dynamite on screen.

A must watch, if you don’t mind a 11yr old mouthing expletives and kicking some serious ass.

Today is Tomorrow

When my wife told our 4yr old daughter that she can have a lollipop the next day, she promptly asked the next morning ‘Amma, can I have a lollipop? Remember yesterday you said that I can have one tomorrow? Today is tomorrow, right?’.