An Indian summer - 1

A warm (and I mean that literally - it's hovering in the high 90's here) hello to our very loyal readers, followers, feed readers, lurkers et al. from India. I haven't written much on these pages for a long, long time and that's because I had other oh-so-slightly important things to attend. Like finalizing on a medical school. And graduation.

But now that I am on a glorious three-week long vacation in India, I have bucketloads of free time. What better way to spend it than churning out blog posts (some of which will, inevitably, be of dubious quality)?

The Flight: The prospect of flying to India from the states is frightening. Total flying time is routinely around 16-20 hours. Unless you are flying to and from a major airport (e.g. Los Angeles to Mumbai), add a few more hours to that flying time for connecting flights, layovers and road transportation. In my case, I flew Emirates airlines from LAX to Dubai and from Dubai to Ahmedabad, a comfortably sized city in the western state of Gujarat. From there, my destination is about 90 km. Emirates is one of the handful of airlines that treats its economy-class passengers as more than worthless cargo. In-flight service is generous and courteous.

I wasted a good two hours trying to like the Adam Sandler-driven trash vehicle "Just go with it", also starring Jennifer Aniston and, inexplicably, Nicole Kidman, finally settling down to watch reruns of my favorite TV show "Mad Men." Dubai's airport is large enough to house an entire eastern European nation or one of those trendy enclaves like Monaco. There I spend a whole $6 on a tiny cup of Haagen-Dazs ice-cream.

After clearing immigration and customs at Ahmedabad airport, I arrived at my destination (a small town called Vallabh Vidyanagar) at 6 in the morning, local time on Wednesday. I had left LA at 1 pm local time on Monday. In all, I spent about 30 hours in flights, layovers and other miscellany.

As I am writing this, the ceiling fan is groaning at top speed, desperately trying to generate enough cool air to ward the heat away. My friends and grandparents told me it was a lot hotter last week. Should I be glad, then?

That's it for this first installment. In the next part, I will talk a bit more about the place I am at (history, customs, what's life like here and so on), but in the meantime, say hello to my little friend that allows me to communicate with the outside world:

It's a series of tubes!

Review: Code Geass - A Gripping Anime Drama with an Unforgettable Protagonist

"I will crush Britannia."

These are the opening words of Code Geass, spoken by disaffected Britannian royal and certified magnificent bastard Lelouch Lamperouge. Code Geass is a two-season supernatural-mecha-drama anime. It is set in an early-future alternate world dominated by the Britannian Empire, a sort of twisted child of the USA and Imperial Britain dedicated to a doctrine of Social Darwinism. This Empire turns upon the child prince Lelouche after the assassination of his queen mother. Lelouch swears a two-fold oath: to wreak bloody vengeance upon the Britannian Empire, and to create a new world where he, his crippled sister, and other weak nobodies can live in peace.

On his path, Lelouch gains a unique superpower and creates a caped alter-ego, "Zero," a hammy revolutionary demagogue balanced somewhere between Robin Hood and Vladamir Lenin. The story covers Zero's undercover miracle-working at the head of a nationalistic Japanese terror cell and his absurd daytime antics at (what else) a Japanese boarding school. Elegant character designs (by CLAMP) and a stirring soundtrack complement passable graphics to bring this piece to life.

But the political drama, high-octane mecha fights (did I mention the mechas have roller-skates?) and Hogwarts-esque school silliness is just the icing on the cake. The real heart of Code Geass is the tension between Lelouch's two vows, his quest for power and his personal bonds, particularly to his sister. Code Geass takes a classic formula - hero corrupted by power - and adds a fresh twist. Lelouch earnestly tries to hide behind the mask of the monster, to submerse himself in the character of "Zero." Whether he succeeds is for the audience to judge. Even in those delicious moments when the facade cracks, the audience is left wondering: Is this the true Lelouch? Or is this Zero in a moment of weakness?

I won't say anything more on this subject, except that, as a brother who tends to baby his little sister, I found Lelouch's tender relationship with his sister Nunnally genuinely touching. But even as he protects Nunnally, he deceives her - here again, Lelouch is an enigma.

Code Geass takes three staples of the anime genre and executes them with refreshing grace. The first is "The Monster," as noted above. The second is "The Genius." Lelouch is billed as a child prodigy, and gets away with a few ridiculous feats because of this, including piloting a mecha training-free. However, true to form, Lelouch's genius flickers between genuine ability and facade. The best moments of the anime (and there are a lot of them) come whenever Lelouch begins losing control. Picture a puppeteer trying to hold one too many strings. When his schemes begin unravelling, Lelouch freezes, he panics, and the audience laps it up.

The third element Code Geass nails is "The Gift." Lelouch's "Geass," granted to him in the first episode, gives him the ability to force any person to fulfill one single command. I was able to get through this whole article without explaining the Geass superpower because, really, the ability to manipulate others is almost an extension of Lelouch's character.

All-in-all, Code Geass is a surprisingly deep series that will appeal to diehard anime-fans and first-timers alike. The series is by no means flawless - in particular, the character of Suzaku, ostensibly Lelouch's foil, tends to get a bit muddled. The series is also full of the ridiculously excessive nudity, innuendo, and schoolgirl-fetish-material that seems obligatory in an anime, so youngsters: Beware! The first season is by far the better of the two, but while season two (or R2) gets a bit lost mid-way, it finds its pace again near the conclusion. For all you non-anime fans out there, there is an English dub, but if you can handle subtitles, everyone agrees the sub (subtitled version) is the way to go.

So, if you're looking for engaging characterization, crafty intrigue, fun mecha fights, or gratuitous overly-bouncy animated boobies, check Code Geass out! Rating: 3.15/π

WTF Pictures! - 4: Awaken YOUR animal passions

From good friend and roommate (with whom - and I cannot stress this enough - I run a highly successful webcomic On Bogosity) shared this picture from Amazon's Kindle store today:

Not very subtle, are they?

Now I get why Amazon sold more Kindle e-books than print books this year.

Club B-cafe

I am glad I am a regular patron of this club:




Remember kids, the fourth swipe will get you another f**king bagel and there are no bathrooms...

Some thoughts on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal

Say you are a 32-year old maid working at a swank hotel in New York city, the kind where suites cost $3000 a night. It's just an ordinary day and you knock on a suite sometime around noon for cleaning. You wait but no one responds. Naturally you use your master key to enter.

Let us pose a few scenarios to try to guess what happens next:

A) The guest is out having lunch at a fancy place. You clean up and move to other rooms.
B) The guest is in the balcony enjoying the sights and sounds. You murmur a soft apology for barging in, but the guest heartily tells you it's OK. You clean up and move to other rooms.
C) The guest rushes toward you in his birthday suit from the bathroom and manhandles you. You bravely fight his aggressive overtures and overcome the shock of seeing his 62-year body in the birthday suit and report him.

If you answered C) you deserve a Klondike bar. This is, mas o menos, what happened with international banker and potential French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn yesterday, according to the hotel maid (whose identity has not been disclosed, wisely).

Strauss-Kahn, or DSK as he is commonly known, is was the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a global monetary institute that sort of helps out developing countries with loans and stuff.

According to the official version of the events, DSK fled the upscale hotel in haste and boarded an Air France flight from JFK to Paris. Meanwhile, the maid complained about the sexual assault and New York's  finest got to work. Since the airport is under the jurisdiction of an entity called the New Jersey and New York Port Authority, they were notified about the incident by the Special Victims Unit (yeah, the one whose exploits have been all over the Law and Order TV show).  

By this time DSK was sitting in first class waiting for the jet to depart. Port Authority badasses boarded the plane and took him away for questioning. TEN MINUTES before it was scheduled to take off. Within four hours of the alleged incident happening, DSK was chillin' in a Manhattan holding cell, awaiting a police lineup (where he was subsequently identified by his accuser), a string of medical tests, and eventual arraignment in court.

DSK on the walk of shame. Note the dude in the back smirking [nytimes.com]

As of this writing, he was denied bail by the judge. He has been charged with rape and other serious crimes. His lawyer is some hotshot who represented noted gun idiot Plaxico Burress and P. Diddy. CNN tells me he has also represented mafiosos Vincent "The Chin" Chingate and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. Yeah, a character straight outta John Grisham novels, this one.

Life in the fast lane

I have wild dreams of becoming a famous writer. Occasionally, I muster up enough determination to crawl out of my laziness to jot short vignettes that I imagine could become smashing short stories. Hah delusions.

Anyway, I noticed I haven't written anything worthwhile in ages and although Lafayette manned the fort ably, I need to pitch in too.

So enjoy this vignette that will, in due time, become the next best Los Angeles novel:

My normal honk-to-mile frequency is around 2. 2.53, to be technical. But today I was easily approaching the freakishly astronomical realm of 10 honks per mile. I felt a sweet, deep jolt of savage satisfaction as my sweaty fist hit the vinyl expanse on the middle of the steering wheel. The oblong Toyota logo shuddered, almost in resonance with the loud honk that reverberated across the freeway, bouncing off fenders, plexiglass and tricked up wheels. It was loud and emphatic, proudly showcasing my frustration, vehemence and desperation.

Miniature Progress!!!

Hi all! First of all, May the 4th be with you!

Second, after a long wait, I've finally got some lovely miniatures assembled and converted and basecoated to show all y'all!

"Hi, I'm one of Citizen Lafayette's minis,

and I'm one badass mother f****er.

I'm working on a box of plastic "French Napoleonic Infantry 1804-1807" by Victrix. This is a marvelous set of minis that I'm planning to paint up as soldiers of the French Revolution - not a huge stretch! This is my first set of historical miniatures, so I'm excited! 

In this post, I'm going to give a quick walkthrough of my work so far, give my thoughts on the minis and the process, and finally lavish you with the pretty pictures!

Unboxing

The box features lovely artwork depicting Napoleon's finest at their most French, complete with grotesquely droopy mustaches.

Inside the box are 8 eight "sprues," the plastic frames upon which the miniatures are suspended. There are two types of sprue - one with parts for normal line infantry, and the other for the "elites" and "command" minis - the grenadiers, together with the officers, drummers, and flag bearers. They are multi-part minis, with heads, arms, backpacks, and accessories molded separately from the torsos.

The minis are 28mm tall and made of relatively-hard plastic - I found it to be softer than most other plastic 28's, but harder than the soft-plastic 20mm minis that have been available for decades. (This is somewhat annoying, since it means that muskets bend and break relatively easily.)

Assembly

I'm not going to lie, assembling these minis was a royal pain in the butt. First, there was flash everywhere (the thin line of plastic left where the two halves of the mold come together). And since each little man is made of five different pieces, that meant that all five had separate flash lines.

Second, these figures are "modular" - that is, every torso is supposed to roughly fit with every set of arms. However, I found that the compromises involved in creating this modularity meant no torso actually fit any of the arms! I spent days and days trying to figure out how to combine arms and torsos to get natural-looking poses.

Apparently, thumb-poking the dude next to you was a 

sign of affection during the French Revolution.

But, they ultimately got done, and after doing a few conversions, I applied a liberal coat of white basecoat spraypaint (another first time for me... piccies below!)

Conversions

But before we get to the basecoated finished product, I want to talk about the #1 coolest thing about plastic miniatures - the conversions! Converting a mini involves modifying its sculpt, and I wanted to really establish these figures as sons of the Revolution, not Napoleon's lackeys.

So, what was the biggest difference between Revolutionaries and Bonapartists? The revolutionaries had giant ass f****ing plumes! I'm serious, those wacky French put all sorts of crazy things on their hats - (spoons are modeled on to these figures) but what every private really wanted was to have the biggest, fluffiest, most flamboyant plume in the regiment. Observe:

Even though it prevents him from seeing anything in his left field of vision, 

Jacques thought his plume was pretty BAMF...

 ...until he saw this! Mon Dieu! What a masterpiece!

So, how to sexy-up those bicornes? I found these sci-fi heads on ebay, complete with topknots that did admirable work as plumes:

"I don't want my luscious locks

on no Frenchie!" (Too bad)

I was actually able to get a number of different shapes by clipping the heck out of these poor helmets. Here's a small selection of how a few of them turned out:

Pictures to Date!

If you've read this far, you deserve the payoff - Pictures!!!!

The whole unit, prior to conversion and spraypainting!

The command figures - this officer means business with that pistol!

Standard bearer and drummer look typically French.

I tried making each flank into a mini-diorama. 

Here, I converted one soldier to be taking a hit,

while his comrade on the right flinches and the men on either side

put their heads down and keep marching on.

 On the other flank we've got soldiers dealing with fatigue.

Guy in the center is putting a brave face on things,

but his buddies don't seem as happy.

Finally, here's a pic demonstrating the dangers of spraypaint;

The backpacks are identical, but the one on the right is caked

with paint, which obscures some of the details and will make

painting more of a challenge. Lesson learned: don't stand too close!

Well, I hope you've enjoyed, and hopefully there'll be some splashes of color coming soon! Au revoir!