Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema

BOOK REVIEW How Superman Would End the War (1940) This book review (magazine actually) is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase . Hop over and check out the eclectic mix of reviews by other bloggers. It will be worth your while. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were bubbling with ideas to give Superman new adventures. How else do you explain this two-page comic story Jerry wrote and Joe drew for Look , a general-interest American magazine, in February 1940? The world is barely six months into World War 2 when the Man of Steel swoops down upon Hitler’s alpine mountain retreat and flies off with him, like a great eagle taking off with its unsuspecting prey. Superman then stops over in Moscow to grab hold of Hitler’s ‘friend’ Josef Stalin, in front of his troops, before turning around and heading for Geneva where he deposits the two dictators at a meeting of the League of Nations which holds them “guilty of modern history’s greatest c...

Books for a rainy day May is a cruel month for Indians with average summer temperatures raging between 35ºC (95ºF) and 45ºC (113ºF). It will continue like this till the rains arrive in the south later this month and slowly move up to other parts of the country in June. The annual monsoon is supposed to hit Bombay, where I live, around June 15, the official date set by the Met department. The rains care two hoots for the Met — they come and go as they please, till September, only to make a brief appearance or two in October with a fairly deafening light-and-sound display. Curiously, if the rains arrive in Bombay several days before the stipulated date, it's called opening showers and if they suddenly reappear, say, in October-November, it's known as closing showers . To me, a shower is a shower and not something like the opening or closing balance in your bank account. I like the monsoon as long as it doesn’t flood the city, shut down the suburban rail network — the lif...

BOOK REVIEW Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare — Exposing Hitler's Undeclared War on the Americas (1939) by John L. Spivak This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase and Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . Don’t forget to check out the wide range of reviews, past and present, at both their blogs. “You will proceed to Prague,” Richter instructed him, “and lose yourself in the city.” The Gestapo chief opened the top drawer of his desk and took a small capsule from a box. “If you find yourself in an utterly hopeless situation, swallow this.” He handed the pellet to the nervous young man. “Cyanide,” Richter said. “Tie it up in a knot in your handkerchief. It will not be taken from you if you are arrested. There is always an opportunity while being searched to take it.” This is but one instance of Nazi Germany’s espionage activities during World War II. This particular incident took place...

FILM REVIEW Saturday Night Fever (1977) This film is my contribution to Tuesday’s Overlooked/Forgotten films and television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . Don't forget to check out the other fascinating entries over there. Saturday Night Fever is the kind of film you liked the first time you saw it, which was probably in high school or college. I watched the dance film in my teens and remember liking it as well. Since the 1990s, the movie has been shown a few times on television. I have tried watching it again, to see if it still had the same appeal, and each time I have switched channels for something better. Clearly, it no longer holds.  Last week, I saw a part of Saturday Night Fever and was, quite frankly, put off by Brooklyn brat Tony Manero’s (John Travolta) acrobats on the dance floor and his antics off it. If you see the film again three decades later, you’ll realise there’s not much dance that you can tap your feet too. You see better dancing ...

Stamp of a Singer: Louis Armstrong "To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!" "Man, all music is folk music. You ain’t never heard no horse sing a song, have you?" "I never tried to prove nothing, just wanted to give a good show. My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people."   "My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn." "The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago." "Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them." "If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I do...

The Tree of Life I took the picture of this magnificent tree in the garden of a century-old hospital in South Bombay. I don't know the botanical name of the tree but I'm pretty certain it's older than the two-storey heritage hospital it looms over. The tree is home to all kinds of birds, such as owls, crows, kites, sparrows, koyals (the long-tailed cuckoo), mynas (the Asian starling) and many others, which "come home" to roost every evening just as the sun sets over the Arabian Sea. The tree has been a quiet chronicler of health and sickness, of life and death, for a hundred years. If only the tree could talk... Footnote: In case you're wondering which camera I used, it was my Nokia cellphone with a 2 megapixel camera. Photo Copyright: Prashant C. Trikannad

This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase and Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . Don’t forget to check out the wide range of reviews, past and present, at both their blogs. The manner in which Mahatma Gandhi travelled third class in an Indian train in 1917 is more or less how millions of people still travel by train in 2012 — nearly a century after Gandhi undertook that unforgettable journey from Bombay (now Mumbai, the capital of the western state of Maharashtra) to Madras (now Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu), and back. Train travel in India has improved vastly since independence in 1947, if not thirty years earlier, in terms of more trains and routes, frequency, amenities and luxuries but much of the rural and semi-urban population continue to travel like cattle.  Had Gandhi travelled by any one of India’s long-distance express or passenger trains today, he would have fou...

FILM REVIEW The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957) This film is my contribution to Tuesday’s Overlooked/Forgotten films and television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . Don't forget to check out the other fascinating entries over there. Passionate love and scintillating verse dominated the twenty-month courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett that eventually culminated in marriage on September 12, 1846, at Marylebone Church in London. The renowned English poets, described as the “most romantic literary couple from the Victorian era,” exchanged hundreds of letters affirming and reaffirming their mutual love and friendship.   “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett — I do, as I say, love these verses with all my heart,” Robert, the more expressive of the two, wrote after he read Elizabeth’s poems for the first time. It wasn’t long before he fell in love with Elizabeth and expressed his feelings for her in nearly all his letters. ...

BOOK REVIEW The Payoff by Don Smith This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at well-known writer Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase . Don’t forget to check out the wide range of reviews at her blog. I have a simple formula for deciding whether or not to read a book I have never heard of — I check out the picture on the front cover and the blurb on the back cover and if I like one or the other, or both, I go ahead and read the novel. So far it has worked for me. It happened with The Payoff by Don Smith which I found under a pile of secondhand paperbacks. I knew I was going to read the book as soon as I pulled it out. As you can see, the cover is striking and the illustration smacks of corporate crime while the blurb on the back cover only hastened my decision to pick up the novel. It read... "I've hit you three times and I'll go on hitting you unless you pay me two million dollars. If you discuss this with the police or the FBI...