I am afraid the blog has fallen into the same trap as the ancient Livejournal. Namely, Reallifeiffy, a beast that slithers up my heels and wraps its tentacles around my fingers whenever I think of sitting down and talking about things I want to talk about. Reallifeiffy, like its distant cousin Dontwannamonkey, has this knack of casually whispering things of major and minor import into my ears, regardless of whether I want to hear them or not. “Stay away. Let me be”, I manage to sputter out. “I have stuff to write. Important stuff.” Reallifeiffy sighs languorously and tightens its grip a little. And then proceeds to remind me of books unread and half-read. Of devices named the PSP and the DS that that weep for my touch. It gently comments on the whirring sounds that my hard-drive emanates, the sound of billions and billions of zeros and ones that crackle with anticipation and wait to be consumed. It also draws my attention to the other stuff I have to write, the ones that appear in respected periodicals every month. It tugs at my eyelids, reminding me that I need to be at work early the next morning.

I am Reallifeiffy’s bitch. So are you, right?

We now leave the metaphor zone and enter a world of hedonistic delights. The question of the day is – “how much fun can you really have despite being down with fever for the better part of a week, and then catching a bad cold a week later, while the lady falls ill as well, and both being so behind on work that it is just not really funny anymore?”

The answer:

Akira Toriyama's Dragonball

Dragonball. The original anime, not the franchise-warming knock-offs that make appearances on geometry boxes and T-shirts. It’s 153 episodes in all, and I just finished watching the first fifteen. Yeah, it might be a little too early to make a judgement, but fuck that. I love Dragonball so far. Everything – right from the lush painted backgrounds to the wacky characters to the tripped-out concepts ( kamehameha!!! hoi poi pills!!! pee pee pee pee!!! ).

Goong

Goong. Which is the name of a Korean soap opera about a cute-in-a-Korean-way high school girl who gets married to the Crown Prince of South Korea. ( Yes, I know Korea does not have a monarchy, but this is an alternate history series as much as it is a romantic comedy) Kind of like Princess Diaries – the books, not the shitty movies – but with more palace intrigue and double-dealing. Though all of it is done in a very feel-good, grey-area way where you identify with every character and sympathize with everyone’s motivations. Every episode is an hour long, and 24 hours will eat up a substantial amount of my free time, but goddamnit, I regret nothing. Goong is a worthy successor to Witch Yoo Hee, the first K-rom-com-soap I saw – and My Girl is in the queue even as we speak, with the lady of the house singing its praises much eloquently ( she saw the 16-episode series when I slept, tired out by the fever)

Preacher

Preacher, which I have begun to reread just because. Unbelievable how the series manages to stay so fresh even after countless rereads, Ennis’s dialog snapping and crackling on the page, each of the characters’ voices individually echoing in my head as I flip through the pages. ( That reminds me – Landmark Hyderabad had the complete trade paperback collection of the series for sale when I went there last, a day or two after it had opened. That was the first time I saw Preacher for sale in India.)

New comic art. Even as a long, long time payment got over a month ago, I had to figure out a way to get 8 new pages into the country without relying on any postal services. Nobody I knew was travelling, and there was a Mega-Important Trade Deal hanging in the balance. Yes, very unwisely, I had traded away two of the pages in the 8-page lot to get another, more important page from a European collector. It was a friend who helped bring the pages into the country, and yet another who transported them from Mumbai to Bangalore, and mailed them over to Hyderabad. If both of you are reading this, thanks a million, guys, and I know you will do this for me next time too, yes? A quick trip to DHL, where I sent off pages for the Mega Important Trade Deal, followed by a mind-bogglingly short wait – and there you go, another page has landed. The loot includes, among other things, a Preacher page ( which is part of the reason I began the series again), an Art Adams X-Men annual page from the 80s. Other items will be uploaded and gloated over later.

Stuff on my wall

Old comic art, newly framed. The Long Time Payment was over; I was tired of flipping through my Itoya folders just to admire my pages from time to time, and the walls of our house look really bare, we decided to go get some key pages framed. Came out beautifully, though my wallet is still reeling from the sudden shock. The bulk of the black-and-white pages is in the living room, the two Japanese pieces you see above are in the area between the master bedroom and the study, and the mandala, the only non-comic art on the wall, is in the other bedroom. I cannot help feeling good everytime I see the Foster and the Williams DPS and the Goon and the Transmet page all together, woo hoo! Here’re pictures of all the comic art pages adorning the house.

So there you go, how’s that for an update?