Having viewed an episode here and an episode there of 30 Rock, had been planning to watch the entire series. Turned out to be quite an experience, as I watched all 21 episodes of Season 1 of 30 Rock in the last 24hrs. It was "unputdownable" as the critics would say about books. The level of creativity, the variety of presentation and a certain charm that is only achievable in the city of NewYork has paved the way for a series that is certainly among the most "fresh" in recent years. Personally, I consider a show to be really good whenever I feel like I would have given up almost anything to have played any part in its existence. In this case, I specifically found myself wishing I had been involved in writing this show but would have been satisfied even if I had been the hotdog man on the street that Tina Fey frequently buys from. Quite similar to the way I felt while reading Stephen Hawkings book on black holes, it was so simple and yet so advanced that I wish I had written that book. When such a huge cast with veteran notables come together, it would really be the whole support crew that needs to be praised. While I will refrain from self-evident praise around the good talent by most of the cast, I would like to point out Rachel Dratch who I began noticing from the second episode. She has done a remarkable job portraying various roles from pet lady with a kitten named runt (which conveniently serves to beep out a curse word ending with "unt" directed at Tina during throughout the episode) to the hooker that hooks up with Jack and goes to party at Tracy's house while he is roleplaying with his wife on Valentine's day. Finally, most noteworthy, is the absence of the omni-present very much annoying "laugh track" that has come to dominate small screen comedy. Finally, I can tell when people around me do not get the joke and quickly turn around to laugh at them.

Some Trivia:
Fey's hubby Richmond composed music, including the awesomely jazzy theme
Emily Mortimer, who appears in a few episodes was also in Pink Panther
Tina was the casting director and most of the cast are her friends from SNL
Rachel Dratch was supposed to play Jenna. Replaced by Jane Karkowski

Ending quote:
Try saying "Rural Juror" with a mid-western American accent.

As a trekkie, I felt completely let down by this movie being called a Star Trek movie. It should have just been made as the fifth sequence of Die Hard :)

Ofcourse, all this did'nt stop me from enjoying the movie. All I had to do was repeat 3 times:
"This is not Stark Trek, it is Die Hard: Space Walk"
"This is not Stark Trek, it is Die Hard: Space Walk"
"This is not Stark Trek, it is Die Hard: Space Walk"

Spolier Alert: Very Minor spoilers ahead but nothing that should change your movie experience

Not that I did not see this coming. I guess I need to brace for and face the fact that teenage humour sells mroe than middle aged honour. Take Stargate Atlantis for exmaple, a series that was doing so well and building up to be an eternal saga. The powers that be decided they could make more money getting kids to watch it, so they axed the show in the 5th season and are working on bringing up StarGate 90210, with the theme being a college in space with teenagers and their stargate adventures. Not that I mind this, infact I'll probably even watch it, I am simply furious that my show got axed to make way for this. The Star Trek that I grew up to had honour first, then adventure and as brief respites, peppered humour. This movie on the other hand was like a National Lampoon's Star Trek. Between Kal Pen joining Obama and John Cho manning the thrusters, I wonder if our world will soon be run by pot smoking, glue sniffing teenage hormones. It is unthinkable that an officer on the bridge will not be trained enough to not be able to take off because he forgot the inertial dampeners. Then there was that irritating Russian accent which was milked for eternity, seemingly because JJ thought it was humourous. I could go on and on, about obvious and tantalising deviances from set customs of Star Trek such as the kissing scene with Spock. I have'nt seen a more un-natural chemistry between two humans (well one half-human). And who promotes a suspended cadet to first officer in 5 minutes? The cast might as well have had Charlie Sheen as Kirk, Steve Martin as Capt. Pike and Vince Vaugh as Spock junior. At least I would'nt have had to assume it was a trekkie movie. My rants, I realize are a lost cause. The movie has one good aspect, it brought all non-trekkies together and made them watch it. They love it and are now walking around claiming themselves as trekkies. Market analysis and profit milking have taken over which is only natural for those investing in it, I can hardly blame them. All I can hope for now is that there are enough fuddy duddies like me that prefer old school enough to keep this slapstick movie seperate from the saga that we have always enjoyed.

My favourite author growing up has been R.K. Narayan, mostly due to his simplistic writing style. Although, I am no stranger to word play or plot complexity, these must be used with care and in as sufficient amount as they are required. With this in mind, I highly recommend Orson Scott Card's Sci-Fi accomplishment, Ender's Game to anyone with a heart for science fiction novels. As a huge fan of Dr.Isaac Asimov, I have never felt the same connection with any other work as I did with the Foundation Series, until now. While Dr.Asimov's protagnosit is a scientist at heart, Orson's is a human prone to logic, confusion and compassion. Much contrast there. And a lasting impression.

Tech Specs: This book was primarily read under the following ambience, apart from a few hours at coffee shops and briefly in the waiting room of Dr.Wong. Alone at home, on a comfortable leather couch in the evening, having shirked of the social calling's of a Friday evening, by the yellow rays of the light bulb, listening to Pearl Jam's Ten in its entirety in the background.

Warning: Do not (at any cost) read any portion of the books summary, cover review, prologue, or any other supporting documents or talk to friends or foe about it prior to reading the book.

A crush a day keeps the doctor away. Not literally everyday, but I do frequently get what I can bestly describe as a "crush" on some woman or the other, either through immediate line of sight or on the telly. Its the way we losers of this world get a reason to go on living. I have found that this keeps my spirits quite up and gives me a lot of positive energy. My newest sweetheart, this week is "Christa Miller" and boy, am I ever in love with her. I saw her in Scrubs and what was typically a monotonous run-through of all my DVR captured episodes, became magical and romantic.

As I went through the process of becoming "whipped" and "lost in love", I realized that I had in fact seen her somewhere. After much deliberation, the neuron patch in my grey matter fused some old connections and I saw images flashing before my eyes. The images belonged to a few scenes from the movie "Kill Bill", which by the way falls in my top 25 movies of all time, a list I plan to finalize and post soon enough. Picture Uma Thurman, dressed in a tight yellow one-piece bikers latex jacket peeing in the restroom and while doing so, she hears the incessant whistling that disturbs us viewers more than once during the movie. The owner of that sound, I was sure was Christa Miller.

Thanks to the age of information, I quickly went over to my favourite database, IMDB and poured over Kill Bill listings and much to my dissapointment, realized that I had been confusing "Julie Dreyfus" for "Christa Miller". In my defense, there is some similarity in their look, especially of Julie in Kill Bill with Christa in Scrubs sans the Japanese robe. While that mystery was indeed solved, I now had a new mystery at hand that was starting to irritate the hell outta me. I could not maintain a crush on someone without knowing their name and having enough information to potentially stalk them, something I don't do though.

Much pondering later, once again, random fusing's of neurons in my cabeza gave rise to a well rounded man of good humour. Drew Carey stood out, laughing at me, cracking "you're so stupid" jokes about me which made me laugh too. And out of the blue, Drew Carey got run over by 17 wheels of an 18-wheeler and I found myself outside Drew's house by the weather beaten pool table in the backyard looking at my sweetheart, Christa Miller who by the way has also appeared in "Seinfeld", "Fresh Prince" and "CSI:Miami".

I do remember her in Seinfeld in the episode, "The Doodle" which is a classic. Its the one where "Jerry lands his girlfriends toothbrush in the toilet bowl", "Christa Miller likes George for who he is even when he drapes himself in Velvet" and "George gets revolted and breaks up with her for sucking a peach pitt discarded earlier by George himself". Also remember her in Fresh Prince, where "Will Smith hits on her" and "Carlton who is the manager of Peacock, a restaurant and book store in ULA campus keeps requesting her to buy something if she wants to sit at the table". I do not regularly watch CSI though and do not recall her in it. Without downplaying her acting talent, allow me to make the connection that her husband "Bill Lawrence", a scriptwriter and producer, got her into Scrubs where she met me.

And we lived happily everafter.

"Turn the pages, Turn to stone", the whole film has been made with astounding adherence to the graphic novel. While the novel did ultimate justice to the comic realm, the movie unfortunately, was not directed, it was not screen played, it was not adapted, it was infact cloned. There is a huge difference between creating a graphic novel and adapting it to a film. The two are as different as night and day, in terms of human quotient, glorifying the characters, plot buildup and providing people impact. Watchmen failed exactly in all these aspects providing viewers a dull lacklustre sensation. Sitting in the jam-packed theater at midnight for the first showing, I found myself blaming myself for feeling detached from the movie and its characters, wondering if I was not the afficionado of this genre, as I had assumed to be. Movie making aspects were up there among the best, several scenes in the movie (prison break, alley fight) and the portrayal of some of the characters (comedian, silk spectre) were incredibly perfect. Thats exactly what this movie seems to have been - perfect. And that is precisely why, the film also turned out to be lonely and unentertaining. Hardcore fans of the novel, needless to say, should be quite satisfied, fans of Sin City, on the other hand would have been left wondering if they would ever get their 2hrs 43mins back while fans of both, such as myself, were left semi-compromised.