Of Being Sad

So, I’m still feeling blue. Somewhat.

Listening to Lost Prophets isn't helping much. They make such sad music.

So, I’m going to do a picture post.

Of The Forests of Lollywood and Bollywood

Life is full of predictable patterns. The sun rises from the west and sets in the east. What goes down must come up. Winters are warm and the summers unbearably cold. Tiny little birds hatch into big grown eggs which subsequently lay more tiny birds.

Well, at least all of this should be happening in movies.

When I was a kid, I had the misfortune of enduring through Pakistani and Indian movies that my grandma loved to watch.

Now that I’ve grown up, dad loves watching Indian movies, and I end up watching old Urdu movies on Filmazia to cheer me up when I’m feeling blue. Trust me, if you haven’t done so already, tune into a 90’s Pakistani movie airing on Filmazia when you’re feeling down. Just the pure WTF-ness and blatant defiance of logic will cheer you up (unless you plan on going into the movie business)

If you show the old movies to any Engineer, he’ll tell you that they had their script written before Newton had an apple-tree shit on him. They have no concept of . . . well, anything! Gravity doesn’t work, nor does force and motion, nor does logic. I mean, hero punches minion and minion flies half a mile back into a solid concrete wall, punching a hole in it. Hero then grabs an empty machine gun, and unloads a thousand bullets into the remaining minions without ever reloading the gun.

No offence to my readers across the border – come to think of it, our media is equally messed up. It’s just that yours gets a lot more exposure and is more interesting, (not to mention has comparatively lax censorship laws than ours) since we see it way before our industry copies 80% of it and force feeds it to us.

Most desi movies (and TV Serials) I’ve come across have certain things that are almost like a requirement that needs to be fulfilled before it’s even considered to be aired.

• A hero and a heroine. They can be evil or good, romantic turned murderer, or terrorist turned McDonalds busboy.
• Five or so songs whose combined budget seems to be twice that of the entire movie. These songs are rarely real life. Most of them are imaginary with either the hero or heroine snapping out of it by some randomly placed extra who’s only job in the entire movie is to put an end to the high budget song.
• A sex scandal. Though these have (or rather their shock value has) become rare  these days, they still pop up. It’s like a last minute thing they can throw in to spice a long running drama or a movie that’s gotten really boring in between two flashy songs.
• An unexpected pregnancy. Again, to spice up a dying storyline.
• A pregnancy complication. (All for the drama!)

We Pakistanis are like India’s little sibling when it comes to Dramas. We copy and modify everything from Indian dramas.

Hey, personally I find watching 90210 (the newer sluttier version) better than an Desi Drama. At least you aren’t shocked by the goras having flings and shit. It is expected from their super-liberal society.

Now, excuse me. I’m going to to go watch Dexter. Blood-Loving-Serial-Killer-with-a-Heart-of-gold trumps Crazy-Ass-Family-Politics every time!

Of Comedy Galore

So, tonight I went to see Saad Haroon’s This is Stand Up Comedy.

Danish Ali is brilliant. I mean, he’s freaking awesome!

I mean, anyone who looks like this, is awesome!

I was planning on writing something long and meaningful as to how cool the show was (since watching him perform is just amazing.

I apologize to people who aren’t living in Karachi or Pakistan, since most of these jokes are based on the various happenings around us. I will try and give you an idea what’s going on. The rest can skip this paragraph and click on the link below. Our Bollywood superstar Meera has horrible English, due to which she’s an embarrassment to the film industry. Mr. Zee is, well, a very corrupt man. Certain cyber-laws prevent me from actually naming him. Use your brains. And we’ve got an abundant supply of refugees who’ve taken upon themselves to rush at cars stopping at an intersection and washing their windshields without the consent of the driver (who keeps yelling at them to cease and desist) and then guilt-tripping them out of money. And lastly, our electricity supply is nowhere near our demand for the stuff.

Danish Ali – Batman in Pakistan

I had a lot of fun. Hope you understand what he’s saying.