Month: May 2013

I could have been anything. Doctor, fireman, semi-professional pig-wrangler – you name it. Had I half a mind, I could have hosted of Celebrity Splash, even if it rendered me overqualified. Life, by its very nature, is full of unexplored opportunities; roads less travelled because fate’s GPS system has seen fit to take you elsewhere. But of all the things I could have been, there is one road less travelled that has more lanes than any other and stretches tantalizingly over the horizon. I could have been an actor.
Continue reading “The Bard and I: How I Saved Shakespeare”

I am good. In fact, I am nice, I am kind and I am thoughtful to others. You could go so far as to say that I am just one big ball of wonderful, a ray of sunshine that heats a solar cell that provides crucial electricity to needy orphans and the abandoned penguins they just rescued. Yes siree, I am nothing short of a beautiful, splendid, awesome human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week and three hundred and sixty five days per year. Except, of course, when I’m driving.
Continue reading “On the Horn of a Dilemma”

I was dumbstruck. We were returning from a game of golf ­ – a circumstance in and of itself as improbable as what was about to follow ­– when the unthinkable was thought and, even worse, said aloud. My friends, our clubs and I were crammed into my 1982 puke-green Daihatsu Charade and travelling along Coolart Road at a pace that rendered the speed limit largely aspirational. This was clearly too much for the car travelling immediately behind us. With my shoulders hunched over the wheel, their faces seemed to be pressed up against the rearview mirror. As I slowed to turn into the driveway, the impatient car pulled up alongside, a passenger wound down the window and yelled, ‘Out of the way, Gene Wilder!’
Continue reading “Born to be Wilder”

Superman, Spider-Man, Batman: they meant nothing to me. As for the likes of Iron Man, the Green Lantern or Daredevil – I could trip over them in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket and still not recognize them, in spite of the costumes. I realize that superheroes are all the rage right now. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sequel to Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starred Thor. Barely a movie goes by without some preposterous champion strapping on some totally outrageous duds with the inevitable promise to combat evil.
Continue reading “Mr. Man and Superman”