Lagaan on American TV

Since I've been talking a little about Bollywood I should mention that Lagaan will be airing on U.S. television on May 5 on IFC. It's supposed to be one of the better Bollywood films and from what I've seen it doesn't look too bad (the DVD I had was scratched). I'll update this post with my thoughts after I see the movie on Tuesday.

Update (5/5):
I watched Lagaan on Tuesday and thought it was better than most Bollywood films. Some of the songs were a little annoying, but that's because this film has an engaging plot that you don't want interrupted. However, four hours is way too long to tell a story about a cricket game. Rent this if you have a lot of time and patience. The quality of the film itself is good, the audio in sync with video, and everything (songs and English) is subtitled.

Andy Blitz's Pop Up Problem

Last month I was having problems with pop-under ads in Safari that were driving me insane! Others were having similar problems in other browsers and found that installing blockers like PithHelmet helped. Now I'm ad free and happy, but I remembered an extremely funny bit on Late Night with Conan O'brien about one of the writers, Andy Blitz, having pop-up problems. Andy calls NBC's tech support center and talks with Sharon, but then decides to visit Sharon in person to get more help (video). Personally, I wouldn't go to such great lengths to get my computer fixed.

Aishwarya Rai on Oprah

A ton of people came here searching for when Aishwarya Rai will be on the Oprah Winfrey Show, but found no information. That's because I didn't have any either and wasn't sure if she'd be featured on the show at all. Well she'll be on Oprah tomorrow, April 25, at 5 pm Eastern time on CBS. I guess it's supposed to be a mystery/surprise for viewers because there's no mention of her on Oprah's site. I'm not big into celebrity but Aishwarya's appearance is supposed to represent Bollywood so this should be an interesting show, even if part of the show's dedicated to Oprah's usual melodrama.

Update 4/25:
I watched the show today and you can watch Aishwarya Rai on Oprah for yourself, courtesy of Mansi from Aishwarya-Forever. Aishwarya did a lot better in this interview than on 60 Minutes and Letterman. She didn't elaborate much on the topics raised, something she could work on in the future, but she's just an actress not an anthropologist. I wanted to hear her opinions on Bollywood, especially the preference for light skinned actors, repetitive plots, and nepotism. BTW, I think Shahrukh Khan is in the video montage at the beginning of the interview.

Gastineau Girls Blog

Last night I watched seven episodes of Gastineau Girls, a show I'd heard about but never seen. It's about a wealthy mother and daughter who live in New York, don't work, go on vacations, shop, and complain. For some reason it's addictive even though Brittny's lazy and spoiled and Lisa does the spoiling. You have to keep in mind it's a TV show that's fun watching and be glad your life isn't being taped for the entertainment of others. The producer Jerry Kolber has a blog about Gastineau Girls and his other work. He wrote a post about why it's useless to complain about the women and their lifestyle. I can think of a few people who believe if a person doesn't live a certain way he's wasting his life. Anyways, I'm hooked to the show and have found another way to waste my own time yet again.

American English

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Chicken Therapy

From Singapore, a method for humans and chickens to connect, despite not being able to see each other. Not sure what the point is, but PETA would approve.

via BoingBoing.

Oral Surgery

Two hours ago I had surgery to get my beautiful wisdom teeth removed. The operation was supposed to take place over four years ago, but I didn't think it was necessary then and wanted to keep my wisdom teeth. The teeth grew out and one was causing me pain, so finally I decided to go through with the operation. I refused to be put asleep because I wasn't sure who the doctor would be and I wanted to be awake if they made a mistake. The hardest part was getting the shots because of the sharp pain. I was hoping the doctor would be the thin, young, good looking guy from four years ago, but it was some other guy.

During the surgery I felt uneasy after seeing the length of the needle for the shots, and also when I opened my eyes just in time to see the doctor put the first blood-covered tooth on the tray. I didn't feel pain, just pressure from the pulling. After the surgery I wasn't in the mood to look at the teeth and just wanted to go home.

Now my mouth is really swollen with four bloody gaping holes where my beautiful wisdom teeth used to be. Other than that, I feel good and up for anything except speaking, eating, or drinking. There's blood on shirt because my numb lips couldn't feel the saliva spilling over and I have to take pain killers and use an ice pack for the swelling. This surgery wasn't major, but I hope I'm never in an operating room again for the rest of my life.

Firefox Impressions

I've only been using Firefox since Sunday and haven't installed any extentions yet, but I'm satisfied with it's pop-up blocking abilities. I don't think Firefox is any better than Safari because I'm still seeing the spinning beach ball of death a lot, some sites aren't rendering properly, I can't easily close tabs or open a link in a new tab, and I still haven't figured out the bookmarks yet. These minor Firefox annoyances are due to Safari being specifically designed for the Mac and it's one mouse button, but I can get over these things. I have to get over these things because I can't stand pop-up windows!

Update
PithHelmet is working for me now, so I'm using Safari again. Firefox kept freezing up and crashing.

Firefox

I'm so fed up with pop unders in Safari that I'm going to download Firefox and give it another try. There is a program called PithHelmet that does block these flash ads, but it's not free and wouldn't install on my machine. Hopefully Apple deals with this problem in Tiger and gives users the option to turn flash off. Even Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP 2 has a better ad blocker than Safari. Meanwhile, Macromedia has a nice guide on how to make pop ups, pop unders, and other annoying advertisements.

Can't Stay Away

It's only been two days since I decided to cut down on my internet usage, but already I've failed to limit myself to two hours a day. During the day I can use the internet for two hours, but late at night when there's nothing else to do I get bored and can't resist being online. Being offline has given me many opportunities to get little chores done, even if I have to write them down first, I'm still being more productive. But the internet is still more appealing and I feel unhappy if I'm not doing something online when I could be. I think those are symptoms of internet addiction, a topic that was discussed five years ago when people were starting to get high speed connections and more new services were offered online. Now I never hear anything about internet addiction and how big a problem it is because online life is considered important. People do business online, converse, and download media on the internet so much that being online for hours on end is not unacceptible anymore.

For me the internet is not an addiction, it's an escape from reality. To me reality is drab and depressing. When I'm traveling I don't miss the internet much or worry about email, blogs, or news. I guess I need to reevaluate whether I should be spending much of the day online, despite many college students doing just that.

Choli Ke Peechhe English Lyrics

For some reason the makers of Khal Nayak didn't subtitle the song and dance numbers, not even the excellent Choli Ke Peechhe song. UKIndia provides the best translation of Choli, but it was kinda hard to find. Why don't more sites provide translations for this movie? Khal Nayak isn't a good movie, but it's nice to see the dancing.

Spending Less Time Online

For the past four years I've spent more and more time sitting in front of the computer on the internet. Most, if not all, of this time is wasted time that could be spent on better ventures. What have I done all this time on the internet? In the last two years I started a blog, figured out what IRC is, found several file sharing programs, joined some social networking groups, and made a profit of $2.65, a cell phone, and one flosser. Because I've wasted all that precious time, I'm going to limit the amount of time I spend on the internet.

When I'm not on the internet I feel that I'm missing out on news and other random facts that I think I need to know and share with others. After I wake up, before I get dressed, brush my teeth, and eat breakfast I go to the computer, start my newsreader and look at some news sites. But that's not enough information, I have to browse some random sites not in my newsreader and look up more info on the news I read in the morning. Before I know it it's time for dinner and I've spent hours doing a lot of something but not really anything.

I can't think of any reason why somebody needs to spend hours on the internet when they don't have to. That's why I'm going to limit my internet use to two hours per day. It's just an experiment, but I have a feeling I'm going to replace the internet with TV and book/magazine/newspaper reading though.

Gmail Invite Give Away

So Gmail didn't go public April 1st like I thought it would, but it did double it's capacity to over 2 gigs. I have never given an invite away because nobody I knew wanted one, so I have 50 invites left. If anybody wants an invite leave a comment or email me (jessicool4 _at_ hotmail.com) and I'll invite you. I'm taking after Dew, but I really want more people to use Gmail.

Nightline Bollywood Episode

In January Nightline had episode featuring Bollywood movies becoming more popular in the U.S. Clips of that episode are at Aishwarya-Forever in four parts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). Personally, I tend to agree with many of the statements of Vikas Kamat on Bollywood movies. I'd rather see non-Bollywood movies from India become more popular in America. All the Bride and Prejudice hype will die down soon and people will probably forget about Bollywood before it has a chance to give itself a bad reputation here any time soon.