"Gosh Darn it all to heck!"

Ayyo again....

It was two nights ago that 2008's oscar nominated Mickey Rourke starrer,"the wrestler" was playing on z-studio,for the first time,i think...and there wasn't much going on,as boxing day proved to be pretty dry for the first time with the mouth-watering Arsenal vs Villa scheduled for sunday..and this was my ONLY complaint,because other than football,i don't watch a lot of t.v nowadays.But the wrestler was on,and its s'possed to be a great movie,right?And its long overdue for me,but no matter....anyway the catch here was that it was past 11:30 p.m,and that meant i had to keep it real low...its sad for me when good movies air at night,and i cant play them at a reasonable volume,even in my room's t.v..but all hope is not lost! Who's the saviour? SUBTITLES!Yeah life-savers...at least you can still watch the movie...although subtitles tend to drag your attention away from whats happening on the reel...well that's how it works in my case anyway..its distracting as hell for me...i always try to find some little mishap in the translation,that might just turn out to be funny!
Most Indian channels airing Hollywood movies apparently feel they don't "connect" with our audiences as much as the audience would have liked...and that most of us fail to understand most of what they're "muttering under their throats",unlike bollywood where every damn actor would enunciate everything he/she says times thousand...all I can say is,we have been Terribly underestimated XD
They're not too bad though,subtitles..I know some guys who are dedicated viewers of the japanese versions of naruto,bleach etc...they'd choke if it weren't for english subs!But the only problem is that if its a movie,most of the intensity you would feel when you hear the characters actually speak are robbed by the subs(especially when you're watching at a low volume...like me at night),cuz they have the censor thing going on,which is funny,but also makes you feel like a 12 year old deaf kid,who's watching a rated-R movie with his folks >_< ...yes the translation is worse than what would be for a PG-13 film.And i'm not talking about grammatical incorrectness...its just that they take the salt and the spice out of the dish when they either exclude or filter the profanity in the subtitles...and how! If you're watching ,like, PULP FICTION and hear Samuel.L Jackson say to Tim Roth " I just thought it was some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker 'fore I popped a cap in his ass."
That is some explicit shit!But here's what the subtitles say:
"I just thought it was some cold crap to say to someone 'fore i popped his butt"... damn PG-13!Sam looks like a cartoon character,(probably a restrained Fred Flintstone trying hard to control himself?)speaking from the subtitles :P Anyway here are some conventional dialogue translations that most Indian channels use nowadays:

-asshole--> scumbag
-you sick bastard-->you are sick
-ass-->butt
-shit-->crap
-hell-->heck
-goddamn-->gosh-darn
-dick-->dumb
-F word-->blank(eg:"WTF are you doin'?" translates as "what ARE you doin'?")
Its frustrating really..how hard is it to understand what they're saying? And if you ask me,with the common gaavti Indian "crowd-who watch-English-movies-to-see-the-babes" in mind,i bet all they'd understand from what they're hearing,are the swear words!Thats all they'll ever get! Its the quintessential aspect of their little lives.So why make the herculean effort of translating those words into cereal form suitable for a 10 year old,while still trying to stay in context?!By trying to stay in context,i have to say these subtitle-folk,don't quit work early...there's a scene in JUNO where Juno's stepmom lashes out at her sonography nurse for being unreasonable with them,and puts her to shame ,after which Juno says"Wow,you're a dick!" The crew could have just used the key shown above and translated dick as dumb,instead it says"wow,you're awesome!"...understanding the context,are them humble folk at star movies XD...hard working,pointlessly hard working folk..
But you see such care being taken because they're official translators! Get a pirated VCD copy of any movie, and it doesn't matter if you're watching "george of the jungle" or "the departed"...the pirated subtitles kill the movie just the same...which is entertaining too,by the way..Heres some Indy for you














XD.Everyone sounds retarded in the subs,and dunno wtf they're saying - still makes for some great entertainment...But well,Indy is awesome anyway..so i'd rather have subs like these if I was watching like..."the league of extraordinary gentlemen".at least this way i'd be able to sit through the whole of it.
And lets not forget.. subtitles especially rule the "misheard" department and that's gut-busting stuff,if you're watching a tamil/kannada/mallu movie,with misheard translations of the songs!And yeah there is the grandaddy of 'em all,BENNY LAVA!If you haven't already seen it yet(and i bet that's a longshot),youtube it right away.

Underrated,subtitles are...yeah,people should realise their importance!What if tomorrow,the Al-Quaeda decide to launch an unexpected terrorist attack,and their chief is on the media giving out important information about where they're gonna hit,and what they're gonna do!With no SUBTITLES on?!?He'll be saying all this with a straight-ass face,so it'll be upto us to make out whether he was talking about an immediate terrorist attack or what he really thought of Barack Obama,and his white-folk?Or just plain talking about what he had for breakfast?!Who knows without subtitles?!?All you can hear is "Ackh-muckhh-chhhsa...achhmed.chuslafiala accckkhhhhhmed!!!"subtitles!!I just wrote up a whole post on the thing! Why am I still going on about it? I'll tell you why...cuz i'm back to writing my blog,full scale...and none of you "scumbags" can do a "gosh darn" thing about it!! "To "heck" with you all!! XD

P.S:The following text contains explicit and profane vocabulary that might disturb some individuals,therefore i hereby state th.......no,wait..this should have come before the post...hmm O_o

-Epitome-

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(wow...the post under this one was written in july? wow...)
lets just pretend it was yesterday when i posted last,and get on with it 'cuz i'm tired of talking about "vows of regular updation" and "reasons for hiatus"...there's been far too much of that XD

Anyway,to begin with whats been going on,i've formed a band,and it finally has a name...yep,its not the "nameless band"anymore...damn its hard to give your band a name... it might seem easy when you look at some really on-the-nose names like 'metallica' or 'deep purple' or some really cheesy names like 'the who' or 'the doors' (who are all rock's hall of fame LEGENDS btw >_<) how hard could it be? But you see the problem is,when you get right down to it,you find out that all the names have been taken,somehow( a common dud for lack of creativity)...meh* And this "thinking of a name/title" stuff is addictive...not to mention irritating if you get others to think for you,cuz once i got kunal(my band's guitarist) to do it,we would be reading the title board of every shop,every hoarding,every sticker/bill there was...probably every piece of bold title text we came across,and would come up with names like "tipnis ka tapri","oven-hot music","nice collection"(of songs)...well you get the picture :P .Its funny at first,but when Kunal finally crosses his forbidden red line and decides to name the band "D-Mart-yrs" or something,its time to endgame. We could have been any one of those really,it was desperate times...Then we would seek aid from the big daddy oxford dict+thesaurus!?( i have no idea why),and countless other stuff;like in the movie "NICK AND NORAH'S infinite playlist",the band members have similar problems and at one point consider calling their band "fistful of assholes" picking it up from a girl who swears at them..lol...that doesn't help much,considering how bad Indian profanity would sound in a band name!But in the end it just struck me...(and thats really the way its always destined to happen,innit) and i decided to call it EPITOME...well its a word,more than a ridiculous band name,but i wanted a chantable 3-4 syllable name!... not something like "THEM CROOCKED VULTURES" or "DEMONIC RESURRECTION"(sucks when the crowd cant chant your name).And it makes sense too...well you can make whatever sense you want to make out of it! and thats um...the beauty of it O_o. And fast forward to now from july,back when all we had was a dump-worthy metal song,which was practically built around its much appraised main riff,and a metallica rip-off blast-beat clad 5 minute force with "reservoir dogs" as the inspiration for its 3 page long story-like lyrics(i'll post those after i prepare myself for embarrassment) ... i must say we 've come a long way since that time,cuz i decided to turn the bandwagon toward mainstream rock...and composed "dark road"(give it a listen) which was primarily the turning point,'cause by that time I had come to be heavily influenced by sludge metal,alternative rock and grunge bands like THE MELVINS,NIRVANA,PEARL JAM,SONIC YOUTH,among others,and also some old school blues from Clapton/Cream,The Doors,and even The Beatles for a while :P.It altered my musical style...actually it created one,one that i'm hoping to stick with anyway. So we recorded like 4 fresh songs,out of 7 potential compositions on paper,roughly to say the least,with equipment as gay,disposable and laughably shitty as those first few recordings! Soon some friends got their hands on it,and I had only sent them out two 2 or 3 close ones...but it got out,and suddenly every old friend of mine who met me went" hey you have a band now right?" And i didnt know if i wanted to feel elated and chest-puffingly proud,cuz if anyone of them asked us to play for them,we'd look like a flock of fucking pigeons,cuz we had no practice playing our own songs!!We'd never even played OUR songs together!Not possible with just one guitar and drums...It was just recorded part for part!And the looming ghost of 8 working hours of college overshadowed any possible jam sessions during the week...so it was just recording ,eventually.But there's a lot lined up for next year with my college rock fest and all,to which we've been invited,but have to try and audition for...and i hope that would somehow serve to be a catapult for us,as it did have major bands performing last year...we can only wait and see!And stupendously impatient as i am,i'm more than itching to get my hands on my own electric guitar come jan 8th,(that is if santa decides to be kind to me ,else i'll be forced to tell myself that he suffered the wrath of recession too XD) and jam with my band for the whole of january (cuz no one ever shows up at coll until after republic day),and also teach my new found bass player to play the ...um...bass...(more on this later,in case you're wondering) >_<

Do leave your comments on the song.And your honest opinion of it...Also special thanks to Minakshi for the esnips thingy,else I would have been lost..until next time then..and here's hoping that's not another 5 months down the road :P
peace!

P.S:@ Ojas: should i post "glint" in the next one?Thinking of making a playlist ...reply ;)