The Honest Review

Chapter 5.

The Helper of Modern Folk

Times are moving fast. We're living in one of the fastest developing cities in one of the most anal countries in the world. People are dumb and impatient, and they either have very little, or too MUCH time to spend on recreation.

Sometimes, all we want to do to get away is watch a movie. We turn to Hollywood because it is a widely accepted belief that they do it the best. Over the years, however, that fact has more fiction in it than most of the senseless tripe that country produces these days. Although piracy is a finely tuned machine in Pakistan, it still burns when a man knows that he just spent a hundred rupees and two hours that he is never getting back, as he ejects the dvd from his player and breaks his copy of 'Johnny Mnemonic'.

So why should it ever be, that the one or two sittings to yourself you get in a week - IF you're a hard working individual - should go to a complete waste because that guy behind the counter in your video store is recommending films that he's never even seen in a language he doesn't speak, and handing the Chronicles Of Narnia to a young woman next to you who's asked for a nice little romance flick, when the only time anyone in that movie showed any romance was a BEAVER couple since the HUMAN stars were all minors and were looking at child pornography charges if any serious romance went down.

It made me wonder, if there was anyone who was finally going to be straight up and BRUTALLY honest about how they review their movies for the benefit of people who, today, have such an insanely large international catalogue of movies being released to choose from.

Ladies and gents, as the helper of modern folk, I feel it is my duty, to present to you:

The Lodhi Review

Sticking to the point for the people

1. The Guardian: Ashton Kutcher plays a tough young cadet, fresh out of the college swimming championships which he took the gold in. He plans to play out his lifelong dream to break every record ever set by any rescue diver in the U.S Coast Guard. Kevin Costner plays the teacher of the class, a veteran diver who's saved over 50 people in seperate diving incidents throughout his career, and YET couldn't save this film from drowning to near death at the box office. The next to nothing dvd sales take care of this. Kevin Costner, till today, remains the only man to ever have bought a copy. Ashton Kutcher denies having worked in the film.

2. Snakes On A Plane: Samuel L. Jackson is a black man with a gun on a plane full of snakes. People die, snakes die. 90 minutes later, you realise you wished a snake had actually bitten you 10 minutes into the film so you would'nt have to sit through this tripe.

3. Borat: A man with a terrible accent which sounds nothing like an Uzbek travels throughout America, recording his trip on a low budget camera, proving once more that after decades of progression in intelligent comedy, the best way to to reach the top of the charts in a country where the people don't even know their first president's name, is still just to show two naked men wrestling and cursing in any foreign language as long as it sounds relatively like those brown sand suckers they keep invading.

4. Chain Reaction: Keanu Reeves outruns a nuclear explosion on his motorcycle. An hour later, thats still the only interesting thing that has happened in the movie.

5. The Covenant: Due to something of a curse on a number of families and their following bloodlines, four young men in a small town develop super powers beyond the imagination of any mortal man in the world today. The four men use their powers to blow up womens skirts and get a look at their panties.

6. Rocky Balboa: Beloved retired boxing superstar Rocky Balboa steps into the ring one last time to redeem himself for the movie Rocky 5. He fails.

7. Kingdom Of Heaven: The holy city of Jerusalem becomes the birthplace of Jerry Springer culture when Orlando Bloom goes there as a knight to fight for God, but ends up sleeping with a woman who had sex with his father. Even two thousand years ago, no one feels like watching this on television.

8. Casino Royale: Renowned MI6 agent James Bond makes his appearance in his 45th motion picture, which leads to his SECRET identity not being very SECRET any more. He performs none of the established James Bond trademark actions, from keeping his calm to playing a good game of cards to even knowing what his favourite drink is. As a result of his hotheaded approach to the espionage world, he gets a knotted rope smacked onto his balls. Very hard. Repeatedly.

9. Hitch: Will Smith falls in love. He falls out of love. He helps men to get women to fall in love. He falls in love again. He helps a fat man learn how to dance. He falls out of love again. He learns some important lesson in life. He falls in love yet again. The end credits begin rolling.

10. Deja Vu: Denzel Washington and a cast of others realise that it is finally possible to travel back in time and they save the life of a beautiful woman, when clearly, the more intelligent move would have been to go back and advise the producers of the movie never to make this piece of crap.

11. I, Robot: Detective Spooner of the Chicago Police Department chases after a homosexual robot called Sonny for presumed murder. After an hour of technical garble and a war between man and machine, the point still remains that it was in fact, murder. Sonny the homosexual robot sees no jail time for his crime.

12. Jurassic Park 3: As the important life lessons to be learnt from the Jurassic Park adventures become ever increasingly shallow, this time, a whole lot of killing ensues to bring a boy and his divorced parents back together. Dr. Alan Grant hitches along for the ride, only to learn that the suprising evolution of the lizards has brought about the highlight of the film, a terrifying new species of dinosaur. Unknown to the writers, this new Spinosaur actually existed before the Jurassic Age. Dino nerds around the world laugh at this. Then cry because the movie still made more money than they make in a decade digging up bones for a living.

13. Clerks 2: A small group of semi actors, semi writers and semi directors with very little money make another movie. It does not help them get laid this time either.

14. The Lady in the Water: A woman escapes from a fairy tale land to enrich mankind with all the knowledge of the universe and its many realms. Instead of telling influential people in high places who could actually use this knowledge and take steps towards the benefit of the human race, she goes to a generic cast of characters that can barely afford to live in a shabby apartment complex. They keep it a secret forever.

15. Million Dollar Baby: After years of depression caused by a fear to believe in himself anymore, a veteran boxing trainer finally comes out of his hole to redeem himself, and trains a young woman to fight. She breaks her neck. Clint Eastwood gets an Oscar for surviving Hollywood till the age of seventy six.

16. Meet Joe Black: Brad Pitt is asked to be a little less BRAD PITT in his performances. He manages, but only after being hit by two seperate cars going at a hundred and twenty five miles per hour.

17. Erin Brokovich: Julia Roberts plays a woman destined to become a lawyer to help the poor people of a small town where the water has been poisoned due to imporperly followed safety regulations by a conglomerate. She is never taken seriously. She does not grip that maybe it's because of the giant breasts she keeps waving in peoples faces.

18. PayCheck: A man who replicates all forms of groundbreaking technology and has his memory erased, somehow creates a time machine that looks into the future. John Woo looks into the future, and relaxes when he sees no other director could make Ben Affleck act well either.

19. Troy: Brad Pitt plays Achilles. And despite the heavy history, that's the focus of pretty much the whole movie.

20. Dark Water: A bunch of japanese people make a movie with barely any budget. Years later, an American producer makes the same movie with LOTS of budget. Jenniffer Connelly fires her agent.

More when there's more.

In Search of the Plan

Chapter 4.

The New Gods

I tapped into one of my many ME's yesterday. It was nearly 80 years ago, and I was somewhere in a newly developing American city. Chicago I think. A poet, on the underground scene. Fingers snapping, dark rooms and smoke filled cafes. Green lights and ashtrays. The ceiling fans set to a motion so slow that its only purpose was to bring un unending sense of movement in the room. And it made me wonder...

Is it that I was more patient with mankind because I was an incredibly FAT bastard once?



Seventy two, once I was, When children played in the sand
What year, what number
I can't quite remember
This member of earth held the world in his hand

I saw their mothers all wicked and learning
Of forth coming days of hell
The priests would yell
Their gods, they fell
When this member of earth held the world in his hand

The coming of ages they called it so well
The dying of ages of long since past
The forming of wages of work so fast
It would break the mould
Of days of old

And form would the buildings of houses of men
Who went higher and higher in search of the plan
It was then that he realised how needed it was
That this member of earth kept the world in his hand

The people they fought, for gold, for space
And cut off their heads for name and race
There were soldiers and leaders and a fear with no face
A fear in their hearts that sat in its place

They bled to please, to honour their gods,
The gods that live in the towers of steel
The gods that give you your every meal
And their godliness still, you pretend not to feel

For how can you feel that which you can not see
And how can you see what you will not believe
Are these the new gods? How could they be?
For calling them such, surely blasphemy

But they bend men at will, command all life and death
Their angels, the ones who will carry their brand
And take over lands, with the strain of a breath
To mix it all up, the blood, the sand

So watch for the people, their smiling faces
Ruining your faith, in a scheme so grand
It may take you decades to finally remember
You are the one with the world in your hand

School Without Breakfast

Chapter 3.

The Lack of Self Care

I have started developing a real patience for FaceBook. An online socialising web site which, let's face it, everyone reading this knows more about than I do. There's a button you can click there, it's called "Play the FRIENDS game" or something along those lines. The point? You guessed it. Random questions based on your friends profiles and a multiple choice with faces to pick the correct friend for the correct bit of trivia from their profile.

After the first 3 minutes, it got VERY boring.

After the next 2, it got depressing. I had only 2 right. And that too because one of the questions repeated right after itself, but it gave me the points none the less.

I love my friends. But they will never know this. Sometimes I think I just have very little patience for socialising. I have maybe 4 friends I meet even NEAR to a regular basis, and the rest of my friends are people that Orkut tells me they are. I'm impressionable and I hate to argue. So I got with it.

I think I've always been like this. My primary education or "IBTIDAI TALEEM" (which is a word anyone failing Urdu Literature as badly as I always have will know very well) was at Beaconhouse Public. That was a nice school. Some of the closest people to my heart are people I know from there. Even if I don't meet them everyday, I pray for them every single night. That is when I'm not too busy doing some form of drug or alcohol. But I rarely pray for myself.

Maybe I should start.

The school, - after a point when we lose our innocence in life - like any other institution, was not without its fair share of politics. Something you will learn I have come to hate about mankind. I remember once when we were in the higher classes, we got our first dose of a real life SCANDAL.

A girl and a boy, were caught making out in the bathroom.

I don't think I've ever been more awakened to how different I always was from most minds than the moment this became news. You see, to most people, the scandal was that a boy and a girl were caught making out by a teacher.

To me, the scandal was that it was in the BATHROOM. And if you ever went to the Beaconhouse Public School, a place which was more public than school, you would know why that was a bit more disturbing to me than the earlier part of the news. You would think, that those peons were actually being paid to do something about the conditions of the bathrooms in that place. You would think it, but you'd be wrong. Then again, if you actually saw some of the students that went to the school, you wouldn't be too eager to clean up after them in the bathroom either. No matter what class of person you might be (CLASS being a word I hate with all my heart), there are certain things even a peon shouldnt have to do.

The strange thing is...the only people who would be willing to actually use the bathroom in that craphole, were the people who you wouldn't want to go near anyway.

I spent entire years of my life, going to school without breakfast, from the fear of having to suddenly go to the bathroom and having no options but the ones provided. So I never ate breakfast, and all it did was lead to my inevitable academic downfall, what with it being the most important meal of the day and all, but it was worth it. Infact I think the only time I ever went in there was to avoid an Islamiat class because as usual, I hadn't memorised parts of a language I didn't even speak, and the teacher, being an Islamiat teacher, rarely got laid for recreational purposes, and so took it all out on the poor unsuspecting students.


Another personal quirk of mine that developed thanks to my lack of self care and my deathly fear of those toilets, was the entire 5 hours in school I used to go through without a single reminder to what my hair was looking like. I often thought people were staring at me because I'm fat, which, sick as it sounds, I find to be a better reason to stare at someone than because their hair is all messed up.

The only time I ever cared about the hair on my head, as is the case even now, is when I accidentally walk in front of any reflective surface. That's always when I realised the horror of having looked like the many different people I've looked like throughout the years and because of what? Because I didn't care? Because I was never in the habit of constantly combing or setting my hair with my hands or fingers out of the loose complex that my hair might be looking off? For worrying about more important things like my imagination, and the people I can help with it?

For not caring about a gust of wind hitting my face because it felt so good at the time I didn't bother to think about what it was doing to my hair, and how the shallow people around me would react to it?

I like to think of it like this. If God throws wind in my face, I love it, I won't start worrying about my hair and make it everytime that happens because if God wants my hair to look like that, who am I to defy Him, right? Because anyone who defies God, is challenging God, and if that be the case then that person is trying to BE God. And that, is shirk, right dear friends? So anyone who ever does their hair EVER again is SHIRKING! Right? So doing your hair is shirk.

I could grow a beard, learn the positions for namaz correctly and travel to interior Punjab and polish my people screaming skills. I could make them think that killing people who do their hair is the only way into heaven, because let's face it, their prerequisites for calling a man a prophet are that the man must have a beard, a megaphone, he must not SAY he's a prophet and he must tell us where to vent out all this anger we have inside due to lack of sexual relations. Atleast with women.

I could train these poor dumb souls. And one night, in two very large port containers, I could drop them right in the middle of Nazimabad. A part of Karachi where, undoubtedly, the largest number of oil loving hair concious men reside.

I could do it.

But I won't.

A Crappy Rolling Chair

Chapter 2.

The Birthday and the Video Game

I just had to wish a friend happy birthday 5 minutes ago. I told her I didn't get her a present because I'm broke and sweet and understanding as they usually are - friends that is - she said it was ok.

But it reminded me of something from back in the day. Remember how your parents would trick you into getting you a birthday gift, even if it's 3 months before your birthday, and calmly tell you "Now this is an early birthday present." That kinda sucked bricks for me, because now I have zero expectations of a day that usually becomes the only one I ever look forward to throughout the year, and I'm supposed to find solace in the fact that atleast I have a SEGA now, which kinda does nothing when the only game you have on it is Street Smart, a ruthless look into the lives of street fighters who ALSO have to be smart about the money they bet on each fight.

I think I'm the only guy who ever bet on the person I was fighting against. I made 6 billion dollars, but never finished the game, and even most of THAT money went to my character's hospital bill.

I've always loved video games.

Sometimes I sit and think about the maybe 2 years of my life where even I found something I cared about enough to become a real part of.

Just like everything else, it got tainted by corruption, desire and more want for some idea of payback for putting in all those years on a crappy rolling chair and a pc screen. People all around living out their fantasies of being called names that their juvenile minds thought would be a fun thing to be called in a fictional universe like MADDER or JACKOLANTERN or ETERNAL or NOT ETERNAL or NINJA or BLADE or BLOOD or SHOT or BLOODSHOT. It was really something to see.

"VULTURE!!! Behind you!!!"

A man with the nick 'Vulture' turns his mouse to see around his character in the pc.

I turn my ACTUAL head around to find a loser who would name himself Vulture. I laugh about it. Loudly.

My name? Lodhi. It was quite brilliant. Anytime someone called it out, I somehow immediately knew they meant me. What with it being my name and all.

If anything REALLY used to bother me about gaming arenas, was how a man sitting 3 feet away from me can actually be bothered to TYPE a comment to me instead of saying it. I get depressed when I see things like that, you know? Like how dependant we've become on technology that we think it works better than just telling someone something? Most conversations of mine went like this.

GoDsmACk: Lodhi, check the A area with ur sniper, i think we have something going on there.

Lodhi: You're sitting right next to me asshole. Stop stuffing chips in ur face and take a minute.

I do have a lot of patience, sometimes. But barely any for people who use CAPS in the most unreasonable places in their nicknames.

Then there's people on msn who do it with their actual typing. I have deleted them from my list. I'm not being a bitch or anything, I'm just particular about the company I keep. And my decisions in this matter may range from the CAPS thing to things like adding twenty Z's at the end of your good byes. AND your hello's. I mean, really, what the hell is that?

Ah but the politics of so called adults hell bent on corrupting even a tiny fun little thing like lan gaming. I knew I should have seen something coming when CS (That's counter strike, a game which you will not care about much after you realise that the prize money going to 5 people really goes 16 different ways...it's called FRIENDSHIP tax) teams from all around Karachi started bringing prinouts of maps and studying them with markers and pencils before any tournament.

I was in a team called DODT. I'm sure if I was to leak out even HALF the nerdish things the boobs in this team used to do, they'd come after me with a sword. But thats ok, because it would probably be in another VIDEO GAME anyway! Most of the guys in this team were either too weak to lift a sword, or too old to be talking back to a mother who would tell them they can't have any swords in the house, without having to suffer the humiliation of having their noses rubbed in the fact that they still lived with their mothers at 32.

I liked the people though. Can't say I didn't. Honestly. I was always there to entertain anyway, right? What do I care as long as they're laughing. That's all it is. Laughs. The world is such a big joke most of the time that it's refreshing to me to see people laughing sometimes. Because that makes me feel that atleast people get this incredibly unfunny universal joke.

In my later days as a hardcore gamer, or a CYBER ATHLETE as one friend - who I quickly grew to hate and eventually cut contact with completely - called it, I was in a team called LORDS. It started with four people and one whore. And we were the best of the best. We beat two tournaments hands down and retired undefeated for all time.

Atleast I did. There's always someone still willing to hold onto something so bad, that when the music stops, they keep tapping their feet just so they have something to dance to. I wished them the best, and ended my run in the gaming world.

In the end, it was funny to see how a group of guys turned into men throughout the years. Some people went onto bigger things, some didn't. But when you sit and think about it, what was the point of sticking around when the very purpose of the game, which was to have fun, was shot out of the sky like it never existed. When it became only about winning, and proving the other person weaker, or not as skilled, or not as talented as you were. So you could go from arena to arena, city to city, person to person, just telling the same old stories again and again about how you were the 'King of the Realm', the 'Master of Mankind' and the 'Decider of Destiny for the Weak'.

In a fucking video game...

Welcome?

Chapter 1.

The SAB scriber

It's been 23 and a half years since my last birth. This time, it's 1983. What a time to be just a baby. Too old to be in the foetal position, and not old enough to join the hippie movement in America, smoke drugs, and end up dead in a bathroom....

...in the foetal position.



My folks tell me I've been bothering people ever since I could say the word Mother Fucker. It was the 4th word I learnt. Right after "Mother", "Food" and "Why Not?". They tell me I learnt Mother Fucker only seconds after Why Not. Something about the answer I got. The conversation went something like this:

Mother?

Yes beta?

Food.

No beta.

Why Not?

Because you just ate your kid sister.

Mother Fucker.



I'm not a comedian. Not professionally anyway. I don't like going to rehearsals. I don't exchange ideas, because I think I'm wasting people's time with them. I don't practice. I don't have the patience. And I hate blogs. But I now have one.


It takes real energy for me to do what I do. Which is nothing. I talk.


I talk about everything. From video games to movies to music to food to ideas to opinions and my opinions of those opinions. Often enough I talk to myself, because I feel I'm the only one who understands. I hope to no end, that I will be proven wrong.


This is the first time I've ever used a blog. More often than that I've visited other blogs and made rude comments at people who type comments under the name Anonymous. After that, I wait. And when someone agrees with me, I ruin them for trying to side with a complete stranger against a person they don't even know. I don't like it when people side together for a so called worthy cause. There's always somebody who jumps on the bandwagon to get laid by a liberal. And he succeeds. And the cause doesn't. It's the way of the world. My ideal tells me to be a good man, and should every single person on the planet do it the way I've seen you do 2000 years ago, we won't need clubs, or asscociations or companies or groups of any kind to make us feel better about ourselves through that over rated sense of self we love so much called, "The sense, of BELONGING".


Then I play a violin insrumental from Max Payne, and talk to myself about how impressionable minds can be tricked into following anything that's been decided as COOL to do or say by a larger number of people.



Like BLOGS.


Your comments are welcome. Your hostility will be punished. And the posting of too many opinions is not advised. I am your friend, your lover, your brother, your soul. Please, do not force me to also be, your daddy. We will try to figure out what the real problem in this world is. Good, bad, rich, poor. Why people die, why people hurt, and when it's okay to laugh about it.

This Book belongs to all of you, no less than it belongs to me.

We will talk about life, we will talk about love, if you're a hot chick we will even hold hands. And hopefully, I will learn as much as everyone, about what the point really is.


I talk about everything. I am, the SAB scriber.

*NOTE*

Posts and articles in the Archives will get funnier over time. This is the author's first attempt at blog writing, and he prefers to live life by the trial and error method set by his own standards over the years. Much like the first work of any writer, this space is the foothold of an ideal, no matter how crude or unrefined it may seem, all references in the Archives of the Book Of Lodhism from this end on will be continually improving records for everyone to learn from.

This blog is a first attempt, and just like the writers first theatrical play, he does not expect anyone to like it.



Or even turn up.