Experiences

It’s the stunt that introduces the hero. He is pummeling one baddie when another baddie crouching behind him gets a call on his cell. The ring tone is a loud ridiculous dance tune. The poor fellow has a deer-caught-in-headlights expression—will the hero thrash him too, now that his presence has been so raucously revealed? The hero turns to face baddie # 2 while holding baddie #1 in a vise-like grip. Baddie #2 swallows hard. Hero slaps his palm on his forehead. “Phone uthana!” he barks at him. Baddie #2 sheepishly takes the phone out and checks who it is. “Kiska hi?” Hero asks. “Ma sir!” baddie #2 replies. “Ma ko mera pranam kehna!” the hero says and turns to Baddie # 1. “Ma se yaad aaya, teri ma…” “Sir!!!!” baddie #2 protests, overcome with scruples now that his mother is on the line. “Nahi, mein yeh pooch raha tha ki teri ma hi ki guzar gayi?” hero asks baddie #1. The theater erupts in laughter. At least, I guess it must, if there are more than two people in the theat

She didn’t have a phone. In order to find each other easily, we decided to meet at the northwestern corner of the Bean at Millennium Park. I told her: “I will have a white carnation pinned to my lapel and be carrying a back issue of the Wall Street Journal. Ask me this question: ‘What is a unicorn?’ My answer will be: ‘A unicorn is just a horse with a long—ay vey!’ Make sure that they don’t follow you.” She replied: “Roger that Betty Boop. Look for a juvenile delinquent in a green shirt. Ask, 'Aasman mein kitne taare hain?' If you hear, 'Hum sab tumhare hain,' start jogging in the north westerly direction. Stop near the Inn of the Frantic Frog. I'll see you there.” It was a nasty day to meet someone at a house of ill repute like the Frantic Frog Inn. Storm clouds hung ominously overhead, darkening the sky so much that at 10:30 a.m., it looked like it was 7:00 p.m. There was a mixed crowd on the train. While getting down at Union Station, I made eye contact

Ladies and gentlemen, would you care to take a little trip down history with me? We are not going far--just up to February 1764, to a small limestone bluff on the west bank of the mighty Mississippi, where Pierre Laclede Liguest’s (a French fur trader) men are erecting the first structures of a settlement, which is called Laclede’s Village for now. Although his French style village is small, Laclede sees “one of the finest cities in America” there. The population of the village steadily grows over the years, aided by the French-Spanish-French-American ownership of the land. Let’s move on to 1804 and be there to flag off the epochal Lewis and Clark expedition from Camp Wood, just outside our town. They are setting out to explore the land beyond the “great rock mountains” of the West, as decreed by President Thomas Jefferson. The nation’s westward expansion has officially begun. Our town, now called St. Louis, becomes the last post before setting off to the wild west. By the 1820

Explain something to me. Is George Clooney a star or not? Is he a media darling, a celebrity, subject of many a female fantasies, and an impossibly good looking 49-year old or not? Is he a mainstream actor or not? Now what is he doing in a quiet, stark movie, doing a delicately nuanced character study of a taciturn assassin, dangerous and endangered (like the butterflies he likes to study)? The American is a take-no-prisoners art house movie. It is minimalist. It is deliberate. It has very little dialog. It has even lesser action. It is visually stunning. Even the plot of the movie is minimalist. Here’s an American assassin called Jack. Or perhaps he is Edward. He works for Pavel. We do not know what he is. It is not important. Only Jack (or Edward) takes orders from him without questions. Jack is forced to kill three people, including a girl (perhaps a prostitute?) in Sweden. Now his boss has asked him to lay low in a remote Italian village. He is supposed to build a custom ri