• Winter Moon

    Dean Koontz

    I was quite surprised that the book was published in 1994. I expected a much earlier date, judging by the work. Its not really bad, but it doesn’t have that gripping quality of Koontz’ later works, of which I’m a big fan. That’s when I got to know that this was first published as ‘Invasion’ in 1975 under the pseudonym Aaron Wolfe.

    The book initially follows two stories in parallel – Jack McGarvey, a cop, and his family in Los Angeles, and Eduardo Fernandez, Jack’s deceased partner’s father, who lives in a ranch in Montana.

    Jack is recuperating from an incident involving a drug-crazed Hollywood director, who opens fire on innocent people, in a service station. Jack ends up having to kill him, and lands himself in the hospital for several months.

    Meanwhile, at the ranch, Eduardo notices bizarre phenomena among the animals around, and realises that there is a mysterious alien force involved.

    Though the book does feature the Koontz trademarks – dog, single kid, quotes from the (then) non existent ‘The Book of Counted Sorrows’, it semmed to be more a Stephen King approach than the later works of Dean Koontz.

    Not really a bad read, but there are definitely better Koontz creations out there.

  • Hiremantra

    Hiremantra.com is a hiring solution that lies somewhere between job sites and recruitment software. In conversation with co-founder Subodh Vinchurkar.

    [scribd id=72386058 key=key-162d604514lctrv33sl5 mode=list]

  • Building brand stories

    There was a superb post at Misentropy last week on story-telling that opened up new perspectives for me on that art, and science, especially the last few lines on subliminal commands that could set or reset a new memory episode in our minds.

    The coincidence in the timing was excellent, because it is related to a subject that has occupied my thoughts for a while now – brand stories in recent times. Notwithstanding recent splurges, a Google or Apple or even an Angry Birds has not really built a brand on advertising. On any given day, there are hundreds if not thousands of websites and blogs which compete among themselves to ensure they get the latest dope on these companies first.

    For a while, I thought that this was largely due to the inherent domain association. Of the internet/mobile and therefore covered on the internet/mobile. But that’s not really true – Lady Gaga or Bieber or The Dark Knight Rises (check out Misentropy’s curated fan creations – Batmania) are not tech, they are popular culture, and yet they have all successfully built brand stories (also) using the internet to great effect. Are all music bands or movies operating at that level? Not. The only commonality I could notice was the ‘product is marketing’ (yes, even Bieber or Kim Kardashian actually belong here) credo, by design or not.  The product in this case need not (and is usually not) even be the core domain they’re operating in, it’s usually a core differentiator – in Gaga’s case, shock. I have no clue on Bieber, and Kim Kard’s sticks way out of the purview of this blog!

    But despite the above, and exceptions, I also wondered whether brands of an earlier era were at a disadvantage because they operated not only in domains that had become commodities, but also operated within frameworks that made their activities templates. Not just from a planning perspective, but from communication platforms as well.

    Thanks (also) to my weekly web wrap column, I noticed one interesting example of a brand that could weave its story into my life’s context – apparently by design. For 8 years, the Samsung TV and I have been staring at each other without getting into a relationship. But for the last few weeks, I’ve been scanning websites to check out the release of the Galaxy Nexus phone in India. The only other alternative I have in mind – the Galaxy S2. Samsung has piggybacked on Android to enter my life. However, just as this article states (about Samsung in the context of the Internet of Things), I’d say that Samsung has missed an opportunity in this regard. (though its Samsung Nation gamification based loyalty program looks interesting) The simple test being that I wouldn’t blink before changing my preferences if a different Android maker offered me a better product. But would I try a different OS family? Not a chance. Because, dessert name versions and all, Android is a story for me now.

    So, simplistically, I see two gateways to story telling – it’s either the story or the telling. In the first case, the product is so different that it leads the story, and in the second, the product might be a commodity, but the telling is such that it creates a story. Classic examples for the latter are ‘Will it Blend?’ and ‘The Old Spice Man’, episodic thought they might seem. Depending on its domain and competitive landscape, each brand would have to decide its focus and build the relevant skill set. The tools are more than ever before, as always, it’s how they are used. That story hasn’t changed.

    until next time, storied brands

  • Act of Life

    Prithviraj (for those who might not know) is God’s Own Controversy’s Child, though the title has other strong contenders like Kochi Tuskers, and its star Sreesanth, and Ranjini Haridas, the compere who defies comparison. Prithviraj also stars in movies while he’s not busy adding credentials to the title. As you must have noticed from the last line, he’s a person who manages to polarise public opinion. 🙂

    Since any further commentary in this direction would have the potential to ignite a troll war, let’s get to the point of the post. Hailing from a family that can’t get more filmi (late father was a popular actor and Kerala’s own angry young man in his era, mother is an actress, brother is an actor and sister-in-law is an actress too), Prithviraj can usually be found within a few metres of the spotlight, if not in it. His interviews are a lot of fun. Reasonably well read, from what I can gather, highly opinionated, and oblivious of tact as a concept (something he himself acknowledges), he either makes intelligent conversation or tries to play footsie with his running mouth. (most recent example) Entertaining either way, and so I make it a point to watch his interviews.

    Thanks to our original underworld hero Mahabali almost being forgotten at Onam, and Prithviraj playing an underworld don in his Onam release, all the channels queued up to interview him. As always, they provided lots of fodder for hilarity. But the one on Kairali TV (I think) happened to be an interesting conversation, also thanks to the interviewer. Something that the actor said about working with Mani Ratnam in ‘Ravanan‘ caught my attention.

    Apparently, Mani Ratnam manages to identify and understand an actor’s comfort zones within a couple of days. He then proceeds to put them in situations they would find uncomfortable. His reasoning is that he doesn’t want their acting to be affected by their conditioning or them to fall back on the learning from earlier characters they have essayed. I thought that was a really smart way to bring some freshness to even the most veteran of actors. Wonder if Prithviraj gained this insight himself, or the director told him.

    But it leads back to a life lesson on conditioning. The routines, the benchmarks, peer pressure and the other daily grind machinations force us back to our conditioning. I know (subjective) from experience how difficult it is to look past the attitudes and responses that smack of conditioning. I have found it difficult to sustain whatever levels of objectivity I might have built up over a period of time. Even when I disrupted a routine, the disruption became a routine. It is as though the equilibrium is always a comfort zone.

    What is a measure of the mettle of an actor? Is it the way he manages to make a done-to-death character come alive or is it how he handles a completely new character convincingly? I guess you’d say both. Unfortunately, I don’t think ‘both’ is an option when you apply this measure to how one lives a life. You’d have to choose one role and play it really well, isn’t it? Life is the movie, there are no re-takes, and getting out of the character is a really difficult thing to do.

    until next time, roled into one.

  • Weekly Top 5

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