Not even a quantum of solace!

Everyone is excited about the new Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace", that released last week in the US. Everyone that is, except me. We went out for dinner last weekend and ran into some friends who were going to go watch this "movie event". The discussion automatically turned to whether the movie was watchable or not and what stunts there would be in the movie and which of the wonderful technological advances shown in the movie were actually accessible to the common man. All wonderful bond traits and things to discuss about any Bond movie from any era. I enthusiastically joined in... until the discussion turned to who made a better Bond, Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Everyone agreed Daniel Craig was good, maybe not as much eye candy as Pierce Brosnan, but not bad on the eyes either, except me who has taken a weird aversion to him. I don't know what it is about some people that turns you off instantly. For eg., there is nothing wrong with Daniel Craig (atleast acc to popular opinion). He's a fairly decent actor who's no worse than the other male stars out there, he's not very bad-looking, a lot of people consider him very handsome, and intellectually, I know he does a decent Bond. I mean, you can't do worse than Timothy Dalton, in any case, right? So my brain tells me there's nothing to hate about him, cause the emotion I have is stronger than mere dislike, its not as strong as hate maybe, but its definitely getting up there. I pray I don't smack his face if ever I run into him somewhere (highly unlikely, so I'm safe there!).
I read somewhere that babies have a built-in evolutionary way of telling if someone is good-looking... they look for symmetry in the features and the expression in people's eyes. As far as symmetry goes, I can understand if the mathematical part of your brain likes that, and therefore if a face is completely unsymmetrical, we call that bad-looking. That makes perfect sense. So does the idea that the expression in a person's eyes appeals to your instincts or your emotions and you like people who smile with their eyes or dislike those who glare at you. But as far as actors are concerned, their every expression goes through a gamut of people, from the casting director to the cameraman to the editor before it winds up in your face, so why should this highly filtered input not cause anything but admiration. It mystifies me what exactly it is about certain faces that you like instantly (I guess we call it "clicking with someone") and what about other people drives you to violence unnecessarily. :)
For now, it remains a chemical imbalance in my brain that causes me to dislike actors like Daniel Craig and Raveena Tandon at first sight, without even considering their body of work. I guess I will cave under pressure and curiosity and end up watching "QofS" someday, but I donot believe I will enjoy the actor much.

Politics and election coverage

Its currently election season at its peak in the USofA. Which means no matter what channel you turn to, you get bombarded with local and national ads as to which candidate is suitable (mostly which one is unsuitable) to govern you and your family and friends. I have nothing against that, tis the season to be campaigning. This piece is about the viewers of said programs.
We have cable at home, which means we can watch the same ad on a 100 different channels, as well as dish tv, which means we can figure out whats happening in India too on the political scene. Among this vast array of choices, at any given time, there are dozens of channels NOT playing political ads or (more annoying to me) political discussions about these ads and the candidates. Programs that follow said candidates through every piece of dialogue, every speech and every interview, and believe you me, they do a lot of all of these.
With all the choices we have to watch something other than politics, guess what we end up watching every single day for hours at a time? Yepp, election coverage! For some reason, the average middle-class indian feels an almost impossible-to-deny urge to be informed of the political process of the country they reside in. I say this admiringly, cause there is nothing better than being informed of the situation around you. However, the level of information we need and the amount of information gathering that takes place is completely disproportional. For eg., for me, knowing which candidates are vying for which post and what their basic beliefs are is enough information. Takes one half-hour to an hour each day, if that. So why do we watch TV coverage of these candidates for 3-4 hours everyday? There's no new information coming in, usually the same speeches are recycled, and the polls change constantly as to which states will vote for which candidates or which county will vote which way. My motto is wait for the final results, cause everything else is just conjecture. but apparently, there are millions of people out there who spend tons of time talking about, discussing, arguing and impossibly enough, watching this conjecturing (sic?). It totally baffles me. I'm just glad election is tomorrow, so we finally get to put the guesswork to rest. But then, there's the post-election coverage and the wisdom of hindsight that gets doled out by the same channels in abundance. So we're looking forward to another couple of months or so of TV watching, discussions, arguments and political information being bandied about in the family room.
And why am I being a bad citizen by not following the election coverage 24 hours a day? Precisely because I'm not... a citizen, that is. All this political coverage is being followed in a household with three adults and a baby, none of whom are eligible to vote. I dread to think of the time when we will be, and the amount of TV watching that will be awaiting us before we feel ready to cast our all-important vote.