Not so fantastic

We watched the "Fantastic Four" yesterday. Or rather, we watched most of the "Fantastic Four" but didn’t get to really see the ending due to a really bad DVD disk which skipped during certain scenes and then got totally stuck towards the very end. However, it was enough for me to go on a rant – so mission accomplished :p

I normally do not watch live versions of comic book movies because they inevitably ruin the magic of the comic-book and the characters for me. I still have not watched most of the Superman movies, have seen only one Batman movie (and that too because that was the only thing on in the flight I was on) and have not seen X-men or Spider-man. However, I did watch the Hulk movie because Ang Lee directed it and I was rather disappointed with the final result. I’ve also seen all the Blade movies but since I never read the comic, I can’t really comment on it one way or another except to say that I liked the movies.

The Fantastic Four? That’s a different kettle of fish altogether. The Fantastic Four aren’t my favourite Marvel characters, not by a long shot. However, I’ve been reading the Fantastic Four for ages and I feel as if I know them really well and there have been certain periods in the writing of the book that I felt really close to them. The best periods that I remember are the ones from just after the whole pocket universe thing when the FF returned to Earth and there were some brilliant stories which emphasized the family aspect of the Fantastic Four.

The movie actually had some of these elements and I really liked the interaction between the different members of the Fantastic Four – the ribbing, the humour the insults. All of that seemed to be spot on. What I hated was the whole Dr. Doom bit. They ruined Victor Von Doom’s transition into Dr. Doom and in the process they also made some major characterization blunders – at least that’s how I see it. In the comics, Dr. Doom wears the mask and the metal armour because of a laboratory accident – unless of course, the story has been retconned and now it is supposed to be something else :p It makes sense for him to wear the mask because he doesn’t like the horrible appearance of his face. In the movie, Von Doom relishes the powers he gets and he doesn’t have metal armour he becomes a man of metal. Why would somebody who relishes his new "godlike" powers want to hide his metal face behind a metal mask? That just does not make sense to me.

Other than for the whole Dr. Doom bit, I enjoyed the movie and it appeared to stay true to form. Except, for one major alteration – another peeve I have with Marvel and their movies. The change? Alicia Masters is now black. I don’t really care whether a character is black or white or purple or grey. Their colour makes no difference to me. What matters is who they are. However, it annoys me when a company goes and changes a story just to be "politically correct". I don’t remember any other black characters in the story at all – maybe some of the firemen that the FF rescue are black, probably some of the waving people are black. But are any of the major characters black? No. Are any of the supporting characters (like Victor’s assistant) black? No. So why go make Alicia Masters black except as a token gesture and perhaps to say that "black people *get* being different"? Do you mean white people or brown people or yellow people or Martians don’t actually "get" what it is to be different? To me that is more racist than telling a story as it was originally told. That means that you feel guilty about what you did before … But then again, YMMV :p

In the soup …

We had seen Prachya Pinkaew’s "Ong-bak" a while back and really liked it. It had really bad sub-titles but then again it was a Thai movie and they may have language issues getting the translations done. The sub-titles still manage to convey the basic meaning and there was a good story, very good action and a really funny trishaw chase scene that Laurie still talks about 🙂 It was a very natural kind of movie and as the tagline for the movie states, "No stunt doubles, no computer images, no strings attached". Plus, Prachya Pinkaew seems to have a bit of Steven Spielberg hang-up and I like that too 🙂

So, when we saw Prachya Pinkaew’s second movie "Tom yum goong", we picked it up immediately. We watched it yesterday and this was a far cry from "Ong-bak" 🙁 This movie had hardly any story and seemed to be simply an adrenalin-pumping action flick which just kept pouring more and more of the action on. This one had very poor sub-titles as well but then again, you don’t really need sub-titles to translate the sound of breaking bones :p That’s what most of the movie consisted of – not much talk but lot of breaking arms, legs, ribs, heads and any other bone out of the 206 in the human body. The language was also mostly really bad English and probably Chinese and so they had Thai sub-titles which totally covered the English sub-titles :p

The action was over the top, and as I mentioned before, non-stop. There is one scene where Tony Jaa beats up black-suited guys who keep coming at him non-stop. When he’s done, the whole room is littered with bodies. Very reminiscent of a similar scene in "Kill Bill" where the Bride leaves a room littered with ninja warriors or something. Then there was the final fight that Tony Jaa’s character has with what I like to call "Blondie and the Steroid Triplets". It’s funny in a way. You have these four huge, muscle bound wrestler types going against this tiny Thai guy. They even throw a baby elephant through a glass-window, I kid you not. And then Tony Jaa straps on a pair of elephant bones to his arms and (literally) hamstrings them :p

Yeah, that’s not the whole story. But if you expect a story, there isn’t much. But if you just want to enjoy some really good martial arts moves and aren’t turned off by the sight of bones being broken and arms pulled out of their sockets as if the bad guys were so many dolls that Tony Jaa’s playing with, by all means go ahead and watch the movie 🙂

Lost …

We watched "The Wild Guys" yesterday and going in, I expected it to be pretty bad. Most of the reviews of the movie said stuff like "this is the worst example of Canadian movie-making", "this sets the bar so low that even a midget would have to do the limbo" (I made that one up :p) etc. I expected it to be utterly bad and the first hour or so appeared to prove them right. The movie was slow moving, lots of talking but nothing much else going on. But then, towards the latter half, magic happened. You could actually sympathize with the characters and come to understand what made them who they are. You could laugh with them, instead of at them, and you could actually empathize with the plights that some of them found themselves in.

It’s not a movie with a lot of action. No siree Bob (and he wasn’t even watching the movie :p). It’s in fact a talking heads movie. But the talk is interesting and meaningful. Well, perhaps not at first but the talk the guys have by the campfire was extremely insightful and made up for the whole of the rest of the movie. I forget the specifics (I’ll have to watch the movie again :p) but it was basically about how all of us are lost in our own ways and are just trying to find our way in this confusing world. It made a lot of sense. So if you have nothing better to do and are feeling in the mood for some soul-searching, get the movie :p

Requiescat in Pace, Artorius

We watched "King Arthur" yesterday. I mean the one released in 2004 with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley since there have been quite a few re-tellings of the Arthurian legend over the years. I was half afraid that this would be another re-hash of the tired old story but those fears were put to rest when the movie began with the following words: "Historians agree that the classical 15th century tale of King Arthur and his Knights rose from a real hero who lived a thousand years earlier in a period often called the Dark Ages. Recently discovered archeological evidence sheds light on his true identity." In fact, I spent most of my time after that worrying about the historical accuracy of the movie to worry about the story :p So this is going to be about the history in the movie and not about the movie itself – it’s fairly entertaining and if you like the Arthurian legends, you’ll definitely enjoy it.

I initially thought that the movie was a bunch of bull and that most of their "historical" facts were inaccurate or misplaced. Upon later investigation though, I found that most of it was either historically accurate and that in fact, they had obtained the services of a historian, who himself believed that the story of Arthur had historical basis, as consultant for the movie. Anyway, for anybody who is as nitpicky as me, here are the points that struck me and a brief discussion about them :p

The movie opens with a story about Sarmatians and I was immediately up in arms. My reaction was, "here’s another movie inventing a fictitious people for story purposes". Turns out that the Sarmatians did indeed exist. They would be Iranians in today’s terminology. Apparently, they were pretty similar to the Scythians (whom I did know about :p) There is an interesting similarity between the Sarmatians and the Picts (who also appear in the movie) – they both had their women participate in warfare. I didn’t find anything about the Sarmatian pact to send their children to serve in the Roman army but there is evidence that Sarmatians served in some of the Roman garrisons in Britain.

Then comes the whole "knight" thing and while it’s a nitpick, it’s a sore point with me :p The term "knight" did not actually come into origin till about 1100AD and this particular story is set around 5th century AD. Since the Arthurian legends are usually set in the medieval period, the term knight is used when referring to Arthur and his men. However, there were no "knights" in the Roman army. The closest term from the Roman period was Equestrian – a member of the upper social classes. While this term (and what it implied) is pretty near that of a knight, I don’t believe that the Sarmatian’s, who were more or less conscripted into the Roman army, were in a position to be part of the upper social class. So the only "knight" in the merry band would have been Arthur. But I nitpick :p

The story progresses and we have the Woads enter the scene. Now what they call Woads in the movie are actually Picts – a group of tribes from what today is called Scotland. The term woad comes from the plant they were supposed to have used to obtain the dye for the intricate tattoos that covered the bodies of the Picts. One comment suggests that the term Woads was used to convey the sense that it was a derogatory military term, like many others used since like Pandy in India by the British or Gook in most of Asia by the US or hundreds of other epithets used by soldiers throughout history to identify the "enemy".

I had other doubts about Christianity in Britain at this time period, about a pope being there in Rome and a few other things. I thought that historically the events were either too early or too late. But turns out I was wrong :p Most of these things did take place (or were at least possible) by around 5th century AD. So overall, it does appear as if the movie is indeed as historically accurate as the movie makers claim. Now I don’t know about the little tiny details – there probably are plenty of anachronisms and slip-ups (there usually are :p) but at least the base facts seem to be straight 🙂

From Ashes …

Laurie and I watched "Cinderella Man" yesterday. I don’t particularly like boxing or movies about boxing. As Laurie put it, "when one man has to knock another man unconscious to win, I don’t like that sport". That’s exactly how I feel – it just has too much of a feel of the old bread and circuses days. And seeing all those people sitting there cheering on two people beating themselves to a bloody pulp does nothing to inspire good feelings about humanity in general – well, at least not for me:

But speaking of blood and circuses, we have General Maximus himself in "Cinderella Man". Actually, for some reason, Russell Crowe looked younger in this movie. I don’t know if anybody else thinks this but he’s got a little Mel Gibson thing going in there. See, all the Aussie actors who make it great in Hollywood have this rugged, unshaven look – think back to Mel Gibson during the Mad Max days and then there was Paul Hogan … not not the wrestler, that’s Hulk Hogan, this is the other guy – remember "Crocodile Dundee"? :p Then there’s Guy Pearce too – even he had that whole unshaven look going on. Anyway don’t know if Crowe calls himself an Aussie or a New Zelander but even when he was shaven, he’s always managed to look menacing and unshaven. Mel Gibson used to be that way and then suddenly he became everybody’s favourite baby-faced boy :p In this one, Crowe too has a completely different personna – he’s got this whole, Irish boyish charm thing going and as I said before, he actually looks younger somehow. So hence the comment about him doing a Mel Gibson.

But getting back to the movie itself, even though I hate boxing, there was the whole underlying thread of one man against all-odds that I always find irresistible. There is something about the victory of human spirit over all adversity that just appeals to me. Then there is the time period – the story is set in depression era New York and the two time periods from American history that I love the most are the pioneer "Westward Ho" days and the depression era 🙂 Add to that the fact that you have a lot of charming characters (and some good actors too – Renée Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Bruce McGill) and then it also has kids, who can resist a movie with kids? :p I loved the scene where Braddock (Crowe’s character) teaches his daughter to spar and gets smacked in the face when he looks away and where he says that he’ll have to buy some turtles if he wins the title because he told his kids that he’d come home with a title and they thought he said "turtle" 🙂 Overall, a pretty good movie to watch!

Serious comics

I’ve written here before about my love of comics and while I had not read comics since around the beginning of the new millennium, I got back to comics about a year ago. At first, I was simply catching up with old stuff or simply finding old comics that I’d wanted to read but had not had the chance to before. But recently, I started reading the comics which are coming out at the moment – the fresh stuff and boy was I in for a surprise 🙂

Somewhere in between the time I stopped reading comics and started reading them again, they seem to have somehow gotten a lot more edgier and more realistic. The first of the new breed that I started reading was DC‘s "Identity Crisis". I suddenly saw old familiar characters portrayed in a new light – they weren’t just super-heroes with incredible powers but normal people like you and I, people with powers sure, but also people with their own vulnerabilities and foibles. Not perfect people by any stretch of imagination – simply people. I was enthralled by this new direction that the comics were taking and got a few more comics – read some more and was beginning to like the way things were going.

However, all the new comics I’d read had been from DC. My original allegiances in comic had been more Marvel than DC. Most of my favourites came from Marvel but they’d also been the reason for me giving up comics a few years back – they’d tried to make things more "realistic" by killing off some of the most beloved (at least beloved to me) characters around and I’d just not liked their experiments. Around this time, Marvel was doing another one of their radical changes – a major story arc which (brutally) changed one of the most established super-hero groups in the Marvel Universe. I was thinking of picking up this story arc and reading it when I heard that one of my most favourite characters dies in that arc and that was it, it felt just like when I’d stopped reading comics earlier and I decided to give Marvel a wide berth and concentrate on DC, who seemed to have better story-telling and better direction anyway.

The original Marvel story arc I was talking about (in case anybody is wondering, it’s "Avengers Disassmebled"), ended and they started a new comic, "New Avengers". I picked up a couple of issues of the comic out of curiosity but still didn’t read it since I still didn’t feel like following a story from the company that killed one of my most favourite heroes. Then Marvel came out with "Young Avengers" and since this was a totally new group of heroes and a totally new comic where I had nothing invested in emotionally (yes, I get worked up about comics :p) I decided to give it a shot and I was pleasantly surprised! It had humour, it had freshness and it was even better than the current stuff from DC – yes, others might disagree with me here but I’m talking about me, not others :p It turned out that the guy who wrote "Young Avengers" -Allan Heinberg – had also written for "Gilmore Girls", one of my favourite TV shows! (Incidentally, that could start a whole other thread of thought about how comics seem to be attracting well-known writers from other fields such as Kevin Smith and Joss Wheadon of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fame – Laurie reminded me later of also Orson Scott Card who is writing "Ultimate Iron Man" … but perhaps another time)

What did happen was that I enjoyed the "Young Avengers" so much that I finally gave the "New Avengers" a try and actually liked how they were written and then went on to read a few more Marvel comics and what do you know, I’m hooked again 🙂 Marvel is doing good stuff with some of their characters and now DC’s got some good story lines going too and then DC announced "Countdown" :p Now, I’m not really sure about "Countdown" – if any comic book fans are reading this, you’d know about DC’s "Crisis on Infinite Earths" back in 1985 where they had a major 12-part series which redefined their universe. Now, 20 years later on their 70th anniversary, DC is doing it again with "Countdown". Heck, they are even calling it "Countdown to Infinite Crisis" :p

I had not read "Crisis on Infinite Earths" till now (though I’d been hearing about it for ages and I’d read both pre-crisis and post-crisis Superman) and I finally did. Now that I’ve read it, the first preludes to "Countdown" seem hauntingly familiar in certain senses – you have the Blue Beetle playing a major role, the villains uniting, the spectre taking a hand and so on – there is even a lot of emphasis on the character of Dr. Light! But will it play out the same? Will this be somebody at DC saying "this is our chance to correct Crisis on Infinite Earths" which was in its own right a correction/update to the DC universe? Or will this play out differently and will we be presented with a new, more mature DC universe? I don’t know … only time, and the unfolding of the story, will tell 🙂

Back again …

I’ve finally decided to come back to blogland :p When I started to write this entry, I thought I’d never been away from blogging for this long since I started blogging way back in ’99 or so (or was it earlier? :p) But then I took a look at the archives for this site and realized that at least here, I seem to have had a habit of cyclically going offline for long periods. The last time was in October of 2003 and and I didn’t come back till April 2004! So I guess this time is a much faster recovery … that is, if I keep on writing after this and not stop again after this entry or a couple of more entries.

So what has been happening? A lot actually. Around the end of October both my sister and sister-in-law (Laurie’s sister) paid us visits. While my sister’s visit was brief, Laurie’s sister and her family stayed with us for a while and we really enjoyed the visit. Of course, having guests in the house meant going sightseeing, going shopping and so on and time really passed by in a blur.

Then in November, I got a new job through the help of my friend Tracie (thanks Tracie :)) and finally left my previous employer – I’d been with them for close to five years (the longest I’d been with any one employer) over two different periods. I always will remember them with warmth because I truly felt at home there but I was going nowhere there since they really didn’t have anything to keep me occupied full time. My new job on the other hand, keeps me so occupied that I am exhausted at the end of the day :p I work for a hosting company as a remote systems admin now and since I’m administering servers, I am on alert most of my working hours in case one of the servers decides to act up. While it’s not very physical work (I sit on the couch staring at my computer screen the whole day :p), it’s mentally exhausting because you can never really relax. But I’m getting better at it and learning to relax a bit more than I did at the beginning, when I was too scared to look away from the monitoring screen for even one second lest something go wrong with the servers and I might miss an alert :p

The new job, the new schedule, the changes in work habits etc. have kept me busy and away from blogging (or even doing any other stuff like coding …) for the last couple of months. I now seem to be finally getting into a new groove (which I hope does not become a rut :p) and so am able to think about blogging again. Plus, I started blogging as an outlet for all the thoughts crowding in my head and also because I needed to, was compelled to write. But since I’m so busy now, the compulsion to write is gone. Indeed, I found that the couple of articles a month I was doing for two different magazines was getting to be draining because of all the research that I had to do. So I gave up most of my writing too (I still write for one magazine – but that’s on an occasional basis) and become a gentlemen of leisure … albeit without too much leisure time :p

That brings us to about yesterday 🙂 I spent most of my spare time yesterday cataloguing my DVD collection. I’d been keeping tabs on my DVD’s using an application that I’d found online (what geek doesn’t? :p) but had stopped updating it like three years ago. And since we’d been buying a lot of DVD’s recently, I found that we had a lot of DVD’s not in the system and worst still, that we were buying duplicates at times because I didn’t have an updated system! So I finally decided to bite the bullet and update the system. I started with around 220 DVD’s in the system and now have 456 after I’d entered almost all of the new ones :p I still have about 10 more to go which are mostly Tamil or Hindi movies which aren’t in the database of selectable movies of the application that I use – DVD Profiler. So I’ll have to entere those manaually – I’ve become really anal about making sure that the cast and crew information is as correct as possible so that I can do an offline cross-reference of any actor, director, writer etc. based on the movies I own. So, I guess I’ll just have to do a lot of IMDB refrencing to update the last 10 or so movies – yes, that’s something I found out yesterday … even Tamil and Hindi movies are in IMDB! Granted, they don’t have as much information as the Hollywood movies, but they are still there and that’s probably one of the easiest references for referencing Bollywood or Mollywood movies too 🙂

Later in the evening we watched "Ocean’s Twelve" on DVD. Yeah, I hear you going, "What? It’s not out on DVD yet!" :p These were pirated copies of the movie – and bad pirated copies at that since somebody had shot it in a theater (probably) and the camera was slightly slanted and so the whole movie was slightly askew :p Then there were all the French titles, place names etc. which made the story a bit difficult to follow since I like to know all the details :p The movie was good but the ending wasn’t breathtaking – in fact, I could see it coming a mile away. I don’t know whether Hollywood writers are becoming more predictable each year or if I’m just beginning to see the patterns better but I can predict what’s going to happen in a movie more and more easily as time passes. The last movie that I can remember surprising me was "The Sixth Sense" and even that I was able to figure out what was happening before the movie ended.

Speaking of "The Sixth Sense", is M. Night Shyamalan’s career going in reverse or what? He came out with his best movie as his maiden offering and it has been steadily going downhill since then. "Unbreakable" was good but left me feeling as if there was something more – as if I’d seen only half a movie and there was an untold story I was missing. "Signs" was just a bad movie – no two words about it. The story was atrocious, so lame that it probably wouldn’t have floated even in the beginning days of science fiction. Come on, aliens who are afraid of water? I read something very similar in one of my first Sinhalese science fiction novels when I was like thirteen and even then, I was sceptical of that whole idea :p I haven’t even bothered to see "The Village" since the guy at the video store was like "This is the same guy who did ‘Sixth Sense’? But this is such an awful load of crap!" ‘Nuff said 🙂

Jersey Girls and Spammer Jerks

I watched "Jersey Girl" on Saturday with Laurie and I must say I loved it 🙂 I’ve seen other Kevin Smith movies like "Chasing Amy", "Dogma" and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and while they all had certain thought-provoking aspects, they never appealed to me emotionally the way "Jersey Girl" did. I don’t know if Keving Smith is growing as a writer and a director of if he is simply becoming one more "Hollywood" writer/director but what I can say is that I liked this one better than most of his previous works. It still had little touches which make it a non-run-of-the-mill movie – such as Gertie doing "Sweeny Todd" for the school (complete with slitting of throats and all :p) and Liv Tyler’s character which was so over-the-top and yet kind of true to life. Most people would probably say that Kevin Smith has sold out because this wasn’t a gritty, realistic, thought provoking movie but instead actually has a happy ending :p But I say, I loved it!!

Spammers seem to be evoking very harsh reactions these days. I’ve heard many people call them jerks (the title was just to go along with Jersey Girls – I really don’t think they are any more of jerks than the rest of humanity … people are just people :p) and even had a couple of users of WPBlacklist write to me and say that they should rot in hell 🙂 I don’t particularly like spammers myself (notwithstanding me not thinking of them as jerks) and so I’ve been conducting my own one-man campaign to do what I can to stop people from being bugged by spam. I’ve been posting over at the WP support forums in response to every spam-related query and have even updated the WPBlacklist plugin in a frenzy of updates to make sure that it can do the best possible to combat spam comments. While I was doing all of this, I seemed to be safe from spam myself for the longest time except for a couple of comments every other day. That seems to have changed now :p Either somebody is determined to get me (no, I’m not paranoid :p) or the spammers have come up with a new set of scripts/tools which circumvent most of the spam deterrents that I’d already put in place. I’ve been getting a steady stream of spam comments since I woke up in the morning today – but the good news is that WPBlacklist has so far caught them all and deleted them instantly. So I sit here with a smug smile on my face saying "another spam comment gone" while the flood of spam continues to hammer at my site :p

The Warrior’ Path

I watched "The Last Samurai" yesterday. Or rather, I actually began watching it on Saturday but couldn’t finish it on Sunday since I had some other stuff to do and so finished watching it yesterday :p I loved the movie. I had not thought I would like it as much as I did when I started watching it but by the time the movie ended, I was loving it. There were moments in the movie which left me pondering about things and that always is a good thing for a movie. What struck me most about the film was the fact that we all have habits, customs or a way of life that we think is the "right" one. It is only when we come face-to-face with something totally alien do we realize that there are other ways than ours and while that might not be the suitable way for us, we must respect the ways of others if we are to ever live in peace on this Earth of ours.

One scene that struck me especially was towards the end when Algren (Tom Cruise) and Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) charge the army of Omura (Masato Harada). While I by no means like violence and would rather find a solution through discussion, I was left with the feeling "this is as it should be, person to person, face to face" when I saw them charging the opposing army. And then … they get cut to pieces by the Gatling gun of Omura and fall in their tracks. I was thinking how low have we fallen, no longer will we even take the honourable way of fighting (if we must fight) by facing our enemy and taking the same risks as s/he does. Instead, we stay far away in safety and fire upon our enemy with weapons that kill without distinction – combatant or non-combatant … there is no difference. Worse yet, our commanders and leaders (the ones who actually order these wars/killings) sit even further away (perhaps even in a different country) safe from all the destruction that they order. I see no honour in such a way.

But then again, was is not about honour any longer, is it? No, wars are fought by the greedy, the opportunistic – people like Omura in "The Last Samurai". People who are only concerned with gaining power or wealth – not about something as transient as honour. Of course, on the other hand, one might say, "What honour is there in killing somebody else?" but that is not my point. My point is that if kill you must, then kill face-to-face, against an opponent who is armed the same as you and has as equal an opportunity of killing you as you them. Perhaps then we would have less wars … but then again, given humanity’s track record so far, that seems unlikely.

Peter Pan the boy-man

Watched "Peter Pan" yesterday with Laurie. Actually, we started on the movie the day before but stopped half-way since there were other things to watch on the telly :p Anyway, it has been a long time since I read the original book and I’d forgotten most parts and in the interim, the image that had stayed with me had mostly been the Disney version and not the original. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I actually saw the story in a new light – not sure if the original book had the same perspective or if the movie maker had given the story a new twist or if it’s just me …

Whatever the case may be, this time around I saw the tale of Peter Pan more as a parable or an allegory. Peter Pan seemed to symbolize all males – never wanting to grow up, always eager to have fun but not ready to have feelings, to be hurt. And Wendy seemed to epitomize womanhood, always wanting a man instead of a boy, somebody who would love her and not just be a playmate 🙂 One of my favourite lines from the movie was Peter saying "I taught you to fight and to fly. What more do you want?" And sometimes I find myself echoing his words, "what more indeed?"

I don’t know about everybody – whether all males never want to grow up and to be honest, I’m not really certain that what most of the world calls growing up is really growing up. It’s all in the perspective. Is becoming hard, mercenary, cynical and suspicious growing up? Some people seem to think so. Is being selfish and thinking of oneself before others growing up? Some people seem to think that too. If that is growing up, I’d rather retain the innocence of childhood. However, I believe that some of us are lucky enough to retain a part of ourselves from our childhood and yet be able to adapt to the so called adult world as well, while there are others who never grow up at all and then again, there are a lot of people who seem to completely grow up and forget all about their childhood. But even this, is all in the perspective of each person since "grown up" is such a subjective term :p