The Keeper of the Dragon Balls

Akira Toriyama is a widely known and acclaimed "mangaka" (Japanese word for a comic artist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese .) known mostly for his work in the Dragon Ball metaseries .

He debuted in 1979 with the story Wonder Island, published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and first gained popularity for the anime and manga series Dr. Slump, originally serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984. In 1984, Toriyama was responsible for developing Dragon Ball which was initially serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. It became an instant accomplishment — primarily selling over 35,000,000 copies in Japan. The series was equally successful worldwide as well, including in the US and Latin America.

Toriyama is mostly acknowledged for his hit series Dragon Ball. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work on Dragon Ball from 1984 to 1995. During that eleven-year period, he produced 519 chapters, collected into 42 volumes.

Each volume has an average of 200 pages and the entire Dragon Ball storyline extends to almost 9,000 pages. Moreover, the benefit of the manga led to an animated television series; it brought forth the famed Dragon Ball Z, numerous feature-length animated movies, several video games, and mega-merchandising.

His works after Dragon Ball tend to be short (100-200 page) stories, including ' Kajika', and 'Sand Land', as well as one-shots, like the self-parody 'Neko Majin'. Most recently, he has been the character designer for 'Dragon Quest Swords' for Nintendo .

The name of Toriyama's studio is Bird Studio, which is a play on his name, meaning "Bird Mountain". 鳥 tori means "bird" and 山 yama means "mountain". 明 akira means "intelligent" or "brightness".

The Man with the Blue Guitar

The Old Guitarist is a picture by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1903, just after the suicide death of Picasso's close friend, Casagemas. Picasso's “Blue Period” spanned the years of 1901–1904, and was followed by his “Rose Period”. These periods were both precursors to Cubism, which defined much of Picasso's career.
The Old Guitarist depicts a blind man, clad in tattered rags, huddled about his guitar. The figure is reportedly modeled after Senor Sebastian Mazzarella, the blind artist who mentored Picasso in his earlier days in Madrid.
This work made in the distorted style (note that the upper torso of the guitarist seems to be reclining, while the bottom half appears to be sitting cross-legged) is reminiscent of the works of El Greco.
The painting is also notable for the ghostly presence of a mysterious image painted underneath it. It is very likely that Picasso originally started painting a portrait of a woman, who appears to possibly be seated, and then changed his mind and painted the guitarist over her to save canvas.

The Man with the Blue Guitar

Wallace Stevens penned the poem “The Man With the Blue Guitar” after viewing this piece, though in the poem the guitar, rather than the man, becomes blue. The blueness here becomes an image of the transformative power of art, as expressed in the opening lines,

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”
And they said then, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.”

A Beatle's Version

Viewing this painting in the hospital after the birth of his daughter, Paul McCartney was inspired to write his 2 finger song. McCartney observes that the old man in the picture was infact using just two fingers while playing . Finding this strange McCartney,a multi instrumentalist himself, tries to copy the old man's fingering and play what he believed the old man was playing, using his own guitar.Having struck on a note he then tunes a song using just two basic notes.
You may listen to the song by clicking the link.

Road Map to Connecticut

1. A slightly weak but interesting one all the same.

"bah humbug" is a phrase which was often used by Ebenezer Scrooge, the protoganist in the Charles Dicken's novel A christmas carol.

Through the looking glass is ofcourse the sequel to Alice in wonderland written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson more popularly known to us by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

Pope John Paul II the second's real name was Karol Józef Wojtyla.

The connection of course is the name 'Carol'.

2.Wolverine

Mahindra and Mahindra in association with Renault had recently launched The Logan.Now if u r familiar with marvel comics ,the name Logan first brings to mind the X-men hero Wolverine.Born James Howlett,Wolverine is one of the Xmen ,guys with the x gene in them which gives them special abilities.A mutant, Wolverine possesses animal-keen senses, enhanced physical capabilities, and a healing factor that allows him to recover from virtually any wound. The near unbreakable metal alloy adamantium bonded to his skeletal system gives him his razor-sharp retractable claws.He is portrayed on screen by the actor Hughe Jackman in the 'X-men" films .the first 2 of which were directed by Brian Singer.

3.Spiderman

The amazing Fantasy #15 ,1962 issue gave us the comic super hero Spiderman.

Created by Stan Lee the amazing webslinger had the alter ego Peter PArker who worked as a press photographer at the 'Daily Bugle' newspaper which had Joseph 'Robbie' Robertson as the Editor in Chief.Among his many deadly supervillains 'Venom' would rank as one ofthe most dangerous.Initially a parasitic alien life form ,venom infects Edward 'Eddie' Brock a fellow press photographer and rival to Peter Parker and becomes the supervillian.

4.Tin tin.

Pablo is a character from The Adventures of Tintin series of classic comic books written and drawn by Hergé. He is a native of the fictional country of San Theodoros and lives in the capital Los Dopicos.Tin Tin's dog snowy is called Milou in the french version and Struppi in the german version.The first Tin Tin comics appeared in Le Petit vingtième, the weekly children's supplement to Le Vingtième siècle newspaper while Herge was its editor.Charles de Gaulle once famously said "Actually, you know, my only international rival is Tintin. We are the little fellows who refuse to be had by the big fellows. People don't notice the resemblance because of my stature."

5.The Battle of Thermopylae pass.

A personal favourite.In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian Empire at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persians for three days in one of history's most famous last stands.Thermopylae means "hot gateway" in greek.Ephialtes was the local who betrayed the greeks by helping the persians penetrate the pass.around 1300 greeks of which about 300 were spartan warriors fought against King Xerxes' 1/2 a million men.The Spartans assembled at full strength a year later and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it the expansion of the Persian Empire into Europe.

The film 300 is based on this historic stand off.

6. This one has some magic in it.

These are the friends of 'Peter Rabit' created by Helen Beatrix Potter (1866 – 1943), an English children's book author and illustrator.

Now have the sir name in mind.J.K Rowling was the First Person to become US dollar billionaire by writing books.Brain Charles Lara HAd the word 'Wizard' written on his bat and Thomas Alva Edison was of course the 'Wizard of Menlo Park.'
answer Harry Potter

CONNECTICUT

So here is my first attempt at connection questions and i give u a full set on them.

1.connect

i "bah Humbug"

ii Through the looking glass

iii Pope John Paul II

2.connect

i Mahindra - Renault

ii James Howlett

iii Adamantium

iv Bryan Singer

3.connect

i "Amazing Fantasy #15",1962

ii Edward Brock

iii Joseph Robertson

4.connect

i Los Dopicos

ii Milou / Struppi

iii Le Vingtieme Siecle

iv Charles de Gaulle's "only international rival".

5.connect

i "hot gate way"

ii Ephialtes

iii 1300:500,000

iv Plataea

6.connect

i Hunca Munca,Squirrel Nutkin , SAmuel Whiskers

ii First Person to become US dollar billionaire by writing books.

iii Brian Lara

iv Thomas Alva Edison

Time for Change

Over the last couple of weeks i have gone through some of the other quiz sites online and came to painfully realize that many questions which i had in my armoury were in fact direct rip offs from other sources.

There is very little one can do to check for the authenticity and uniqueness of these 'type set' questions and therefore i have decided to change the format a little bit. Ungettable one liners are not worthy to be asked for quizzes , so i therefore have made a conscious effort to bring in something new.A quiz ought to have a certain 'charm' in it .It must be something worth to cherish . And it is this which i seek to achieve.

As i said i came across some seriously good quiz blogs run by some former and current IITites and was clearly bowled over.Surely nothing i churn up would be nearly as good as the stuff they put up, still i now have something to raise my sights to.Do file in ur comments as and when u like.

Also due to the 'mind blowing' response i ve had for my previous posts , i have decided to include answers encoded in my posts from here on. hope the change in style will be taken well by the readers.