a few nights ago, i saw "margot at the wedding," the new noah baumbach film. any longtime readers of this blog will know how i feel about the squid and the whale, and so they will know with what expectations i walked into the theater. the times' review had rated the film mediocre, but still commented that it was a more mature squid and the whale. so i figured whatever flaws it might have, i would most likely still enjoy it tremendously. i think i miscalculated two factors. first, that just because i loved another noah baumbach movie, did not mean that i would love this one; on the contrary, it meant that i would be more likely to be let down. and second, how bad the movie is.
i mean, it wasn't terrible. but two of the four lead characters were horrifically miscast, to the serious detriment of the film. the first, nicole kidman, gave a decent performance, but her constant attempts to do a jewish accent made her sound ridiculous. it's like i said when ScoJo tried to go jewish in that woody allen movie, some people can simply never be convincing jews. and then jack black was quite lovable for most of the movie, but the dramatic climax of the film fell on him, and he could not deliver. in a scene where he is supposed to be crying his heart out, it was hard not to snicker. i guess its not his fault really, but he just couldn't stop being jack black.
oh, the other problem was that the lead character was an unsympathetic bitch. i mean really, every time she spoke you kind of wanted to slap her. and i guess another reason that i disliked the film was that unlike the squid and the whale, it deals with a crisis experienced by someone at an age i have not yet reached, so it didn't have any resonance with me, whatsoever. oh well. i'm kind of hungover and it's thanksgiving, so i'm gonna stop now.

i'm not alone! well whatever, i won't be getting on any airplanes any time soon, so it's not something i need to worry about.
things have been getting a bit more exciting in my life. how exciting? i saw sam levine, the guy who plays neal on freaks and geeks! not impressed? we tried to get into a benefit performance of 30 rock at the upright citizens brigade yesterday, but of course it was totally sold out. so we decided to wait outside and see all the celebs that came. unfortunately, sam levine was the most famous non-cast member we saw.
the two most exciting things that happened were that alec baldwin was walking by us, and smita goes "hello that is alec baldwin" and he said "hi" back! well it was kind of weird, because he didn't seem exactly like he was saying hi directly to her, but there was no one else around so it must have been to her, and because she hadn't really intended on saying hi to him, she was puzzled that he responded. i think it was true love.
the other exciting thing was that smita had a bouquet (sp?) of flowers that her boss had given her, so she wrote on it "love your work, smita" and when the bald guy who plays tina fey's co-head writer walked by, she gave it to him. he was really nice, and asked if it was just for him or for the whole cast. we told him to enjoy it. he walked away after a few minutes, and then a newscaster started interviewing him, while he held up the flowers the whole time. those flowers were famous. ooh, smita had also written her email address on the flowers, so i wonder if that got picked up on the feed. maybe she'll get lots of random emails now.
now you might be thinking that it was mostly smita who had an exciting time, but i also had my own special moment. well, that was actually the night before, when we went to see the upright citizens assscat show. it was a good one, amy poehler, seth meyers, the guy who plays kenneth the intern on 30 rock and rachel dratch performed (though i think you know how i feel about her improv skills) and the guy who plays the tim character on the american office did the monologue (if i wasn't so lazy i'd look some of these people's names up) . oh, but the exciting part was that i sat next to the girl who plays cerie on 30 rock, and we even talked for a little, an enthralling convo about some masking tape on the floor. she was very unhot in real life, and we at the time nixed the idea that it was her, but jeremy looked her up online and discovered that she just likes to wear incredibly unflattering makeup. yes, i know she's not much of a celebrity, not really one at all, but don't be such a killjoy. let me enjoy my moment.

i'm a bit hesitant to update my blog now, as i will have to write about the everyday mundanities of life in ny. which could well be more interesting to some than me writing a laundry list of the places i've been to. but it requires a lot more energy on my part. i'm still in the stages of building up my usa energy. or, i mean, building up productive energy. since i've been home, i've been enjoying a vacation-like state, eating and watching tv all day, and meeting up with all of my employed friends at night. things like updating my resume, trying to reach my contacts in the industry, and getting my haircut are kind of falling to the wayside. but my idea is that i should let myself enjoy this vacation time until i'm totally sick of it, so then i'll be happy to take whatever crap job i land. because i think that was part of the reason i was so miserable when i returned to my job in beijing; having spent the last few months traveling and visiting my friends at home, a job that had previously only made me moderately bored became quite hellish.
anyway, it is exciting to get back into the swing of things and see all the exciting things that are happening in this country- from what i can tell, the scriptwriters' strike and guitar hero. also, pretty much all my friends now live in a two-block radius in park slope. so i guess that's convenient. my parents are in the process of fixing up my basement into an apartment for me, which is going to be pretty nice though for now i'm back in my old room. i've got digital cable though, so i'm happy. also, my blog still seems to think i'm in china, because all my commands are still in chinese. oh well.

well, i'm back in new york! i would've updated during my last week in beijing, but there really wasn't much to report. i said goodbye to all my friends, and bought an L word dvd 9. i found out that the people i was going to do the back door of tibet with saw a sky burial, and was terribly jealous. well, sort of jealous. a sky burial is the funeral held by tibetan peoples, which involves having the body eaten by eagles, the idea being that they are being carried to heaven. wild. they said it was pretty cool to see. ah well, who says i won't see that in ny?
my flight home started well. it was a 3 o'clock flight, which meant that i had plenty of time to prepare my tuna fish sandwiches. when i got on the flight i discovered, joy of joys, that they had installed personal on demand tvs! this meant that instead of sleeping for the whole flight, i watched chocolat, no reservations, evening, and probably some other things i forget. toward the end of the flight, as it approached 3 in the morning, i realized that might have been a mistake.
i had to pick up my baggage and go through us customs in toronto (yes, apparently they have it there) and i was very nervous about my large dvd collection, and whether i'd have to do some fast talking to get them to let me keep it. as i waited for my luggage though, i discovered that i had another challenge. one of my two bags, the big one, did not show up. i waited as the remaining hour before my flight to ny ticked away, and finally the people there were like, oh well i guess you should just go. not losing my cool during this period, around 5 in the morning, was very difficult. but i am proud to say, not a single tear. the airline industry will get no more tears from me!
i would like to point out that this means that for me, air canada has a 100 percent bag loss rate. i guess if i felt like being generous, i could say they had a 66 percent bag loss rate, as one of my bags made it through fine yesterday. but screw that. come on air canada, the personal tvs do not make up for losing my bag! i'm going to give them a day before i start calling to bug them, but i'm more optimistic this time, since last time they managed to get me my bag before my insurance would have granted me any money. though this time, i've got a lot more to lose. this was about half my stuff for the year. crap. i have seriously the worst luck. no one else on that transfer flight lost their stuff.
uh, i had a very talkative cab driver for the ride home, which was quite a joy as by now it was 8 o'clock in the morning my time and i had slept only about an hour on the flight from toronto to new york. he was a young guy, and kept talking about how people should take advantage of their opportunities. or something, i dunno. i got home, and was asleep by eight.