红酒·绿茶 / Red Wine & Green Tea / Vin Rouge et Thé Vert

When I was watching "Sunset Blvd." , I couldn't help thinking of "Mulholland Dr." . These two films resemble each other in not only the names and locations but also in their equally witty plots, profound satires and powerful casts. Of course the latter, after fifty years of evolution of film as an art and as an industry, is more sophisticated in technologies and story-telling techniques which are unique to films as opposed to, e.g., plays. It is a pleasure to compare them.

Saw "Not Another Teen Movie" again and felt it was really underestimated. They put a lot of efforts in this "teen movie of all teen movies" and you would appreciate it much more if you were familiar with/tired of all the teen movies and their clichés it was referring to/laughing at. Accidentally saw another teen movie "Mean Girls" by Lindsay Lohan. You still get tons of those clichés but teens/we just can't get enough of them, can they/we?

Went to Northern Central Railroad Trail in Gunpowder Falls State Park . It was actually my first hike in United States. We hiked about 7.6 miles. The trail was monotonous but we did see some opportunities of biking and kayaking. I was a little alergic to the pollens though.

Went to The Walters Art Museum on Saturday, when their permanent colletion is free. I was surprised that Baltimore had not one but two pretty decent art museums. (Another is Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) .) Walters has a very good collection of Asian arts while BMA has the famous Cone collection which specilizes in Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Renoir. Also worth mentioning are BMA's gift store and restraurant .

That day I was meeting with my advisor on a report I wrote. He opened our meeting like this: "You know, your writing in English is quite good." I was totally flattered, thinking: "Oh my God, finally! All my hard work (of exercising my wrting by blogging) paid off." "Thanks!" I replied happily. However, in one second he continued, "...I mean, much better than your speaking..." "..."

Che Guevara Originally uploaded by nuance1979 . Went to Noah and Karen's (announce of) engagement party in Little Havana , a very nice Cuban bar and restraurant. Nice environment and nice food with a great price. I really liked they put Che Guevara 's famous picture on men's room with the Cuban (I suppose) word for "men" and a female version of that picture and the word for "women" on ladies'. (For the female version, think about Madonna's Che-inspired cd cover for "American Life".)

Watched "Chicago the Movie" on cable. It was a nice adoption which exploited advantage of the forms of both motion picture and musical play. The cast was stunning for any film and Zellweger (Roxie Hart), Zeta-Jones (Velma Kelly) and Gere (Billy Flint) were more at home when playing the "movie" part of this film, as expected. Comparing to "Chicago the Musical", their on-stage singing and dancing were only good enough for themselves even though Zellweger and Zeta-Jones were way better than Gere and Reilly (Amos Hart). I liked the smooth transition between the movie part and the play part and how they purposefully blurred the line. By the way, after watching the musical, someone was accusing the play for repeatedly using actors/actresses for small characters instead of hiring more people. To me that was totally a joke; it was exactly one of the pleasures I had when watching the play, that is, to see how painstakingly economic the playwright was trying to be ...

Finally settled down in the new apartment, unfolding my American life. Oh yeah!