I have a very busy week and since I’ve already seen one movie in theaters (Linda Linda Linda at IFC on a date, excellent film), I’d like to change things up a little!

I’m going rock climbing at Central Rock Gym’s Riverside location at 7pm tonight! I have a membership to this gym, and a free guest pass for the month, so whoever confirms first gets a free pass :)

I’m trying to be more deliberate about climbing regularly, and this mailing list format has been great for ensuring I see movies, so I may expand it to include climbing sessions as well. If having regularly organized climbing sessions would be of interest to you, please let me know!

Last week we saw Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge at the Metrograph. As a recap, it is a 3 hour Bollywood musical in Hindi, and has a claim to fame of having played continuously in the same theater in Mumbai for >30 years. I went in having never seen a Bollywood film but with deep curiosity as to how it could have such a following.

I get it now.

The movie had wonderful emotion, excellent jokes, amazing sounds, and beautiful colors. If you haven’t seen Bollywood before, I would HIGHLY recommend this as an entry point. I am hoping to see more as they get screened at these incredible New York City independent theaters :)

I had such a wonderful evening watching it :) there were of course plenty of cultural references that I didn’t get, but at the same time I felt a weird sense of familiarity: many of the musical ideas sounded melodically related to some of the Jewish prayers we’d singing growing up, and some of the cultural statements that felt very different from 2025 America actually felt closer to my mom’s Orthodox Jewish heritage. What a cool experience!