The End Draws Nigh

After the party, we hung out at the apartment in North Hollywood, waiting for the gunfire to subside before returning to our cars. One thing gun-happy revelers don't seem to understand is that "What goes up, must come down." Every year someone gets killed by falling bullets. In fact, I've seen billboards telling people about the dangers. It just doesn't do any good.

This year, it's probably Law & Order reruns for Darin and me. We might go hogwild and have some sparking cider. I myself am hoping for another one of those New Year's kisses.

This reminds me: what are we going to do for New Year's Eve 1999?

I've been reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. Mayes and her husband, both professors in California, bought a house in Cortona, in rural Tuscany. The book chronicles their adventures of fitting in to Italy and renovating the house while 10,000 miles away in our house in California.

It's intensely Romantic, of course--buying fresh food every day, cooking (she includes summer and winter recipes), getting acquainted with the Tuscan way of doing things (like bolting cups of espresso). The idea of actually pitching in and clearing field by hand--not my cup of tea, but she definitely makes it attactive.

There's evidenly a whole genre of books like this, like Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence/Toujours Provence, about an Englishman who moves to the South of France (Provence, to be exact). I came across another one, about a couple from New York who relocate back to his native Ireland--on the blasted Western shore, rather than the civilized Eastern one.

To me settling in another country seems incredibly exciting and incredibly impossible. Of course, I've found moving 400 miles from my home intensely unsettling--moving 10,000 miles and not even speaking the language that well seems beyond the realm of possibility. (I skim over the fact, of course, that I pick up languages fairly quickly, at least of the European kind. I don't actually think that's what would bother me.)

I read about people who live in "New York City and Paris" and I think: Do they maintain two homes? How do they afford that? How did they learn to navigate the way of finding and buying a place over there? Do they try to divide their time evenly--or do they just go whenever they want? How do they keep their houses maintained: do they have to get an agency?

On the other hand, I guess I fantasize about doing it. "I'm going off to my place in Berlin," I could say. "Want to join me there for the Film Fest?" Or: "The hotels in Paris--bah. I have a much nicer place. Join me there, we'll go shopping at the Place D'Opera." Note that there is no place in my fantasies for rural anywhere--if I'm going to live somewhere, it's going to be in a city.

I wonder if I should warn Darin that I have fantasies about picking up a small chateau in a foreign country. Not speaking the language really does bother him--although the quality of the food might mollify him a bit. And they all speak English anyhow (koff, koff).

What other books I have been reading:

Rob Petrie's brother Michael (who does not, strangely, go by the name Michael Petrie) is a big fan of Colleen McCullough's First Man In Rome series and turned me onto Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series (Roman Blood, Arms of Nemesis, The Venus Throw, Catilina's Riddle, and A Murder on the Appian Way). Saylor's Gordianus the Finder mysteries are set in the twilight of Republican Rome and do a good job of grafting memorable personalities onto the major players of the time. The mysteries are entertaining, even if I did figure out one or two of them ahead of time. He's clearly more interested in the time period than the mysteries anyhow.

My only beef is that Saylor spends a little too long on the private lives of certain characters, particularly the homosexual characters. Catilina's several page speech about the beauty of young men--did this figure into the plot any? It did not. Michael informs me that Saylor is gay, so perhaps this is a way of his advertising the fact that several of the most revered figures of Western Civilization's history enjoyed the company of their own sex.

Because I bought Saylor's books, Amazon has been been recommending every mystery series set in a different place and time, particularly in the Classical World: Rome, Greece, Egypt. And closer to our own time (at least by several hundred years): Japan.

Here's a free book idea for all of you writers out there: Plato or Aristotle (or both) as detectives in ancient Athens. "I'm sensing an Epicurean did this...look at the crumbs over here!"

I've started on another mystery series set in Rome, this time in Vespasian's time (Vespasian being the first Emperor who survived for any period of time after the first 5 Caesars--after Nero died was the Year of the Four Emperors, then Vespasian). Lindsey Davis' Marcus Didius Falco mysteries (Silver Pigs, Shadows in Bronze, Venus in Copper, The Iron Hand of Mars, Last Act in Palmyra, Poseidon's Gold, A Dying Light In Corduba and Time To Depart) have a distinctly British feel to them.

The mystery of Silver Pigs wasn't great, but I liked Davis's writing and I enjoyed the incipient romance between...well, if you can't guess by midway through the book (I guessed the first time her name was introduced), don't call yourself a reader. Anyhow: I enjoyed the heat there. I've decided that I'm more into romance than I've admitted to myself in the past.

I just love being interrupted by door-to-door salesmen who then get really pissed off when I say, "Sorry, not interested."

Oooo--even better: a phone call from The Los Angeles Times subscription weenies asking if they can speak to "the head of the household--your mom or dad."

I don't care what they're selling when I hear something like that.

Resolutions

• Learn enough Spanish in order to tell the gardeners precisely what I want done in various places in the yard.
• Lose some weight.
• The perennial: appear on The Late Show with David Letterman. Why, I don't know.