live each millenium as if it were your last.
Hey, how 'bout that Boris Yeltsin? Think it was voluntary or the way Nikita Khrushchev found himself out of a job? And who was Nikita Khrushchev anyhow?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
And so this is the end of a century. (Don't. Start. With. Me. This is it.) I heard that the world's oldest person died yesterday; if she'd managed two more days she would have lived in three centuries. There are probably lots of babies born this year--hell, for the past ten to twenty years--who have a good opportunity to spend a lifetime stretched over three centuries.
When I think about the yearometer rolling over and starting at 2000, I get really excited. I mean, this is really cool. I wonder what the future will be like. One thing I've always noted is that for humankind as a whole, the future is always better than the past. (If you think the past was better, you are probably a member of the Elite Classes, meaning you're white and male and heterosexual.) My daughter's going to grow up in a whole new century, where social norms and science and technology are changing at a fantastic rate.
I'm pretty happy about it. Well, except for the part about computers never working again.
Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is already pretending to be something he's not when we meet him: he's playing piano and wearing a Princeton jacket. When asked if he attended Princeton, he says yes because of what saying yes will get him--but he didn't; the jacket is borrowed. Everything about Ripley is borrowed.
He gets the assignment of going to Italy to bring back wealthy young American wastrel Dickie Greenleaf (the amazingly beautiful Jude Law--the cinematographer should get nominated simply on how well Jude Law gets lighted), who's hanging out with girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Ripley becomes a worshipful hanger-on, desperate for rays of attention from sungod Dickie. But Ripley, for all his ability to make himself fit in, isn't really one of the gang. Not our kind, you know. And when Dickie finally tells Ripley to get lost, Ripley lashes out and murders him. Which provides him with the perfect opportunity to assume Dickie's identity, bank account, and life.
I love the Ripley books. They definitely provide a guilty pleasure. Tom Ripley is the bad guy--I'm not giving anything away here; you know this immediately. And you get drawn into Patricia Highsmith's manipulations of making Tom the hero--or true anti-hero, as opposed to the usual good-guy-in-need-of-slight-moral-cleansing anti-hero--and seeing how he accomplishes what he sets out to do, at any cost. (The Ripley books are: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water. I bought an anthology of the first four in Ireland 6 years ago, but a search on Amazon UK didn't show it, so I can't point you to that.)
A couple of movies have been made from the Ripley stories: Purple Noon, which I haven't seen, and The American Friend, a Wim Wenders film I have seen and which is based on Ripley Under Ground. I seem to remember liking The American Friend, although it's been years since I've seen it. And now comes the epic version, screenplay by and directed by Anthony Minghella, he of The English Patient.
I really wanted to love this movie and I didn't. How in the name of God did it end up on so many Top Ten lists? How did Roger Ebert, with whom I usually agree, give it four stars? It's reportedly two hours and twenty minutes long, but I felt sure we'd missed the New Year's Eve celebrations. For next year.
Let me put it this way: I was so bored during this film that I noticed such tidbits as Gwyneth Paltrow's attached earlobes.
The film is gorgeous. It's overly gorgeous: we spend a long time on travelogues. The players are very good, particularly Matt Damon (although something has to be done about that boy's teeth--they don't look natural, he has to smoke more or something to stain them up) and Jude Law. Gwyneth keeps her Annoying Quotient down. But still, it's like, Who cares? There is a notable lack of tension throughout the entire movie, at least as far as Darin and I were concerned.
Darin nailed why that is, I think: Ripley finds himself in the exact same situation over and over again--the stakes never escalate. You'd think they would, considering what he's doing. But they really don't. It doesn't make for a compelling story.
I also don't know how I feel about making the homosexual subtext of the story so blatant. I think it's a story more about the American Dream of wanting the Good Life than it is about Tom wanting Dickie. The sexual aspect is always there--here's a tip, all you dramatists out there: whenever you have two characters present, you always have sex there with them--but it's not very interesting. Instead of a story of longing for what you cannot have because you weren't born to it, it seems to me to become a story of yet another homicidal gay guy. (Which, if you don't know your cinematic history, is one of the great and terrible cliches of the movies.) Okay, maybe that's just me.
Well, it's been fun being married, but I have the suspicion I'm never going to see Darin again.
His new toy arrived today. Finally. Thank God.
He ordered the new Mac G4 with Cinema Display at 12:01am October 1. It's taken until now to get it, mostly because of the Cinema Display, the snazzy new ultra-thin and extra-cool Apple monitor. The way Darin put it was, "I ordered a monitor and got a computer to go along with it."
When Darin told Fernando the computer had arrived, Fernando was at the house within a half hour to help set it up and check it out. This machine is that cool.
Now It Can Be Told: Greg Marriott confessed to me that he's the one putting the urinating Calvin stickers on the backs of cars all over LA.
By the way, so far no one has 'fessed up to having one.
Stee wrote and said he was mightily disappointed in my list o' restaurants, since I had none in LA. He's desperately looking for new food hangouts.
Without further ado:
Darin and Diane's Top Ten List of LA Restaurants
Restaurants we think are good and keep going back to, in no particular order. Whether they're the best or not in town I have no idea.
- Pinot Bistro: the chocolate bread pudding is to die for.
- John O'Groats: best breakfast we've found so far.
- Lawry's Prime Rib: when you need large plates of meat.
- Empress Pavilion: Chinatown dim sum. (The Hong Kong Flower Lounge--located in Hong Kong, Burlingame, and Palo Alto--totally kicks its ass though.)
- The Grill: the upscale original of the Daily Grill experience. Make reservations or be told when to vacate your table.
- Gourmet 88: the best Chinese we've found so far.
- Pink's: hot dogs. Of course.
- Fuddrucker's: yes, the chain. For when we really need burgers and we need them now. They now have four sizes of burger: one-third of a pound, one-half of a pound, two-thirds of a pound, and a full pound. I want to shoot whoever would get over one-third of a pound.
- Iwata: sushi. Yes, our neighborhood joint in Cupertino, Kikusushi, is way better. This is still the best we've found. Darin, Fernando, and I all hated the revered Sushi Nozawa--what up with that? And Darin and I haven't been to Matsuhisa yet.
- Delmonico's: for the big seafood. And an amazing Sunday brunch (get there earlier than noon).
By the way, there isn't anywhere on this list I wouldn't trade for somewhere better in the Bay Area. LA should have great restaurants and great hairstylists and it's really been quite disappointing in both categories.
And, sadly, Jeff Baker informs me that Wiltz's Cajun Kitchen is no more. There is a treasure that I will miss.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com