somebody tether benigni to earth.
I would like to be Jupiter and kidnap everybody right now in the firmament, making love to everybody.
5.3 miles! I begin again!
Today was spent getting ready for and hosting an Oscar party. Mine was not the top Oscar party on people's lists: I don't do an Oscar pool for money (which is key to maximizing your guests, I've discovered). We had 6 people (plus a tiny person named Damian, 11 months old) show up, which worked out well. We had a good time and munched out too much.
We were also running neck and neck for a while on who was going to win the Oscars, because all of us either picked a winner out of our butts or totally got shafted on a "sure thing."
And now, my take on the Oscars:
- The African Queen. I like that.
- Roberto Benigni?
- Helen Hunt: going for the Cher demographic.
- Is that the stage the Batcave?
- Evidently the answer is always Saving Private Ryan...unless it's Shakespeare In Love or Life In Beautiful. I see how this goes.
- Roberto Benigni!
- No more Oscar dance numbers. Ever.
- That's Peter Gabriel, huh?
- That Jim Carrey. Always joking around.
- Somebody make Roberto Benigni close his damn mouth!
- Enough with the costumes, Whoopi.
- Is the cameraman in love with Goldie Hawn?
- I know for sure the cameraman took a twenty from Geoffrey Rush.
- ROBERTO BENIGNI?????
- Somebody shut Gwyneth up. Please.
- What's with De Niro's hair? Anyone?
- Is Amy Madigan going to rush the stage and throttle Kazan? Bets?
- SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE? Well, it's good someone's ad campaign paid off.
I won the Oscar pool again this year--whoo hoo! another year running!--but since I can't win at my own party, I gave the prize (paperback copy of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) to Dan. Tamar had already read it, but she'd taken it back to the library.
(I totally bit it on Best Picture, by the way--I picked Ryan. I also didn't get Best Actor--Dan actually did pick him, I couldn't believe it--and I screamed when James Coburn got Best Supporting Actor, because as anybody who's read nka for a while knows I hated that movie (and thought he was terrible in it). But hey: you never, ever know.)
I took our collection of pennies to the market moneychanger today. You know, thsoe big machines that take coins and spit out a voucher you take to one of the cashiers. I was happily surprised by how many pennies it turned out to be: 1250. I was even more surprised by the cut the moneychanger takes: 8 and nine-tenths percent of every dollar. (Why not just 9 percent? You be the judge.) So I got $11.40 in return. What a scam.
Paid for a lot of the munchies I bought for the party though.
Mystery writing rule #3: Do not begin your mystery with a party scene in which you introduce moi, the reader, to eight million characters, most of whom will be victims or suspects in a later chapter. I ain't going to remember them, and I'm going to be annoyed by you for doing this.
I've abandoned two books recently--What's a Girl Gotta Do? by Sparkle Hayter (someone compared her to Janet Evanovich--I think not!) and Sympathy for the Devil by Jerrilyn Farmer--for violating this rule. I don't care about the narrator or the people involved yet to pay attention to this huge cast of characters, so I've put the books down and not gone back. I used to always finish what I started; I don't do that any more.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com