Caterwauling

Quiet day at the ranch here, and deservedly so. I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t do anything thing that involved driving, but alas, that did NOT rule out taking the Metro. Or ordering food for delivery. Or shopping online. 😉

But first, I witnessed my little firecracker, Kadi, being GOOD — and thanks to my lil Nikon, I captured it on film:

Yesterday was the day to go into D.C. for me — I couldn’t bear to rastle with tourons for oxygen for today’s festivities. And I made a great decision — it was quiet downtown, and the few of us who were out and about were locals.

Token patriotic photos:

Because everyone gets “funny in the tummy” when they see this monument:

My purpose was to hop down to the Hirshhorn’s Visual Music exhibit. I loved it — I was mesmerized by both the paintings and the early achievements in digital graphic design (set to music) long before any idiot with a few grand could buy a copy of Photoshop or iMovie.

My favorite was the room full of color organs — I mean, they move and look like your everyday screensaver to our jaded eyes, but you’ve got to remember that those were made in the early half of the 20th century with prisms and glass and a variety of other everyday materials.

I also loved the films, but it was the “Swell” and “Lightscape” installations that hypnotized me for a ridiculous amount of time.

Confession: I am one of those people who gets lost in a painting for an hour. I am also the one who will ignore you when you ask me questions or the one who will stick out her foot and trip your kids if they are disturbing the sacrosanctity of the gallery. I mean, this painting alone (“Circus”) had me smiling to myself for a looong time:

Days like yesterday remind me that I keep meaning to pick up some paint supplies and just do something with all this intensity trapped within me. Words just aren’t cutting it — while words are my first love, of course, I feel the need to deviate — colors and shapes don’t require the same structure, rhyme or even reason.

After a few mental orgasms, I wound down at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Found it a lot more boring than last year, and I wasn’t exactly bursting with fruit flavor then. At least last year, I met some interesting people and tried some good food and was entertained by the hippies. This year, there was a neat educational booth on reincarnation, but the rest of that part of the Mall was a love-fest for Krishna and some book/author they were promoting. My favorite were all the tents that said “Free Feast” and “Questions and Answers” but had neither a person nor a thing in them. That says a lot. 😉

Not to mention, I had to wait IN LINE to get into the Festival Marketplace (i.e., where you shop). How dare anybody hold me back from retail therapy! Not that there was anything good in there — I’d wanted incense from Oman, but it was $60 for a tiny jar. Yeah, don’t think so. I’d also wanted chocolate from La Paz, Bolivia, but it was sold out.

So, since I was all Metro-bound anyway, I stopped in at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City to shop. And I stopped to grab something to eat, but as the mall was closing, lots of places were running low on chow. So I stopped at McDonald’s (not my first choice, mind you), only to have this rude female security guard start snapping at all 20 of us in line that “You know the mall is closing, but you get in line anyway. So hurry up already and order.”

I looked at her, with her fat ass parked in the fake plants, sitting around staring at the customers and doing not a goddamned thing else, and I said, “Fine. They don’t need my business, then.” And she said something snotty in return.

Not that I necessarily thought I was doing anybody a favor buy buying the pre-made food shriveling under the heat lamps, but I figured an extra last-minute sale wouldn’t be met with assholitry. I worked in a mall where I was required to stay open until midnight even though the rest of the mall closed at 9 p.m. — I get that folks want to go home. But by my watch, it was 5:48 p.m. and the mall closed at 6.

Oh well. I was more than happy to spend that money elsewhere. And I did. And then some.:)

Because I parked near a movie theater, I wandered through before going to my car to see if anything happened to be playing in a few minutes. Lo and behold, “Dianetics” “War of the Worlds” was starting then. Oy vey.

Despite the Sultan of Scientology himself having the starring role, it wasn’t horrible. But I want my $9.50 back — or, at least, half of it, as the air-conditioning was superb and the seat was comfortable. Dakota Fanning was wonderful. The special effects were of the level you’ve come to expect from Steven Spielberg — we’ve all had dreams of vaporizing people, and it gives us hope that large machines might decend upon our enemies and eradicate their existence. 😉

But … it’s not that I’m overly sensitive or even personally connected to the 9/11 tragedies, but seeing people walking ghost-like, covered in cremains through the bridges and streets of New Jersey was eerie. I had a professional colleague who had told me what it was like on that fateful day, with people who were stunned silent at what they had witnessed, covered in the ashes of their officemates, leaving Manhattan on foot — she’d described them as bodies with their souls shaken loose. And that is exactly how the few who survived the “War of the Worlds” walked the earth, and I shudder to imagine this version of the movie being made any closer to 2001.

In any event, saved the worst for last — Self-Portrait Day!

Well, off to start marinating dinner — the kitties and I are grilling out. Obligatory yay. And more online shoppping — like for this!

On iTunes: Vanessa Daou, “A Thousand Licks”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2005 at 1:19 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.