zeldafitz

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Jane’s all over the map this morning

My new art project will be to photograph the Mormon Temple,*

which I drive by EVERY MORNING on the Beltway. Because it looks different every single day. Once you get past the incendiary, weird, dissonant, predatory aspects of a gargantuan TEMPLE placed strategically into the path of every DC yay-hoo and power gonk in town, it becomes kind of beautiful, in a disturbing yet undeniably pristine white reflective marblish kind of way. It is basically the antithesis of the Taj Mahal, which is all about reflecting love—you know, into eternity. The first time I saw the Taj Mahal I was seven years old and we rode up to it on a man-drawn rickshaw. BUT THAT IS ANOTHER STORY.

*I did not take this photograph. (But I COULD HAVE).

Speaking of stories, I wrote this story one time for a class and I had these scenes in India and it was, say, in the 1970’s or something, and this guy in my class wrote—indignantly, on my story--that it had “inaccuracies” because man-drawn rickshaws were "no longer around" in the early 1970’s. They would have “surely been replaced by motorcycle-powered rickshaws." Yeah, well, they would have “surely been replaced," except that they “weren’t” and I know that because I used to ride around in man-drawn rickshaws all the time, because that’s just the sort of imperialistic young papaya eating princess I used to be. Doncha know.

Then I was literally swooning this morning, listening to Jeff Buckley tell ME “Everybody Here Wants You.” I know. I talk about Jeff Buckley a lot.

But I love him. I know him. And I decided, quite spontaneously, that Jeff Buckley’s version of “Everybody Here Wants You” is the SEXIEST SONG IN THE UNIVERSE. And I am going to put it on my Top Ten Sexiest Songs List.

I also want to do a Movie Top Ten List because I have seen every single movie EVER made. And I feel this qualifies me superbly. OK, there are some huge gaps from about 1992-1998 because I was in a land far far away during those years and I missed out on loads and loads of pop culture iconography.

But, BEFORE that, I had seen every movie ever made. And I mean “real” movies, not dumb arcana like “The Blob,” although I have seen “The Blob,” and only because my man Steve McQueen is in it. I LOVE Steve McQueen. My favorite Steve McQueen movie is “The Sand Pebbles” with Candace Bergen. Steve McQueen makes me think of Sam Peckinpah, whom I also like very much. My favorite Sam Peckinpah movie is “Straw Dogs” WITH the phenomenal (and I am not afraid to say it) Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.

Toldja I was all over the map.

And, to close things out, last but CERTAINLY not least, is a brilliant column today by Harold Meyerson. Because any day the headline “Bush the Incompetent” appears, it is a GOOD DAY.