It's Funny, But I AM That Yankee Doodle Boy

Well, I celebrated America Day, celebrated the hell out of it.

Tuesday night began as an after rehearsal meeting for drinks, not really a celebration of the U.S of A., but more a “we don’t have to work on a Wednesday, let’s drink like it was a Friday.” This was all fine and well until people started producing Jaeger shots for me.

Side note 1: There’s this personality trait that I have where if someone is buying me a drink, I must drink it. And it doesn’t matter what sort of important events are happening the next day; i.e. getting married.

Side note 2: Jaeger, in the past, has made me forget large chunks of an evening where I have broken people’s furniture and repeatedly accosted a friend as if they were a tackling dummy.

So the evening did eventually involve me dropping my pants at the request of a fellow drinker. This would have happened without the Jaeger, but for some reason I decided to announce quite loudly that I was doing so for America which got a robust amount of cheering and applause from the patrons on the patio. I’m assuming they thought it was ironic, but much like anything I write here, I really didn’t have a point.

The actual day of America Day was spent in a sun dappled lawn (I never thought I would get to use the term “sun dappled”. I can now die complete.) drinking beers and playing Cornhole, which deserves a posting all its own (including a page full of documented innuendo around the name Cornhole). But for a brief overview: teams toss corn filled, hand sewn bags at a board with a hole in it. If you get your bag to land on the board it’s worth a point, in the hole it’s worth 3.

I don’t know, apparently it’s something they do in Ohio.

The fireworks arrived after a spectacular sunset, and they exploded so close that you could practically taste them. These fireworks tasted like churros, which is good if you’re a churro fan. As I watched all of these shimmering sparks rain down on Lake Union, I began to think about a July 4th past.

This was back when my first roommate, Captain M.I.A., was moving from his “something fun to do on a Saturday night” drug habit to his “I need something just to get through the day” drug habit. We were meeting up with some friends to watch fireworks on the beach in San Clemente, CA. He showed up at the meeting place with someone I’ll call Lawrence. This is the same someone I’ll call Lawrence who I later found making crack at my kitchen table after coming home from work.

Well the two of them proceeded to get crazy high under a beach blanket which gave Captain M.I.A. the impulse to hold a lighter flame to a rock for going on twenty minutes. “What are you doing?” I would ask. “Trying to heat up this rock,” he would reply. Of course. Some minutes later, awed by the fireworks exploding over his head, he put the superheated rock to his lips, burning them quite badly.

I had at one time thought that watching a fireworks display on acid would a pretty nifty experience. At the time I thought almost anything save a visit to a slaughterhouse or watching Pink Floyd The Wall would be nifty on acid, so I was interested in hearing what the fireworks were like to someone high enough to put a sauna rock on their mouth. “I don’t know,” was the response. “My lip hurts.”

This 4th beat the living crap out of that one, not that it was much of a contest.


Confidential to Mo Money Mandy: I hope the presentation went well.