The Fourth of July

Another Fourth of July is upon us, another viewing of the Roland Emmerich blockbuster Independence Day (for folks keeping score, this was 1996’s second best disaster picture), yet another (and another, and another) spin of The Boss’s Born in the U.S.A. Rachel just went up to bed after watching the tv broadcast of the Columbus “Red White and Boom” fireworks display (something she’s been doing her whole life, a small tradition that adopted me when we moved in together in 2017) and I am left with just enough of a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that I wanted to collect some thoughts.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act passed today, and depending on what “news” source you read, this is either very good, or very bad. The economics of it all are beyond me, something that I should perhaps be ashamed to admit, the letter of the law, similarly so, though some of our Representatives are on the news talking about how they haven’t read it all, so surely I get more of a pass than a disgraceful congresswomen?

Recently, there’s been a lot of discouraging and downright evil shit happening in the global, national, and local news. Every story I see in my little social media bubble has the potential to fill me with dread or disgust. I am fearful, when I really think about it: the future, the nation, “America,” whatever. But mostly: it is a dull noise. I am lucky, privileged, and selfish, to be able to mostly hear it as static. I fear it will come for me and I will be surprised, though I don’t know what “it” is nor what it will bring. I suspect it will be bad for the student loan forgiveness I was promised, the prospects of getting Desi & Poppy a suitable yard with a fence, and Ben a bigger bedroom.

If that is off-putting, this post is probably a skip, because even though there’s much to criticize (globally, nationally, locally), this holiday and its silly traditions are only becoming more and more special to me each year. Like almost everything else I write about on this newsletter, it is just as much about nostalgia as the Thing Itself, and in this case, the Thing Itself is increasingly more difficult to defend.

Here’s cognitive dissonance: I’m writing this reflection which will shortly circle back to the rose-colored view of America in the early 60s The Sandlot reflects, which I could really ruin that movie for myself if I think about it too much, but there is an alien ventriloquisting an Area 51 scientist to puppet the threat of global extinction to President Bill Pullman right now. Dissonance.

Look, dude, I’m just going to say it: creating laws that hurt the middle and lower class to make rich people more rich sucks. Cutting social programs - like mother fucking libraries! - makes us meaner and dumber, and isn’t really saving us any money. Like the idealized America the boys in The Sandlot play harmonious baseball in, these policies for the sake of austerity, are a fantasy. In reality, they are cruel. Having heartless immigration policy, letting ICE run roughshod and seemingly unchecked with an infinite and swelling budget, seems bad. Cruel and dumb, are the two adjectives I keep coming back to.

Again: I have the luxury (or lack the luxury?) to ignore the news. Other than the time I spend on this newsletter, I am - delightfully, in most cases - very busy: the dogs need walked, courses need prepped, papers need grades, books need read and articles need to be written. Ben needs to be cared for, Rachel doesn’t need to be cared for but enjoys my being around. I have to prepare him for whatever world we - whoever “we” are - decide he gets to inherit. I allow myself, dumb, numb, focused, to look at the very narrow view. America is big, abstract, rotten, an ideal, a movie set fantasy; Marysville is real. I live there. I spend my life, my time, my money here. The four walls around me I can immerse in.

So in this way, I suspect I will enjoy tomorrow, as I have since July 4, 2011, the first Fourth of July I really, really enjoyed. This picture will explain why perhaps better than words can:

It was good to be home for a bit from our respective colleges, and it was even better to be old enough to enjoy, well, no free ads but the bottles were cold and golden.

Growing up, I was ambivalent about the Fourth. From 2000-2012, the holiday typically meant walking in parades around the counties of eastern Ohio my mom’s judicial district covered and while those are many fun memories, those summers the parades were work.

My idyllic, movie-scene Fourth of July, was something we’ve gotten to capture and recreate with Ben twice since he was born. “Celebrate Poland,” which when I was a kid was a very small affair, has blossomed into a full-blown festival in town: corn dogs and fair food vendors, a petting zoo, and of course, fireworks. Two years ago, Ben fell asleep during the display. This year, at one point, he said “these are boring.”

I remember when I was in high school always running around town and bumping into different friends up at the middle school football field (where they did the fireworks after dark), riding my bike to peoples’ houses, getting ice cream at the Friendly’s, wherever. I confess: this wasn’t “giving America,” though I loved this day (and still do!) it never stirred me to anything even remotely resembling patriotism. But, despite the Thing Itself, the memories around The Thing are quite splendid.

Stray Thoughts on the Fourth of July

1. In 2019, a band I loved back in the Celebrate Poland days of bicycle freedom, released a double-a side single from the album where I officially got off the Cold War Kids train (what can I say? we grow, we change, we grow apart - I’ll never miss a CWK show in Columbus even if I’m not buying new albums anymore).

   The songs, “Complainer” and “Fourth of July”: feels like a prescient double-shot. On social media, regardless of your bubble or echo chamber, you will see people lodging perfectly reasonable complaints about the immorality of a dying empire lashing out against the world and its own huddled masses, and you will see bootlicking pieces of shit other people making the trite and utterly useless observation that “if you hate it here so much, why don’t you leave?” Stunning idea, guy! The idea that anything - let alone something as massive and abstract as a country should be insulated from legitimate criticism - shit, complaints, too! - is ridiculous.

   I’ve seen a lot of well-meaning “I love the country I hate how its being run” type posts, the sort of Fourth of July season “hate the player not the game.” I get the rhetorical gesture that sentiment makes, a sort of blow softening for our would be patriots to not blow steam out their ears like a Looney Toon character when someone suggests that perhaps, no, we shouldn’t baselessly deport American citizens using a militarized secret police. I don’t think we should capitulate, though. Hate the game and the player. Fuck ICE. America is an idea. You can’t hurt its feelings. The lads in Boston Harbor were the ultimate haters, so if you really think about it, we are built on the altar of property destruction, civil disobedience, and yes, complainers.

2. Born in the U.S.A. is the top ‘this album is actually exactly as good as the hype would have you think,’ but “Born in the USA” isn’t even the second best song on the album. “Dancing in the Dark,” obviously, is the best, and I’m giving the rockabilly “Working on the Highway” the number two spot. Both great songs. Twelve great songs, good stuff Bruce Springsteen. Cannot wait to hear your anti-war protest song during the fireworks this weekend.

3. Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam does not have quite the same mass appeal The Boss curates, but, is just as good a Fourth of July album as any other. The centerpiece song is called “Fireworks,” for goodness sakes.

   Not convinced? Okay, how’s this: the last song, “Derek,” is a love song to Animal Collective member Panda Bear’s late dog, which is very sad, but the song is very sweet:

   Goes without saying, dogs hate fireworks: “I should have been so much more willing / to help out with all the things that a dog like you needed.” How sweet! Goes without saying Desi & Poppy will need extra cuddles tomorrow night.

4. Unfortunately for Desi & Poppy, fireworks are awesome. This is in spite of one of the most ridiculous things I heard an actual real life human being in my grad program say: “fireworks are the lowest form of entertainment.” No, obviously, people who talk to hear themselves talk, are the lowest form of entertainment.

5. The best kind of fireworks, with respect to the Fourth of July, are not Fourth of July fireworks. They are post-baseball game fireworks.

   

   Sadly, there will be no more fireworks in the Coliseum after Oakland A’s baseball games because the Oakland A’s now play in a minor league ballpark in Sacramento while the dipshit billionaire owner of the team fumbles around a construction project in Las Vegas. America’s pastime indeed!

   1. Post-concert and/or mid-concert fireworks at a nearby baseball park are also the best kind of fireworks. For your consideration, Coheed & Cambria playing “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth” in 2021:

6. Another high quality firework aren’t fireworks at all, so for your consideration, might I recommend seeing the absolute love of your life’s face lit up by fleeting sparklers in the night’s sky while they dance with the reckless abandon of youth, totally unburdened by angst or self-doubt.

   

7. Underrated dad-joke: at the end of Independence Day, Will Smith scoops up his step-son and they admire the crashed and actively exploding alien spaceship that has probably killed a billion people and Will Smith tells the kid, “see, I told you there’d be fireworks.” Classic line.

8. Before “Red, White and Boom” tonight there was a Pepsi sponsored drone light show and, after the American flag, they flew in formation six different brand logos, as if the corporate-ness of it all wasn’t so nakedly transparent as lights illuminating the night’s sky. Again: what is America?

9. You know who might have a good answer? Bono. That’s a guy who probably loves fireworks, and definitely has some ideas about what America is.

   The totally moving Super Bowl halftime show from 2002 where the band plays “Where the Streets Have No Name” while the names of the victims of the 9/11 attacks plays on a stadium-sized screen behind them, it is the smallest Bono and U2 have ever made themselves in a spectacle. That, those four Irishmen demonstrate, is what America is. Compassion, bombast, spectacle. Fuckin’ fireworks.

10. The best Fourth of July movies are, in no particular order, Top Gun (just the first one, Maverick is tremendous, but more of a winter movie than a summer movie), Independence Day, obviously, The Patriot, and The Sandlot.

    Tomorrow morning I suspect I will get a text message from my brother or one of our childhood buddies with the text of this speech, verbatim, possibly typed from memory. My money is on Steve because he won’t have had as many Miller High Lifes as we did that Fourth back in 2011, and, I understand my nephew is teething presently, plus Chris lives in Central Time, so we’ve got him beat by an hour.

    It will be easy to wake up early tomorrow, which is after all, just another day. My son will enjoy a parade, get lots of candy, get spoiled with snacks from his grandparents and possibly ice cream in the park. It will be hot. His hair will be sweaty in a cute way, mine, in a disgusting way. Rachel will smile photogenically in front of a mural of a flag in Plain City, she might, as I force myself to, forget about the tenuous status of PSLF, and enjoy a day with family.

11. The fireworks will explode in the sky while mosquitos feast on our blood. The dogs will quiver behind a sofa, but then will settle down once it is quiet. The lights will burn colorfully into our eyes, a sign that yet another year is now halfway done, Fall semester is now weeks, not months, away. The fifth of July will come and with it, the pride and joy I have in the small country that is my family and the things that make them smile brightly against the dark night’s sky.