[unspecified] Thursday, May 08 2008
I am Jack's disappointing fourth of July. Okay, so Columbus had this "amazing" huge thing going on called Red, White, and Boom. I missed the fireworks last year quite simply because I didn't want to go downtown to a large event with 500 thousand people all drinking beer by myself. So this year rolls around and luckily my girlfriend isn't in Italy, so we decide to go to Red, White, and Boom. I thought it was a good idea, go see fireworks, eat some disgusting carnival type food, and just basically hang out. Well, it wasn't all that good. We waited almost two hours for the fireworks to start because we wanted to be able to get a decent spot on some grass. It took us nearly 30 minutes just to find this decent spot because all the other people in all of Columbus were already there because they realized it was going to be so crowded. So we finally find a spot that was pretty decent but unfortunately the ground was wet so after about twenty minutes or so our pants were getting wet. Not so bad, it was dark, and there were too many people all packed into one area to be able to really see my wet ass. So we sit around for a while and my girlfriend has a conversation with a glow-ey salesman (yes, he called them "gloweys") about why his bag had steam coming out of it and he proceeded to tell us (while counting his large wad of one dollar bills) all about why he had dry ice in his bag and how to keep your "gloweys" good for a couple days. He eventually finished counting his money, nearly sold some gloweys for a beer, then left. It was almost time for the fireworks to start, and I was getting annoyed just simply because we had been waiting so long. I was smoking to pass the time. It was getting very uncomfortable sitting on this ground, and the 8 bleach-blonde fake tan high school kids sitting next to us were slightly annoying, although one of them was nice and told one of the other ones to stop standing in front of us. Anyway, the national anthem comes on, a couple fireworks go up, and everybody but myself and the people I was with stand up. We'd been sitting to long to stand up. My ass hurt. Fireworks started to go up in the air, so we all decided to stand up because everyone was standing in front of us. We watched about four or five large fireworks go up as the national anthem stopped, then people sat back down. I noticed that a lot of the smoke was hanging in the air, but didn't really think anything of it. A few seconds later, some fireworks started going off, and more smoke filled the sky. After about four or five more, the sky was a glowing cloud of smoke, the fireworks completely obscured. The sky was glowing red, green, blue, and white, and there were many loud booms, but you couldn't see anything. An old man pointed towards on of the taller buildings downtown that was almost completely covered, but you could see a few lights on it, and said "Look a UFO!". By then I was really annoyed. I could have easily sat at home and watched the fireworks on television and saved the time and energy of going to see them. We packed up our blanket, and tried to get through the crowd. It only took a few minutes to get out of the crowd and we were walking back to my car to drive home. After getting in my car we have a little discovery session to try to figure out the best way home. We take alley after alley then decide the easiest way would be to drive through the ghetto on the east side of Columbus. It was a good idea in that it was a lot faster, but it was a bad idea that there were ghettoworks ( that's ghetto fireworks for short, thanks Sara!) on every street and even a few people throwing fireworks at cars, mine included. Now, I'm not incredibly anal about my car. It is brand new, but I'm not going to cry when I get a little scratch. It's just really annoying to have fireworks thrown on your car and explode. By some miracle the fireworks didn't damage my car, but even if they did I'm sure I'm not going to stop and start yelling at someone where I was driving. That reminds me of a time when I was younger when a friend and I had some bang snaps and he threw about eight or so of them on this pretty shiny new truck and the guy in the truck chased us around the back streets of Lousiville, Ohio on our bicycles. Luckily Tom and I were too slick for the truck guy, but Chris's chain fell off as he started to run, and he got caught by the truck guy. Chris wasn't as slick as Tom and I were, we threw our bikes over bushes to get away. Anyway, back to my bad fourth of July. Sara and I get home, and go to bed. The next day (which was actually the fourth, Red White and Boom was on the third) we go to a cookout at a friend's house, which was probably the only good part of the past couple of days. We get home from the cookout and decide to go to fireworks in Westerville. Great idea, we know exactly where Allum Creek park is, so we go to the park and sit and wait for the fireworks. We waited for about 45 minutes to see these god damned fireworks, and apparently when they said Allum Creek Park has fireworks, they meant "You won't be able to see the fireworks from Allum Creek park". The park is surrounded by trees on all but one side, and the fireworks people decided to send up the fireworks from a side with trees, which completely blocked all the fireworks. Annoyed, we waited a few minutes, packed up our stuff, and started walking back towards the car. Just down the street there was a decent vantage point, and we stopped and watched the remaining five minutes of fireworks. When I was a kid, I remembered fireworks as a completely amazing thing. As I got older, fireworks got less exciting and bigger. The older I got the bigger fireworks shows got, and I needed it to be bigger to even remotely enjoy it. Well, tonight the fireworks were exactly as I remembered them: slow, boring, and generally unimpressive. They weren't big. They weren't fun. The grand finale was as exciting as the very beginning of Red White and Boom (had we actually seen it that is). Well, the point to all this is lost somewhere, but basically it wasn't very exciting. I think it's a sign. You're too old to enjoy fireworks. I'm not sure, but I'm tired of thinking about it (and especially since Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is on Conan O'Brien right now, I'm losing focus).
