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There's one thing every woman's missed in Massachusetts Bay
Tonight: watched the fireworks from the Cambridge side of the Esplanade with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaudior and rushthatspeaks, who had providently staked out a spot about ten feet from the water and directly opposite the fireworks barges. I brought potato salad, brownies, and homemade strawberry ice cream, they supplied the cherries, carrots, cupcakes, and nearly sufficient quantities of bottled water. There was a sky full of burning gold light and blown-rose clouds against argon blue; around eight-thirty, a rainbow became visible in the sunset over the Charles. I was hit on by some kind of postgraduate with an American flag bandanna and the recurring delusion that he could pick me up by inaccurately correcting my knowledge of Norse mythology and presumed inability to distinguish Germans and Nazis. The fireworks had evidently been scheduled for convenient television broadcast rather than actual in-city audience, because ten-thirty at night is way too late to start and playing the 1812 Overture forty-five minutes earlier did not help. The evening was nonetheless awesome. I didn't even sunburn. Tomorrow: write notes on E.T.A. Hoffmann; post my Readercon schedule; read my two books on Wittgenstein with even greater care than usual, as it appears that fifty-nine years of death have done nothing to improve his suicidal depression. Recover my hearing. I have the best cousins ever.
gaudior and rushthatspeaks, who had providently staked out a spot about ten feet from the water and directly opposite the fireworks barges. I brought potato salad, brownies, and homemade strawberry ice cream, they supplied the cherries, carrots, cupcakes, and nearly sufficient quantities of bottled water. There was a sky full of burning gold light and blown-rose clouds against argon blue; around eight-thirty, a rainbow became visible in the sunset over the Charles. I was hit on by some kind of postgraduate with an American flag bandanna and the recurring delusion that he could pick me up by inaccurately correcting my knowledge of Norse mythology and presumed inability to distinguish Germans and Nazis. The fireworks had evidently been scheduled for convenient television broadcast rather than actual in-city audience, because ten-thirty at night is way too late to start and playing the 1812 Overture forty-five minutes earlier did not help. The evening was nonetheless awesome. I didn't even sunburn. Tomorrow: write notes on E.T.A. Hoffmann; post my Readercon schedule; read my two books on Wittgenstein with even greater care than usual, as it appears that fifty-nine years of death have done nothing to improve his suicidal depression. Recover my hearing. I have the best cousins ever.
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Ha! Ha ha! That just gave me a good laugh. I would love to have been there to see that.
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Yay cousins!
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...on the other hand, I agree that people probably need more cheering up when the nights are long and darkness comes so early.
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I could just hear the French at that point une espèce de [postgraduate<--French fails me here]
I love that locution, which adds just the right flavor of lip-curling distaste that you need, sometimes. As when such a guy comes along.
rainbow in the sunset--lovely.
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(And your help in the actual getting-home and hauling stuff back was exceedingly awesome.)
Best cousin!
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That's what the bonfire's for...
...on the other other hand, I agree that fireworks and home-made strawberry ice cream sounds good, too.
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And, like, chicks always get turned on when you correct them about Norse mythology. And when you tell them that they don't know the difference between Germans and Nazis, it's a sure hot date right there.
Yeah. Where was he a postgraduate of?
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"I was hit on by some kind of postgraduate with an American flag bandanna and the recurring delusion that he could pick me up by inaccurately correcting my knowledge of Norse mythology"
Seriously. :D
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Sorry State.
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I played a pre-fireworks gig at the beach in one of the coastal towns, with the mostly-competent core of the sometimes bloated band that I play with. Lots of underdressed/probably underaged in the audience-as-it-were. Nobody requested "Free Bird", which was good because there were too many children around to do the hoary digitus-impudicus/"No charge, mate!" gag.
We loaded up the van and left as the fireworks were starting, ca. 9:30--no point in getting stuck in the departing traffic and not getting home till two in the morning.
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Thank you.
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I am afraid it was not particularly exciting: he was mostly the pretentious kind of inaccurate as opposed to the batshit spectacular. I started to bring up Tacitus and the fact that while there is a lot of overlap between the cosmologies, the Norse gods were, in fact, Norse rather than really German, he cut me off—did I know, no, seriously, their names are different in German? Like, Odin is Wotan. Sigurd's real name was Siegfried. I contemplated whether I wanted to start reeling off names of the Æsir and the cast of the Nibelungenlied, but decided that might imply that I was interested in his conversation.
(I did ask at one point if he was German. I couldn't otherwise tell why he would be earnestly attempting to convince me, by way of chat-up, that the rest of the world hadn't yet forgiven Germany for World War II. No, he said, but he was very European.
. . . It did not seem to stop him from shouting, at frequent intervals, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!")
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They could have started as early as nine o'clock if all they had been waiting for was full dark and no wind. The problem is that they were waiting for ten-thirty and national broadcast.
Yay cousins!
They rock.
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He had friends. They also hit on
rainbow in the sunset--lovely.
It was astonishing.
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Merci!
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What impresses me is that the books keep trying to commit suicide. Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein spent an entire dinner attempting to plunge to its death and all evening Terry Eagleton and Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein demonstrated a knack for turning up directly underneath descending objects. I am now a little afraid that I'll pick up the Tractatus and it will set itself on fire or something.
(Did she think he was a good teacher?)
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It really was. I am very glad it worked out, even if the Pops really needs to reorder its priorities.
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It was. I'd never seen the fireworks from the Esplanade before; we always went to my grandfather's girlfriend's apartment near the Symphony and watched from the roof. They were spectacular.
And, like, chicks always get turned on when you correct them about Norse mythology. And when you tell them that they don't know the difference between Germans and Nazis, it's a sure hot date right there.
Seriously! I mean, it's probably some kind of improvement on leading off with yeah, baby, you know you want it, but what the hell suggested bad comparative religion as a natural substitute?
Where was he a postgraduate of?
I didn't ask. I did not want to give the slightest impression I cared.
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What I was told was that the fireworks have been drifting steadily later so that they can be broadcast at primetime on the West Coast. I think this is not the correct target audience, especially considering how many people come and camp out the entire day in order to watch the show. I remember they used to lead in straight from the 1812 Overture—not throw in nearly an hour of filler to make up the time.
and it was still partially light when they started in D.C.! I don't understand why they don't sync them north to south, though.
Yeah, that's backward.
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It was worth doing.
I hope you had a good Fourth?
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It's one of my family's traditions. We used to pick the strawberries ourselves when my grandparents lived in Maine, but nowadays we buy them from Wilson Farms. The results are still extremely edible, however.
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I'm glad.
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I am very fond of them.
Nobody requested "Free Bird", which was good because there were too many children around to do the hoary digitus-impudicus/"No charge, mate!" gag.
Heh. Sounds like not a bad way to spend the holiday, nonetheless.
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Thanks. In compensation, he made a good story.
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And well you should be. I'm fond of some of my cousins, although I have too many to readily keep track of them all.
Heh. Sounds like not a bad way to spend the holiday, nonetheless.
It was. We sounded decent, or at least not embarrassing. It ended up running late enough that I wasn't able to go to my mother's friend's party, which I found out afterwards was attended not only by her friend's biker/Shakespearean brother but by a rather pleasant undergraduette/Irish dancer, but such is life.