Yowza. Though I suppose it could have been a threesome, and the statement literally true.
Which still doesn't sound like much fun.
Not to disparage those who do in fact gain gratification from playing mattress.
It may not prove true of this one, (it being Saturday night of a vaction weekend being an alternative explanation) but I really like it when threads explicitly sex get very few comments and threads not about sex get tons of comments about sex.
We could talk about the makeover/Cinderella fantasy at the heart of The Devil Wears Prada.
I saw the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada and it was awesome. Why don't other movies just show an intriguing two-minute chunk? In the Line of Fire did something similar, though IIRC it was a continuous chunk of dialogue over discontinuous scenes from the movie.
I also like it when threads explicitly sex, but I figure that then it's not too surprising when they're too busy to accumulate comments.
I also like it when threads explicitly sex
Mutombo.
Remember the conversation about the cringing mortification of watching someone embarrass themselves? I've got a new one: the cringeworthy mortification of watching fan-made Star Trek episodes that your life partner has downloaded and burnded to DVD, the better to (1) see them in all their low-tech glory on a bigger screen; (2) impose them on your environment; (3) brainwash your darling little boy into growing up to be as huge a geek as his father.
Could be worse, B. He could be making his own fan-made Star Trek episodes and roping PK into starring.
I spent the evening outside having an impromptu block party/barbecue with all of the families that live in our cul-de-sac. It was quite nice and I was having a lot of fun playing with the little one year old kid from next door and was just starting to think "aww...I should get me one of these" when he started to freak the fuck out like a demon posessed for no reason and I thought "Omigod! I broke it!" and had to give him back to his dad (the really hot ex-pro-beach-volleyball-player who looks like Matthew McConaughey, only hotter) and run and hide.
11-12: You know what's really sad is that after about 20 minutes of watching it, over-achiever Mama said, "you know, maybe you and Papa could make one of these yourselves!" In that "let's try to make this a learning activity" kind of way. At first PK was all into it, and then he remembered some project he talked me into a year ago about making an animated film about mice. Which I really started out trying to do with him in good faith, but he just does not have the patience yet to do stop-motion animation, and I don't have the patience to deal with him.
The moral of the story is, when you get one of those cute things, you end up having to do all sorts of non-cute, incredibly boring and or frustrating stuff. It's part of the deal.
As someone who spent a large part of her Christmas vacation helping her younger brother build a model of a Trojan Horse out of popsicle sticks, I feel ya.
Watching fireworks from a sailboat: highly recommended.
Of course not. They just schedule them for the weekend.
(Do Canadians even have fireworks? Seems like the sort of thing they wouldn't do.)
Yet more moving around of holidays. Part of me likes the convenience; the other part is annoyed by the violation of tradition.
The moral of the story is, when you get one of those cute things, you end up having to do all sorts of non-cute, incredibly boring and or frustrating stuff.
In my case, I think two is actually easier than one, from an ease of entertainment perspective. Both girls, and under 2 years apart means they run around and play together. Definitely not cheaper though.
Part of me likes the convenience; the other part is annoyed by the violation of tradition.
I'm pretty much all annoyed by the violation of tradition. If it falls on a Tuesday, dammit, celebrate it on a Tuesday. But I'm not the one with the fireworks.
Possibly the best fireworks I've ever seen were in the 24th largest city in France on Bastille Day. Assuming that quality of fireworks improves proportionally with population, France must generally have kick ass fireworks. England also has fireworks. As do we. Canada, being nothing but an admixture of the three, must have fireworks.
In recognition of the fact that everything changed on 9/11, the fourth of July should now be referred to as 7/4.
Your logic is impeccable, w/d, but I'd like to hear it from a Canadian.
For some reason, moving the Fourth of July stuff bothers me less than moving Halloween. Which makes no sense, as the Fourth of July is obviously more closely tied to the date.
Canada, being nothing but an admixture of the three
What happened to the First Nations? Were they chopped into liver?
I always love the Fourth of July party my friend Jenny throws each year on her roof in Brooklyn that, sadly, I cannot attend this year since I'll be in D.C. It's 360 degrees of fireworks -- you've got the Macy's fireworks in Manhattan and a bunch of cities in Jersey all doing shows at the same time. You're completely surrounded.
21 - I would think the quality of the fireworks would improve with the population of your Chinatown.
Do they have Chinatowns in France? And aren't Manhattan and New Jersey the same direction from Brooklyn?
Also, who moves Halloween? And whither?
One year in Boy Scouts we - meaning the older scouts who ran the activities - told everyone to dress up in costume for the meeting we had just before Halloween (which didn't fall on our normal meeting day). At the start of the meeting we gave each patrol a pumpkin to carve.
In the pumpkins we'd hidden, in zip lock bags, notes announcing that what we'd really planned was not a Halloween party, but a competition in which each patrol had to find and decipher a series of notes, each leading them to the next location and next note, until they returned to the meeting place. First patrol to get back would win. The notes were hidden in places like under a rock in a park, or in a phone booth, or hidden in a hedge.
For the next hour and half everyone was running around the city, still in costume, while passersby kept wondering what the hell was going on since Halloween wasn't for a few more days.
Paris has an area that may be considered a Chinatown, but it may just be a Chinese neighborhood.
28 - No, Manhattan and Jersey are in different directions.
29 - They always move Halloween in my Midwestern hometown. There's always a battle between whether it should be on a weekend (so kids aren't out on a schoolnight) or on a schoolnight to keep the mischief level down. And God forbid that pagan holiday falls on a Sunday...
30 is totally cute.
Once, when we were bored in High School, we dressed up in costumes and went Trick or Treating in the middle of July. People were very confused but, generally, they were amused and still gave us stuff.
33: Huh, so they are. That's still only about 90 degrees.
And the moving Halloween thing is teh weird. They never did that where I come from.
35 - WMYBSALB, Teo? OK, my geometry may not be 100% but, still -- 4 or 5 simultaneous fireworks shows? Very cool.
25: I considered acknowledging that the Acadians exist but thought it might lead to objections to my thesis. The First Nations lead to the same problem more directly, so there existence is even less acknowledged by me.
30 is totally cute inadequately explained for my tastes. How did you get the ziploc bag inside without the pumpkins being obviously pre-carved in at least one spot.
36: I got an invite to an apartment on 34th and 1st Ave. which should have a great view. Which is good, since the gathering of people there will suck.
36: I am exceedingly you-style right now. And I never denied the coolness; indeed, I saw multiple fireworks shows myself this evening.
Uh, Acadians are French. You've got them covered. First Nations are still a problem which you have not yet addressed.
I wasn't in charge of the pumpkins (I wrote and hid some of the notes), but I believe what they did was cut a very small hole, fold up the bag, slide it in, and replace the piece that was cut out. I don't remember how it was concealed, but it was done pretty well since they only found the notes after taking out quite a lot of the innards. It wasn't likely that they were going to pick up the pumpkins and examine their strutural integrity.
I would imagine (and I mean literally imagine with no basis at all) that French people in France feel much closer culturally to the Quebecois than to the Acadians, and that while both are descended from French people, one of them is more informatively described as French than the other.
We saw probably the best fireworks we've ever seen in a tiny village in France on Bastille Day. Which makes me think that the French *really* care about Bastille Day (or fireworks).
Canadian here. I can confirm: we do in fact do fireworks on Canada day.
Becks -- there are a number of places one can be in DC and see more than one fireworks display. Anywhere that one can see the horizon into Virginia as well as the sky over the Mall will do.
The consistently best 4th fireworks I ever saw were in S/ttle. They play the Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner and a lot of blues/R&B, and totally skip that godawful Lee Greenwood song that seems ubiquitous everywhere else. Plus, there are actually two different displays, and if you get up on a roof in the right part of town, you can watch 'em both.
DC 'works - The rooftops in Mt Peasant (being on top of said "Mount") offer an unparralleled view of the Mall fireworks, as well as the Virginia and Maryland ones off in the distance, like a visual echo.
Why are we Googleproofing the name of a city?
because the people of Sittle are Googling themselves all the time and are very sensitive about how we talk about them.
I'm pretty jaded when it comes to fireworks displays now. This old comment explains why. Plus there's a nice recipe in that post. And discussions of sea cucumber!
Because I'm paranoid and probably stupid about what I'm doing.
21: Apparently France only has 3 cities larger than Omaha.
Acadian-wise, small French-speaking communities survived in Minnesota, Illinois, and Missouri well into the twentieth century (Google "Old Mines").
I for one would welcome new French or Quebequois masters, should the battle on the Plains of Abraham be nullified.
The best fireworks I ever saw were in Edinburgh for Hogmonay (New Year's, which in Scotland is a way bigger deal than Christmas). Those spoiled me pemanently. In fact, a fireworks show at Salisbury Cathedral, that my Dad described as one of the best he's ever seen, seemed weak in comparison.
The one in Edimburh was part fireworks and part human performance. In addition to the regular fireworks, there were people who had these strange tall metal contraptions on their head which emitted sparkler type fireworks. There was also non-popping fireworks: big long flames of fire that shooted out of cannons. It was something that would actually be worth watching on video; ordinary fireworks suck on screen. It was certainly worth standing outside in cold weather.
Do they have Chinatowns in France?
Around the Place D'Italie, though it's kind of a pan-Asian mix with lots of Vietnamese, etc.
You can see multiple fireworks displays in the Bay Area too; a few years ago my girlfriend and I drove across the Bay Bridge while they were going off at Pac Bell Park and Crissy Field, and we could see Sausalito's fireworks off in the distance. (Convertibles work best for this.) And apparently the tradition in our little 'burb on the 4th is to drive up the hill and watch the fireworks, since you can see from Oakland to Berkeley in the East Bay, and over to the City as well.
That almost sounds like Cai Guo-Qiang's Black Rainbow, which was performed in Edinburgh.
The fireworks celebration that struck me the most vividly was Switzerland's 1 August national holiday, with big professional fireworks set off from barges on Lake Geneva. It was the smaller, citizen fireworks set off into the Lake that really impressed me. And the giant sparklers set off under leafy trees. And the children running around with candle-lit paper maiche baubles on sticks. And the drunken firemen loitering around hitting on young girls.
I had just come from draught-stricken California and was terrified that the whole place was going to go up in flames.
"Which makes no sense, as the Fourth of July is obviously more closely tied to the date."
Um, the Constitution was signed on July 2nd. What is it you think happened on the 4th?
"draught-stricken" s/b "drought-stricken"
The Constitution was signed on September 17, Gary.
60: Umm, the Declaration of Independence?
Fourth of July is obviously more closely tied to the date
I think she meant, "The holiday Independence Day is also frequently called the 4th of July. The holiday Haloween is never called the 31st of October. Therefore the Fourth of July is obviously more closely tied to the date."
Though it is frequently called Halloween.
In the Canada of my childhood, forty years ago, fireworks were set off very freely on "The Queen's Birthday," May 24th. This holiday is not the actual birthday of the current queen, which is in April, but the official celebration, since before confederation on Queen Victoria's birthday. Commercial calendars suggest this is now called "Victoria Day," logically enough. Domininion Day, now called Canada Day, was not a day I remember fireworks for, but that may have been local and may of course have changed.
The best fireworks display I ever saw was in Canada. There's an international competition held every summer in Vancouver, BC -- the year I lived there it was a fierce showdown between China, Italy and Mexico. Also I distinctly recall Canada Day being big for fireworks as well.
Washerdreyer still hasn't explained how Acadians aren't French.
Now that I think of it, I saw a magnificent fireworks display over the water on Vancouver's waterfront on Canada Day in 1986. The fireworks day must have changed since my childhood, or always been celebrated differently in other parts of the country.
Man, everybody is becks-style. I believe I shall get Becks-style too.
Canadian identity was presented in my childhood as an amalgam of the unassimilated nations of the British Isles and the French. That Canada had the same waves of immigration at the turn of the century as the US did, so that the prairies were filled with Ukrainians, the cities with people from Southern and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, didn't make it into this account any more than the "First Nations" did.
Anyway, The Maple Leaf Forever, the Canadian patriotic song, has this refrain: "The Lily, Thistle, Shamrock , Rose; The Maple Leaf Forever".
For pre-revolutionary France (Fleur de Lis), Scotland, Ireland, and England.
Anybody happen to know if Canadian Schoolkids still learn that?
In the Yukon of my dad's childhood, IDP, I'd say that the French didn't figure nearly as prominently as the First Nations and Ukrainians did.
Ok, that's not entirely true. The French figured, but mostly as socialistic, bureaucratic bogeymen "Outside" (that is, outside the territory). My dad grew up working and playing with First Nations kids, and my aunt by marriage is first-generation Ukrainian...
I don't know what modern Canadian schoolkids learn about their country's history and self-identity, though.
JM, I believe people from the North, and the West, and the Maritimes, all believe that Ontario cultural hegemony is very annoying. Or rather, that the "Two Solitudes" trope, as if all Canadian history was the Ontario-Quebec nexus, leaves out more than half the country.
I was talking to a guy from the prairies waiting for a connection at Pearson a couple of years ago, who said he never saw a real life maple tree until he was grown up. Might as well have been a Fleur de Lis.
IDP, you have no idea what paranoid lengths my Yukon granddad was willing to go to make sure all of his precious mementos stayed out of Ottawa's hands.
My relatives up there get more angry about bilingual product labelling than I could ever really understand--after all, if you don't read French, you just don't read that side of the label, right? No, they'd reply: "What a waste of money!"
But most of them up there are really skeptical that government is any good at all. (Unfortunately for the territory, that attitude seems to have been inherited from relatives who actually were in the government, and corrupt, ineffective, and nepotistic they were, afaict.)
BG's right about the Hogmanay fireworks in Edinburgh. They're magnificent.
But for batshit insane levels of gunpowder going off all at the same time for hours, China wins hands down. In Shanghai for Chinese New Year there were two official shows going on simultaneously, one in the east and one in the west of the city, and from where I lived I could see both, and not only were they incredibly good fireworks, but they went on and on and on for over an hour, with no resting time between bursts. At any given second there were about 15 bursts happening on both horizons. I've never heard so much oohing and aahing in all my life, and all the while there were also metric shitloads of civilian firecrackers going off everywhere too.
Which reminds me, they have these signs in certain areas in Shanghai, about the size of your average no parking sign, that have a silhouette of a string of erupting firecrackers, and then the red circle with the line through it, to indicate that it's a no-firecracker zone (firecrackers are used on lots of occasions, like opening up a new store or business, or moving into a new apartment; on any given day you're liable to hear fireworks at least once). Of course everyone ignored these signs.
I can see the NY fireworks if I sit on my fire escape. Or stick my head really far out the window.
I haven't spent July 4th in the Bay Area for a while, but all I can remember is fog/clouds making it difficult to see the displays from afar. But I'm pretty indifferent to fireworks, and never made much effort to go looking for them.
72: to the Becks-style, all things are redolent of Becksitude. Hurray!
If I'm ever alone, at night, with internet access, I'm going to set up a row of bottles and try becks-style in earnest. I'm going to my mother's with my brother next week: it just might happen. May even improve clarity.
Do any Chicago people know if it's possible to see the downtown fireworks if you just kind of look down one of the diagonal streets?
Best fireworks I've ever seen were in my tiny little hometown in NC. I'm a fiend for fireworks. I don't always make it out to see them, but every time I do I get the same giddy, child-like amazement going.
(Do Canadians even have fireworks? Seems like the sort of thing they wouldn't do.)
I Don't Pay's 66 was totally right: the only "firecracker day" when I was growing up was Victoria day, in May. There were no firecrackers on July 1st until later. In fact, I was telling a friend this very evening that I believe Canadians started having firecrackers on Canada Day in direct imitation of the Fourth of July.
Oh, and to I Don't Pay's 71: I have never ever heard of that song.
Incidentally, I celebrated Canada Day by watching SCTV sketches on YouTube. Boy, that show is not as funny as I remembered.
Best fireworks I've ever seen
Pamplona, during the feria, or whatever it's called. But then I was really, but really, becks-style.
I believe Canadians started having firecrackers on Canada Day in direct imitation of the Fourth of July
I'm pretty sure that they don't like it when we say stuff like that.
But I'm Canadian, so I'm allowed.
You know what else Canadians have shamelessly ripped off? In the NYC subways there are posters featuring a few verses of a well-known poem, and at the top they say, "Poetry in Motion."
In the Toronto subway they have the same thing, but it's called, "Poetry on the Way." Lame, lame, lame.
77 - I've always wanted a fire escape. Fire escapes are awesome.
Fire escapes are awesome.
Especially when there's a fire.
Best fireworks I ever saw were waay up in the mountains in Lebanon for Mary's Annunciation (I think - it might have been some other piece of maryolatry) day in mid-August. Big frigging speakers booming out music which the fireworks were synched up to - it sounds massively cheesy, but somehow they pulled it off.
65 -- and less frequently, alas, Hallowe'en.
Best fireworks I ever saw were for some sort of 'Thames Festival' in London about 3 or 4 years ago.
They'd hired the French guy who'd done the Eiffel Tower display on the Millenium and it was amazing. They had fire barges going down the Thames puffing up huge balls of flaming gas and everything was lit up with the coolest fireworks.
It wasn't so much the scale of it but the inventiveness of the use of fireworks and the perfect timing of the various bursts.
93 sounds a bit like what I saw in Edunburgh. The ones I saw weren't the ones that they did on New Year's Eve but ones that they set up a few days before. I was there in 98-99. I think that I remember people saying that it was the same group that had done the World Cup fireworks in 98 in France. Maybe that's the same guy who did the the Eiffel tower fireworks and the display that McGrattan saw in London.
"HUge balls of Flaming gas" is closer to what I remember than my own description of "long flames of fire shooting out of cannons."
Firworks are pretty damn big in Bagdad too....
81: No. Also, wouldn't you need to choose the correct diagonal street? Looking down, say, Lincoln wouldn't do you much good.
My plan is to go see the fireworks in Evanston, because a) actually on the 4th, b) not a literal million of other spectators there.
I saw amazing fireworks in Venice. I was there during the Biennale, and San Marco square was lit up by a massive installation of three enormous LCD screens on three sides of the square. Big variegating light screens + awesome fireworks. But I'm pretty sure that if I'd seen Guo-Qiang's Tornado here in DC, which triggered terrorist alert alarms, that would have taken the cake. I mean, come on. That's awesome.
And I don't remember who said it, but whoever hated on Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be an American" upthread? Love it or leave it.
That was me, and that song alone pretty much makes the country uninhabitable.
88 -- is "Poetry in Motion" still a going concern? I went to the launch party for that, which must have been back in 1994 or some similar year, and was very excited to hear both Allan Ginsberg and Galway Kinnell reading, both were marvelous readers; but I do not recall seeing one of their posters in years. The program featered some wonderful poems and made nice company commuting in to work in the morning. It was however not original to NYC; as I recall it was based on a similar program in London or possibly Paris.
I have to agree with Dr. B that that song is pretty much kills my patriotic spirit every time it's cued up. We were at a fireworks display on Saturday night and when that song came on it was like a showstopper compared with Ray Charles' America or John Philip Sousa.
If by "Tories" you mean, "people who aren't technically deaf," yes.
Canada has its share of reactionaries; if "The Maple Leaf Forever" has been abandoned or suppressed, it's probably a virulently expressed cause for someone.
About a year ago, when I was watching Letterman, a middle-aged, red-haired woman, with an interesting combination of primness and a ready-for-anything air, presented herself for "Stupid Human Tricks" Asked if she wanted music, she called for "The Maple Leaf Forever." Paul Schaeffer, he of Port Arthur, Ontario, reacted slightly and played it.
104: My assignment today is to find that song because it does not ring any bells for me.
And Canada certainly does have its share of reactionaries.
If by "Tories" you mean, "people who aren't technically deaf," yes.
I actually performed a sign-language version of "Proud to Be an American" back in elementary school, so I don't think even that exception applies. I still half-remember most of the choreography, taught to us with increasing frustration by the gym teacher over several weeks.
The launch of Poetry in Motion was in 1992! It was modelled on a similar program in London. A poem I first saw on PiM which I love: Along the Hard Crest of the Snowdrift, by Anna Akhmatova. (A poem which deserves pride of place on Emerson's bookshelf.) Also: To my love, combing her hair by Yehuda Amichai, source of the extraordinary couplet: "The pillow on your bed is your spare brain,/ tucked under your neck for remembering and dreaming."
106: OMG, you mean you imposed that thing on the only people in the entire nation who hadn't yet been tortured by it?
You do know you're going to rott in hell, right?
DA: Here are the words.
http://ingeb.org/songs/indaysof.html
The years of my absence, which saw "bringing the constitution home" would have made the renaming of Dominion Day, and in fact the supercession of the concept of Dominion, and the valorization of Canada Day, logical and defensible. I don't disapprove, I only realize my memories are of a significantly different country.
I just downloaded Anne Murray singing "The Maple Leaf Forever" at a Maple Leafs hockey game. Still doesn't ring a bell.
107: 1992 was the first time I ever visited NYC and I remember those posters. I like them too. I wonder what the London program was called. What annoys me about the Toronto ones is that "Poetry on the Way" reads like they wanted to convey the same thing as "Poetry in Motion" but didn't realize the latter is a figure of speech.
My last comment makes it sound like I no longer live in NYC. I do still live here, and I still regularly see those posters, and still like them.
Further to the PiM reading, which was in the Transit Museum in Brooklyn Heights -- I was a mere lad of 22 and still a year away from being married, indeed I don't think we had even solidified our matrimonial plans yet at that point -- my fiancee and I were living in Park Slope but had recently been living around the corner from the Transit Museum, however we had never been there until this event. She reminisced about babysitting for Galway Kinnell when she was in grad school, and how he was an arrogant asshole.
My all-time favorite transit poetry, spotted in the Paris metro in 1998:
J'ai voulu t'écrire une lettre d'amour,
Glisser un mot dans ta boîte à lettres;
Au lieu, j'ai j'été une pierre par ta fenêtre--
J'ai même pas osé mettre papier autour.
[I wanted to write you a love letter/ Slip a note in your mailbox/ Instead, I threw a rock through your window/ I didn't even dare put paper around it.]
"j'été" s/b "jété" of course. (I recently got a lot of guff about leaving out diacritical marks and am still getting used to coding them in. Sorry about that. Oh, and "note" s/b translated literally, as "word.")
63: "60: Umm, the Declaration of Independence?"
Right; sorry. My point was that the vote was held on July 2nd, not July 4th (despite what some websites and histories will tell you; they lie). See here, for instance.
63: "60: Umm, the Declaration of Independence?"
Right; sorry. My point was that the vote was held on July 2nd, not July 4th (despite what some websites and histories will tell you; they lie). See here, for instance.
The London scheme of poems on the underground is called - in a flash of brilliance - "Poems on the Underground" :) Dunno if it's still going, haven't noticed one for a while, but I'm not a regular Tube passenger these days.
Gary, that's a really interesting link. I picked up a copy of this Garry Willis book at a used bookstore a while back, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet or I probably would have learned those things.
Do people think that Lincoln quote at the top is correct? That is, he claims the 1789 Union was just a more mature version of the 1774 one. My understanding of both Constitutional history and sensible anti-secession argument (though tbhe idea of challenging Lincoln on that topic is a curious one) both say otherwise, that the 1789 Union was an utterly new one, replacing the old. NB: I use 1789 (government operations begin in earnest), Lincoln uses 1787 (the convention sends the Constitution to the states for ratification) in that quote, and if we wanted to talk about when the new union actually came into existence it's got to be June 21, 1788.
It's crucial for Lincoln's anti-secession argument that 1788 be seen as a continuation of the existing union, not a whole new one, because the Articles of Confederation refer to the union as "perpetual" while the 1788 constitution doesn't.
But the 1788 one does refer to "a more perfect union," and my understanding is that in some ratifying debates this was taken to mean that the previously existing right of secession would be given up.