Fourth of July

Sometimes (actually, lots of times) my state really embarrasses me. Usually, though, Lincoln stands out as a little island of sanity, but not this time. This is just too stupid for words.

Do you know who "Larry the Cable Guy" (Daniel Lawrence Whitney -- "Git-r-done") is? He lives in Lincoln. That's embarrassing enough, but he decided he wants to do a 4th of July show at Memorial Stadium. The University mulled it over for quite a while and finally said okay. As a result, the City of Lincoln decided to do its 4th of July whoop-ti-do on July 3rd -- apparently because they thought so many people would want to go to Larry the Cable Guy's show (stadium holds about 80,000 people).

So, last night, Mother Nature put on her own fireworks display, and we had thunderstorms and pouring rain all night. Must have put a damper on the city's party. Today, I have my curmudgeonly fingers crossed that it rains again tonight so that anyone dumb enough to think Larry the Cable Guy is actually funny gets rained out.

July 4th isn't one of my favorite holidays anyway. I seem to remember liking it when I was a kid, but I think having a dog that would whine and cower for a week or more pretty much cured me. Now fireworks just piss me off (although I still sort of like the big public displays -- from a distance). If it doesn't rain tonight, the whole city will be blanketed with a sulphurous haze. I can't for the life of me figure out how over-priced, polluting, made-in-China fireworks is an appropriate expression of patriotism.