Battle of the Bands, Dumbass Edition

Nothing says "God Bless America" like that "Boot in yer Ass" country song, right? Gosh, I was so proud of our collective songwriting genius.

I have this friend who arranges outings like a Norman Rockwell Painting: "We'll all be out by the lake. Late afternoon 'til after sundown. Some people will be fishing, some of us will just drink beer by the picinc table. The kids can take turns on the jet-ski. I'll be cooking hot dogs and put on my Yo-Yo Ma CD..." Never mind that nobody else wants to hear Yo-Yo Ma except him. We are all just participants in his well-intentioned fantasy choreography and we seriously need to do a better job of following stage directions without question.

So, when Ryan and I pulled into the parking lot across from the shopping mall (funny aside: Later, Fran and I were watching the Washington DC fireworks in front of the Washington Monument and Fran said "Someday, I would like to be in DC watching fireworks along the Mall--I replied "Ryan and I just back from doing that..."), it was a mixed bag of people. I could go into decribing them in detail, but there was pretty much a representative of everyone there. Think you could stump me? Try me out: Organ grinder and monkey: check. Outlaw biker gang: check. Yuppie in a beemer: check (right next to us). Masai warrior with shield: check. Someone blowing "fire breath": check.

I thought it was pretty cool to be in such an unusually random group of people, and right when the fireworks started Hillbilly Hank decided to crank up a stirring rendition of "Boot in yer Ass" to complete his wonderful Fourth of July Holiday...Blazingly loud. Well, one look at his chain-smoking, wife-beater t-shirt-wearing scraggly butt told me that this guy was really just praying that he could finish off the Fourth with either a) a well-thought-out debate, between swigs of Pabst Blue Ribbon, over his Constitutional right to annoy the nation with his crappy musical tastes or b) a UBC-style bare-knuckle cage match. I mean, he was sitting there waiting to sucker punch someone, and it wasn't going to be me. We kind of all looked at each other and let the song finish, hoping he was getting it out of his system. I thought to myself that, well, maybe some people need to stir themselves up to be patriotic. Maybe his version of Norman Rockwell is painted with different colors than mine--there's room for tolerance. Maybe his kid's in the service or something, or he lost someone at the WTC...at any rate, I was trying to go along with his scene for a moment...or maybe he'd put a boot...

Ryan was sitting in my lap sideways with his arm around my shoulder, and he was loving the fireworks, oblivious to the nonsense. He was having a great time.

So, Poindexter in the Saab decides that he'll do him one better, and passive-aggressively cranks "Stars and Stripes Forever"--even louder.

Then, one of the ex-members of Motley Crue, who happened to be in the parking lot, cranked up his song: it was either a live recording of a camel vivisection or some kind of acid-metal-speed-rock thing with guitar and I think the feedback was part of the song, but it was utter crap as well. Can't remember what he was driving but it was either one of those double-decker buses from England or a dunebuggy with a flag on the back.

So now we had a discordant concoction of music blaring from three corners of the parking lot. It reminded me of the 3-way gunfight at the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (now THERE's some music they could have played!).

"Boot in yer Ass" guy started feeling a little limp in light of everyone else's kickin' audio systems, so I saw him finish off his soldier and reach over and click off his radio, whipping out another cigarette and tapping it on the box before firing it up with a butane lighter.

This prompted Saab man to wait a minute or so until the song ended, and he put down his half-full Merlot to turn his radio off. I guess he figured the he and Crue man had cooperated to shout down das Boot. Nein.

No, no, Crue decided to keep the jam alive, so we all got "rocked out" for another 30 minutes--I didn't even know that Slayer put out a box set...It sounded like a 'roid raging Cookie Monster screaming over a mic with someone randomly playing stacatto guitar cords in the background. I was laughing to myself (a little). I was thinking: If Fran was here, she'd ...bravely and angrily pick a fight and then step back innocently for me to finish it. An aside: I think there was blood dripping out of Crue's car, but I'm not completely certain of it.

Have you ever noticed that when fireworks are over, there is a collective mindset of "Wow! Those were great! Yeahhhhhh!!!!! (clapping) I Love this Country!"

Then

"Let's get the hell out of here before the rest of these yahoo rednecks! I'm gonna cut that one off! Let's pretend we don't see him comin'..."

God Bless America (seriously).