It’s the 5th of July and the weather is not cooperating with my headache. It’s supposed to be the hottest day on record for San Francisco, not that this city sets the bar all that high. Oakland is practically viscous sludge with the heat, but enough about the weather.
Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep to the soothing rumble of explosion after explosion after explosion right outside my window, I was reminded of this time my brother Chris, a sound engineer, worked the Milwaukee Big Bang fireworks show back in the late 80s. The show was supposed to be set to rock music, but his boss screwed up and supplied him with a blank tape, which he didn’t discover until, like, 10 minutes before the fireworks started. So rather than not playing any music at all, Chris substituted a Bruce Springsteen bootleg he dug out of his glove compartment. Sitting out on the hill above Lake Michigan, all I could hear was the white noise of a cheering crowd laced with the muffled chords of "Born to Run." It felt strange because none of us were actually cheering. We all just kept looking around at each other, thinking everyone else must be clapping. It was almost like performance art: playing applause for the non-applauding crowd.
The whole event got panned on the local news stations.
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