(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

Prior to my teen years, it was traditional for me to go with my family to the July 4 fireworks show on the Mall (near the Washington Monument). We would sit on a distant hill for relatively little crowding. In early years, the best thing about it to me was getting to stay up past 9:30.

Then I attended a rural overnight summer camp for four years straight. It had much less light pollution to compete with, but the fireworks were too paltry to interest me. For years after that, I had lost all interest in fireworks. Wasn't it pretty much the same every time, not worth going out of one's way? And wasn't there just as much dazzle to be found in various popular media?

In the last few years, my family urged me to see the fireworks at a nearby country club. They were enough to tell me that the pyrotechnic sciences had advanced, but still, only the short walk led me to bother. Didn't help that trees obscured part of the show.

This year, my dad said that his office, the Reagan Building, would be open to letting people onto its fifth-floor outdoor walkway to watch the Mall fireworks. After a self-debate on whether to finish my cartoon on schedule instead, I agreed (sorry, fans!). I hadn't realized how close my dad worked to the Monument. Now I could feel the noise vibrations in my chest.

And what a show. I have little idea how they arrange those shapes and movement patterns, and I'll thank any knowing readers not to tell me -- I'd rather let 'em stay magical. No anticlimax this time, either. Everyone knew the moment to applaud.

The first time in more than half my life that I've seen the nations most famous fireworks show live, and it's the best I've ever seen.

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

You need to see Fantasmic sometime at DisneyWorld or DisneyLand, it's fireworks + movie clips + pyrotechnics + floats, great stuff. :)

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I thought "pyrotechnics" was a synonym for "fireworks."

[level-head.livejournal.com]

And what a show. I have little idea how they arrange those shapes and movement patterns, and I'll thank any knowing readers not to tell me -- I'd rather let 'em stay magical.

I will say with great solemnity that it is magical.

I'd love to have seen it. It's been ... more than four decades since I've seen the pyrotechnics in Washington DC. The fireworks, that is. ];-)

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