Noli Me Tangere

Dude, where's my parking lot?

I love living in Buckhead much more than I like Buckhead itself. Today I could walk out my door and, without starting a car, be at the starting line of the Peachtree Road Race and the launch pad of the Lenox Square fireworks within 5 minutes.

Of course, the flipside is that I was awakened 7:25AM by “Ticket to Ride” and a helicopter which seemed to be landing on my roof. I looked out my front door and saw a sea of people, all with these pieces of paper hanging on their shirts, like some kind of cattle drive of the badly dressed.

Then things were quiet until around 6pm, when the area began to fill up again, so I walked over to Lenox to see about the fuss. There were all kinds of people filing in, filling up any flat surface with a view of the sky, including a family in burkhas, teens, baby boomers, and an outlaw in a do-rag and a faded t-shirt that said, “Jerry Springer ‘Too Hot for TV’ Security Detail”. The streets were unnavigable, and had I suddenly gone into labor, I would have been in trouble. (This was a risk I was willing to take.)

[The funny thing is, it wasn’t until I got home and viewed this picture on my computer that I realized Chris McDaniel was in it. Can you spot him?]

At the Lenox/Peachtree intersection, you could look from the sidewalk down onto the back of a stage set up for live music. While a band played Abba covers, I could see the sidestage area—not 50 feet away—and there she was, ladies and gentlemen, your Diana DeGarmo. She was hidden from the crowd and was trying her darnedest to stay perky in the heat and humidity. (She is nothing if not perky.) She kept making little adjustments to the bust of her patriotic outfit while her mom fussed with her hair. Some people near me caught her eye with some frantic waving. She waved back, but that pageant smile came and went with robotic efficiency and she generally looked miserable. Then I felt badly for her. She’s just a 17-yr old girl who probably feels like a monkey in a cage sometimes, constantly goaded to perform for onlookers. I wouldn’t blame her if she thought of her fans as idiots.

Celebrity worship is such a strange phenomenon. I fall into it too (though not necessarily with Diana DeGarmo) but when I step back momentarily it becomes mind-numbingly stupid. Why do I care that Britney is engaged? Does this have any bearing on my life at all?

Then, as if to drive home the arbitrary and fleeting nature of fame, the Spin Doctors took the stage. I wondered what happend to those guys. Apparently it was not kryptonite, but actually a pocket full of lame rock clichés.

But I digress. The real highlight of the evening was what it was supposed to be. I haven’t been wowed by fireworks in years, but these were big and loud and creative and they were so close. They set off car alarms and scared children. They sometimes hit the sides of the high-rises nearby. It’s also interesting to watch people when they are genuinely awed by something. We’re such a jaded society that nothing really thrills us anymore, but these oohs and ahs were real.

And it made me think of our national anthem. We’ve all heard it so much that we no longer hear it. The words have become like “El Emeno Pee” in our consciousness, but they’re really a pretty grim picture of war. I imagine if you were there watching real explosions ripping things apart, the song might not seem so glib. The third verse gets even more gritty:

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

People say it’s not a good anthem, it has too much range, it’s hard to sing, but I like the words. Written from a place of bitter hope. It’s an anthem with bite, poetry that a gun fanatic can like.

And nothing makes me prouder on this day than knowing that somewhere in this great land, people are trying to cram as many hot dogs into their gullet as they possibly can. Oh, wait, I guess the Japanese beat us at that also.

Happy belated Independence Day, everyone.

Posted by aokie at July 5, 2004 11:54 AM