July 4th, US Man Day

I was hanging out with my friend M (not the M in KLM) at Amber last night. He was a little depressed because the next day was the 4th of July. Why would Independence Day be depressing? He was depressed because he's British. Not as if he thought that by simply being British, he should have been King of The Americas, or some... uh, actually... sorry, he did think that by simply being British (and drunk) that he should have had sovereignty over what wouldn't have been called the United States had the Brits won what wouldn't have been called the Revolutionary War*.

This is M's first 4th in the States, and while many United Statesians believe that everyone in the world is familiar with all things United Statesish, that's not true. When I was asked what we do on ID4, I told him that we cook meat and blow stuff up. It's a decidedly masculine holiday, isn't it? I'm pretty certain that throwing raw meat on an open flame while drinking beer was not done by any of the leading ladies in Sex and the City. I'm also pretty doubtful that "How to Blow Up a Watermelon With an M80" will be on the next Oprah. Really, the only way the 4th of July could be more masculine is if men went with Ted Nugent to shoot wild hot dogs with a crossbow and cooked them on the hood of a '67 Mustang that would be cleaned afterwards by the Hooters Bikini Team. Then, at night, men would gather in baseball stadiums to play air guitar to Guns n' Roses doing a cover of Springsteen's "Born in the USA" before a game of dodgeball with firecrackers, and end the evening with Cindy Crawford eating an Eskimo Pie, naked on the roof of the Empire State Building.

America, F**k Yeah!



*Not having a revolutionary war would also mean Purple Rain wouldn't have happened, since there wouldn't be Prince & the Revolution, and Adam Ant wouldn't have a career at all... maybe that part wouldn't be so bad ;-)