Usually I write a long pean to the nature of July 4th and what it means to me to celebrate four years as a US citizen.  And finally not be a stateless person with a passport to a country I no longer live in.

This year the July 4th entry is different.  Firstly, I couldn’t write it the night of the big show because I had a headache and was really tired.  Last night the same thing.

Oh and I was completely soaking wet when I got home from the whole thing.  Yes.  This year my 4th was spent in stupendous company.  And then I got soaked.  As an aside, if you plan on screaming AMERICA at the top of your lungs every three seconds during a fireworks display, prepare to be on the receiving end of my Blunderbuss.  Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot of Pawn Stars lately and that was one superior item they had on that show.

Well of course the fireworks display was outrageously great, as usual.  You gotta give Boston credit.  For a city whose motto should be “Honey Badger Doesn’t Care,” this place sure puts on a fantastic show.  Let’s have a look see:

Sail Boston is in town.  As you could all see, the Navies of the world are visiting and this seems to have attracted pirates.  Well, amateur pirates hopefully, because obviously I don’t want the Navies to do anything else but be adorable.  And they are much too overdressed to do too much pillaging and stealing of gold.  I mean doesn’t piracy involve cunning?  And agility?  And these outfits don’t exactly scream that:

P.S. The guy in photo #2 sent me the following message:

This be a great shot of me, Captain Kindle Burns! Thanks fer postin’ it!!!

And he refers to the gent in photo #3 as “Weird Beard.”  I guess it is a pirate thing.

Men’s Vogue editor, I’m looking right at you.  It is time to stop dressing bored looking male models in military outfits and get some real guys on the pages.  Like for example, these boys.  They already look perfect and know how to pose:

 

If only I could be carried around like this all day long.

Pre-July 4th edition.  All the Bostonians are preparing for the festivities by wearing the American flag in creative ways:

And some matchy-matchy for the evening:

Red Auerbach coached the famous 1980s Celtics, like Larry “Hick from French Lick” Bird and Kevin “6th man” McHale.  And he graduated from the George Washington University, which the intellectual giant who writes this blog also attended and graduated from.

Well, this kid really doesn’t care about Red.  It is kind of funny, actually:

Interestingly, I got photos of two kinds of revolution today.  As you all may know America’s birthday is coming up in a couple of days and a lot of people seem to have that on the brain.

The American Revolution is for my money, one of the most interesting and most misunderstood revolutions out there.  The players are well known, but living here in Boston, it’s like the players follow you around most of the time.  Downtown is full of people dressed up as Revolution war figures, but the players really are with you and people around here have quite a lot to say about them.  John Adams was a lawyer and as a park ranger at his old house in Quincy told me, a bit of a loud mouth.  Thomas Jefferson attended the constitution convention and wrote the thing, but barely said anything at the actual proceedings.

What is also startling are the actual ages of the guys.  Jefferson was 33 at the time of the American Revolution, Washington in his 50s and Ben Franklin in his 70s.  It was expected to be the younger guys that took over of course and in turn they did.

The Revolution is full of misunderstandings.  Yeah, liberty and freedom played a big role in the United States back then.  The liberty and freedom of white guys with money!  Others, meaning slaves, were considered property and women didn’t have any sort of a voice.  But this is not to discount what these white guys with the money did for the United States as a nation.  They declared, probably for the first time in modern times, that they deserved a voice in deciding their own fate and that that fate should not be decided miles away in some distant capital.  People have a right to determine their own laws and that was revolutionary.

So it is fitting that big groups of people dress up British Army Royal Red Coats when July 4th is coming around.  The constitution, written by a 33 year old Jefferson, guarantees freedom of expression, so these guys are free to express whatever they want:

Well, let’s go forward about 230 years to today.  Revolution is not an unknown occurrence in the world.  Actually, it is probably happening more now than we thought it would.  The Arab World experienced it in the Spring 2011 and Syria is currently experiencing it.  Like the Americans, the Syrians want to overthrow an unfair government.  Unlike the Americans, the Brits weren’t killing Americans en masse.  They did of course during the Revolutionary War, but not before it started.  They mostly just passed unfair laws against each other.

Today I attended a protest to Free Syria.  It had an honest about it that I really liked.  I just sincerely hope that once the tyrannical Syrian government is overthrown, there isn’t a vacuum left over.  A power vacuum into which anyone could step.

Let’s have a look see at what I saw over at the other Revolution:

 

Yeah, I just make this kind of stuff all the time:

Tiny:

Really big sized: