Fourth of July: Put down that burger and pick up a VHS tape

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I don’t do much to celebrate the Fourth of July.

                It’s not because I’m secretly a dirty Commie so and so with red in his veins and hatred towards Uncle Sam in his heart. I can assure you, none of that is true. There’s just not much there for me when it comes to America’s bday.

The big thing with Fourth of July is the parading and the fireworks.

                I’m ok with fireworks, I don’t love them but I’ll watch and enjoy them in person for a bit. Usually by the quarter pole the allure of bright and loud things in the sky starts to fade, my neck and back start to get sore and my attention wanders.

                Parades though. Those I vehemently dislike. There is nothing more boring than standing outside and watching other people walk by you slowly in a straight line.

                My favorite part of any of the parades I’ve been to is when the line backs up and I get to watch the paraders (parade participants?) awkwardly wave to the same section of the crowd while they wait for things get moving again.

                Outside of that brief bit of “Office”-like squirm-humor, it’s just a lot of walking, loud noises and the occasional silly costume. I could go to any mall in the country on any day of week and get the same experience by watching old people do laps from outside of a Hot Topic.

                There are also the BBQs which I like, but there are lots of BBQs during the summer, I cook on my own grill at least once a week, so there’s nothing very special about them.    

                The one tradition that I hold sacred is watching the movie “Gettysburg” on VHS tape every single July. All 4 ½ hours of it.

                The Ted Turner-produced Civil War epic is one of my all-time favorite movies. And there’s no better way to celebrate America in my opinion then spending about the time it would take the average person to run a marathon watching a movie about that time when America almost divorced itself.

                Sure, it might be better to make the pilgrimage to Gettysburg or some other Civil War site. God knows I could drive to Gettysburg and back in about the time it takes me to watch the movie.

                But then I’d be deprived of the fun of dusting off my ancient tape-playin’ device, remembering what channel the TV needs to be set to in order for it to work and dicking around with the tracking every ten minutes to keep the picture at just the right level of blurred fuzziness.

Homemade signs, greasy food and the ghosts of S*per Bowls past

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On average, I’d say I watch somewhere in the neighborhood of one full football game a year and it just so happens to be the Super Bowl. The large game. The grande enchilada.

That’s the only football game I’ll watch from the opening kickoff through the post-end credits scene where Sam Jackson shows up with a zany plan.

                  There’s really no reason for me to watch the aforementioned large game. I don’t have the stomach to gamble and I’m clearly not much of a football fan. On top of that, my office doesn’t even have a water cooler, so there’s nothing to gather around on Monday and dissect the Xs and Os of the game.

                And by Xs and Os I mean the commercials and the halftime show.

                Despite all of that, I still make it a point to watch and have since my days as a small boy.

                Every year my parents, sister and I would dine on hoagies and wings, eating them off football-themed plates and napkins. My dad would spend half the game reminding my mom of how football worked and the other half waving the white flag in the face of her never-ending onslaught of questions. Every single year.

                It warms the cockles of my heart just thinking about it. 

                Another tradition was the decorations. For whatever reason, as a youth I got it in my head that I needed to be the official decorating committee of my family’s Super Bowl festivities.

                So starting on Super Bowl eve, I’d cobble together a bunch of hand-made pennants with crudely scribbled slogans on them: Go Niners! Go Giants! Switzer’s a bum! And so forth like that.

                Then I’d wait for the first floor of our family home to clear out. I liked to work in private, so I’d dawdle until everyone wandered to other areas. Perhaps I thought it was best for artwork of that caliber to hit the audience all at one time. That way they could drink in the deep-seated commentary I was trying to convey in one giant gulp. 

24/7: Road to Christmas: Musing on Beloved Traditions Before the Sleigh Arrives

It’s that time of year once again. The time where I complain about B101’s taste in Christmas music, watch “Black Christmas” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” over and over and scream The Royal Guardsmen’s “Snoopy’s Christmas” at the top of my lungs when I’m in the car by myself.

As magical as those traditions are – very – they’re not even all that high on my list of favorite Christmas activities.

Of course, I don’t have an actual list per say. That’d take too much work. What I do have is a loose and random collection of things that I enjoy or enjoyed doing during the long, slow slog towards C-Day morning, when wrapping paper bombs go off in living rooms all across this great and god-fearing nation.

• The family party. Gatherings with the extended family used to be a pretty huge deal when I was younger, but none more than the Christmas party, which my family hosted. These parties got less and less important as I got older until it reached the point where I stopped going to any of them. Things have come full circle now and I enjoy going to them again, but still nowhere near as much as I did when I was a lad. I’ll always remember hanging out with the cousins and playing nonsense games with Nerf guns. The all-time highlight took place during the Christmas party when I was in 8^th grade. Both my younger cousin and I were completely obsessed with the WWF and we spent a huge chunk of the night reenacting matches and moves. It all culminated memorably with me locking him in the Mandible Claw complete with sweaty sock, which made both of us crack up. Well, he cracked up after I'd removed the sock from his mouth.