Enduring that heatwave at the end June was about as much fun as receiving a concrete enema. And there’s always some wise guy who has to point out that it’s not the heat, rather the humidity that makes it so insufferable. Well, I lived Las Vegas for a year, and as far as I’m concerned, both the heat and the humidity—as I now personify them—can go [do something that is anatomically impossible for humans].
But, alas, the heatwave and June are behind us, and as now we prepare to celebrate ‘Merica by grilling animal flesh, drinking our body weight in booze and blowing stuff up, here is this month’s homage to great Providence Journal former-columnist Bill Reynolds.
- Please don’t be the guy at the barbeque who mentions that The Continental Congress actually voted in favor of independence on July 2 and the Declaration was adopted on July 4, adding that most historians believe it wasn’t actually signed until Aug. 2, 1776. You’ll end up looking like a pretentious tool-bag. Like I just did.
- I try to make it a point to listen to CCR’s “Fortunate Son,”[1] Springsteen’s “Independence Day”[2] and Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” every Fourth of July weekend. Just saying.
- A guy is watching television in his apartment when there’s a knock at his door. He answers the door, and nobody is there. Then he looks down and sees a snail. Frustrated by the inconvenience of getting up from the couch, he reaches down, picks up the snail and throws it as far he can.
- On July 21, 1987, Guns N’ Roses released “Appetite for Destruction.” Can someone convince me that this album is not the greatest hard rock album ever recorded? This is not a single throwaway track on it.
- July is National Ice Cream Month, National Hot Dog Month and National Pickle Month.
- Julius Caesar was born in July, and the Roman senate named the month after him. Later, his buddies would lead a group of senators to stab him to death on the steps of Pompey’s Theater on the Ides of March. That was a bad day for Caesar.
- July is the beginning of the “dog days of summer,” which is a term any baseball fan knows well.
- Let me go on record saying that hot dogs taste better boiled than grilled. In the words of Michael Felger: “This is a fact, not an opinion.”
- I’m not going to lie: lighting off fireworks appeals deeply to my inner-adolescent boy.[3]
- It’s now July, and I still haven’t attended a New Hampshire Fisher Cats game yet. This needs to be rectified soon.
- July 2, 1947, was the approximate date of the Roswell UFO Incident near Roswell, New Mexico.
- Despite my earlier cynical statements about the 2021 Boston Red Sox, it appears they are for real. Not only do they possess the best record in the American League, they’re also a tremendously affable group of ballplayers and prodigiously fun to watch. As a friend of mine mentioned, there are some similarities to the 2004 Idiots.
- The same guy is watching television in his apartment two years later when there’s another knock at the door. He looks down and sees the same snail. The snail says, “What was that all about?”
- While there has been a lot of buzz surrounding the teaching of Critical Race Theory recently, please realize that concept was adopted in the 1980s and the good history teachers are already teaching it. It was embedded in the curriculum before Fox News started crying about it.
- July 14 is Bastille Day, which commemorates the start of The French Revolution. The Canadian rock trio Rush wrote a song about it[4].
- Happy Independence Day, everyone. Be safe, and don’t forget to bring a sweater and an umbrella this year.
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[1] Donald “Bone Spurs” Trump obliviously used this song at his campaign rallies in 2020.
[2] This song actually doesn’t have anything to do with the holiday, rather a son leaving his father’s house, but that’s inconsequential to me.
[3] Many would argue that I’ve never matured beyond the said inner-adolescent.
[4] July 1 was Canada Day, which celebrates the establishment of the Dominion of Canada. Happy Belated-Birthday to our friends from the Great White North.
