James worked today--albeit he got to telework—so this is not the blog entry for riotous festive Fourth of July tales. My biggest activity today was trying to get Tucker to go outside. The pops, bangs and booms from around the neighborhood have Mister Sure-I'll-Take-on-That-German-Shepherd! petrified. This morning wasn't so bad, and I managed to get him to pee during the late afternoon, but by dark he curled up in a tight ball either at my feet, or James' feet or in James' recliner and stayed there. If you tried to coax him out he sat, shivering, with his left paw up, looking like those old big-eyed dog paintings from the 1960s. I tried taking him out before bed, after the neighbors had finished burning ground fireworks, but no dice.

I could have gone to Michael's with a coupon or JoAnn with same, but I find I am so tired of driving I didn't want to. There's an old joke about Rhode Islanders: that if they have to drive any longer than an hour they get a motel, but my Dad wasn't like that. He loved to go places, and I used to, too. But after 28 years of Atlanta traffic I am flat burned out.

So I did minimal tidying up (I would have vacuumed, but that would have interrupted James, although he only had two calls, one in the morning and an interminable one in the afternoon). Mostly I watched television or read my magazines and my book about Betsy Ross. Had Alistair Cooke's America on in the morning: "Making a Revolution" and "Inventing a Nation" for the obvious reasons, and then "Gone West" just because I like it. I switched on John Williams albums after that—"By Request" and "Music of America" and one other—but we didn't watch 1776 until after James had cooked supper. We had some, unfortunately tough, steak I got on sale and excellent corn on the cob, with pumpkin bread (how can you get more American than pumpkin?) from the Farmer's Market with whipped cream on top.

It was over just before the Boston Pops concert, which was, once again after a few years' absence, being broadcast on CBS, who managed to turn the whole event into rubbish. Instead of broadcasting the entire concert, they aired two comedy show reruns (including the loathsome 2 Broke Girls) and joined the "1812 Overture" in progress, which means we heard the last few notes and the howitzers being shot off. CBS doesn't think that's all there is to the piece, do they? Otherwise we heard the Boston Pops perform only twice, once during the sing-a-long and the other during "Stars and Stripes Forever." The rest of the time they played second fiddle to some pop stars, Nick Jonas, Demi Lovato, and a supposed "country" group called Big Little Town. Jonas and Lovato wailed their way through "America the Beautiful"; otherwise they did a medley of their hits. If they weren't wailing so loud, I would have fallen asleep before the fireworks, which were brilliant—literally, as there was much use of a bright chrome yellow this year mixed with red fireworks, producing extraordinarily orange smoke—with a dreadful soundtrack: all loud songs, only one patriotic one ("God Bless America" yelled as loudly as the singer could manage), no soft ballads, no movie music, no John Williams pieces. Complained bitterly on CBS's Facebook page as well as the Pops' page. Some folks blaming Keith Lockhart when it's totally not his fault; probably CBS agreed to broadcast if they could pimp their pop tarts. All CBS needs now is a pimp suit and a pimpmobile. What tripe!

Labels: dogs, food, holidays, Independence Day, music, pets, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:08:00 PM

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