Last night, we celebrated our nation’s independence by blowing stuff up at la casa de Feedle. While I don’t think there were any hardcore-illegal Indian reservation fireworks, there were a number of things from across the border. I guess that Vancouver’s fireworks are allowed to leave the ground, whereas Portland’s cannot.
The aptly named Neighbor Hater is a sort of pagoda-shaped thing that spins around really fast for a good number of seconds then suddenly lifts off the ground at an amazing rate, and explodes at about 50 feet up. A smoldering cardboard carcass then drops to earth, where it can optionally light a neighbor’s dry grass on fire. I’m not saying that this happened, but it has certainly been a dry season.
The Loud Little Suckers are similar in nature. They are like those helicopter toys you get as a kid, but with a rocket engine attached. They swiftly ascend to about 50 feet, then explode. Little pieces of plastic shrapnel descend upon the people below.
The L.O.L. and its scary clown motif continued the creepiness past the lighting of the fuse. The mouth glowed constantly and the eyes would twinkle on and off. If you want creepy, this will give you your most bang for the buck.
The Equalizer was, effectively, a palette of rockets. Yeah, that thing that looks like 16 fireworks? That’s a single firework with a single fuse.
Of course, you cannot help but giggle at things like the “Three Inch Happiness” or the “Golden Shower.”
The full set of photos and videos are in my July 4th Flickr set.
