Vegas: Summertime Fireworks

 What could possibly be a more American way to celebrate our independence and the creation of our nation-state than to get irresponsibly intoxicated and set off explosives in the street? Often there's a ceremonial barbeque involved as well, where slabs of pork, beef or tubular meat-forms are seared and slathered for consumption, though this particular Fourth's festivities were devoid of such sustenance and socializing around carcasses. It was a rather impromptu thing, at least from my perspective, as I kind of crashed the housemate's party while Antho was at work. While there's no shortage of places from whence you can purchase boom-booms in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and configurations, we hadn't gone out and done so due to limited funds. These things, they happen. I wasn't particularly upset about this lack of combustive arsenal, partly due to the fact I'm not exactly 100% comfortable with the combination of booze and explosives in residential areas. I mean, Japan does fireworks, and they do them big and beautiful, so it's not exactly like celebrating with fire flowers is an entirely new phenomenon...  but those shows were generally situated around rivers or water, even in the case of Tokyo Disney's firework shows...

Anyway, when I was able to get over my trepidation at having things exploding several feet away from my vehicle (full of combustible gasoline and such), I was able to capture some pretty fun photos of the fire-flowers in blossom. I know, they're technically called fireworks in English, but I find the Japanese term of "hanabi", or fire-flowers, far more poetic and in-tune with the ephemeral beauty of the bursts. As brilliant and stunning as they are, they only light up the sky for these brief blasts of intense beauty. I'm not familiar with the chemistry involved behind achieving the different colors, or the different shapes, though I know the shape of the tubes themselves can provide some degree of variation in the bursts. That's one of the cool things about life, though, I suppose... you don't have to completely understand the mechanics behind something to appreciate it's beauty. Sometime's it's best to just stop and take it in for what it is before it's gone.

Vegas: Drunkachu and so long to Stan The Man

We live in strange, unpredictable times where anything is possible, no matter how incredible or how awful it may seem. Some of our greatest heroes have left us behind as they venture off to traverse the Rainbow Bridge, leaving a gap that many fans of superheroes and comic books will sorely and deeply feel. So long, Stan the Man. It's been an incredible ride, and your empire of creative work will undoubtedly continue to inspire and strike awe into the hearts of young and old for decades to come. Sigh. Not only did we lose Stan the Man, but then we got the trailer for Detective Pikachu. A live action Pokemon film in and of itself doesn't necessarily bode of impending cinematic craptitude, though previous anime adaptations to the third dimension have generally struggled to bring their subjects to satisfying reality, but we get a wise-cracking Ryan Reynolds as the voice of the typically linguistically limited character of Pikachu. To be fair, anthropomorphizing the little squeak isn't exactly new terrain as speaking animals have always been a favorite in films for Disney, but when it comes to Pikachu the last time he(she?) spoke people lost their minds.  

I guess, if I were a real-life Pikachu, I might want to run away to Vegas for a weekend of debauchery in a futile effort to escape my situation or the reality of losing another architect of my childhood. The world can be a dark and disturbing place, and we need people like Stan Lee to help us reimagine things, to look for the good, the heroic in people. While sometimes the stories of Good Versus Evil can feel trite, it's because they've been built upon an archetype established by the imaginations of men like Stan early in the advent of widely accessible comics. The premise of this escape from the difficulties of life was a huge part of what inspired the founder of Critical Care Comics to establish his non-profit organization! It may be only 28 pages of fantasy, but when you're stuck in the hospital it can be an absolute lifesaver to have a distraction from the endless beeping of machines or unsettling nature of hospitals themselves. Due to my location, I'm no longer able to volunteer my services to the group, but it makes me so happy to see them out there still doing their good work for the community of Las Vegas and any nearby hospitals they get called to. They're a seriously wonderful group of human beings, and I know that they'll be mourning the loss of Stan over the last week and into the future. I guess we all kind of need an escape these days, huh?

Photos in this post were taken by Antho!