A Happy Chinese 4th, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

July 7, 2010 Whitney Farmer 14 Comments

On Day 2 of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings – when asked by Senator Lindsey Graham with what might have been unsuccessfully veiled anti-Semitism where she spent Christmas –  nominee Elena Kagan responded, “Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

I thought of this as my parents and I sat down to a July 4^th celebration that consisted of Chinese take-out. I was still thrashed from a show the night before, my dad had a migraine, and one of their little white dogs had had a seizure. None of us were up for cooking with flames. Dessert was fortune cookies, each speaking directly to us with a slight twist of the knife. Mine said I needed to develop my feminine side. Mom’s said that she needed to pay more attention to her family.  My 82-year-old Dad’s said that he should seek the advice of someone older, as if that was possible. Our laughter was the perfect finale of the Independence Day meal, but not the end of the celebration.

My party had started at about 3:00am that morning when I came out of the office after closing out the books for the show.  I discovered about a dozen employees in the main venue eating the leftover chips from the green room. On holiday weekends when the roads are dangerous, I tend to encourage staff to linger until all the drunk drivers are either in the hospital, in jail, or passed out at home rather than still on the road. Plus, it provides the perfect opportunity for spontaneous employee dance smackdowns. Everyone whipped out their stellar moves, accompanied by the sounds of rudimentary karaoke and music coming through a gi-normously expensive sound system. I added my 8^th grade pep routine (performed to the tune of “Car Wash”) to the artistic menudo. The Samoans took down their hair and whipped it while dancing to some crazy tribal sound that was so cool that it was maybe a bit scary, then transitioned smoothly into Motown ballads. The Mexican bartender did this thing where he basically kicks his own ass around the dance floor to the brassy whine of tejano music. Then everyone was mashed together swapping partners during the slow songs. I was the only female and no one wanted to wait, so there was a mess of Samoans and Mexicans and Greasers and Lebanese and Mutts partnering up to sway to the music. We took pictures to prove it.

That was Sunday. On Monday, we had no show and decided to celebrate the birthday of one of our bartenders at a club on Sunset that had a hair band/metal/comedy show. It’s true. I managed to embarrass myself only once: During the show, the band saw a musician they knew in the audience and pulled him on stage to make him sing “Don’t Stop Believin’”. After the show, a promoter for that club that I know brought the singer up to me to introduce us. He said, “I wasn’t expecting to sing Journey tonight.” I said, “It’s okay. Chicks did Journey.” He paused and then laughed as he said, “Yeah, that’s true.” I found out later that he had been their lead singer for a couple of years after Steve Perry.

After the show and after sidewalk hotdogs, I got a call from someone who worked in production that night to rendezvous on the top of a nearby building for illegal fireworks. Done, complete with a finale that singed some arm hair(see photo above of the Samoan watching from a safe distance the staging of the final conflagration). I talked with the…perpetrator?…about what gunpowder tasted like which I viewed as a perfect segue to discuss the Star Trek episode when Kirk fights the Gorn. He had to make gunpowder to create a rudimentary weapon…It took the group another two hours to run out of things to talk about, laugh about, and try. Maybe some small laws were broken. Perhaps seven. Seven – as in a.m. – was also the hour that I finally made it home. We all left each other with the salutation, “Happy July 6^th!”

There is much to love about this country. We pursued happiness this weekend and caught it. A pile of people representing the world’s four corners were allowed to come together and act really stupid and no one went to jail, and no one is slated for execution or behanding. I know that we are at times discouraged or outraged or appalled about our country’s state of affairs. But one of the gifts in this land is that we are allowed a voice, even one that is dissenting. Perhaps especially one that is so. And Samoans, Mexicans, Greasers, Lebanese, and Mutts can cross each others’ paths and come to know each other well enough to compete in spontaneous dance smackdowns.

Happy 4^th, 6^th, and all the free days to come!

Quote of the Blog, from Ed, Dude of Light and Fog: We had a nightmare promoter tell our servers WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION that they would have to wear lingerie to work on the night he was doing or be replaced on their shift. Obviously, the club owner issued appropriate and lawful instructions when I notified him about what had been said. However, still steamed, I vented with Ed and told him about the whole Underwear Order while he was working the lights during the show that night. He said, “That’s WEIRD because I forgot to wear any today!” I later learned that everyone in production had gone commando that night in unplanned solidarity.