I always liked, about the United States of America (MY country), that we celebrate our birthday on July 4. NOT the day we (and the French) defeated the British. NOT the day we finally worked out our Constitution, or chose our first President. But the day we DECLARED we were INDEPENDENT. And worked out all the details later. It was like we were the first nation that consisted of an act of WILL, or IMAGINATION. This allows us, this week, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of this act of will, despite the fact that we are presently way further up Shit Creek than at any time since the Civil War – the important thing is, we still have the Paddle! (Look how tightly composer Charles Ives is clutching that paddle in the image above, at least I think it’s the paddle.)

It’s been impossible to post about this Fire Hose of “Interesting Times” while nearly single-handedly trying to get signatures for Anaheim Rent Control this past half-year… but I am back. What’d we miss? Just last week, this is an appropriate one: our smug, punchable Vice President JD Vance (if that is his name) came to our Nixon Library and joked about how “Watergate woulda been a 12-hour news story if it happened now.” Joking, with that douchebag eye-twinkle and raised brow of his that signals “This IS amusing isn’t it, amiright?”

And sadly JD is right. Dan C kinda missed the point here (although JD did go on to show ignorance/indifference to the facts of Watergate, and Dan has been writing better lately.) Vance’s point is that his crowd’s lawlessness puts old Nixon to shame, they DO commit many Watergates a week, our civic conscience has been raped into numbness, and JD thinks that’s not only fine but cute.

Fittingly it was only the next day that the slimy homunculus Mike Johnson promised a crowd of MAGA “Christians” that if they just kept him and his Party in power he would be their “protection program” and keep them safe from consequences for all their crimes past present and future:

Sometimes the Fire Hose spurts out a horror show, like this past week’s ICE blitzkrieg on our immigrant friends, spurred by the hate and frustration of the monstrous Stephen Miller at failing to overturn the Constitution’s Birthright Citizenship. Just as often it spurts out endless farce, as seen in Pervert Hoover’s misadventures with the Lincoln Reflecting Pool. You know all this maybe –

• As part of his obsessive re-decorating of DC for this week’s festivities, Mango Mussolini resolved to re-paint the pool “American Flag Blue” which was a bad idea to start with and cost us $16 million;
• While it was drained, the Ochre Abomination thought it’d be cool to drive a convoy of armored vehicles across the pool bed because why not? And he apparently put a long crack in the bed doing that;
• Once the pool was painted nice and dark blue and re-filled with water, mucho ALGAE sprouted up in record time, between the hot weather and the darker color making the water even hotter; and of course Orange Shitler blamed this on Antifa Vandals and shadowy Biden Donors;
• Hydrogen peroxide was poured into the unfortunate pool, killing SOME of the algae but also making the new paint peel off, and Tangerine Palpatine declared that to also be the doing of mysterious invisible Marauders paid by George Soros;
• Ducks died;
• Some Olympian dude biked along and examined the mess, and got arrested, indicted and threatened with up to TEN YEARS… by THIS drunken Trump-sucking DA-hag, this Jeanine Pirro:

Yup, same drunken Pirro whose “remarkable” record as US Attorney for DC consists of failing to indict Jerome Powell of BS charges, failing to indict six military-veteran Democrat politicians for BS charges, and failing to indict a ham sandwich – or rather, the guy who heroically flung a hero sandwich at an ICE marauder. That Pirro. Sometimes you are allowed to laugh.

But you are ALWAYS required to fight back.

I could go on about MAGA Republicans’ many-pronged attempts to steal the upcoming midterms – to finally gain control of the Paddle so we are stuck up Shit’s Creek forever. And about the new, welcome signs of life in the Democrat Party as we elect Fighting Socialists across the land. But I can’t fit all of that in this Open Thread. (YOU could.)

Let’s remember that it’s all THE LAST DEATH THROES OF WHITE SUPREMACY. I know, I’ve been saying that here since 2010. And then Trump was elected in 2016, and it seemed like maybe that’d be the last chapter. And it’s still not over. Americans with their flea-sized memories did it again in 2024, for whatever combination of economic foolishness and not wanting to vote for a black woman. But on our 250th birthday let’s put a final end to it. Let the Paddle be also a sharpened stake and plunge it into the heart of Zombie Hate. You’re invited to:

The Rebel Semi-Quincentennial Concert

The featured composer at Saturday’s concert is CHARLES IVES (1874-1954) – heard of him? A real American original. Way ahead of his time. And maybe a little bit insane. His love of polytonality and polyrhythms came naturally from listening to competing marching bands playing different things at the same time on his Connecticut streets. And he habitually mixed his beautiful original melodies with snatches of popular patriotic tunes like some abstract or surrealist canvas. This piece “Fourth of July” (cued up below) might even get across our mixed feelings about our nation during this Semi-Quincentennial:

From that I’m (by request) going into Neil Diamond’s ode to immigration, “Coming to America.” I never really listened to Neil Diamond. I only know that song from this scene in Cheech Marin’s “Born in East L.A.”…

When I finally heard the whole song, well, it needed work. An upgrade. It was Neil Diamond. A sentimental, Norman Rockwell celebration of apparently Jewish Europeans immigrating across the Atlantic. The song had to be adjusted to 2026, to the ICE age. So the new words are in bold. Oh, and also the immigrants are no longer “they” but “we.”

Far, we’ve been travelling far,
without a car, but not without a star.
Free, we just wanna be free,
we huddle close, hanging on to a dream.

Pushing ‘cross the Rio Grand, we’re coming to America!
Pushing ‘cross the desert sand, we’re coming to America!

Home – don’t it seem so far away?
We’re traveling light today, in the eye of the storm, in the eye of the storm.
Home – to a new and splendid place – close your eyes and we’ll say our grace,
freedom’s light burning warm – just don’t open that door!

We’re adding to your melting pot – we’re coming to America!
See all the cultures that we’ve brought – we’re coming to America!
We do the jobs that you won’t do – we’re coming to America!
We share the Dream that you do too – we’re coming to America!
TODAY! Fuck ICE!
TODAY! Fuck ICE!
TODAY! Fuck ICE!

When Johnny Comes Marching Home

Civil War-era folk tune, arr. by Vern Nelson & The Clash
words by Irish-American band leader Patrick Gilmore, Vern Nelson & Chumbawamba

When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah!
We’ll give him a hearty welcome then, Hurrah, Hurrah!
Oh the men will cheer and the boys will shout, the ladies they will all come out
and we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.

In 18-hundred-and-61, Hurrah! Hurrah!
That’s when our Civil War begun, Hurrah! Hurrah!
In 18-hundred-and-63, old Abe he ended Slavery,
and we’ll all drink stone wine when Johnny comes marching home!

In the year two-thousand-and-26, Hurrah! Hurrah!
We need many more Johnnys in our midst, Hurrah! Hurrah!
In the fight against the Plutocracy allied with White Supremacy,
and we’ll all be Johnnys Till Every Nazi Dies!

Dvorak: New World Symphony, Largo excerpt (arr. VN)

Vern Nelson: Marine & Dog (2019, song #8 from “Songs of the OC Homeless”)

sung (hopefully) by Joel-Steven Hammond

F Major-Minor Medley:

• Zez Confrey: Kitten on the Keys (1921)
• Neil Young: Don’t Let it Bring You Down
• JS Bach, from Well-Tempered Clavier book 2: Prelude & Fugue in F, Prelude in F minor
• Chopin: FANTASY in F Minor

Van Morrisson: Moondance (w/ guest flautist)

• Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto in B-flat minor intro
• That’s Amore
• Toots Thielemans: Bluesette (1962; jazz standard by a BELGIAN composer)

Charles Ives: “The Alcotts” from “Concord Sonata”

Ives’ “Concord Sonata” was inspired by the “Transcendentalists” of his contemporary New England whom he admired so much: the movements are “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts” and “Thoreau.” “The Alcotts” (a portrait of Louisa May Alcott’s family) is the most popular and prettiest.

Vern Nelson: “The Ghost of Kelly Thomas” (2020-23, from “Songs of the OC Homeless”)

INTERMISSION

Charles Ives: Waltz-Rondo (1911)

“A distressingly insipid waltz theme alternates with six episodes of progressively more riotous character, culminating in a coda that combines all those episodes.” CRAZY-ASS PIECE! And only Vern plays it.

Two Mexican songs:

• “Cri-Cri” (Francisco Gabilondo Soler): El Ropero
• Consuelo Garcia: Besame Mucho (wild arrangement by VN)

Beethoven: Waldstein Sonata

(my favorite Beethoven, which I haven’t performed in over two years so you’re not tired of it?)

American Finale Medley

• John Philip Sousa: Washington Post March
• Cole Porter: I’ve Got You Under My Skin
• John Philip Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever

Be kind to your web-footed friends
cuz a duck could be somebody’s mother!
Be kind to the creatures in the swamp,
cuz they live where it’s very very damp.
Well you may think that this is the end:
You’d be right, like a million more before you.
This song is the best one we know,
and still we hope that all the others didn’t bore you.

Rebel Semi-Quincentennial Concert.
Saturday July 11, 5pm.
Anaheim Unitarian Church, 511 S. Harbor.
$10 suggested donation.

Now Open Thread!