The Monster Birthday Month Bash continues…

July 3rd.

Happy Birthday to Franz Kafka, Dave Barry, and one Thomas Cruise Mapother IV aka Tom Cruise.

Kafka is dead. Cruise will live forever.

Dave Barry used to be funny. Tom Cruise is still scary.

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My oldest’s gymnastics practice is right by where the Hometown Fest carnival is taking place. Last night when I drove to the gym, I was able to drive past the police barricade with the obvious excuse of picking my child up and park right next to the carnival. As in, HERE is the parking spot. 30 steps later. Oh lookee here, we are at the carnival!

I am always appreciative of an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime parking spot, mindful of the hapless souls circling the residential area looking for a spot within a humane radius we encountered along the way.  Naturally we went back to the carnival again tonight. We had to. You simply CANNOT waste a good parking spot like that. It’s bad karma.

The carnival on Friday night was a completely different beast than the one we saw on Thursday night. The one on Thursday night was docile, leisurely. Carefree. And sober. The carnival I went to last night was frantic, full of teenage angst, yet at the same time going through midlife crisis. Everyone older than 21 apparently had one drink or more.

Who says suburban life is all repression? We let our inner demons out once every year, under the watchful eyes of carnival workers.

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FREE BIRD!

I am pretty sure whoever taught me about the historical significance of shouting FREE BIRD at a concert regretted it. This random act of kindness has created a monster who yells out FREE BIRD! whenever she has the guts and chance. Probably done inappropriately 50% of the time. But I LOVE bellowing out, FREE BIRD! because it makes me feel… I don’t know, intrinsically American. Like a secret handshake that someone was kind enough to show me. Perhaps I imagined this, but I swear that as soon as people heard me shouting FREE BIRD! — even at the most inopportune times — they no longer see me as foreign, despite the accent. I became, instead of standing out like a sore thumb, instantly one of the in-crowd. It’s like a code. I have cracked the code. One of them anyway.

It’s no wonder why I am fascinated by American pop culture and see it as a personal imperative to understand all pop culture references known to man. These are little bits of mosaic puzzles for becoming American.

The same can be said of

“We need more cowbell!”

“These pretzels are making me thirsty!”

“420”

These however are more esoteric pop culture references that need to be used and appreciated by specific audiences.

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Every time I walk into a room, I integrate.

Every time I walk into a room, I represent.

At least that’s how I feel. On some days, it makes me feel empowered and shit. On the others, it just makes me feel like shit.

Last night at the carnival was one of the better days.

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The July 4th carnival is where I get to see the real Americans.

Not the over-educated, pampered, (forced to be) politically correct, self-conscious people I have chosen and am able to surround myself with, including affording a house in a certain type of neighborhood. There is no need for me to prove my American-ness to these people. They should know better. They have all agreed to live with multiculturalism, no matter how begrudgingly. That’s part of the baggage of being the bourgeois. They have signed the contract.

The kind of real Americans I imagined I would have met if I ever drove down Route 66.

Naturally, when I make such a statement, I am seeing the “natives” as exotic creatures from the perspective of a tourist.

At the Hometown Fest, I felt schizophrenic: on one hand, more than ever, being outside of my usual comfort zone (home, work, home, work), I sensed that my foreignness was on display. After all, it is Hometown Fest, not Tourist Town. Insiders only.

On the other hand, as I chugged down my third beer, sweet-talked the carnival guy into giving the kids a bigger prize (yes, I used “the wink”), watched the kids having an all-out battle with inflatable hammers and inflatable baseball bats against a football player who looked like a stereotypical football player whose girlfriend affectionately called the “meat head”, joked with the said girlfriend who looked like a stereotypical (former) cheerleader and Queen Bee, chitchatted with random bystanders, and in general, hung out, I felt “vindicated”. Strangely at home. I have hit the motherload: the real Americans, the ones who did not have to be nice or be politically correct or be tolerant and shit, thought I was just one of the regular Joes. I have managed to sneak past through the door and now I am looking from the inside out. I am one of the townies.

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On second thought, maybe not completely 100% townie. Not yet. At least, not until I attend one of these…

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