I’m not someone who normally spends large quantities of money, or any amount of money, on fireworks. I like seeing them, sure. They’re pretty; they’re fun. I just personally don’t feel like lighting money on fire, nor do I feel especially patriotic nowadays.
Still, the 4th of July is a fine enough excuse to engage in the great American pastime of getting drunk outdoors in the summer and eating grilled meats, so my friends and I did that and had a fine time. A lot of my neighbors were shooting off fireworks, so we got a free show for our trouble. And then, around 10 p.m., a couple more friends showed up with an unexpected surprise: a small box of fireworks. In it were sparklers, bottle rockets, fountains, those zippy guys that spin upward and go “wheee!”, several larger items I probably shouldn’t mention for no reason really, and also this:
Yup. That’s Pikachu. Or should I say, the very legally distinct Peek-a-boom, a yellow mouse with no resemblance to anything in particular. I’m told that firework stands are chock full of this sort of probably totally not trademark-violating thing, but no one can really do anything about it because they only spring up for a few days per year, and everyone burns the evidence.
What was the Pikachu going to do? We didn’t know. A label read “Spins on ground” and “Emits showers of sparks,” the latter of which is written on basically every single firework you can buy anywhere. Non-descript, unhelpful. We lit some other fireworks off and had a grand time for a while, saving the Pikachu for the very, very end.
And then it was time. We fired up the boy. For the first several seconds, no one was impressed. Did our friends just bring an overpriced, shitty fountain? But then, toward the end, it got real, real good:
Wow! What a finish! He does indeed “spin on ground” and “emit showers of sparks”…from about five or six different places, including those stupid little ears. I was briefly worried that my Russian sage in the garden just off-camera was going to catch on fire.
This was fun, and I am glad someone else purchased a firework and brought it to my get-together. For those concerned, Pikachu is fine. We left him out in the street to cool off for a bit, and while he was out there, he was hit by an SUV. He survived that, too.
