Sunday, September 06, 2009

Behold America! I give you your new spokesmodel!

So there was a local end-of-summer event this evening near the new Cerebral Itch offices; it promised good food, entertainment and fireworks. The venue is new and quite fetching. The Cerebral Itch family thought this lovely warm September evening would be a wonderful opportunity to venture out, be part of the community and risk some H1N1.

Well, it turned out to be an overcrowded fire marshal-hatin' cluster fuck of families and slow-moving food and beer lines. On the first recon lap of the joint, in a vain effort to try to find a place to sit, I come across the above family. I feign taking a picture of the building behind them so I can quickly drop the iPhone and snap a picture of this brood.

Now mind you, their appearance sadly was not all that different from a great majority of the people in attendance. What was so gripping about the scene was their absolute lack of self-awareness. Here they were in the middle of hundreds of people at dusk, still in their swimsuits, beached on concrete waiting for the band and the fireworks.

 

After the shallow and obvious comedy of the scene abated, the image of the boy stayed with me. I immediately saw him as a phenomenally accurate metaphor for our country right at this moment: Pubescent, fat, generally not that swift and shrouded in the flag in order to cover up shortcomings.

Tell me I'm wrong.

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