Last Nite in Newburgh (The Bombs Bursting in Air)!

Last evening in Newburgh, New York, where my wife Claire and I had gone to watch fireworks, we were treated to a display of wantonly suggestive dancing from a biker chick with a pasty complexion, a distended belly, and the requisite multiple tattoos. So wanton was this person’s cavorting that Bosco of Bosco & The Storm, who were providing the entertainment, was apparently asked to announce, “We’re playing it clean, and you need to dance it clean,” this, mind you, mere minutes after a song (entitled, I think, "It's Hard") unashamedly about sexual arousal! Claire noticed there wasn’t a male or lesbian in the vicinity not slack-jawed with lust, or at least amazement.

When B&TS took a break, our lascivious rug-cutter bummed a cigarette from one of her admirers and then drifted from view, leaving us at the mercy of a local dignitary who asked us to observe a moment of silence for the brave men and women of our armed services who are fighting to keep us free, and then led us, whether we wanted to be led or not, in a prayer to an unspecified Father, making the pantheists among us long for the biker chick.

By the time B&TS returned, the two female singers without their pole-dancer shoes, the area in front of their stage had been commandeered by slightly older versions of the little folks who have made the Piggy Bank’s weekly Tiki Nite such a nightmare, them and the increasingly insipid roots music. One precocious tot, in a Dustin Pedroia jersey, breakdanced (brokedanced?) with rare gusto, and complete inattention to tempo. Our biker chick reappeared in their midst, and no one dared breathe, but she did no worse than point congratulatorily at the young breakdancer, rather in the way a basketball player will point to a teammate whose wonderful pass has enabled him to score a field goal.

Later, the bombs burst in air and we found ourselves immobile in woeful traffic. It made one proud to be an American.

Over to you, Charlene.