Free the Fireworks! can Individual Citizens be Trusted to Celebrate Independence Day with a Bang? (Columns‪)‬

OUTSIDE OF HARDCORE porn, is there any art form as static as a Fourth of July fireworks display? Once you've seen one, you've seen them all, yet year after year, like stoned zombies staring at screensavers, we tilt our heads to the sky and watch amateurs and professionals alike stage the pyrotechnical equivalents of gang bangs. If a dozen silver comets shooting across the heavens are spectacular, 100 are even better! And why not throw some crimson, gold, and turquoise into the mix too? Thus the spectrum expands, the explosions multiply, the choreography grows increasingly byzantine--but the basic plot remains unchanged. So why are we so crazy about fireworks? In 1976, the year the United States celebrated its bicentennial, American patriots blew up 29 million pounds of fireworks. In 2006, the American Pyrotechnic Association reports, we exploded nearly 10 times that amount--in part, no doubt, because 10 times as many events have become fireworks appropriate. NFL games, casino open-hags, political conventions, weddings, and even a few funerals now get the sort of schlock-and-aww pageantry we once reserved for the Fourth.