All The Fireworks Go Off At Once

A few years ago, a friend and I stumbled upon a Bangladeshi street festival on what happened to be Bonfire Night in East London.  The show runners clearly had enough fireworks to make for a ten to fifteen minute show, but they apparently decided to crunch it down into two minutes and it was the greatest fireworks show I'd ever seen.  That is, until I found these videos from yesterday's San Diego Fourth of July celebration. 

Behold the new champion: 

Look, when it comes to fireworks--there aren't a lot of surprises left.  We've seen the tricks, we know the deal.  Bright lights and loud noises for twenty minutes.  We're wowed once when we're four years old (those of us who aren't terrified, which is a more reasonable response, anyway) and then pretend to be awed by them every year for the next seventy years.  It's time for the farce to end.  At the very least, let's not waste so much time anymore.  There's no point in building up to a grand finale when the beginning can also be the finale--fireworks shows shouldn't require foreplay.  And we're not talking about a subtle medium here--there's no dramatic storytelling element to respect, at least not in the modern American version.  So why do we, as a culture, insist on stretching these things out? 

As San Diego proved yesterday in a beautiful accident--not unlike a younger sibling--less is more.