Category: Fireworks

Our Patriotic Duty

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Our fireworks stash (click on the image to see full size) for Saturday night’s celebration amounts to 35 cases, including two cases (192) of 5-inch canister shells and a case of two 500-gram, 200-shot Shogun Thriller cakes for the grand finale. My son Jim and I have spent the past week building finale boards like these two:

 

(Click on the image to see full size.)

It is difficult to describe how many hours of work and planning go into a project like this. It’s not a matter of going into a store and buying whatever we like. We started planning this year’s show almost the moment we finished last year’s show. The 364-day planning cycle involves going over lists of products, viewing videos and finding the best prices on the effects you want. We made our first wholesale buy (11 cases) last August, and also bought two more cases (blue roman candles and a special pink effect) from another vendor. My podcasting partner John Hoge supplied us with our 14th case (120 shells) last fall. Then in March, in a 40%-off “Early Bird” sale, we bought another 17 cases. You can see my brother Kirby with that purchase here.

 

(Click on the image to see full size.)

Here is a video preview of our fireworks stash:

 

Accumulating the necessary supplies, of course, is just the beginning of the process. We have to work out the timing of each effect, measure the fuses to connect them, position them on the boards — it’s a lot of work, and also a lot of zip ties. Just yesterday, I had to make a run to Lowe’s to pick up extra glue and another 800 zip ties. Did I mention that more than 200 feet of fuse will be involved in this project? Because what you want to do is set it up so that you light one fuse and this sets off a long series of effects. Our opening board will last about 7 minutes, all from one continuous fuse, then we go to the first finale (a/k/a “the fake finale”) shot from two different boards, giving the audience a “pause for applause” before lighting the real finale (a/k/a the Grand Finale) that will overwhelm spectators with a 45-second barrage of stunning intensity.

Did I say “stunning intensity”? Let me explain what that means. Sunday afternoon, I spent seven hours fusing together 144 Dominator Blue Thunder eight-shot roman candles on three angled racks:

 

Do the math. You see that this is 1,152 shots to be fired in the span of about 45 seconds, or about 25 shots per second — and the audience will barely even notice it, except as extra noise, because those candles will be fired along with a barrage of about 1,800 other shots, including multiple 500-gram cakes and more than 120 shells. Like I said, stunning intensity.

Did I mention that John Hoge bought us a case of 120 shells? That assortment included triple-break and double-break shells, which will be used in a concluding effect — the “coda,” as I call it, an exclamation mark of sorts — that will have 62 aerial explosions at once.

Because we love America.

It is our patriotic duty to light up the sky on the Fourth of July. Please remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

Why Does New York Hate Freedom?

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New Yorkers are not allowed to celebrate the Fourth of July:

More than a dozen people were arrested in separate fireworks busts across New York City as part of a new crackdown.
Two men in Staten Island were arrested on Tuesday as part of the crackdown.
The FDNY posted pictures of the $6,000 worth of fireworks fire marshals found in the suspects’ car.
Matthew King, 35, and Rayval Singh, 22, will face charges of reckless endangerment and the unlawful dealing of fireworks.
Fire marshals were conducting surveillance near the Goethals Bridge to try to intercept illegal fireworks being brought into the city.
Also, Deputy Sheriff Fireworks Task Force Officers arrest two people in Canarsie, Brooklyn, for unlawfully dealing with fireworks and dangerous fireworks valued at more than $2,000 that were trafficked from Pennsylvania.
In the Bronx, officials say two more people were arrested after being caught selling fireworks out of their vehicle last week.
A buyer was also summonsed. The fireworks were confiscated, and the vehicle was seized for forfeiture.
Another bust in the Bronx on Wednesday led to the arrests of 12 more people and the confiscation of two rifles and a handgun.
FDNY Fire Marshals also arrested Jeffrey Andrew Lee, 25, for possession of approximately $2,500 worth of illegal fireworks. Lee was arrested in Manhattan by Fire Marshals investigating and conducting surveillance regarding illegal fireworks in our city. He is charged with reckless endangerment and the unlawful dealing of fireworks.
And not far from the city in Yonkers, cops busted a 34-year-old man for selling illegal fireworks from the trunk of his car. Police found 28 cases of fireworks valuing about $10,000.

Every patriotic American enjoys shooting “extremely dangerous” illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July, but patriotism is illegal in New York. Meanwhile in West Virginia, where “extremely dangerous” fireworks are actually legal — because freedom! — our family has accumulated a supply that would probably send us to prison in New York. We are grateful to readers who support this patriotic celebration.

$17.76




 

The Definition of ‘Execrable’

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The word originally meant, deserving of curses:

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead writer for the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” caught backlash Sunday for telling people to “read” a conspiracy theory about the use of fireworks being an attack by the government “on Black and Brown communities.”
Hannah-Jones’ “1619 Project” suggests America’s “true founding” was when the first slaves arrived in 1619 and “aims to reframe the country’s history.” The NYT writer won a Pulitzer Prize in commentary for her work related to the “1619 Project,” despite numerous historians raising objections to some of its claims.
“Read this,” Hannah-Jones tweeted Sunday about a conspiracy theory suggesting the government was planning attacks on minority communities. The post suggested that the numerous fireworks going off in Brooklyn over the past two weeks is actually “part of a coordinated attack on Black and Brown communities by government forces.”
This alleged “attack” is intended “to disorient and destabilize the #BlackLivesMatter movement,” the claim, written by author Robert Jones Jr., reads. Hannah-Jones appeared to delete her tweet and deactivate her Twitter following backlash. She appeared to [reactivate] her account shortly after, according to reports.

She is certainly deserving of curses.

Of course, if fireworks are “part of a coordinated attack,” you’ll want to help support my family’s Fourth of July fireworks show. Because racism.




 

$17.76

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Whenever it comes time to, uh, celebrate shameless capitalism here, the suggested donation is $17.76, because we love America.

Of course, our patriotic readers know what happened in 1776, and also know that this is why the Fourth of July is celebrated annually.

Because we love America. And we love tradition. So our family has a traditional celebration of our national independence. Which is to say that we shoot off a metric buttload of fireworks. Continue reading $17.76 →

The Family Business

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My podcast partner (and former Kimberlin co-defendant) John Hoge is from an eminent Tennessee family, and some of his cousins are proprietors of Atomic Fireworks, headquartered in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, with retail locations in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Missouri. This company was founded in 1930 by L.W. Loyd, who in 1948 was one of the first U.S. fireworks importers to travel to China, and subsequently made famous the Cherry Bomb and M-80 brand fireworks, both of which are company trademarks.

As regular readers are aware, I am a stone-cold fireworks fanatic. Here’s video of the finale of our family’s July 2019 show:

 

Considering my good friend John Hoge’s family connections to the fireworks industry, it quite naturally occurred to me that he might be able to impose upon his Tennessee kinfolk for a considerable discount, and I particularly had my eye on their Dixie Dynamite canister shell assortment, a case of which contains 96 shells, and I don’t know what the retail price would be, but kinfolk don’t pay retail prices, do they?

At any rate, Mr. Hoge has promised to renew acquaintances with his Tennessee fireworks cousins the next time he travels down home, and the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

The Four Most Important Words About Fireworks: ‘Light Fuse, Get Away’

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If you love shooting fireworks as much as I do, you have to be serious about safety. Later this month, my sons and I will be shooting a genuinely massive show — a belated Fourth of July celebration, delayed for family reasons — and we are experienced enough to do things right. Unfortunately, some people are not so experienced:

A fireworks store in Indiana was forced to recall 25,000 individual fireworks after a boy lost his hand in an accident, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced in a statement.
According to Oxford, Ohio, police, Caleb Bogan and Brendon Jones found the end of a Talon rocket on the evening of March 19, lit it and were injured by the explosion. Caleb, 12, was flown to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital after sustaining serious injuries, while Brendon suffered only minor injuries.
The recall entails that all products and fireworks be immediately returned for a refund to Grandma’s Fireworks in West College Corner, Ind., which is located just on the Indiana-Ohio state border.

Four words: “Light fuse, get away.”

Every consumer firework sold in the United States carries that warning, and yet every year, people are injured because they ignore that warning.

Three words: “Always brace cakes.” (The ABC Rule.)

Aerial repeaters (known as “cakes”) are the most popular consumer firework product. You light one fuse, and multiple shots fire into the sky — or rather, they’re supposed to fire into the sky. If not properly braced, some cakes can tip over and start firing sideways. Three times I’ve been present when that happened (none of the tip-overs were my fault), and it’s a genuinely frightening experience. Therefore the ABC Rule is always enforced when I’m in charge of a show. But not everybody understands why this rule is so important:

Nine years ago, Kryshelle Houghton safely stood on her driveway watching friends shoot off New Year’s Eve fireworks. She never imagined what impact that celebration wound have on the rest of her life. After a friend lit off a firework ironically named the “Lucky Seven,” it accidentally tipped over and hit Houghton directly in her left eye. Tragically, Houghton, who was 19 at the time lost the vision in her eye that night.
In Houghton’s case, she wasn’t participating in any sort of risky firework behavior at the time of her accident. “I wasn’t doing anything unsafe – I was standing there in the driveway watching a show in the road,” Houghton said. “People don’t realize how unsafe (fireworks) can be.

One look at the “Lucky 7” tells you why it can so easly tip over:

 

There are several ways to brace cakes. You can drive a stake into the ground and use duct tape to wrap the cake to the stake. Or if you’re shooting on the street, a driveway or a parking lot, you can use bricks to brace your cakes. What we do in our shows is glue the cakes to a board and use fuse to connect them to fire in sequence. Here’s a 3-minute video (not mine) that gives you the basic idea of how it’s done:

 

The ABC Rule and the four basic words (“Light fuse, get away”) of fireworks safety will eliminate 99% of the risk involved. Once you’ve done that, the biggest remaining risk is a blowout, which is when an aerial shell fails to launch and explodes inside the tube on the ground. If one of the shots in a cake does this, often it will blow the whole cake apart, sending some of the shots going sideways. Every pyrotechnicians’s worst nightmare is to have a blowout on a mortar rack that splits the rack, leaving chain-fused mortars firing sideways. Before shows, I always tell people, “We have a lot of things that fire at different angles, but the one angle we don’t want is sideways. If you see me running? Run for it!”

A lot of fireworks fans have been worried that President Trump’s trade war with China will cause an increase in prices, because nearly all consumer fireworks sold in America are made in China. This is one product we should be grateful to have the Chinese manufacture, not only because they have thousands of years of expertise — they did invent gunpowder, after all — but also because it’s very dangerous work. “12 killed as explosion rips through fireworks factory in China” (September 2014) and “7 killed in East China’s firework plant blast” (September 2017) are typical headlines. Can you imagine the insurance costs if we were making fireworks in America? So thank you, Communist China and your nimble-fingered peasant workers! But every once in a while, we get a glimpse of the dangers of mass quantities of fireworks:

FORT MILL, S.C. – Firefighters had to dodge exploding rockets to douse a spectacular fire that destroyed containers of fireworks stored for sale on the Fourth of July.
Now, investigators believe that fire may have been intentionally set. According to the York County deputy fire marshal, they are investigating [the] fire as a possible arson.
No other details about the investigation have been released.
Crews spent nearly an hour extinguishing the fire that broke out before dawn at the fireworks storage center in Fort Mill.
Emergency crews were called around 5:45 a.m. to the fireworks storage containers near Davey Jones Fireworks along Carowinds Boulevard, just off Interstate 77. . . .
York County deputies said the fire was not actually at the fireworks store but started in containers just outside the store.

 

The fact that this happened in storage containers that should have been locked is probably why authorities suspect arson. If indeed this proves to be the case, I hope the culprit is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Wasting perfectly good fireworks like that? It’s so wrong.



 

Happy Fourth of July, You Fascists!

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The Democrats are now a party of paranoid conspiracy theorists:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in a new interview that she believes the United States is heading in a fascist direction under President Trump.
“Are we headed to fascism? Yes. I don’t think there’s a question,” Ocasio-Cortez told Yahoo News earlier this week after she visited migrant detention facilities managed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“If you actually take the time to study, and to look at the steps, and to see how government transforms under authoritarian regimes, and look at the political decisions and patterns of this president, the answer is yes.”

They define fascism as “whenever Democrats lose elections,” and therefore when Ocasio-Cortez says we are “headed to fascism,” what she means is that Trump will be re-elected. After all, Democrats believe the Betsy Ross flag is a symbol of “white supremacy,” so we shouldn’t be surprised that they consider patriotism a synonym for “hate.”

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, where Republicans and journalists are brutally attacked by left-wing mobs in open daylight, liberals are becoming so paranoid, they’ve started gun clubs:

Liberals are notoriously loath to take their own side in a fight. But their reticence may well be changing in an age of vigilante, white nationalist terror—openly condoned and supported by an incumbent president who has suggested that his armed devotees won’t stand for his removal from office. Increasingly, the antifa left is arguing — and training — in response. They are worried not only about an armed reckoning following a contested election, but also about rising violence from the paramilitaries loyal to President Donald Trump. . . .
As a result, many leftists and even some liberals are beginning to reconsider their feelings about firearms, joining a loose amalgamation of gun groups, from John Brown Gun Clubs (which take their name from the abolitionist) to the Pink Pistols (an LGBTQ group), Liberal Gun Club, and Socialist Rifle Association. Some of these organizations are moderate and traditionalist, others radical and revolutionary. . . . Some of their members hope such efforts will at least make Republicans think twice before attempting a massacre. . . .
A third of the Socialist Rifle Association’s 2,000 members identify as LGBTQ, and 8 percent are transgender.

What is happening here? What explains the hysterical rhetoric coming from Democrats and their media allies this Fourth of July?

They’re living inside an imaginary universe where CNN is “mainstream” journalism, instead of an obscure cable TV channel with fewer viewers than HGTV and Nickelodeon, where Oberlin College is a reputable institution, where transgenderism is more acceptable than patriotism:

The Left’s hysteria over Trump’s victory in 2016 has escalated into something quite beyond mere hysteria. Now the leftists are well and truly dangerous. Antifa, the fascist organization that protests anything and everything with which it disagrees, is violent, very violent. These people show up with weapons, wearing masks, and attack anyone they perceive to be in opposition to their own warped ideology.
CNN has long defended the group as good guys, social justice warriors. That is how off the rails CNN is. Like Antifa, CNN is officially and openly anti-American.

In a nation with a two-party politicial system, where each party has roughly equal levels of core support, but where one party’s strength is concentrated in urban enclaves, we should expect this kind of derangement whenever the urban party loses elections. If you live in New York, San Francisco, or Portland, Oregon, you are immersed in a community where 80% of people vote Democrat, and where Republican voters aren’t likely to speak up about their political beliefs, since doing so would make them targets of hatred. This echo-chamber effect is compounded by the fact that most of the people who produce media — not just journalism, but also entertainment — are members of the same urban Democrat community. CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, whose father was the Democrat governor of New York and whose brother is New York’s current Democrat governor, doesn’t socialize with the kind of people who vote Republican. Nobody that Chris Cuomo considers a friend has ever served in the U.S. military, and he views members of the military as scum, unworthy of respect from elite people like himself.

Why do you think Democrats are freaking out because President Trump wanted some tanks in the Fourth of July parade? Because the U.S. military symbolizes everything they hate about America. They hate to be reminded that what happened on July 4, 1776, was the publication of our Declaration of Independence, but it was not the words on parchment which made America free. No, we are free because of the service and sacrifice of men whose names are not famous, who marched barefoot through the snow to Trenton, who suffered at Valley Forge, who died in battle against the “elite” troops of the British Empire. America is independent not because of the Declaration, but because courageous men were willing to fight and die for their freedom. When we celebrate the heroism of these brave patriots, it makes cowardly liberals like Chris Cuomo feel ashamed of themselves (as well they should).

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Today I’ll be working in a West Virginia fireworks store, where military members and veterans are eligible for a special discount. And I know what you’re thinking: I’m gonna get paid in fireworks. Unfortunately, however, my wife has insisted that I be paid in cash, so the only way I’ll be able to afford to buy any fireworks is if readers remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance, and God bless America!



 

Cody’s Excellent Fourth of July Plan

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It’s that time of year, when patriotic Americans have their garages stacked to the rafters with cases full of fireworks:

 

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking — this has ‘divorce’ written all over it. . . . I did some math on this stuff, because we’ve got such a ridiculous quantity of fireworks here. So I did some math, and I found out that I have enough fireworks here that, if sold at retail value in the U.S.A., I could pay off all of my credit-card debt and the remaining loan on my pickup, and still have money left over to buy more fireworks.”

Nice you’ve got a sense of humor about it, Cody. Remind me some day to tell you the story about the time the ATF raided my house . . .