1) I'm still as unimpressed with it as I was last year. It's just boozy and rowdy, like some gigantic purposeless college kids party.
2) Try to tell an American that the 4th of July is not celebrated around the world, like for instance in Turkey, and he will be shocked.
3) Our neighbours are much more of a nightmare than I had realized so far. Actually, I'm not even sure if our "transients by the garbage bins" were all that worse. Or the drug addict that was living in our garage last year ... :
12:00 AM - We come home from our drive-in movie. As we step into the house we hear a lot of crying and yelling from a nearby house. A woman keeps screaming "Get OUT of my house! GET out of my house! Get out of my HOUSE!" It echos over the neighbourhood and C decides to walk over to the police squad next street and check if they will do something about this. As he comes back, we hear a man shout "Get the F*** out of her house, man!" There's some banging and then it's quiet!
3:00 AM - Our neighbours to the right (the ones with the fence that's falling apart) receive their first 4th of July guests. They arrive in a car with all the honking and clacking and slamming that goes with and their first comments are about what I great parking space they got this year (yeah, right outside our bedroom window).
3:15 AM - Some more guests arrive to join the first ones that still are standing just by the car, smoking, chatting, drinking, laughing (uhh, right outside our window).
3:30 AM - I turn to C and ask him: "Isn't there a law for this?" He answers, "It's the 4th of July, honey. There's spare earplugs on your nightstand ..."
3:40 AM - I get up and close all our windows facing the north side. I take a glimpse outside and notice that the loudest voice outside belongs to a heavily intoxicated, staggering girl standing outside my window wearing only a skinny bikini. I grab a pair of earplugs and return to bed.
3:45 AM - Even through my earplugs I hear something about going for a dip in the hot tub in the back ... I guess I could have been dreaming.
9:10 AM - I wake up super late. As I take a look outside I notice people arriving at my other neighbour's house (the one to the left who hoses his lawn all day). I think: "I wonder how many cars he's gonna be able to fit on his lawn today?"
10:00 AM - I think our neighbour's party has officially started. They got stacks of beer on their lawn now and between 20 and 30 people are already standing there chatting and drinking. "Hmm, great! I wonder if his party is gonna take place there, right in our driveway?"
10:30 AM - Wow, they're firing up the barbecue already. They've put it in our driveway, so that the smoke blows into our house, instead of over their guests.
11:30 AM - The grill's been going for an hour now, but it looks like they're not grilling anything except for the coals ...
12:00 PM - There's about five ghetto blasters gathered on our neighbours lawn now. They seem to be kind of competing with each other. Or maybe it's just to overpower the noise from the talking and (by now) screaming crowd.
1:00 PM - Some more cars arrive. I don't know where they are going to park. Oh, well, looks like they're gonna park in our driveway. Good thing we got nowhere to go. For the moment. Or until we have to go get P&R from wherever they manage to park their truck in PB. They're carrying some stuff out of one of the trucks though; when I realize it's a drum set my jaw falls off.
1:10 PM - The drum set is up! "Are they really allowed to do that, honey? In OUR driveway?" "Uh", C replies, "I'm sure they're not gonna be loud. They don't want people calling the cops."
1:30 PM - They've been jerking off at the drum set now for a while, and I swear, I'm sure one could almost get used to this. We'll just have to talk louder so that we hear each other ...
1:40 PM - I changed my mind: I can't get used to this. Now, they also got an electric guitar and a bass with an amplifier that can probably broadcast their music all the way to Temecula. And they're pretending to be playing some song and all the guests are cheering them on.
1:45 PM - Okay, I get it: the bigger the noise the better the party.
2:15: PM - I've been trying to keep an open mind for this, but the music they're trying to play is just SO bad! These guys badly need a garage to practice their skills ...
2:30 PM - P&R have arrived, they look somewhat bemused by the scene taking place in front of our house.
3:00 PM - Some of the people next door are so drunk by now, they can not stand up straight.
3:15 PM - The cops arrive. They tell the people next door to pack up and get the drum set and the amplifier out of there. I'm kind of relieved. I wonder who called them. Maybe my landlady, I'm sure she wasn't thrilled by their socalled music ...3:30 PM - The "guitarist" of the band walks up to our porch. I wonder if he thinks we called the cops on them. He asks C: "Is it okay with you if we just play some more? We're just gonna keep it cool, some jazzy kind'uv stuff, something mellow and quiet." C says "No, it's not okay." "Alright, but how about you don't call the cops?" C says: "We didn't call the cops, but I was thinking about it. Yet, I wouldn't of course, not without talking to you first, okay? But you're being way too loud. We can't even hear our thoughts in there anymore." "Alright, I get it", says the red eyed amateur musician as he walks away ...
3:45 PM - They are at it again. I will say though, that they have turned the amplifier down a little bit. If the police gets called again, they're gonna be in trouble ...
4:00 PM - The amplifier is up to max again, and they're blasting our ears off. There's no detecteble music coming through, but a lot of noise. The guy at the guitar is pulling off some very ingenuous solo stunts. The bass player is however doing his own thing.
4:04 PM - "Geez, they're bad!" says R. They're like school kids who got their hands on electric instruments for the first time in their lifes. Thanks to the crowds that are walking past every minute and all the attention they are getting with their impromptu band out there on the street, the wannabe musicians are probably living the day of their life.
...
6:10 PM - C's been out there a few times now to ask them please to stop, but to no avail. Sometimes they get tired and stop for a little while. Sometimes a new person comes and picks up the drums. I'm starting to really like the drums, they are so much less annoying than the awful squeaking that comes out of that electric guitar. I was hoping we would get some quiet while we ate, but I guess not ...
6:30 PM - The crowd has cleared out quite a bit now and some just passed out on the lawn. Maybe they are getting tired (too) ...
6:40 PM - A few of the guys left from the party next door are now playing football on the street. They just broke the side mirror on one of the cars parked in front of our house. After a brief consternation somebody shouted: "Anybody have some Dragon Glue?", after which they continued playing for two more minutes, then quietly let themselves disappear. Wow! It's really getting quite around here now.
7:00 PM - Gosh, I shouldn't have said that. Now they're out of the house again, jumping up and down on the table tennis table that served as a drink table all day, trying to smash it into pieces. They're also throwing beer bottles on the lawn, but nothing broke yet.
8:00 PM - It's amazingly quiet now. The neighbour's dog has been expressing his bond with our great little rock band by peeing on the electric guitar lying there on the lawn and over the drum set at all possible angles. Sprucing it up a bit.
10:30 PM - The neighbour's lot is now completely abandoned. Besides the drum set, in our driveway and on the neighbour's lawn there's also all this nice plastic patio furniture lying in abandon. Maybe we should pick up a few chairs for our front porch while we got the chance.
Happy Fourth of July (expressed in a broken voice)!
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