Bradbury Season

Some lowlife was trying to sell me ‘buds’ while in line at Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. Putting on my businessman hat, I convinced him I was an executive from Ty looking into licensing deals on the West Coast…and that he could make more money cutting open his wife’s Beanie Babies, filling them with…

Once I was at Disneyland and saw a group of Buddhist monks filing out of the Country Bear Kitchen restaurant, elderly men in salmon robes. Some children were playing tag in the crowd. One little boy, sprinting while looking backward at his friends, ran full-tilt into an old monk… …who rocked with the impact, caught…

Might as well get started with a great link: Coolest Homemade Costumes. All the best costumes involve some domestic engineering. Those box sets with chintzy character mask and vinyl poncho explaining what you’re supposed to be, since the costume doesn’t cut it? Early childhood FAIL.

This was the core of our annual firework arsenal. We’d often have a brick of these things, leading to a steady course of them over the evening, punctuated by fountain cones or other more exotic (expensive) devices. As the night wore on and we got bored with lighting them one at a time, we tried…

Some years would see a block party with neighbors combining firework arsenals. The Dagnalls never kicked in the large boxed assortments. In part because I was particular about the fireworks I liked and the ones I didn’t at the local Red Devil/Freedom/Wildcat stands. I preferred to handpick my fireworks. I swore by Piccolo Petes and Ground…