Film study: The slow and the dumb
Putting a microscope over how people react in the moment is what allows you to identify natural-born left tackles and dudes who will be sorted out by Darwin.
I am a lifelong fireworks enthusiast. Always loved them, and while I’ve never gone so far as to purchase mortars, I wouldn’t presume to make any hasty judgments on someone who did.
I attribute this to my backwoods upbringing in the feral half of Eastern Oregon, and while there were plenty of hillbillies who did stupid things — such as the older kid on my block who had a BB embedded in his iris — I’ve also seen plenty of my backwoods brethren capable of deploying high-grade Fourth of July ordnance without ever putting anyone at risk.
Yes, I’m aware that people seriously injure themselves each year using fireworks to celebrate this specific holiday. I know the story of Jason Pierre-Paul. However, I can say that this video that was posted on Twitter earlier this week was one of the more frightening incidents I’ve witnessed. Honestly, it scared the hell out of me.
Now let me say that I realize mistakes were made. Home fireworks show should always be done in the street as opposed to the green strip that was used here. Also, the main stash should not be located within 20 yards of the launch zone under any circumstances. The main stash also should not be located near a motor vehicle. Still, even recognizing the errors that were made, it was hard to anticipate the speed of escalation. And in the spirit of learning what we can from the incident, I’ve decided to apply a football scout’s vocabulary to evaluate the participants.
Let’s start with the initial blast:
