The 1812 Overature is associated with the 4th of July because of the Boston Pops. Stars and Strips Forever had a big head start but the Boston Pops was fairly influential in shaping popular musical tastes.
Maybe there is a tradition where people are conditioned to think they are supposed to applaud during the piccolo solo, the same way there is a tradition where people are conditioned to think they are supposed to stand up during the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah? But to anyone on the outside looking in, you wonder wtf just happened?
Another bit of quintessential Americana – the Alabama - Auburn football game, as seen through foreign eyes (British media personality Stephen Fry). Ending with a flyover, of course.
I took my own advice and found this clip, which I’d never seen before. It literally gave me goosebumps.
Beats me – I never made the claim.
Best thing is, the flyovers don’t cost the taxpayer an additional dime. The military pilots have to do a certain amount of flying every now and then just to stay current in their jets, so flying over the stadium is no different than flying over empty grassland.
Except a mistake could be more messy.
Hmmm. For some reason the US military pays the NFL for the privilege of flying over the stadiums. Or did. I’m not clear if that’s still happening.
I made the claim, but I’ve never been to Boston.
This is my go-to version of The Stars and Stripes Forever.
What sort of mistake do you think would happen here? They’re not flying 14 inches above the stadium or anything - they’re several thousand feet up.
This is a feel good thread about American identity. As a Canadian, the most American thing to me is singing the national anthem in an ostentatious way - holding notes for long periods of time or other acts of musical effluorishment. However, I cannot fairly answer this question.
This differs from the most American place - Las Vegas, endeavouring to take ersatz copies of great global monuments and reproduce them in the desert, adding gambling, shows, shopping, partying, tourism, food, impulsivity and regret.
This also differs from the most American thing of all - the Covid-19 vaccine. There is nothing more American than the brightest minds in the world rushing to consolidate two decades of research, into making an unlikely game-changing novel vaccine actually effective against a dangerous challenger. And nothing more American than millions of people refusing to take it, because they don’t want to, or believe it effective, and you can’t make me so back off, or seemingly challenge their individual right to decide what is right for them and which truthiness has greater cogency.
I think this might be the right answer. It couldn’t get more American if Betty Ross herself embroidered it on grandma’s pantaloons and ran it up the flagpole. I’d sure as hell salute it.
This kind.
Well, that all works out, then
So either you’ve never been to a sporting event where there’s been a flyover, or you’ve never been to an air show.
Absolutely 100% true to both, but your seeming claim that they couldn’t hit the stadium because they are over a thousand feet up when they fly over is nonsensical. It only requires that the plane starts falling before it reaches the stadium.
How about completely botching the Canadian national anthem…in Las Vegas?
Yes, I’m aware how gravity and trajectories work. Did you want to keep equating a formation of planes performing a straight-line trajectory at 1000+ feet with multiple aircraft performing acrobatic maneuvers at a couple dozen feet above an airfield at trajectories seemingly directly at each other?
Are you familiar with the term “margin of error”? There are orders of magnitudes of differences between these two scenarios that it’s simply absurd to compare them beyond “they both involve airplanes”.
I simply made the off-hand mention that the crash of a plane in a crowded area could be more messy than the crash of a plane over an open field. I’m not wasting any more time on a tangent that disputes that fucking obvious basic fact.