OK, I'm determined to try out this 'very short' blog post thing, so I want to wish everyone (which according to my blog stats means basically no one except for my girlfriend ... hi babyyy!!) a Happy Fourth!

Holidays almost always make me nostalgic, and the Fourth of July is no exception. Growing up in a St. Louis suburb, my parents always took me and my brother to some local firework show, usually along with another neighborhood family or two. The displays must have paled in comparison to the technical extravaganza I see now every year in NYC, but man, did they seem like the shiz-nit at the time. I felt like I was so close to the action, where you could smell the smoke and the explosions reverberated in your tummy. i would ooh and aah, and squeal and shiver, and snuggle close to my mom, the fireworks provoking equal measures of fear, awe, delight.

But perhaps the thing I most associate with the Fourth of July growing up were these tiny candy cigarettes that for some reason my parents always had for me on that day and not at any other time. Small tasty little chalk-white sticks with a little red spot on their tips, packaged in some miniature branded cigarette pack, they served as the perfect marketing for an industry looking to entice the next generation of addicts.  My parents never smoked, hated smoking, and still apparently had no problems giving me these candy cigarettes and watching me pretend to smoke before eating them. Given how far American society has turned against smoking, it's almost impossible now to even imagine those things ever existing in my lifetime. They're like the anachronistic equivalent of that one 70s game show in which a man's wife and his secretary compete to see which one knows him best.

Imagine my surprise when I googled candy cigarettes and found out the damn things still existed, and are even sold in some U.S. stores. The nostalgic part of me is kind of glad to hear it and even tempted to get some; the rest of me marvels at the hypocrisy.

Anyway, Happy Fourth!