Barack on the Beach

Last night, we went to see Twelfth Night at Vancouver's summer Shakespeare festival "Bard on the Beach." There are two giant tents (and lots of little ones) where they put on 4 shows each summer right on the waterfront. It's one of those quintessential Vancouver things that we'd never actually managed to get to...until last night. It was intended to be my birthday celebration, so we splurged and went for the Bard-B-Q and fireworks package, so we got not only the show, but also a salmon bbq (which totally wasn't bbq'd, but oh well) and great seats for the Celebration of Light. the CoL is another quintessential Vancouver experience - a four-day international fireworks competition. Three invited countries (sometimes including Canada) each put on a 30-minute music-choreographed fireworks show, then the fourth night is the grand finale, featuring pieces from each show. Last night was the US's entry. We were expecting lots of red, white, and blue, stars and stripes, etc., but alas, not so much. I think the (poorly executed) theme was love...

But the funny part came as we were leaving the site, walking out with the huge crowd. We overheard a group of older patrons behind us joking, as we had been, about the lack of red, white, and blue and the lack of an outright Obama endorsement in the soundtrack. Since I obviously missed the day in preschool where they taught us to never talk to strangers, I turned around and said, "My husband thought the finale would spell out 'O-B-A-M-A' across the sky." They laughed, and without missing a beat, one quipped back, "Well, we were expecting him to come out walking across the water!" LOL. I haven't laughed that hard in quite a while.

I think there's something about being in Canada that leaves us with a bit lighter perspective on the whole thing...