I am totally a fan of any holiday that can 1) get you out of work or 2) give you a reason to blow shit up.  In Utah we’re lucky enough, or blessed enough depending on how you look at it, to have two of these in the same month!  We really should feel special, fellow Utahans.  Everyone gets the fourth of July but then we get a bonus twenty days later.  Thank you pioneer friends!  Plus, it’s not just like some lame little holiday.  Oh no, it brings on like the third biggest parade in the nation.  Yes, I said nation!  That’s what my mom told me anyway.  The pioneers would be so proud.

Most of the celebrating has no real connection to the pioneers.  I mean yes, there are some freaky people that dress up in long ass dresses and bonnets and push handcarts around in the 99 degree heat, but other than that, our celebrating pretty much involves eating, drinking, watching parades and blowing things up.  I’ve actually renamed it Pyrobeer day.  Very fitting, don’t you think?

Brigham Young definitely started something cool when arriving in Utah.  There’s a good chance that he was just tired and hot as shit after having traveled for so long and so he thought to hell with it, this is going to be the place.  However it went down, it’s all good with me.  There is no way in hell I’m going to push around some handcart in the heat.  Listen, I know they suffered.  I don’t need to experience the same misery.  However, if it means I have the chance to catch candy thrown from a float and write my name in the air with a sparkler, I’m good to go.