Garrison Keillor: It's the Fourth of July weekend when we celebrate our independence from the English by deliberately speaking ungrammatically -- (Sue Scott DEEP VOICE: Him and me are going to drink a keg of beer.) --(Tim Russell: Hey, your subject don't agree with your predicament.) (SS DEEP: Irregardless--) -- we tear around in a motorboat (BOAT RACING FAST, ACROSS WAVES) at high speeds and a girl in a red bikini on water skis fires a shotgun and tries to kill fish (BOAT PASSES, GUNSHOTS), which is a very unEnglish thing to do (TR BRIT DISAPPROVAL: How distasteful -- HE SPUTTERS -- beastly unsporting, old chap.) and of course that's why we do it. To cheese them off. NASCAR races -- what are they for if not to irritate the English. (NASCAR RACE SEQ) (TR BRIT: How bloody tedious. They just go round and round ... And round.) The English are addicted to a ridiculous game that they play with a shovel. It's called cricket. The pitcher throws a bad pitch and a guy swings a shovel at it and then there's a lot of sticks and the games last an average of six hours and everybody wears white and there are no grass stains on their pants or even wrinkles. -- it's a sport in the way that skipping down the street and waving a carnation is a sport. Men fought and died in 1776 so that your children would not be subjected to cricket. (GUNFIRE, SHOUTS, HORSE WHINNIES) They fought so that we'd be free of those wretched fried tomatoes the English eat for breakfast -- (YECHHHH. SPLOT, SPLAT) -- free of Corgis (YAPPING), those ugly little rodent-like dogs favored by Queen Elizabeth -- the English even have a musical about it, Corgi and Bess --
TR QUEEN SINGING:
Summertime and the living is easy,
in my garden where the Corgis can run,
Here on my lap is my favorite Corgi --
I think it's a Corgi, but maybe it's my son.
GK: It's a dreadful musical, like most English musicals Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Wal-Mart of the musical. The only great English musical was written by Americans, My Fair Lady. People think of the English as civilized but they never attended an English soccer match. Enormous red-faced men bellowing and throwing up on each other. When was the last time you had thirty people trampled to death at a baseball game? Civilized??? Have you never been to a pub? (BIG BELCH) (ENGLISH BEERINESS) That's what warm beer does to you, it makes you stupid. Let's be Americans this weekend. No tweed, no Marmite. No fussing over the tea. If you've got to have tea, toss the teabag in the water, put the cup in the microwave (SFX), it's good enough. Shorts and t-shirts. If you see someone with a parasol, throw her in the pond (SS BRIT PROTEST:, THEN SPLASH OF MUCK AND MUD). No Elgar this weekend, thank you. And let's pronounce our R's. (TR BRIT: Bring the car round in an hour, James.) It's pronounced car. (TR BRIT: Car.) Car. (TR BRIT: Car.) Hour. (TR BRIT: Hour.) There's no such word as ow-ah. It's hour. (TR BRIT: Hour.) Into the pond with him. (TR: BRIT PROTEST, SPLASH IN MUCK) Have a cold one (POPTOP OPEN) and drink it (GLUGGING) as you hit a home run (KONK OF BAT, ROAR OF CROWD) and the ball sails out high over the lake (MOTORBOAT) and the girl in the red bikini shoots it (GUNSHOT) and you fall in love with her. (Fred Newman: Her and me are going to get married!). Happy Fourth of July. (FIREWORKS)