Houston, we have a problem ...

Traditionally, at midnight on New Year's Eve, Seattle has a spectacular fireworks show which somehow does NOT blow up the Space Needle.

Last night, that would have been more interesting.

From a local news site blog:

If you were like me, you were stunned when the fireworks mysteriously stopped at the Space Needle just after the stroke of midnight with the Star Wars theme playing in the background.

"We wish you could show you more right now, but something has stopped," said KING 5 anchor Dennis Bounds.

Then, less than a minute later, a few more bursts lit up the air. And it stopped again.

Finally, at six painful minutes after midnight, the fireworks began in earnest. But without the music. And it appeared to only shoot out the west side of the Needle.

"It stopped, they rebooted it," said Evening Magazine host John Curley about the computerized sequence that triggered the fireworks. "They rebooted it a second time." But it didn't restart. "So somebody sat in there and fired each one (manually)," he said.

This year, like every year in recent memory, the show is put on by Pyro Spectaculars, which is hired by the Space Needle Corporation.

"The eight minute show went on about twelve minutes, so I guess you can look at it as a bonus," joked Bounds after it was over.

No one at my party had ever heard of this happening before. Certainly a New Year's to remember.

It really was quite pathetic. Scott and I alternately cried from laughing so hard, and sat there slack-jawed thinking "Seattle is so f*****-up".

Update: Last year - what it's SUPPOSED to look like: