Tuesday, January 01, 2008

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:

6 comments:

Rick Rockhill said...

Matt- at least you got a chuckle out of it. I love it when the news (radio or TV) guys are covering things like that and they start to ad lib, rambling to cover for mishaps like that. they often say the silliest things that make no sense.

atany rate, Happy New Year to you boys.

-rick

Michael said...

Oh geez--that is SAD! LOL I hope it's no indication of the year to come. Happy New Year, anyway!

Anonymous said...

It would have been beautiful if it had worked! Still nice to look at, but I sure hope the city gets some freebies out of it for next year!

Scott in Iowa said...

Even with the delays, How cool is that!? Fireworks from the Space Needle! Wish I'd been there to see it.

Adam said...

Ha, that's funny. Someone's going to get a talking to when they get back to work.

LSL said...

I loved your reactions :)