Speaking of Bastille Day...

...Americans can make anything fun and profitable. (See American Civil War re-enactments.)

KYW News Radio: Celebrating Bastille Day in Phila.

It was a celebration of French Independence in Philadelphia at the Eastern State Penitentiary as the storming of Bastille was reenacted.

This was the 12th year of the Fairmount Bastille Day celebration. Complete with a prison, a mob -- not quite as angry as the one back in 1789 -- and Queen Marie Antoinette.

Sean Kelley is the program director for Eastern State Penitentiary:

“Bastille Day is of course the celebration of French Independence and it turns around this historic prison in Paris. We have a historic prison here in Philadelphia so we celebrate Bastille Day up here in Fairmount with a real guillotine, a real prison and lots of great food from local restaurants.”*

I know this guy sounds like a clown, but has has stumbled onto the truth. Bastille Day is about French independence: Independence from Truth, reality, order, sense, justice, and humanity.

As in the French Revolution Queen Marie Antoinette was captured and brought to the guillotine. But Kelley says despite a dozen of these Bastille Day celebrations in Fairmount, the queen has managed to escape losing her head:

“But every year she gets more demanding, so we'll see what happens to her next year.”

* "Let them eat criminally over-priced Nouvelle Cuisine."