Styrofoam

On blustery afternoons, my street’s geography sends every scrap of airborne litter to my curb: candy wrappers, Styrofoam peanuts and Trader Joe’s receipts that reveal too much about the neighbors’ taquitos intake.

There are no discarded once-frozen coffee drinks sweating rings onto wooden tables; no empty Styrofoam takeout containers littering kitchen counters mere inches away from the trash can.

Early on, Boo Boo’s frozen cups consisted of Kool-Aid poured into a Styrofoam cup and placed in a freezer.

The opulence of the White House, the informality of the food, the forced cheer of the players standing around Styrofoam boxes — it was spectacle with a barely disguised sneer.

The magic of blasting down a wall of water balanced on a few pounds of Styrofoam doesn’t typically translate to the rectangular page; too many efforts feel pompous, ponderous or preening.