Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

A consequence of cucumbers

White supremacy is terrorism.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

“woke” is the new caravan.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Consistently wrong since 2002

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Music / Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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I think I told you before the story of how Paddy Reilly bought me and my friend a round of Johnnie Walker Blue after I told him the heart-rending story of my Irish grandfather and the Red Sox (he was born in 1919, died in 1996 so must missed seeing them win the World Series on both ends).

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155Comments

  1. 1.

    Steve in the ATL

    I am neither Irish nor Catholic, and I am a grown man. For the foregoing reasons, I am not wearing green today. And, if anyone tries to pinch me because of that, then, as the Kaiser Chiefs noted, I predict a riot.

    That said, I am also not asshole enough to wear orange today.

  6. 6.

    japa21

    Born orange Irish, now green Irish. Well 50% Irish, the bulk of the rest is English. I have had a very conflicted life.

  9. 9.

    randy khan

    This is totally not about music, but I just saw that Hillary asked for a secure smartphone in 2009 and that NSA wouldn’t give her one, and the offsite server was the alternative she pursued. In a universe with rational people in Congress this would mean that whatever oversight committee there is would come down like a ton of bricks on the NSA and that the investigation of Clinton would end. (As if that would ever happen.)

    And what in the world was NSA doing denying a secure phone to the freaking Secretary of State?

  10. 10.

    Linnaeus

    @Doug!:

    Disagree. Scotch is fine (though I think many scotches are overrated simply because they are scotches), but Irish whiskey can be smooth and drinkable if you’re not in the mood for liquid earth.

  11. 11.

    schrodinger's cat

    Why not? What’s wrong with orange?

    P.S. Don’t know much about Irish history except that it was there that the British tried out the different techniques that they used to build their vast empire, first. Like mass starvation, divide and rule etc.

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Mike J: Funny, Green is identified with Islam on the subcontinent and orange with Hinduism. Traditionally, ochre and/or orange is the color of renunciation for Hindus and also for Sikhs. That’s why sanyasis wear orange,and warriors who did not expect to survive a battle, fought under a saffron banner. These days saffron has been co-opted by the Hindu right in India.

  22. 22.

    DemJayhawks

    This may be old news, but the esteemed Ron Fournier has a parenting memoir coming out next month.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodinger’s cat: Unionists wear Orange to commemorate (I think) a battle won by William of Orange.

    I probably just butchered several chapters of Irish history. Have a good laugh everyone at my expense.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Yet another example of good guys with guns meeting other good guys with guns:

    Maryland cop shot and killed by fellow officer in ‘tragic’ misunderstanding

    If only these people would follow their NRA talking points, these things wouldn’t happen.***

    ***with all due sorrow for the officer who lost his life and just as much for the one who fired the fatal shot.

  27. 27.

    VOR

    @randy khan: Because they can. The excuse was lack of infrastructure at State, but my guess is the real reason is because they wanted to show who was boss.

  28. 28.

    Linnaeus

    @VOR:

    The intelligence community really seems to have it in for the Department of State. I suppose they think State is too “soft” or something.

  30. 30.

    NobodySpecial

    I hate this fucking ‘holiday’ with a passion, from the celebration of fucking poverty food that is corned beef and cabbage to the ethnically stereotypical drunkfest that everyone wants to participate in as a good excuse/cover to get shitfaced on a weekday that doesn’t involve their love life or their lack of other interests in life. Saint Padraig could start sliding down chimneys and leaving poisonous serpents for half the world and that’d be an improvement.


    The Foggy Dew

  32. 32.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    I’m told that St. Patrick himself is associated with blue, but the holiday turned green because of Ireland.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Steve in the ATL: I am “Irish”, which I put in quotes because I’ve heard the whole Irish-American thing drives the real Irish nuts*, was raised Catholic and am not wearing green today. Not making a point of it, just don’t think I have anything green and weather-appropriate in my wardrobe these days.
    * there was a funny video floating around a few months back about the members of I don’t what currently popular popular music group exasperatedly explaining to drunken hipster fans that they, the hipsters, were not, in fact, Irish.

    All four of my grandparents were born in Ireland. My mother’s father and my father’s mother were professional Micks, telling stories about Banshees and leprechauns and the hated English. I think I was fifteen when I figured out my grandfather didn’t really believe in banshees and leprechauns, I’m forty-eight now, and I’m pretty sure my grandmother did, at least the banshees. They each married, in the States, fellow immigrants who, but for their siblings, didn’t give a rat’s ass (though neither would’ve used such language) if they ever saw that impoverished country and the miserable farms they were born on again.

  34. 34.

    MattF

    @Thunderbird: Well, yes. Back in my drinking days, Amateur Night was when we all stayed away– not recognizing people who came in the bars’ front door was generally frowned on by the various admissions committees. It might be necessary to persuade them to exit through the window.

  35. 35.

    bystander

    Al Franken coming up (11:43 EDT now) on MSNBC. I feel as if I never see him, so looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

  36. 36.

    Peale

    @Linnaeus: I think the NSA thinks that we don’t need these bloody embassies. That somehow we could do just fine by spying from above and listening into phone conversations. Actually meeting people and eating dinner with them? They’re probably jealous as an NSA analyst dinner is probably doritos and mountain dew.

  38. 38.

    scav

    @Linnaeus: Well, in theory it was the Dutch being vegetably subversive but adding it to the cabbage and potatoes only seems to improve our vegetable options today, so Slainte!

  39. 39.

    Miss Bianca

    Travelling to my former hometown to play a gig tonight – well, three gigs actually. First is for a charity dinner for a community center (no corned beef *or* cabbage AFAIK, which combination seems more like a New World Jewish/Irish poverty thing than an “Irish” tradition to me), second is at my favorite distillery, third is closing down the night at one of the taverns with a real nutter who is probably the area’s best musician. Always a rave-up.

    For me, the only reason to love St. Paddy’s Day is that it’s the one day of the year when people actually *want* to hear Irish music. Or “Irish” music…YMMV on what counts.

  40. 40.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    @Peale: Martin O’Malley, in his brief moment of relevance, really shat on SIGINT and pledged to invest more in HUMINT. I found that endearing.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NobodySpecial: Obviously you never participated in the Alternative St Paddy’s Day parade because you got kicked out of the nonpartisan politically correct one in downtown.

  42. 42.

    Miss Bianca

    @Linnaeus: @Doug!:

    Redbreast is the best Irish whisky out there, IMHO…or, rather the combined not-so-humble opinion of the single-malt Scotch society I used to be a part of… we branched out occasionally into sampling other whiskies.

  44. 44.

    benw

    @Peale:

    an NSA analyst dinner is probably doritos and mountain dew.

    Don’t forget the Ho-hos. And, if we’re feeling like something healthy, a granola bar.

  45. 45.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Steve in the ATL:

    I am neither Irish nor Catholic, and I am a grown man. For the foregoing reasons, I am not wearing green today. And, if anyone tries to pinch me because of that, then, as the Kaiser Chiefs noted, I predict a riot.

    That said, I am also not asshole enough to wear orange today.

    This is my view as well, with the exception that I am a grown ass woman. When my hair was still red ( I haven’t changed at all, if you were wondering), I sort of had to wear something green or my mornings at the courthouse were tiresome. But I always wore sage or loden or something not kelly green, as a sort of minor rebellion.

  46. 46.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NobodySpecial: I hate this fucking ‘holiday’ with a passion, from the celebration of fucking poverty food that is corned beef and cabbage to the ethnically stereotypical drunkfest that everyone wants t

    I don’t know if it’s an urban legend but I’ve heard that the Irish learned about corned beef and cabbage from eastern European Jews in the tenements of New York. I was in Ireland when I was twelve and the only food I remember is fried eggs at every B&B and mounds of sliced mutton my relatives put out for us. And tea.

  50. 50.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That seems to describe the immigrant dynamic pretty well. Immigrants have a pretty realistic picture of the country of their birth, its the subsequent generations that tend to look at the land of their forefathers with rose tinted glasses.

    I love Irish tea, its mostly an Assam tea blend, much stronger than the froo froo Darjeeling blends.

  52. 52.

    randy khan

    @VOR:

    Realizing that it’s true, it’s still a lousy explanation. Interagency rivalry is stupid enough (if entirely expected), but non-cooperation like this that reduces national security shouldn’t be tolerated.

  54. 54.

    Shell

    Speaking of March events…the 20th is the first day of Spring, which means a snow storm of course~! We’re supposed to get one roaring in on Sunday. Wheee! St.Patricks Day traditionally is when you’re supposed to plant your early peas. Forget that.

  57. 57.

    Mike J

    [holiday] is the worst thing ever. I don’t see how any so called adult can bring themselves to “celebrate” [holiday]. [holiday] is nothing more than a festival of exploitation, colonialism, and consumerism. I just wish that everybody who celebrates [holiday] would shut up and worry about something more important.

    Please keep this balloon-juice holiday comment handy for each day marked in red on standard calendars to save yourself some trouble.

  63. 63.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    All four of my grandparents were born in Ireland.

    That’s pretty cool–they were probably more interesting than my four American-born grandparents.

    We periodically visit some good friends on Achill Island, on the west coast. Every second I’m there I think it’s Craggy Island from Father Ted.

  65. 65.

    Peale

    @MattF: So tell me…how is Cruz different from Trump? Those bigwigs meeting in Warshintown to find their establishment pot-o-gold today are going to settle on Cruz. But he’s seriously at or to the right of Trump on all social issues.

  66. 66.

    evap

    I am married to someone who is really Irish (born and raised in Dublin) and he hates the American St. Paddy’s Day celebration stuff with a passion. In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday and there were no parades, excess drinking, green everything, etc. in Ireland when he lived there. There’s a little bit of it now, but it’s for the American tourists.

    By the way, there is good Whiskey in Ireland, try some of the Irish single malts. Bushmills Black is very good.

  67. 67.

    Cacti

    Have lots of Irish ancestors, but plenty of Scots, English, French, and German too. I’ve never really clung to any one of my ancestral ethnicities over another, so I’ve always celebrated the true American meaning of St. Patrick’s Day…

    A good excuse to get drunk on a weekday.

  69. 69.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Steve in the ATL: the one grandmother told good stories, the others were kind of dour in that Catholic way. The other grandmother was a great cook. Like her eight surviving children (ten pregnancies that I know of), twas her duty as a woman. Thank god the Church didn’t condemn gravy and cake (her only apparent vice) or she probably would’ve been the world’s first paleo-vegan anti-sugar purist.

    ETA: and you remind me that I want to binge-watch Father Ted, I’ve only seen a couple but I know “Feck! Girls! Gobshite!”

  71. 71.

    maurinsky

    I am wearing green, because I have red hair and it looks good on me. My father and all my grandparents were born in Ireland, and though they were immigrants, they were *extremely* sentimental about their homeland, especially my maternal grandmother and my father.

    I don’t like corned beef, though, and when I was a child, our special occasion food was always lamb. Unfortunately, the cuisine of my ancestors is pretty limited, and cooking skills in my family were extremely poor. Sometimes we had boiled chicken. Boiled. Chicken.

  72. 72.

    Isobel

    Happy Saint Patrick’s Day all! I haven’t seen a single person wearing green, but that’s because this holiday is not on the radar in Ghana. My entire team is down at the bar and was just bought a round by the only other foreigner in town.

  73. 73.

    Poopyman

    @Doug!:

    Irish whiskey just isn’t that good.

    Bite me.

    Or more civilly, your information is outdated, good sir. Use to be so, but in the last decade or so several craft distilleries started putting out some pretty good stuff. My favorite is the Knappogue Castle 14 y.o., but ymmv.

  75. 75.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think it’s true, from the new neighbors they came to know in NYC. Raising cattle doesn’t go as well with the plants, climate and limits in Ireland. Plus no sheep, no wool while you wait for so to become food.

    My wife’s paternal GF was laid in the ground on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, in 2004 (well, his ashes) and within 24 hours the Red Sox won the series. No word on the number of bets or taunts about “not until you’re six feet under” came true.

    (Of course he was alive for the previous one.)

  79. 79.

    redshirt

    So, St. Patrick’s Day = Ireland
    Cinco de Mayo = Mexico
    Any other foreign country holidays in America?

    Does Mardi Gras count as French?

    What I’m asking is for an effort to give every country a drinking holiday in America.

  84. 84.

    scav

    @Isobel: I think the — or at least one — problem with green there might be Nigeria and the Green Eagles.
    ETA apparently called Super Eagles now, but same Green-white kit.

  86. 86.

    Poopyman

    @redshirt: Bastille Day.

    Also too, Columbus Day for Italians, maybe? Canada Day (July1)? Not that the Canadians ever needed an excuse to party.

  88. 88.

    Punchy

    @Doug!: If you want some slightly above average, better than tepid by not by much Scottish whiskey, I highly recommend Monkey Shoulder.

  89. 89.

    Miss Bianca

    @maurinsky:

    I don’t know about sentimental…but my friends’ Irish forbears tended to be more “wistful” about the old country than anything else…from back in the days when they’d wake you when you left, because they knew they’d likely never see you again…unless *they* hopped on the boat and came over. Sort of mind-blowing to imagine now in the days of fast mass travel..

    And speaking of music, here’s a little number that addresses that very issue…one that’s been on my list for years to learn…the only problem I have is that I can never get thru’ it without choking up…which is a bit of a problem for a singer! That’s the reaction you want to provoke in your *audience*!

  90. 90.

    Mnemosyne

    @evap:

    “That would be an ecumenical matter!”

    Or, my all-time favorite Father Jack line when they sober him up for Lent: “Don’t tell me I’m still on that feckin’ island!”

  91. 91.

    The Dangerman

    Madness starts in the first game of the day? UNCW might give Duke all they want today (Duke is seriously thin in players).

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @Linnaeus:

    Well, Mardi Gras is not really a holiday — it’s the last fling before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday. That’s why you only see it in Catholic countries. I think most Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries call it some form of “Carnival.”

  98. 98.

    Humboldtblue

    @Doug!: This is why people don’t invite you to parties.

    Irish whisky is fantastic, from some random Deadspin writer

    4. Tullamore D.E.W.; $28, 80 proof

    So the D.E.W. represents an old distiller’s initials, which is nice, but feel free (by which I mean, feel obligated by decency) to pronounce it “Dew.” It opens with a strong, sweet vanilla and butterscotch aroma, with cherry and faint pine needle notes emerging with time. And this is weird, but hear me out: I swear I pick up a little mustard seed? Good stuff.

    3. Jameson Gold Reserve; $70, 80 proof

    Of course it’s good, it costs $14 a gulp! But, price gripes aside, the caramel apple, cinnamon, vanilla bean, oak, indeterminate spice, and light toffee work very well together, and I’ll happily drink this any time someone else is buying.

    2. Tullamore Dew Trilogy 15-Year; $75, 80 proof

    Another super-deluxe model, this one is a blend of whiskies aged in sherry, bourbon, and rum barrels. It tastes like butterscotch, orange blossoms, maybe even mango, definitely cashews, and smoked honey. It’s bonkers and delightful, and I would likely feel that way even if they hadn’t sent me a small sample bottle.

    1. Redbreast 12-Year; $55, 80 proof

    Sweet and spicy, with vanilla, black pepper, plum, anise, and molasses. I will very rarely advocate that Drunkspin readers spend this many of their own dollars on a single bottle of liquor, especially one that’s only 80 proof, but here’s a plan: Get yourself a bottle of Redbreast and have two ounces on the 17th of every month for a year. You’ve done so many worse things with $55.

  99. 99.

    The Dangerman

    @raven:

    The greatest 2 days in sports…

    Absolutely. 16 and 16; I used to be the person that kept the scores on the whiteboards back in my Aero days (before Internet; I had to call a bookie line every few minutes).

    My office was visited by others frequently.

  100. 100.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Poopyman:

    Columbus Day for Italians

    Or, perhaps, for the Portuguese. Won’t have a definitive answer until Dan Brown writes a novel about it.

  101. 101.

    Humboldtblue

    Also, considering it’s the opening day of the best weekend of sports in the country, here’s a sports-related version of that beautiful song sung by the members of the Kop, supporters of Liverpool Football Club.

    The Fields of Anfield road

  102. 102.

    elmo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Paternal grandparents born and raised in Ireland, came here as adults. Family legend has it that Grandfather, at least, was making his escape after the Easter Rising of 1916. The timing works, so why the hell not.

    The grandparents were utterly clear-eyed about the place and had no nostalgia whatever, even though my Grandmother was a native Irish speaker. Dad asked his father once if he ever wanted to go back, and his thoroughly Irish, phlegmatic answer: “If I’d wanted to go back, I’d never have left.”

    But the Irish romantic notions definitely took hold in my Dad’s household, nevermind his own parents’ indifference. Irish music every St. Patrick’s day, and none of your “Irish Eyes” or “Whiskey You’re the Divil” either. It was all “Marching to Tipp’rary” and “Up the Republic” and “Wearing of the Green” and, of course, the Merry Ploughboy:

    I have always hated slav’ry
    Since the day that I was born
    So I’m off to join the IRA
    and I’m off tomorrow morn.

    Everybody!
    So we’re off to Dublin in the green, in the green
    Where the bayonets glisten in the sun
    Where the helmets flash
    And rifles crash
    To the echo of the Thompson gun

  103. 103.

    raven

    @scav: Aside from Mardi Gras Day, the most significant day for the Mardi Gras Indians is their Super Sunday. The New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council always has their Indian Sunday on the third Sunday of March, around St. Joseph’s Day. Their festivities begin at noon in A.L. Davis Park (at Washington & LaSalle Streets) where the Mardi Gras Indians once again dress in their feathers and suits and take to the streets to meet other “gangs”.

    http://www.mardigrasneworleans.com/supersunday.html

  104. 104.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne:

    “Carnival(e)” it is – “meat fest”, really. Last chance to indulge!

    btw, completely o/t – I loved your story last night about your hubbie and the Monty Python commercial – so cute! nice h/t to Jane Eyre there, too, well-played.

  106. 106.

    Humboldtblue

    @maurinsky: I have a good friend who was born and bred in Dublin and who has lived in the states for almost 30 years now and he invited me over for some sports watching a few years ago. I asked him if I should bring a pizza or something and he said no, he was going to be cooking (he was a regular at my place and I am pretty good in the kitchen and with a Weber kettle so he always ate well).

    I arrived and watched him dump a pound of frozen hamburger in one pot of boiling water and a bag of frozen veggies in a second pot. That was his meal, boiled beef and veggies. Needless to say I always brought pizza to his place anytime it was his turn to host a Champions League match.

  108. 108.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @schrodinger’s cat: I was only served a tiny bit once by an Indian friend during what I think was Holi. It was decades ago, but remains the only way I can manage milk without 3x as much ice cream in the mix.

  110. 110.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Celebrating the Catholic victory over the pagans of Ireland by getting drunk and wearing green makes as much sense as the other nominally Catholic holidays. Which is to say, none at all.

  111. 111.

    Cacti

    @redshirt:

    Armistice Day in November for the Canucks and Brits. Would work for the French too.

    Any member of the WWI allied coalition, really.

  115. 115.

    Linnaeus

    @Mnemosyne:

    “Holiday” was meant as shorthand for “period of celebration”.

    Carnival is also celebrated in German-speaking countries. It’s Karneval, Fasching, or Fastnacht depending on where you are.

  116. 116.

    Cacti

    @gogol’s wife:

    My friend who knows about this stuff sniffs at corned beef and cabbage as totally American Irish. We’ll be having lamb stew at his place. Wish I liked lamb!

    Your friend is right. Corned beef brisket is a thoroughly Irish-American affair.

    Cheap, tough cuts of beef were the working class fare of the early 20th century USA. Ireland isn’t exactly known for its large herds of beef cattle.

  117. 117.

    scav

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah, but pancake races v. feathers, parades, masks, crepes and etcetera. The import is looking pretty good. Even the Germans seem to have more fun.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    @elmo:

    I have a feeling your dad would have liked The Pogues, particularly “Young Ned of the Hill”, whose chorus goes:

    A curse upon you, Oliver Cromwell
    You who raped our motherland
    I hope you’re rotting down in hell
    For the horrors that you sent
    To our misfortunate forefathers
    Whom you robbed of their birthright
    “To hell or Connaught”
    May you burn in hell tonight

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @Miss Bianca:

    Thanks! Our 10th wedding anniversary is in July (on Bastille Day, actually!) so those kinds of moments have been on my mind. Plus it’s true that writing a romance novel does cause you to look at your own relationship, which fortunately for us is pretty solid.

  121. 121.

    guachi

    @benw:

    an NSA analyst dinner is probably doritos and mountain dew.

    Don’t forget the Ho-hos. And, if we’re feeling like something healthy, a granola bar.

    I’m sitting at work at the NSA reading this eating my lunch, which is a banana and the cabbage rolls for the Friday Food exchange a few weeks back.

    My coworker to my right is eating some divine looking biryani he and his wife made. (recipe from his Arabic teacher).

    My wife upstairs has split pea soup I made for her.

    Though I will admit the cafeterias have some very bad food. While we analysts may consume Mountain Dew and Doritos at home (it’s perfect food for board game/D&D night!), I’ve never seen anyone consume either at work.

  122. 122.

    Cacti

    Since we’re posting Irish rebel tunes, this one’s practically mandatory.

    Come out Ye Black and Tans

    I was born on a Dublin street where the royal drums did beat
    And those loving English feet they walked all over us,
    And every single night when me Da would come home tight
    He’d invite the neighbors outside with this chorus:

    Come out ye black and tans,
    Come out and fight me like a man
    Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
    Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,
    From the green and lovely lanes of Killeshandra.

  126. 126.

    PurpleGirl

    @redshirt: There’s Bastille Day but I don’t know that Americans of French background do a lot of drinking to celebrate it. Alliance Francais in NYC usually sponsors a street fair for Bastille Day and it features French food.

  127. 127.

    Cacti

    Since WP ate my last post, and since we’re doing Irish rebel songs now:

    Come out ya Black and Tans
    Come out and fight me like a man
    Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
    Tell ‘er how the IRA made you run like hell away
    From the green and lovely lanes of Killeshandra!

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne

    @Linnaeus:

    Ah, but there are many Catholic parts of Germany — my great-grandmother was a German Catholic who immigrated here and married an Irish Catholic. So I maintain that it’s primarily a Catholic thing.

    And if you can’t have a fight about a silly, pedantic point on St. Patrick’s Day, when can you?
    ;-)

  129. 129.

    schrodinger's cat

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Bhang is pretty strong stuff, from I what I hear. The festival could be Holi or Mahashivratri (Great Shiva’s Night), the day Shiva is worshiped. Shiva drinks bhangs, smokes ganja, hangs out in graveyards, wears a snake around his neck, smears ash on his body, is pretty chill unless you piss him off. Then he opens his third eye and does the dance of destruction.

  130. 130.

    ? Martin

    @randy khan:

    And what in the world was NSA doing denying a secure phone to the freaking Secretary of State?

    A few important details:

    1) She was asking them for her top staff as well (not unreasonable)
    2) At the time the NSA locked down the device extraordinarily tightly. You could only contact specific people (Obama was restricted to 10 people) and someone had to be within a certain distance to you with a box that was basically a portable secure cell tower that would add encryption and ensure it only went through US secure systems (probably satellite based).

    That meant that for Clinton’s staff, they would all need some NSA lackey following them with a satellite uplink wherever they went.

    Now, it could be (easily) argued that the NSA requirements were overkill and they refused to come up with an intermediate solution that was appropriate for Clinton’s team.

    It should also be noted that the NSA was unable to do what the FBI is now accusing Apple of doing for every single iPhone owner.

  131. 131.

    Linnaeus

    @Mnemosyne:

    Well, yeah, I knew it was a mostly Catholic thing, although there is a contemporaneous festival traditionally celebrated in the more Protestant northern parts of Germany. Not sure if it’s still a thing, though.

    But yes, mostly Catholic. :)

  132. 132.

    gogol's wife

    @Mnemosyne:

    And that link above also has the cast doing the opening number in a stripped-down version in the White House, and it’s really interesting to hear.

  135. 135.

    Mnemosyne

    @gogol’s wife:

    So many “Hamilton” links, so little time. G found an interview between William Daniel (who played John Adams in “1776”) and Lin-Manuel.

    When Daniels says he’d like to see the show when he’s in New York but he’s heard it’s hard to get tickets, Lin-Manuel says, “Don’t worry, I know a guy.”

    I’ll see if I can track it down, but Joel Grey has a funny story of just showing up at the “Hamilton” box office and claiming he had tickets when he didn’t.

  137. 137.

    Aleta

    How well I remember my sainted Irish-Canadian grandmother bellowing this at the table with the lace tablecloths brought over by her family on the coffin ships.

  139. 139.

    Origuy

    @Miss Bianca:

    I have is that I can never get thru’ it without choking up…which is a bit of a problem for a singer!

    I can see why, that’s a tearjerker and a half! I’d never heard Kilkenny before, although I’ve heard a lot of Irish songs. I have a couple of friends who play Irish music. One is in a ceili band playing this afternoon; she plays hammered dulcimer.

    The Back Door by Cherish the Ladies with Cathie Ryan

  142. 142.

    PurpleGirl

    This is a paraphrase because I forget the actual comment but it went something like this:

    St. Patrick’s Day in NYC — when the masters watch their servants march.

  143. 143.

    Calouste

    @Linnaeus: Karneval as celebrated in the catholic areas of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands is indeed like Mardi Gras. If Mardi Gras started on the Friday before.

  144. 144.

    Miss Bianca

    @Origuy:

    IKR? It’s that last verse…I can get thru’ everything but that last verse…

    And I love “The Back Door” too…also Cherish the Ladies. Joanie Malone is a hoot, and Liz Carroll played with them, too…and they always have singers with such gorgeous voices!

  145. 145.

    Brachiator

    @Miss Bianca:

    “Carnival(e)” it is – “meat fest”, really. Last chance to indulge!

    I always thought it was from carne vale, farewell to meat.

  148. 148.

    MattF

    @Brachiator: I was suspicious of that etymology, but according to the OED, it’s not too far from the truth:

    The history of the word is illustrated by the parallel medieval Latin name carnem laxare (cited by Carpentier from a charter of 1050), corresponding to Italian *carne lasciare ‘leaving or forsaking flesh’, whence, apparently by contraction, the modern carnasciale = carnevale. Carnem laxare, *carne lasciare, *carnelasciale, carnasciale, form a series exactly parallel to *carnem levare, *carne levare, carnelevale, carnevale. Other names having a similar reference are, for Shrove Tuesday, carnicapium ‘flesh-taking’, and carnivora [dies]; for Lent or its beginning, carniprivium, carnisprivium, privicarnium, < privare to deprive.

  149. 149.

    maurinsky

    @elmo:

    As very small children, we were often called to sing Are You Ready for a War, which closes with the following poem:

    Up a long ladder and down a short rope
    to hell with King Billy and God Bless the Pope
    if that doesn’t do, we’ll tear you in two
    and send you to hell with your red, white and blue

    When I try to think if the Irish songs we sang a lot when I was growing up, I can never think of them, but it only takes a phrase to bring it all back. I read something today about the men behind the wire, and there it came:

    Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons,
    but every man must stand behind the men behind the wire.

    Also: Jameson Reserve is my favorite. The smell is intoxicating and it goes down so nicely.

  150. 150.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    I’m envisioning 40-50 rabbis standing at the back of the AIPAC hall, quietly holding up protest signs, while Trump screams “Geddum outta here! Outta here! GEDDUM OUT!!“

  151. 151.

    NotMax

    @jeffreyw

    Serving up a corned beef sandwich that skimpy within 100 miles of the lower east side of Manhattan is a class C felony.

    ;)

  152. 152.

    Brachiator

    @redshirt:

    What I’m asking is for an effort to give every country a drinking holiday in America.

    Purim. The Talmud states that on Purim one is to drink to the point of not knowing the difference between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.”

  153. 153.

    Brachiator

    @MattF:

    for Lent or its beginning, carniprivium, carnisprivium, privicarnium, < privare to deprive.

    Which also reminds me that tempura has connections to Lent and carne vale, avoiding meat.

    The word “tempura”, or the technique of dipping fish and vegetables into a batter and frying them, comes from the word “tempora”, a Latin word meaning “times”, “time period” used by both Spanish and Portuguese missionaries to refer to the Lenten period or Ember Days (ad tempora quadragesimae), Fridays, and other Christian holy days. Ember Days or quattuor tempora refer to holy days when Catholics avoid red meat and instead eat fish or vegetables.

  154. 154.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    All four of my grandparents were born in Ireland.

    All four of mine were born in Italy (if you count la Trinacria). Both grandfathers were dead before I turned 2. Neither grandmother spoke more than a dozen words of English, & since my parents had chosen not to teach us kids Italian (so they could used it to discuss stuff they didn’t want us to hear)…

    Anyone who actually got to know & interact with grandparents should be grateful–it doesn’t necessarily come with the territory.

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