I’ve seen the extremes of St. Patricks’ Day: it once found me, I may or may not be proud to say, onstage at Dallas’ Tipperary Inn, throwing potatoes high in the air and catching them on a fork clenched between my teeth. I was, to be fair, the entertainment, part of an Irish band. But still. We Americans have turned this day into something very, very weird.
But every year, there’s something that irks me more than anything else: green beer. I have been to this Ireland place, and no one drank green beer, not even in Cork. Well, There was the one fellow whose Guinness had gone bad several years before and sported a fur of mold. He was a slow drinker, I guess. Only time, though. There also were no leprechauns. And believe you me, I looked. I found a toadstool, but the thing was unoccupied.
Why must we not only wear green, but drink green things today? Does it increase festiveness? What’s next? Red and blue beer on the Fourth? Pastel Easter beer?
And if another person says “Top o’ the mornin'” or anything about being “magically delicious,” I may try to reproduce for them 800 years of John Bull’s tyranny.
Okay, I feel better now.
Slainte abhaile!
