St. Patrick’s Season Recap w/ Danahey on the Loose

 

St. Patrick’s season is most likely finally over.

I waited a week past March 17 just to make sure. Here’s a recap of my shenanigans.

Grew a beard 

This was my attempt to look more Irish, like an extra in Darby O’Gill and the Little People, but with better teeth. Or the Notre Dame leprechaun. Or maybe George Bernard Shaw.

Either way, Best Fest Buddy Tom’s beard came in better than mine. He could play a crusty old Irish guy better than I could anyway.

I did not dye my beard ginger, nor give it a spray tan. Neither did Tom.

I did go to the local barber school for a trim. I was nicked by the 18-year-old student, but survived. I told him the small cut built character. My modeling career ended long ago.

Bought lots of corned beef  – and one solitary cabbage

On a dare from Tom and his brother, I shopped to find the least expensive corned beef. 

This American Irish briney brisket ain’t cheap. Even on sale, it was more than $8 a pound for the name brands

Bargain-hunting-me found flats, points and rounds for around $4 a pound at Aldi, Jewel, Meijer and Butera. Butera had cabbage for 17 cents a pound, so I threw one of those in for good measure.

I wound up giving two packages and the cabbage to a neighbor – and still have two left in my fridge.

Found a new flat cap

Tom gave me his spare $10 Kohl’s cash, which went to me picking up a lined flat cap, on clearance. That was a fortuitous choice, given the weird weather and its arctic spells during St. Patrick’s season.

Used a gift card to by libations

Showing discipline, I saved a Binny’s gift card received at Christmas, to buy some Jameson and Guinness. A week or so later, I added to sale-priced Tullamore Dew, Bushmills and another eight-pack of beer to the St. Patrick’s stash.

Lest you get the wrong idea, much of it remains available to drink come Easter and beyond.

Put up two decorations

There’s been a small silver tree in my hallway since Christmas time. For Valentine’s Day I put hearts on it. For St. Patrick’s season, a Dollar Tree leprechaun hung from its branches. I adorned a doorknob with some wooden shamrocks. Martha O’Stewart would be proud.

Avoided a parade

The town near where I live held its parade March 7. That’s too early. 

Plus, Tom’s grandkids had swim lessons the same time the parade happened. So after that, I took two of them to the Bricks and Minifigs store to shop for Lego. Then we had horchata, tacos and Mexican Coca-Cola. Does anyone else remember the Carlos Murphy’s chain of restaurants?

Saw Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

The same afternoon as the premature parade I went to the local cinema to view the latest piece of product in the Peaky Blinders line.

This time, brooding old Tommy Shelby battles ghosts, his rotten Romani son and Nazis. A good time is had by all.

Everything looks brown and dirty. Blue-eyed boyos Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan can mumble and pout with the best of them. Parts of the flick play like MTV videos for Irish band Fontaines DC. You might not want to eat pork for a bit, given what happens in a couple scenes.

I watched the movie a second time this past weekend, when it came out on Netflix. It looked bluer on the streamer. 

A sequel series is in the works, starring Keoghan. They should have an amusement park, too, where everybody can smoke cigarettes and opium and where they sell all the Peaky merchandise. They’ll shoot anyone who calls the holiday St. Patty’s Day at this place. For sport.

Watched The Quiet Man for the umpteenth time

It’s become a tradition – particularly since I sent my dad a Korean bootleg copy I hope he watched just before he passed away 11 years ago.

Sure, The Quiet Man is quaint, dated and cornball. It plays like an old fashioned musical, without the singing. Still, there is some sly dialogue to be heard and general Technicolor wackiness to be seen.

 

Had an Oreo Shamrock McFlurry 

Another personal tradition is to slurp a Shamrock Shake and, since its Lent, wolf sown a Filet-O-Fish during St. Patrick’s season. 

Changing things up a bit, I tried an Oreo Shamrock McFlurry. It looked like how Irish American arteries look after eating too much corned beef. 

I wound up having the shake and fish at a later date. That was $10. The shake was blander than I recall, with little mint taste. The fish sandwich seemed smaller, drier and salty.

That might be because as a New Year’s resolution, I gave up going to McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. For real.

Caught some Irish cheese on WTTW pledge drive 

A Chicago area St. Patrick’s season TV tradition, WTTW shows Irish cheese during a March pledge drive. 

In keeping with that, I happened upon a bit of Riverdance 25 and Celtic Woman. I felt glossy afterward. I wore my shirt unbuttoned to the navel for a couple days after this.

 

 

 

Attended The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings live in concert 

Tom’s brother and I caught the screening at The Auditorium where 238 musicians played live along with the first part of Peter Jackson’s take on the trilogy.

It was impressive to hear and to see how they fit all those singers and players on stage. While I spotted the didgeridoo,  I didn’t realize there was an accordion player until everyone took a bow at intermission.

Lest you forget, at least three of the Hobbits in the 25-year-old movie have Irish accents. Frodo, Sam and their buddies also do an Irish goodbye at the end of this one – leaving the rest of the Middle Earth resistance movement behind for a bit in the endless saga.

What people do forget is theater etiquette. One douchebag divorced dad type – dressed in pre-ripped designer jeans – had to be told to take his feet off the railing of the box seat where he was sitting with tween daughter. She had her shoes off and feet on the railing too.

It goes without saying some folks were making videos and snapping photos with their smartphones. Apparently this was allowed at this show.

It also goes without saying that some people dressed up like their favorite characters to attend. The guy in the bar line dressed like Gandalf, though, looked more like a big mushroom. I wonder if he ordered the Shire Sunrise.

Anyway, adding to the St. Patrick’s season of the excursion, we went the Friday before the St. Patrick’s parade in downtown Chicago. Across the street from The Auditorium, a bagpipe group was practicing in the alley. Celebrants were checking into The Congress Plaza Hotel.

We grabbed some grub at the hotel before the movie. I had never been inside this bit of history. The dining room was very Mid-Century Modern – and looked like any number of places in the suburbs where dads smoked and drank too much back in the 1970s.

Ghostbuster types claim the Congress Hotel is haunted. But no red rum was on the menu.

The staff was friendly and getting ready for the storm. I wished our elderly, Eastern European waitress good luck in dealing with the incoming crowd and Saturday’s silliness.

 

Paraded in St. Charles

The Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day, Tom and I took his three grandkids to the big, hilly march in St. Charles.

Lucking into a parking spot, we only had a quarter mile or so to walk to the staging area – as opposed to the hike with an Irish sherpa we took the prior year. 

Tom and the youngest lad met up with the gang from Rosie’s Color Studio (oh the irony, per the baldness). They wound up sharing duties, carrying one of the Irish county flags along the route, the one for Leitrim.

The other two kids just wanted to collect candy and other parade swag, so I watched them watch the parade. They don’t even eat most of what they get. It’s like money is for billionaires. It’s basically a game all about being able to get as much as you can.

To that point, the middle lad brought along a brightly colored fitted bed sheet to gather his stash. It matched his holiday outfit. He’s destined to be an inventive engineer or some sort of product designer.

For once, they listened to my advice. They set up along a curb close to where the parade route started. This allows for maximum volume, as marchers work to unload their treats ASAP. The other good spot is at the end of the route, where the slowpokes have leftovers they don’t want to haul back home with them.

The snow flurried on this parade. The following Monday it was close to 70, and we took the kids to the park. March is schizo that way. Also frightening:  saw a mom with a Mar-A-Lago/Kardashian/Kris Jenner face at the park. It scared me.

 

Gave fashion advice to a dinner host

The Sunday before St. Patrick’s I headed to another local establishment I frequent to offer fashion advice.

The Village Vintner would be hosting Scotch-Irish dinners the Wednesday and Thursday after St. Patrick’s Day. The waiter hosting the meals wanted to borrow a kilt. He’s thin. I’m not.

So I suggested he wear a flat cap, vest, dress shirt and jeans, like they dress Irish in American movies about Ireland.

My good deed done, I had a Scottish ale to mark the occasion.

Saw Sean Cleland fiddling  at Brix

As luck would have it, the local library sponsored a free performance from Sean Cleland and a couple of his musician buddies the night before St. Patrick’s Day at The Brix, a banquet hall out my way.

The fabled fiddler and his pals shared tales about Irish music, instruments and of Chief O’Neill. I learned that bodhran is just a fancy word for a tambourine.

Weary from all their St. Patrick’s season performances, the trio quipped that to novice ears all Irish music sounds the same. Then, for those playing it for years and years, they realize that’s probably true.

As an added bonus, I went home with some Lucky Charms bars and a couple chocolate coins.

 

Lunched at Bennigan’s

On a frigid but sunny St. Patrick’s Day, I met a buddy for lunch at Bennigan’s in Elgin. It’s one of the just six full-scale Bennigan’s left in the United States. Remember the one across South Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute of Chicago? That makes you old, like me.

I opted for grilled cheese and a salad, not the traditional Turkey O’Toole. 

Contrarian by nature, aside from my green DKM T-shirt, I wore mostly blue for the day. Track pants and a hoodie, even, like a Euro gangster in a TV show. 

Besides, blue was the first color associated with St. Patrick. But blue and orange would have made Ireland the Fighting Illini.

Headed to ECC to see Switchback

After lunch, a bunch of us Irish guys headed to Elgin Community College for Switchback’s matinee concert, a dry one at that.

See, the Blizzard Theater there is the same building that was serving as a polling place for the primary. A nice touch was valet parking for the show and for voters. 

Marty McCormack and Brian FitzGerald put on an energetic show. The fellas are my age and can still kick their legs up like Rockettes. 

These days, I walk so slow, when I was downtown heading back to the Grant Park South Garage a woman wearing stiletto heels was able to pass by me – by a considerable distance. 

I said hello to the Switchback lads at intermission and bought a CD. A buddy picked up a brochure about the band’s fall excursion to Ireland.

Three of four of us did an Irish goodbye shortly after that. Hey, Shay had to meet his St. Patrick’s posse at Rosie’s  – the bar not the hair place – at 3 p.m.

 

Had pints, heard piping at Rosie’s

So Rosie’s it was. They had a bagpiper there, a guy who is to that instrument what Roseanne Barr is to the Star Spangled Banner.

He stood up on the bartop and had staff queue up AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll) on the digital jukebox. He seemed to pipe-synch the pipe solo in that tune.

A bit later, a buddy of mine said she sort of recognized one of the numbers the poor piper tried to play. I thought about hiring him to scare squirrels away from my roof.

Praise Jesus and pour another Guinness, the set was mercifully short.

Darby O’Gill was playing on the wide screen above the fireplace. In high def, you can really see how bad teeth were back in those days.

Rosie’s usually has a game of some sorts on its sets. With the NCAA men’s basketball tournament approaching, I remembered that on St. Patrick’s Day in 1979, the DePaul Blue Demons beat UCLA to head to the Final Four for the last time in the Chicago school’s history. Bill Murray may have bragged about it on Saturday Night Live.

Loyola made it in 2018. Notre Dame hasn’t made the Final Four since 1978. The Irish women’s team has been there nine times, the last being 2018 when the squad won its second title.

I tried some Reuben eggrolls a friend ordered. Hmm. The Irish and the Chinese built the Transcontinental Railway in the 1860s. The Reuben has been around for about 100 years and has at least three origin stories, according to the internet. One tale is based in Omaha, of all places.

The sandwich and eggroll versions have corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese. It’s served with Thousand Island dressing – which first was known as Sophia’s Special Sauce . A Reuben can also come with a side of Russian dressing.

Geez. Food can be so WOKE!

Ate more corned beef and watched a Star Wars movie

Discombobulated by the first Daylight Saving Time holiday, we headed back to Tom’s for some more corned beef. Ok. DST started March 8. But still.

This first corned beef Tom prepared in the crockpot earlier during St. Patricks’s season turned out tender and good for sandwiches. The next one wound up in soup.

I had that while watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It’s an Irish movie, with many scenes filmed on Skellig Michael. 

I could barely walk along the Cliffs of Moher without getting vertigo. That’s French for being afraid Tom was going to push me down into the deep blue sea, to see if I was really a puffin. 

So, though pretty to see from a distance, Skellig Michael out there in the Atlantic is not on my bucket list of places to visit.

Started watching Dublin Murders

Keeping St. Patrick’s season alive, we’ve been watching Dublin Murders, a nostalgic look back at Ireland in the mid-2000s. The Celtic Tiger is the killer.

Or not.

Dublin Murders is pretty much the Celtic cousin of many Scandinavian detective shows – grumpy grizzled veterans, fresh faced rookie garda, some supernatural stuff  and psychologically scarred up-and-coming sleuths with drinking problems and sad sex lives. 

Conleth Hill, who played baldie eunuch Varys on Game of Thrones plays a boss in Dublin Murders. He has a full head of hair here. I assume all his character’s other body parts are intact, too.

Unlike Game of Thrones, my guess is there will never be any Dublin Murders tours of Ireland’s capital. This could have been made in Cleveland. Are there any mountains in Ohio?

Anyway, 25 or 6 to 4 words later, that’s been my St. Patrick’s season. Maybe I’ll put one of the remaining corned beef chunks in the air fryer sometime this week to relive the memories.