A Day I Shall Not Soon Remember

Ahh, St. Patrick's Day. Is there a better reason to drink for an entire day than to celebrate a man who mythically banished snakes from Ireland? Not in Chicago. As is the custom here, unless St. Patrick's Day falls on a Saturday, it is celebrated the Saturday before March 17.

This year's St. Patrick's Day observed also happened to be the birth date of Alex, which gave us even more reason to drink the entire day, as he unmythically banished snakes from Woodstock, Illinois, as far as I know. In addition, John and Ari came into town from Porkopolis, bringing with them their fat bull dyke dog, Frannie, who is a compulsive overeater and a bit of a ham for the camera, as you can see here in this picture, which was taken after Frannie ate an entire ham and a camera.

In honor of Patrick and Alex, Jester and I decided to have a get-together beginning at 8:30 in the morning -- or morn', for you leprechauns. Ari made "Irish car bomb" cupcakes. And we also had a drink called an Irish car bomb! Wha?! That's like naming a drink with Chicago-based alcohols the Cub, or a New Orleans-based drink the Hurricane.

I also made several pounds of bacon and sausage patties -- St. Pattie's patties, if you will (you don't have to). Our place still reeks of pan-fried meat. Not wanting to alienate anyone, Jester and I made green jello shots for the Catholics and orange jello shots laced with arsenic for the Protestant bastards who claim loyalty to William of Orange and his whore wife Mary.

As you may know, I have given up drinking for Lent, save for last Saturday and tomorrow. Thus, I had my first Guinness around 8 a.m. on Saturday (during the aforementioned meat pan-frying). It was orgasmic. My last beer of the day would be sometime between 1:30 and 2 a.m. I have no idea how I made it that long, but I'll be happy to tell you what happened along the way.

As people started to show up, I cranked a delightful St. Patrick's Day mix I had prepared last March 18 in anticipation of this moment. Gregerson showed up with vanilla ice cream to make Guinness floats. He also gave Alex some pink socks for his birthday, but luckily not a pink sock.

A decent crowd showed up for the party. We did our best to recreate The Troubles, although instead of real car bombs, we had the aforementioned alcoholic car bombs, and instead of Ulster, we had an Alternative Ulster, and instead of Sinn Fein, we had whiskey, and instead of Bloody Sunday, we had Bloody Mary. I hope she's feeling better. I'm usually a much better brick juggler.

Chandler invented something that will put me in an early grave. First, he wrapped some bacon around a deviled egg. And then he went a step further and made a deviled egg sandwich by putting a deviled egg stuffing side down on a sausage patty. It was met with significant fanfare.

Saint Chandler, as he was thereafter canonized, then started passing out communion in the form of sausage patties. The body of Christ, indeed.

A little bit before noon, we played "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" repeatedly until we could muster the courage to walk to Rocks with Solo cups full of beer.

At Rocks, our brood became even larger, stretching across the front wall of Rocks and occasionally spreading into the middle, like an angry amoeba -- fluid, spry, dangerous.

Over the course of the day, I saw the following people: Tron, Magdog, a whole bunch of teachers, some teachers' significant others, book readers, Judson, Bob Terwilliger, an Aussie, several Katies, several Joes, James Joyce, Craic, Ace Frehley, Tana, Christ, my brother, whippets doing whip-its, green, and the back of my eyelids. Interestingly, I never saw myself, nor did I see Kirsten Dunst, as I had expected.

I have no idea where someone got a green feather boa, but I must say that it was the most captivating green feather boa I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Kyla was not as captivated, as she kept having problems seeing out of one eye. Remember that.
Feeling haughty, Alex showed off his pink sock, but luckily not his pink sock.People fed Alex green beer, but only in pitchers, as anything smaller might have come across as effeminate -- or at least more effeminate than a dude wearing a boa on his head carrying pink socks, although luckily not a pink sock.

He then made every woman's dream come true. Get it? Come? No? You see, Holt, the gesture in this picture emulates a male performing oral sex on a female. The term "come" can mean to bring to climax, in the sexual sense, so what I have done here is a bit of a pun, or, as the French might say, double entendre. I hope this clears things up.

Kyla wasn't nearly excited, as she had hoped two colorblind invisible men would make the same type of gesture. As you can't see, they aren't doing it here.
No worries, though, because what she lost in imaginary men sticking their non-existent tongues through her fingers, she gained in shamrock-shaped monocles and flamboyantly drowsy husbands.
I kind of got sick of all the contrived cunnilingus talk, so I just grabbed Jester and held her, which she loves almost as much as when I sing to her while she sleeps every night.
After she shoved me away -- with love, mind you -- I started a bird flipping contest. Chandler lost.

I won $5 from Gregerson at Silver Strike bowling, which is of no relevance.

Eventually, the green boa became self-aware and started choking Alex. To combat this turn of events and divert the boa's attention, Adam cleared a space and started dancing seductively. There was a lot of collar touching. You may remember Adam as the deity who is to 30 in 8 what bunny hills are to clumsy women named Natasha. He drank scotch all day. Remember that.

And then he started pointing at people, which had a magnetic effect on Jason, made Jeremy think about whether now is the right time for Hollywood to remake In the Army Now, and prompted George to start pointing at people and Andy to develop a fear of cameras pointing at him.

Tim just stood there and made love to the camera with his eyes, but not his penis -- and we would learn why later.
Christoff started creeping things out, as he's wont to do.

At some point, things kind of got away from us, coincidentally around the time Chandler and I started drinking Bushmill's on the rocks to chase our pints of Guinness. I plugged somewhere between $20 and $80 into the jukebox to ensure that "Whiskey in the Jar" was played at least once an hour. A woman shoved her chest in Gregeson's face while sitting at the bar. A bearded man extolled me on the virtues of steroids. I went on an unintentional hunger strike. Some people puked at Rocks (in the bathrooms, thankfully). The teachers and their significant others went to Gino's East to get some pizza, found a half a case of beer, drank the half case of beer, locked a stranger in a closet at Gino's East, and refused to let him out until they were done eating. Brick killed a man -- with a trident. At some point, Adam lost feeling in the left side of his body, which means he may or may not have given himself a scotch-induced stroke. The college kids across the street from us had a party, and one of them jumped from a third-story balcony onto the concrete below without breaking any limbs or losing his life.

As day turned into night, things looked bleak. Despite our best efforts to prevent it, Chandler and I made it to the Double Door by ten to see Razorlight. Chandler bought me a beer, which I quickly returned to him. I must have looked well, because when I ordered a Diet Coke and two waters from the bar, the bartendress refused to take any money from me.

The opening band -- whose name I can't recall, but I think it had "wild" in the title -- sounded like they really wanted to be The Killers from several years ago. Razorlight was awesome, but their set was terribly short. They played for 45 minutes, and then their encore was two songs, bringing their running time to approximately one hour. Short, but sweet, and we were only about 15 feet from the stage, so that was cool.

Since I had forgotten to eat much over the course of the day, Chandler and I went back to Rocks after the show, and Creature met up with us. It was decidedly less crowded than when we left. The mini corn dogs provided significant relief, and allowed me to ingest a green beer. We took a picture.

Meanwhile, Tim showed us his thing, which is quite long, weirdly shaped, and contained 186 car bombs.

Paper wangs aside, a little bit before 2, I realized that I needed some sleep, so we left, and I sprinted home, for fear of the goblins.

The next morning came too quickly. My body missed the shaking, heart palpitations, and pointed head pain that comes with drinking for 18 hours. Needing something besides Excedrin Migraine in my system, I (along with Jester, John, Kyla, and Alex) went to the Golden Apple for some breakfast. I ordered off the menu, going with a cheeseburger patty and eggs over easy, with some hash browns and a chocolate milkshake because it seemed like the thing to do. We parked about a half a block south on Lincoln, and saw this empty bottle of Jameson sitting in a doorway, keeping a silent, but poignant vigil, reminding everyone who passed exactly what St. Patrick's Day is all about.