Day. St. Patrick's. Happy.

I'm still tuckered out from "sugaring" (burning maple sap into syrup) with my brother the last three weeks so my energy to get creative this St. Patrick's Day is sapped. HA! Get it? Unlike most years, "sugaring" came pre-March 17 (watch for posts).

That being said, my love for everything Irish has NOT waned. So, here are some of my favorite blog posts from my blog, "Good Craic. Welcome to Eire" (my 2009 trip to Ireland). One note - mute the music on this blog before you open up these links. I'm thinking you won't wanna hear two Celtic tunes playing over one another.

1.  "Ceol" means "music". Live music from Galway and Castle Oranmore in Galway.

2.  "Dathannach". Translation: "Colorful". Various places we visited.

3.  "Fear Faiche" loosely means, "green man". Pastoral photos set to verse.

4.  "Teach tábhairne" means "pub" in Gaelic. Me - in front of a lot of pubs.

5.  " Mé " means "me". More me - all over Ireland.

Enjoy...I know I did. Slainte!

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Fight scene from "The Quiet Man".

Couples don't walk like that anymore, you know? Classic John Ford (director) - and Wayne and Maureen O'Hara and Barry Fitzgerald. Watch it.

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Tullamore Dew. Drink up, laddies!

And lasses. My friend, Marisa, graces one of Tullamore's print ads in their latest advertising campaign. You can read more about it here. I'm jealous - if you know me well than you know of my affinity for anything Irish.

That's Marisa and I at the Los Angeles ShortsFest in July for the film I wrote. See...I told you it's her mug in that ad. DRINK TULLAMORE DEW WHISKEY!

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The art of Kevin Dillon.

I purchased these really, very gorgeous pieces at Irish Fest in Milwaukee Friday (no - wait, one was an early birthday gift...thanks, Jen). $40 each/framed. That's a steal. TOP:  "May you always find three welcomes...in a garden in the summer, at a fireside during winter & whatever the day or season, in the kind eyes of a friend." - Gaelic welcoming prayer. BOTTOM:  "Leave room in your garden for the fairies to dance."

Good luck on the last one...have you seen my garden lately? Rather than me go on about these pieces, read this:

...Celtic artist Kevin Dillon has rediscovered the same mediaeval techniques used by these monks. Using a mortle & pestle, Kevin crushes semi-precious stones - lapis lazuli, cinnabar, azurite, orpiment and malachite to make his paints. Using a dip pen or goose quill, the letters are meticulously applied by hand to the calf skin vellum. One at a time the colors are applied - first blue, followed by the reds, then each remaining color in turn, The final illumination is achieved using 24K gold leaf. The artist's seal, a stylized design of his initials, is imprinted into a molten, charred wax at the bottom of each piece...

Click on READ MORE for a couple detailed photographs. You can purchase more of Kevin Dillon's artwork here.

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Goitse!

A big fan? Drunk? Who knows. Who cares - he was having a ball. That's "Go-cha". Lazy FB users who won't go to my blog can see this video here.

Great band. And Aine ain't too bad to look at either. See them below on Balcony TV. Again, lazy FB users who won't go to my blog can catch Goitse here.



You can find more information on the band on their website.

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Cairde maith, deoch maith, ceol go maith!

Happy Irish Fest, Milwaukee!

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Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

"Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra" from Going My Way (link for FB).

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Charles Haughey versus Don Lydon. Dublin-style!

A good Irish door is easy to find - unless you're Irish politician Don Lydon. After a heated discussion with Charles Haughey (left), then Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, Lydon (right) was having difficulty finding the door out of Charles' wood panelled office in Dublin. After a few moments, Charles looked up.

CHARLIE
What are you still doing here?

LYDON
I can't find the door, Prime Minister.

CHARLIE
Then why don't you jump out the fucking window?

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dia dhuit (dee a ghwit). Twenty Major.

One of Dublin's most notorious bloggers. Check it out - and may God be with you.

I come from Dublin, Ireland. This is my blog. I am a kind, considerate, gentle person who always sees the good in the world.

I also have four arms, a hundred brothers and I own Tallaght. Some people ask “Is Twenty Major’s real name really Twenty Major?”. To them I say “Twenty Major’s real name is Horace Understudy. Or Twenty Major’s real name is Arnold Micstand.”

I drink in Ron’s bar. He has the best Guinness in Dublin. He is also a big cunt so I wouldn’t bother dropping in. I drink with my mates Jimmy the Bollix, Stinking Pete, Dirty Dave, Lucky Luciano and sometimes Splodge who has a big fuck off birthmark on the side of his face, hence the name.

I have a dog called Bastardface, he is enormous and eats knackers. I also have a cat that I rescued from the banks of the canal near Dolphin’s Barn. He is called Throatripper and he kills stuff.

If you want, you can see Twenty Major take a poop all over the world.

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Pipes & Drums. Irish Fest. Milwaukee.

Here's the link for those of you on FB.

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Frogwater. County Clare. East side Milwaukee.

After some eats and some drinks at my new place in Greendale, college buddy Jim and I headed to the Milwaukee's eastside for some Irish music. Check out Frogwater's site and their music on YouTube. I will definitely keep tabs on this bunch.

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Happy St. Patty's Day! Pubs of Ireland. "Teach tábhairne".

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here are a few posts I featured on my Irish travel blog - "Good Craic. Welcome to Ireland" - recounting my trip to Ireland this past fall. You can click here to see the Irish blog in its entirety.

"Teach tábhairne" means "pub" in Gaelic. I think half our trip was spent in pubs. Click on READ MORE! to see me standing in more Irish pub doorways than you can spit at. And no we didn't have a drink in every pub whose doorway I stood. But no doubt there were plenty o'pubs we drank in that we didn't snap a shot either. Slan!


West Clare, Co. Clare

Swords, Co. Dublin. And no, it wasn't a gay bar. That was back in Galway.

Kinsale.


Kinsale.

Cahir, Co. Tipperary

Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare

Cashel, Co. Tipperary

Cahir, Co. Tipperary

Cahir, Co. Tipperary

These last two are blurry but I included them as they were, I felt, important pubs on our travels. Tig Coili in Galway, Co. Galway is the home of traditional Irish music in Galway. We spend a few hours there.

The other pub is The Local Bar in Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary, where our cottage was. It's run by Thomas and Gavin and their father and we spent many evenings here with the boys. More on Ardfinnan later.

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"Mór"! Johnnie Fox's Pub in Co. Dublin.

"Mór" means "grand" in Gaelic. And Johnnie Fox's is the grandest, best ever pub/tavern I've ever been in (The Safe House in Milwaukee is #2). The only way to describe it to you is to have you see what I saw. So I shot this very crude video of me entering the front door at one end of the pub and then meandering through it.

Situated in Glencullen, south of Dublin in the Dublin Mountains, Johnnie Fox's was established in 1798 and is the highest pub in Ireland. NO trip to Dublin should be without a visit here. And they run cabs back and forth from the B&B's and hotels to the pub so no one inadvertently drives off the road. It's steep and curvy. Check out Johnnie Fox's website here.

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"Mé" in Ireland

"Mé" means "me". Click on READ MORE! for a few more shots of me traipsing around Ireland this past fall.

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"Ceol" & Alec Finn.

"Ceol" means "music". When my friend Justyna and I were in Ireland in 2006, we didn't get to see any traditional Irish music performed in pubs as it was April (off-season) AND we weren't on the west coast, where the traditional music is more prevalent.

On my travels to Ireland this past fall, I was not only lucky enough to be able to listen to traditional Irish music in the pubs but I got to listen to Alec Finn, one of Celtic music's most influential musicians and a founding member of DeDanaan, play in his castle. Finn's debut solo album, Blue Shamrock, received critical lauds, described by Hot Press as "a beautifully crafted, highly satisfying, collection of Irish airs". You might wanna pause the Celtic jukebox at the top of the blog before listening to this.

Alec and his wife, Leonie, live at Oranmore Castle in Oranmore, Co. Galway. Oranmore Castle is family friend Michael's ancestral home and the purpose of our visit was to spread Michael's father's ashes over the sides of the castle turret. They graciously invited Michael and I into their home/castle and we had a wonderful time. Irish music, live performance, port wine, roaring fire, castle...a high point of the trip.

The Irish bouzouki, the instrument Alec is playing, is a derivative of the Greek bouzouki, adopted into and adapted for Irish music from the late 1960s onward. Not sure which bouzouki Alec is playing, but I assume it's the Greek version (it's what he's known for).

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TGIF! presents..."Riverdance!"

The broadcast of Riverdance at Eurovision 1994 was the FIRST occasion American audiences witnessed what became a worldwide phenomenon. I remember seeing it on television on PBS and running to my theater friends, saying, "you've got to see this!". None of them had.

Oh - and I thought this was an appropriate "TGIF! presents..." as it's my FIRST "TGIF! presents..." since arriving back in WI (to stay) AND I'm headed to Ireland next Wednesday and will be remiss in posting for 10 days.

The video is worth seeing just for Jean Butler's (the redhead) dancing. Please skip ahead to the 1:40 mark. Enjoy. Slan!

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Singing to my god daughter, Gwyneth.

I was practicing this traditional Irish drinking song for my trip to Ireland in late September. It's called, "Here's A Health to the Company". I sang it once for a girl I love...thought I'd practice for another girl I love - my god daughter, Gwyneth.

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Quote of my lifetime! Homeland Security chief puts both feet in her mouth while simultaneously shoving her head up her ass.

(My buddy Tony blogs at Tuesdays. He has a regular blogpost called, "Quote of the Day".)

In an interview on CNN's John King last week, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano stated, "And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil."

You must be fucking joking me. Well - if I wasn't completely certain before, I'm positive now that eventually illegal aliens in the U.S. will be declared legal by amnesty.

(OK - this is where you must envision I'm blogging in Ireland again. I did this once before and it's precious.).

This cunt has already apologized to U.S. veterans for saying that some of them could partake in right-wing extremism acts upon return to U.S. soil (by the way, according to the cunt's own definition, I'm a right-wing extremist; so is my mother). And the cunt's investigating ICE workplace raids - curtailing them in the process - making sure they're necessary and prudent. This - our chief of Homeland Security????

This is for that dumb cunt Chief of Homeland Security who's apparently not familiar with one of the fundamental laws that her own department is in charge of upholding: the statute reads, “Any alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers . . . shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both.” Is that enough of a crime for you, you stupid, dumb cunt? Send your resignation in NOW!

(OK, I'm back in the U.S. I hate Janet N. Don't be turned off by the language in this post. I AM sensitive to my readers, but here's a woman who does not know how to do her own job while our country is experiencing its worst unemployment in decades. I'm sorry but there's no excuse for it. Besides, I was blogging, in part, from Ireland, where the word "cunt" is used freely in everyday language. "When in Rome...")

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The Old Mill, Part Deux.

This photo of an old mill in Co. Kilkenny, Ireland was originally a part of my St. Patrick's Day posts. I contribute to the blog, Ditalini Press, and each month someone's responsible for suggesting a topic for the other bloggers to write about. I had April - my topic was to write a story derived from this photo.

My contribution is noted here.

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Got dirt in me shoes & bits of skull at me feet. "A Skull in Connemara" feckin' awesome!

That's right - those are bits of skull left over from the A+ production of Martin McDonagh's "A Skull in Connemara" by Theatre Tribe in North Hollywood.

Billed as "a bone crushing dark feckin' comedy", this was one of the best theater experiences of my life (as a patron). Theater Tribe is an intimate space - I don't think it's even a 99-seat theater. I sat in the front row - I did some research on the play and I wanted to be in the thick of the action (ergo...the bits of dirt and skull left at my feet). McDonagh wrote the screenplay, In Bruges; won a 2007 Academy Award for his short film, Six Shooter, and has published some wonderfully dark Irish plays - including, "The Cripple of Innishmaan" (reading), "The Pillowman" (read), "The Lieutenant of Innishmore" (read) and "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" (Tony winner). I enjoy his sense of humor and his dark comedy.

Director Stuart Rogers outdid himself. The acting was superb (Irish accents were excellent and I'm a stickler for 'either do them right or don't do them at all' - which would be hard 'cause it takes place in Ireland), the story was fascinating and the set - never saw anything quite like it. In front of my eyes, the Irish cottage was transformed into a graveyard - I mean the actors were actually standing in half-dug graves shoveling dirt. If part of the job of theater is to make one believe you're actually there (that's a rhetorical question), it succeeded. I congratulate the actors - Morlan Higgins, John K. Linton, Jeff Kerr McGivney and Jayne Taini (that's Jenny O'Hara above, who was taking the night off), as well as the crew. Brav-feckin'-o!

Here's the review in Variety. I went last Saturday on closing night. The audience's rousing cheers and clapping soon morphed into a beat that complemented the Irish music and we continued clapping until the actors returned for a 2nd bow. Too bad. You missed a great show.

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