seeing green

Did you know almost half the girls in Cleveland are half Irish, half Polish? That is a fact I made up just now. - Bridget's right it seems.

Like many of my generation and possibly the previous, many of our parents were no longer obligated to marry within ethnicity, as the common bond of Catholicism tended to be sufficient, and we were mostly potato-eating peasant stock anyway on either side anyway, with some sense of diluted and abstract ethnicity.

I don't identify strongly with either side, as my parents and grandparents have little in the way of nationalistic tendencies, though I've evidently got rabble-rousers of the Easter Rising variety from way back when. I don't do much for St. Patrick's Day because while I enjoy infrequent libations, I don't drink in large quantities and can't stand large masses of drunk people. I don't like most bars. I think corned beef is gross, never tell anyone to "Erin Go Bragh" and the caricature of Irish culture gets to be a bit much.

It was bad enough in grade school doing fake stepdancing in music class or having your first grade teacher suggest adding "O'" or "Mc" to the front of your last name which looks really stupid when you've got a long certain ethnic surname like mine.

I dig the poetry and art, and the mythology and the music, but not on March 17th. Some people I know are way into the whole Irish festival thing and seeing these sucky local bands that sound great when you've chugged too much Guinness but having a fiddler in your group doesn't make it more authentic, and IRA t-shirts are not cool.

Still, despite my previous paragraphs, this is the best Deep Purple tribute act turned 70's punk band ever. I think one of the reasons why "The Kids" go back to the early punk acts has to do with some sense of relevance to the current situation paired with anger and power chords.