I see a sea of green

The sometimes volatile nature of being a freelancer means that jobs sometimes fall through. This can be disastrous or joyous, depending mostly on the state of one's finances and the weather condition outside. So when I found myself at the last minute not having to work on Friday, I figured it was a good day to do some good, old-fashioned people watching. It was an absolutely beautiful day and it just so happen to be St. Patrick's Day. While I find green beer to be an insult to the otherwise delicious beverage, I do enjoy watching its effects on those who consume large quantities of it.



Sure, the History Channel debunked the myth that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland as exaggeration incurred over centuries of embellished storytelling. What is no exaggeration is the number of slushes it drives into Manhattan every year on the 17th of March - especially when the date falls on a Friday and even more so when the weather is nice, such as it was. They come early and they come drunk. Screams (of the intoxicated variety) tore through Penn Station around 10 am. A short and stocky marine escorted a drunken college kid out of Penn station and invited me to go to Jersey with him and get drunk. I declined and he professed his love to me anyway. A low-ranking restaurant employee tried to sweep fresh puke onto a dustpan, with little success. Everywhere people were wearing whatever green garments they could dig out of their closets. Silly hats, green beads and assorted shamrock crap were available for sale at every street corner, with plenty of takers.





For those on the market for a classier souvenir, the Saint Patrick's Cathedral gift shop offered this statue of St. Patrick for eleven thousand clams.



I'm not a parade-person. I can think of 100 things I would rather do than watch a parade go by, such as picking lint out of my belly button and watching paint dry. But you can't get a sense of the magnitude of the St. Patrick's Day festivities without attending the parade. So I went. For a little bit, which was all I could take. I figure, if I have to watch a parade, give me something to look at, like floats and balloons shaped like Elmo or Capitan Underpants. But no luck, at least not for the 15 minutes I stood, six or seven deep, kiddy corner from St. Pat's Cathedral (the VIP area where no commoners were allowed). What I saw was the color guard on horseback and several servicemen in combat fatigues. Mostly I saw the top of people's heads. Time to move on...



Every bar in town was having some sort of commemoration. Downtown in the financial district they clearly took ambiance a bit more seriously, including a stretch of real grass in the middle of the alley. Drunken, but classy, I suppose was the message.



At the end of the day, the casualties of the green beer staggered home the best they could, in varying levels of impairment, from seriously trashed to behaving mildly like an asshole. All in a day's celebration.

Day at The Daily Show

We've been fans of the Daily Show since way back when it was hosted by Craig Kilborn - before he got weird and moved on to host The Late Late Show. Back in the day when their tag was "When news break, we fix it." So it was really fun to get to go see a taping of the show last Thursday.

It all began with waiting in line for a couple of hours, being entertained by our fellow in-line-standers. People our age, not old tourists from Arkansas like the type you see in line at Letterman. There were some aging hippies, 20-something hipsters, 30-somethings playing hooky from work, and generally no one that stood out as someone who lives outside the tri-state area.

After our obligatory wait in line, we were led into what appeared to be a black box theater with a facsimile of the set of the TV show. It was fairly small and charmingly low rent. I suppose when Jon Stewart jokes that Comedy Central is cheap, he is not exaggerating all that much. The feel of the place is more community access than late night talk show.

We were joking that the guest would probably be some former government worker who has written a book, based on the fact that the guest the night before was Neil Young. Sure enough, it was some guy who was fired from a government job for writing a book critical of the administration.

The show was fun. Before taping began, Stewart came out for a Q&A with the audience. He answered questions ranging from hosting the Oscars ("the goodie bags are unbelievable. You get certificates for lots of stuff, plus you get to choose one production assistant that they will kill and stuff in the bag for you") and hair styling ("This? Do you think someone would do this to me? Of course I do my own hair") to whether he changes diapers at night ("Well, no. I usually wear flannels instead.")

After the show we just so happen to walk by a little Brazilian restaurant on 9th Avenue, "Rice'n'Beans" and figured it would be a good mom's cooking. The place is a hole in the wall and it's hard to even put your coat on without bumping into anything. I want to go back sometime and try the Bacalhau, a staple of Brazilian cuisine that I've never tried, even though I grew up there. My mom refused to allow it in the house because it smells really bad when you cook it - it's dried salted cod, so you picture the foul odor of dry fish. Yummy!

We rounded up our evening out with a drink at the Boxer Bar in the Village. We had to kill sometime because the trains on the North East Corridor (that's Jersey if you're not from around here) were not running. Somebody decided to end it all by jumping in the front of the 7:29 to Trenton. It was about 12:30 am by the time we finally made it home. Didn't get to watch ourselves on TV, but that's OK. We'll be back.