Is My Band Cool? DOT com

Some of you readers may be from Minnesota where Maudlin is headquartered.  So, you will all understand this.  Others may have to take a trip up here to visit.  …It’s really cold here. Really, really, cold.  It may seem odd to many of our friends to the south that this blog has lay dormant for months since last fall- but like the illusive groundhog, I poked my head out into the frigid reality of Minnesota, and just went back to bed.  Like all burrowing rodents, I was eventually lured out by food coloring and crowds of people in dumb costumes.  I’m, of course, referring to Saint Patrick’s day.

Like many of our treasured holidays, Saint Patrick’s day was a total flop when it was first recognized.  But after many uneventful years, the meaning of the holiday was swapped out with the simple, yet effective, focus of complete drunkenness.  The name remained the same to lend legitimacy. You may remember this model being used for Christmas when the celebration of the birth of the savor was not as popular as the celebration of a fat guy who stages an annual home invasion, pilferes the fridge, and makes advances on your mother, in exchange for cheap Walmart toys wrapped in shinny paper and tape.

But, regardless of how things got the way they are- or what Saint Patrick’s was supposed to be about, the bottom line is clear.  At 10 am on a Wednesday morning, downtown Saint Paul was crawling with a hundred thousand people desiring nothing less than to shame their families and defile themselves in every way possible. …and I would certainly never miss a freak fest like that.

It started out like any other party.  I saw a film crew from a Canadian broadcasting company doing a piece on Saint Patrick’s day so I introduced myself.  “Hey, I’m a douche bag, interview me!” …Why that always works, I’ll never know, but they did proceed to interview me for several minutes.  Ten bucks to whoever can find the footage online, because I can’t.  …and, I mean, obviously they would air my interview.

After that my party buddy, Nick, and I went to the parade to have candy thrown at us by members of NASA.  I don’t know much about what the space program is up to these days, but I’m pretty sure that putting a marching band in a Saint Patrick’s Day parade is a pour use of government funding.  I mean, we can’t even live in space yet, WTF.  Let’s fix that problem, and then maybe have a marching band.

When the parade was done, we walked back to see historic West Seventh street in Saint Paul be destroyed by morons.  I prefer to make Patrick McGovern’s my home base for Saint Patrick’s Day.  When we got there, there were already a thousand people in the joint.  I was hungry and Iron Man Nick had only had some cottage cheese before biking thirty five miles before I woke up… so we decided to carb up on some hamburgers.  Now, on a serious note, McGovern’s is great, and the food is great… any other day of the year.  Every single employee looked like they should have been on suicide watch, and they served my burger on a paper plate with ketchup packets.         …ketchup. Packets. *shudders*

We got stuck sitting right next to a couple of “hilljacks” -Thanks for the scientific terminology Barb! (Barb Abney, that is.  Barb is MPR’s foremost expert on Ohio- the native breeding ground of the hilljack) Nick and I tried really hard to make fun of them in code that their primitive minds couldn’t follow without getting killed.  …there are no picutres also because I didn’t want to die for a photo opp.  …but just imagine that they were so hilljacky that I had to mention it.  That’s a lot of hilljack.

After the carb up, we ventured up to see all the freaks dancing to the DJ’s very non-Irish set.  This guy was the live of the party, and my goal for elder life.  If I could be one part this guy and one part Johnny Cash, I think I’d die happy.  He’s 62 years young, and he was dancing there with his daughter all day.

Later we made the horrifying discovery that some people were wearing Zubas again.  …Although, one of these girls also had a fanny pack on, so they may have both just been from a group home.

There were a whole lot of freaks there, and Nick and I bothered all of them.  One girl thought that wearing a white shirt and letting people write things on her would be fun.  Boy was she dumb.   Then some girls pants fell off of her butt.  I’m really excited to see how many google hits I get from someone googling that exact phrase, btw.

Later, Priscilla joined Nick and I because we still hadn’t managed to get the crap kicked out of us yet, and she wanted to try and fix that.

We inched closer and closer to the drunk couple making out. It was really funny. ...if you were there...

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Some of you may have noticed that when these pictures started it was very noonish, and in the Green Man picture it’s very bedtime-ish.  Well, seeing as well at to work the next day, we called it a night shortly thereafter.  As Nick would say, “…and cut!”

In Brief:

The Marc Pease Experience. …um… if you pick this one off the self and take a look you’ll probably think.  “Oh, Ben Stiller and Jason Schwartzman in a comedy about a musical? Classic!” Then you’d rent it, and then you’d find out this movie has no jokes in it, but but it does have eight full songs from The Wiz in it.  If you’re thinking, “That sounds good, but I’d rather see Stiller and Schawartzman co-star in a movie where they are both pedophiles” then this is really your movie.

That’s all for now, I changed our cats food, and they’re number three-ing (which is the scientific term for excriment that has both the characteristics of number one and number two…) all over the house, and I need to get my hasmat gear…

David