Not too unlike the way I was seein' 'em
I was surprised at how early my voice gave out this year.
This was probably our fifteenth year at the Irish celebration and my friend Ham o' Bone was out of drinking practice, so I thought he'd be in trouble in that arena but it scarcely occurred to me that I was out of singing practice (or what passes for it) at the annual AOH Irish party. But I learned that even if you're hoarse, you can always force a little more when the time comes, i.e. at the penultimate "Give Ireland back to the Irish!"
Ham will be reading so for his benefit (aside: can you do these sort of personal asides in blogs or are they unprofessional?) let me say that in regard to drinking he started slow and tapered off. *grin* We forewent (past tense of forgo?) the usual "shot heard round the world", i.e. the shot of Jameson that begins the festivities and all-in-all I think it a good call. It's the eve of Palm Sunday after all. And neither of us are as young as we used to be. In fact, AOH isn't as young as it used to be. Looking around it's amazing to see how different 1994 is from 2008. Irish was hipper then. (If only Obama was O'Bama.)
It's certainly not every day you leave a Passion play early but it was right on the heels of our outing. Hambone had assumed incorrectly there would be an intermission and ended up having to try to sneak his family of six out just as Pilate was washing his hands. The lights came up and the Bone's were exposed, as if they were leaving in protest.
We started out at dinner at Gordon Biersch's; "building the base" as we call it, and a fine base it was. At AOH we ended up sitting next to the Irish Hulk, the same guy who last year polished off nearly as many beers as Anheuser was able to brew. He was noticeably quieter this year.
The dancers were without their wigs this year. No curly hair. I wouldn't have noticed except for the preponderance of blonde-hair'd Irish dancers whom I dubbed the "Scandinavian Irish dancers". But there was the Andie McDowell lookalike who looked like she was taking an algebra exam and/or drinking prune juice. She must be good, I thought, to frown so much.
The house band - The Hooligans - were magic, as always. During Finnegan's Wake, our audience-participation "lunch" was afforded the highest mark in history. (A quick look at the record though shows that August 6, 2007 also received the 'best lunch in history'. Bad Hooligans, bad!)
"Requests!" they asked. Hambone and I have a perverse knee-jerk reaction to yell out "Pope John Paul Polka" when requests are requested. I still had the invincible ignorance of thinking it harmless (i.e. respectful of our late Pope) but the Hooligans said that they hoped Father Hayes wasn't there, who obviously didn't approve of this one.
About halfway into the song who do we see in the archway? Fr. Hayes. Up from Kentucky and looking stern. And clean-shaven. He'd shaven his beard and mustache since last year, making him look (obviously) very different.
I’ll not forget the first time I saw Fr. Hayes. I was taking an Irish language course at a local Catholic college and in the middle of class he rushes in wearing those strange Dominican robes, a gigantic rosary at his hip like a Colt on a gunslinger. He sat forward in the tiny chair the classroom afforded and eagerly responded in Irish to queries.
After tonight's shenanigans (an Irish word btw) the good padre sang "A Soldier's Song" in Irish and then we all finished with "God Bless America".
[AOH's of years past: 2007; 2006; 2005; 2004; 2003]
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