Not being Irish myself (or if I am Irish, which is technically possible, then it's a negligible amount), I've always felt a little weird about investing too heavily in St. Patrick's Day. On the one hand, it's a holiday--and I am Catholic. On the other hand, nothing is more annoying that someone with maybe a thimbleful of Irish heritage who dresses all in green on St. Paddy's Day, runs around trying to pinch people who aren't in green, and finishes the night getting sloppy drunk on cheap beer. So in honor of the faux Irish, today I thought I'd count down the three worst drunks I've ever known--not worst in terms of consumption or their burgeoning alcoholism, but worst in the sense that they were a royal pain to hang out with when drinking. Here we go:
3.) McPoser. I went to a small Catholic college, which meant that about 1/2 the student body claimed some kind of Irish heritage. Of course, these were all clean-cut middle class white kids, so McPoser decided to create an identity for himself out of his Irishness. And, not being particularly tough, he was forced to rely on alcoholism (rather than fighting) as a way to establish his Irish cred. (I believe that his parents were accountants from an affluent suburb.) Sadly, this meant that most of the time not spent mooning after his increasingly impatient girlfriend was spent throwing up. This was capped by a particularly spectacular display one St. Patrick's Day, when he vomited Guinness all over the bar at our favorite Irish pub, more or less guaranteeing that nobody could go back there again during this lifetime.
2.) Drowsy. I envy guys. When you're a guy and your buddy makes a drunken ass out of himself in public, you get to leave him there. When you're a girl out with a drunken girlfriend, you have to shepherd her out of the bar, make sure she gets home ok, and find something to tie back her hair for the inevitable restroom sojourn. Once, I even woke up on a scratchy wool couch at a ski lodge miles from my college--where I had spent the night trying to use my sweater as a makeshift blanket because my friend wanted to hook up with some guy she met at a bar, and I got to be the one to go along and make sure that (if he turned out to be psycho) we could both get murdered instead of just her. I think it goes without saying that his mom is the one who found me the next morning then went on a tear through the house screaming about the fact that there were strange girls in the living room. Anyway, Drowsy makes the list due to her tendency to pass out in public after about 5 drinks. This meant that we were constantly pulling her out of booths and dragging/carrying her home. This, of course, culminated in the night that I had to crawl under the stall door of the filthiest restroom in Florence (in one of the clubs that catered to international students--which at the time meant that they played "Gangsta's Paradise" once every 20 minutes) so that I could retrieve Drowsy, who had somehow managed to pass out while on the toilet.
1.) DramaLlama. But the worst experiences belong to the time spent with DramaLlama, who enjoyed nothing so much as getting shit-faced and then pretending to try to kill herself. Obviously, she didn't actually want to kill herself. She just liked having a group of girls following her around, concerned about her safety and trying to "save" her while telling her about what a good person she is. It was a lot like those guys who pretend that they would fight you if there weren't a bunch of people holding him back. Thus, so long as there were plenty of people around to prevent her, she would get plastered and try to throw herself down staircases, out the window, etc., etc. Of course, after one night like this, I was ready to hold everyone else back and just let her jump.
When it comes to regrettable TV specials, there's one name the stands above the rest . . . yes, I'm talking about the infamous Star Wars Christmas Special. Many thanks to AnneArchy for this link to an article about the holiday menace from Vanity Fair, which gives us a peek into the demented minds that brought you singing stormtroopers.
Interestingly, I think it also gives you glimpses into the causes behind the travesty that would become the new trilogy and the Jar-Jar-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. It has long been my contention that the major problem with the newer movies is George Lucas' ego--in short, that he is either unwilling to listen to those who point out that some of his ideas (ahem, Greedo shooting first, midichlorians, making the main plot line of the new trilogy into an extended intergalactic C-Span) are total crap. Though there is also the possibility that no one is brave enough to tell him that in the first place. And, once it sprialled out of control when Lucas couldn't do as much work on it as planned, the resultant disaster apparently helped teach him that he needed to exercise total control over all of his projects. Anyway, consider this:
"Lucas was intent on building The Star Wars Holiday Special, as it would be called, around Wookiees—specifically, the family of Chewbacca, Han Solo’s shaggy sidekick, as they outwitted Imperial forces to come together on Life Day, the Wookiee equivalent of Christmas. Suddenly, Vilanch says, the special was in danger of looking like “one long episode of Lassie.”
“I said: ‘You’ve chosen to build a story around these characters who don’t speak. The only sound they make is like fat people having an orgasm,’” the 250-plus-pound Vilanch recalls. “In fact, I told Lucas he could just leave a tape recorder in my bedroom and I’d be happy to do all the looping and Foley work for him.”
"Lucas met these comments with a “glacial” look. “This was his vision, and he could not be moved,” Vilanch says. “And of course Star Wars was so gigantic that he had been validated a hundred times over. So he had what a director needs to have, which is this insane belief in their personal vision, and he was somehow going to make it work.”
And somehow they ended up integrating this Bea Arthur. Even the guy from Jefferson Starship (Bea Arthur and Jefferson Starship?) describes the result in terms of a drug hallucination.
Today's Daily Fluff is about one of the all time bad Christmas songs, "Do They Know It's Christmas?", but there are actually many, many bad Christmas songs that deserve to be noticed as well. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" may win the coveted Bad Preachy Activist Rock Award, but there are so many other seasonal irritations, it's hard to choose an all-time worst. Though I do have some contenders:
"The Christmas Shoes"--A strong competitor for the win, with its cheesy story about some poor Dickensian urchin trying to buy shoes for his dying mother. If your mother truly only has hours to live, what are you doing shopping for shoes? How will shoes (as opposed to a blouse or dress or something) make her look, "beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight"? And, of course, it has a section sung by overly precious child singers which threatens to send the listener into a diabetic coma. And it may just be me, but it's also royally annoying to hear how self-congratulatory the narrator is about helping the kid buy the shoes when he (the kid) came up short. Jeez, I did that the other day for a woman who was short for her breakfast muffin--it doesn't exactly make you Philanthropist of the Year.
"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"/"Jingle Bell Rock"--These are mostly here as part of my campaign against the inappropriate use of the word "rock" as a verb. I cannot think of anything that has less call for being "rocked" than Christmas, unless it's the Children's Burn Unit at St. Vincent's Hospital.
Anything by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra--Now I realize that a lot of people really like their stuff. On the other hand, a lot of people also think that Carlos Mencia is funny, and that is clearly not true. It's over-produced, generic, and ridiculously bombastic. And yes, I realize that statement could apply equally to both Carlos Mencia and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which is kind of my point.
So, anyone have any least favorite Christmas carols to add to the list?
If you've ever taken homemade cookies into work (hey, some people do those kinds of things!), you'll notice that people are always a little suspicious of them. They give them a little test nibble, ready to bolt off to the bathroom and trash the thing. And if the cookies are good, they can hardly keep the surprise out of their voice. Personally, I blame the holiday potluck for this lack of trust.
Christmas is the one time of year when people will spontaneously bring in their homemade treats, and some people have some very odd ideas of the concept of a Christmas treat. So there you are, standing by the dessert table, where someone has placed their zucchini-carrot bread because, "it's so sweet, it's really a dessert." And you get cajoled into trying the thing because the cook is in your department and standing right next to you. So there you are, with a mouthful of dry death while she chatters on about it, and you think: "Yes, you really can taste the zucchini; no, I don't believe you when you say that your kids really love it; and yes, it does make a difference that you ran out of sugar and substituted Splenda instead."
People do some strange things in the name of the Christmas cookie too. Personally, my pet peeve is the chocolate chip cookies with M&Ms instead of chocolate chips. They're always really hard, and something strange happens to the M&Ms in the baking process so that the effect is like eating sawdust filled with little chocolate rocks. (Actually, my absolute biggest problem are cookies where you think it's full of chocolate chips and it turns out to be full of raisins. It's not really a mistake, but why are some people so happy to put raisins in everything? Anything that is good with a raisin in it would be much better with a chocolate chip.) Also, those chewy candied fruits--no one likes those things, and yet people keep adding them to their desserts. Anyway, what are your Christmas dessert travesties?
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