Page 2 of 3

Posted on

Alcoholism and Irish Blood

Today is St. Patrick’s Day in America and while the day is intended to celebrate Saint Patrick, it is really a day for celebrating the Irish and getting drunk.
There are all kinds of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

We have parades. We have pints of green beer selling for a nickel a glass. We wear green or live in fear of getting pinched.

Beyond the laughter, the bawdiness and the ubiquitous curse of The Green Beer — I wonder about a deeper cultural and ethnic issue bothering the whole idea of getting drunk in the name of a Saint in celebration of cultural icons.
If there another national holiday dedicated to one culture — where the overarching idea of the day is to get blasted and bleary-eyed?
Is there a reason people live to get drunk on St. Patty’s Day?

Do we honor the Irish by getting falling-down drunk?

Is there a genetic predisposition in the Irish population for alcoholism and, if there is, what does that say about our need to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by imbibing? 

Continue reading → Alcoholism and Irish Blood

Posted on

Brown Paper Bag Experiences

We have all been subject to “Brown Paper Bag Experiences” when others evaluate us not by our inner selves — but by our outward appearances — and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:

I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York’s liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don’t know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler – unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul – but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag – converting, that is.

Continue reading → Brown Paper Bag Experiences

Posted on

Underage Backstage at Barrymore’s Bar

Barrymore’s Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska is unique. It is located in the backstage area of what used to be the Stuart Theatre. You enter the bar through an alley. The bar entrance was the performer’s stage door when the theatre opened in 1929.

Barrymore’s was always dark and musky and smelling of sawdust and rope. The Stuart theatre is still a performance space with seats and a stage and on the other side of the fire curtain remains Barrymore’s — still backstage — and still thriving with life and ambition and still giving off a strange ambience of being someplace you don’t belong but were always meant to be in the end.

Barrymore’s is where the radio people I used to work with would hang out before, during and after work because the station was on the eighth floor of the same building. If I joined them during the day I always had a pop while those around me would slowly make their way into the slosh. One day my friends and I were hanging out downtown after school and we decided to go into Barrymore’s.

Barrymore’s was an upper class bar. It wasn’t like the bar troughs clotted along downtown where University of Nebraska-Lincoln students would head for the cheapest buzz they could find. The five of us sat down together at a tiny round table. The waitress came over and smiled and asked what we were drinking as she placed a cocktail napkin before each of us. She said drinking in such a way we knew she mean alcohol and not pop or water.

Continue reading → Underage Backstage at Barrymore’s Bar

Posted on

A Toast to Pyramid

It caught my attention recently after watching musical performer Franz Ferdinand on Saturday Night Live that an advertisement I never really noticed too well popped up. It announced that the musical performance on Saturday Night Live was sponsored by Budweiser, still proclaiming itself to be the ‘King of Beers’. I of course have long disagreed with this title however the monarchy apparently continues, no doubt in part because of low prices and widespread advertising. I would like to suggest that if it is available to you, you entertain Pyramid Ales & Lagers as an alternative.

Continue reading → A Toast to Pyramid

Posted on

Kate: Chapter 13

The Peculier Pub is not particularly peculiar in any way other than how it has a large number of incredibly delectable beers on tap yet somehow manages to attract a myriad of people who come in to spend their money on watered down commercial American swill, the sort that would generally be found in large kegs at parties with people all around it doing hand stands and trying to drink as much as possible without getting alcohol poisoning.

Continue reading → Kate: Chapter 13