A Guinny for a guinea

Happy Potato Day, all. I spent this weekend getting back to my Irish roots. The Dropkick Murphys kicked ass on Saturday afternoon. We blew off the opening bands and showed up just as the second opener was wrapping up. The place was completely packed, teeming with boyish crewcutted men in newsboy caps. Joe used his concert instinct to steer us to a decent spot on the right side of the stage, near the front. We were behind a couple of skinheads and in front of two drunk chicks who were hanging off each other like boxers and kept elbowing us. The house lights went down to the mournful strains of The Foggy Dew and then the giant Dropkicks banner dropped down and they exploded onto the stage. Great show, what can I say? They did all the tunes I wanted to hear: Bastards on Parade, the Gauntlet, Blackout, The Dirty Glass, Tessie (complete with video intro by Lenny DiNardo)... and they did a ripping version of Dirty Water to get the hometown pride flowing. After the show I grabbed a pic of the Citgo sign on my cameraphone and made it my new phone wallpaper.

Yesterday Judy and I were in Southie for the parade. Her aunt, a nun, lives a couple of blocks off the parade route so we went to her place, watched the politician's breakfast on TV, and played with her neice and nephew, then went out to line up along the police barriers. Mostly the parade is what you'd expect: marching bands in kilts, high school color guard squads, staties on horseback, politicians shaking hands and kissing babies, old guys in funny vehicles, kids throwing candy and bead necklaces, and people garbed in various shades of green drinking from strange containers. Good times.