irish you weren't such a fucking asshole

I was gonna write this whole thing about how dumb St. Patricks day is. I mean, I’ve got an Irish name…although, and this is the real germ of the issue that I have with St. Paddys…I’m not actually Irish. I’m American. I’ve never hung out in Ireland and although the ancestors I have who were Irish actually came to America and became cops (I think…someone needs to look that up. I need an intern) which is pretty Irish, for sure, I don’t actually know those people. I think they were dead by the time I was born.
I’ve actually told an irish guy in a bar that I was Irish, because my name was Brendan Kelly, and this was in Amsterdam, so I thought we’d have a nice little bond over being a couple of micks far from home. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was wrong. I may have an irish name, but that’s it. He was pissed, and looking back, sure, he was kind of an asshole, but he had a good point. I can’t just walk around claiming to be from a place I’ve never even been. That ain’t right. I mean, what are the irish traditions in my family? Drinking whiskey? I don’t even think I’ve ever seen anyone in the ‘irish’ line of my family drink whiskey, and they sure as shit never corned any beef, granted me any wishes or cried over blighted potatoes.
Really, let’s be honest, St. Patricks day is a day where everyone acts like a bigger asshole than they already are, and if you’re already a super big asshole, you’ll probably find it easy to justify your shitty behavior by saying something like “I’m Irish, man. This is my fucking DAY!” But guess what? YOU AREN’T. IT’S NOT. And besides, you already get too drunk and act like a dick every weekend, what’s the big deal?
Anyway, good thing I decided not to write about this, right?
Yeah. Instead I’ll write about this great moment in my life when I went to London with my friend Pete. We were there to see the original reformation of the pogues with Shane, and the first night, we went to this bar called the Underworld. At the door, people recognized me as the guy from the Lawrence Arms. Now, this was crazy for a few reasons- 1) this was a while ago, and I wasn’t really getting recognized very often anywhere, as my band was very new and completely unknown 2) I was in fucking LONDON, which is a far cry from getting recognized, you know, at my local dive bar and 3) I STILL don’t really get recognized for being in a band, even after all this tremendous, rocketship full of success that I’ve had…It was completely strange, but make no mistake, I was feeling pretty cool.
We walked into the bar and got busy drinking beers and doing shots and talking to these guys who were fans of my band and also Pete’s band (which was, lets be fair, an extremely popular band…so there’s that) and I started laughing at this guy who was down the bar. He looked just like Danzig. He was short and burly with long hair and big stupid porkchop sideburns and he was wearing all leather. I was smoking cigarettes, drinking shots, talking to Londoners about this danzig impersonator at the end of the bar, probably being loud enough that he could hear me. In short, I was really thinking that I was killing it. In my mind, I was absolutely the COOLEST. Fuck man, who knew I was so popular all the way in London, right? Hey, check it out dudes, Danzig is coming this way!
I stifled a laugh as the danzig guy came up and tapped me on the shoulder. Real dismissively, I turned around and through some really snide giggles said something like, “uh, yeah, what can I do for you, Danzig?”
And he said (I am not making this up…I swear. I’m actually laughing out loud as I write this, because it’s the funniest thing that’s maybe ever happened to me):

“You’re on fire.”

And I said “huh?”
And he repeated himself.

“You’re on fire.”

And he pointed at my leg, and guess what? He was absolutely right. I was on fire. My jeans were burning. Up in flames. Well…suddenly I got a little panicked, as sometimes happens when a danzig lookalike points out that you’ve set your highly greasy and flammable jeans on fire with your wildly gesticulating smoking hand in front of a bunch of strangers, and I kind of tried to pat the fire out, although, honestly, I was super flustered, holding a glass, and I really didn’t have the best handle on how to properly put out fires with my hand, and I wasn’t having much success, and that’s when Danzig grabbed my pint glass out of my hand, tossed my beer onto my burning pants, extinguishing the fire, and walked away, shaking his head.
Pretty awesome, Danzig. Pretty awesome.
And there I was. In crusty, stinky, burnt jeans with a huge part of the leg missing, doused in beer, far from home. Killing it. Absolutely the coolest.
So, as of then, and as it stands, the score is Danzig 1, me 0.
You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but nope. I’m still an asshole,
Interestingly, those pants caught fire AGAIN on that trip. Pretty wild, for sure man. Ah, London. That’s where I’m totally ON FIRE! Heh.