Wherever we go we celebrate the land that makes us refugees

This is an adorable blogger conceit, heading posts with song lyrics. I only know a handful of songs so this should end soon.

I thought about titling this post, and therefore this weekend:

The Irish are Idiots. Or: Happy Fake Patrick's Day.

But I don't think the Irish are idiots. Sometimes I feel like an idiot, and I have some claim to Irishness, but we cannot blight a whole people because I sometimes dislike my Americanness. I love St. Patrick's Day festivities because it focuses my natural tendency to sentimentality, which the Irish claim as their own, by the way. It is also a nice time to exercise my internal class struggle; I like to see the trashy Irish, and those folks whose own trashiness has drawn them to Irishness. Also when I think of myself as an island, a lone intellectual and spiritual searcher walking these mean streets without a clique to back me, I have to face that I am just another jackass wearing a green sweatshirt and making eyes at redheads.

The South Side parade is the best in the world. I don't know how this North/South thing is even debated; it is the difference between a big hot basket of fish and chips and a photograph of poop. Which would you rather eat? At the parade you are right up there and free to yell whatever you want. I let the Morgan Park Dance Squad know that "You are beautiful, ladies!" I got an older couple to yell "We love history!" with me at the Beverly Hills Historical Society. I sprayed silly string on some toddlers. We gave Sexy Eyes to some firefighters, we motioned for them to call us, I will be checking 'missed connections' on craigslist for days. I enjoy hooting, waving, yelling, and dancing, and I like to be on pavement: parades are heaven.

The real deal is coming up. Cousins are coming into town. When the pain of the world has got me down, when I am crying for all the children that are not my children, it is time to gather those I love around me and take them to a bar, do some hooting, yelling, and dancing, and then get them drunk enough that I can tell them how much I love them.