It happens once a year. And here we have dove into it. We had no choice. We never do. After the festivities and bonhomie of the holiday season, here we are, back in Shitville. Shitville is where everyone lives until Spring. From New Year’s Day until the first day of Spring, nothing happens that’s worth a damn.
Valentine’s Day? Valentine’s Day can piss up a rope. Oh yay, let’s spend a lot of money on roses, a lot of money on a restaurant, spend money at CVS for those little mint hearts that say “Be Mine”, spend money for enough cards for each classmate the rug-rat has multiplied by how many rug-rats you have, get the crappy candy in the heart-shaped box, pay the babysitter, spring for the good wine at dinner, schvitz in your woolen winter suit, pay between one and two C-notes for the whole shebang, and maybe – MAYBE – you get laid. And for what it’s worth, Valentine’s Day falls on a Monday this year. Nobody over 30 gets laid on Monday.
St. Patrick’s Day. Oh boy, another chance for all the amateur drunks to bend their elbows. People who don’t drink regularly should be required by law to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day within the confines of their own houses or gated communities. They don’t drink well because they don’t know-how. Me, I drank well (before I had to stop). You’d never know I was hammered until I stood up to walk. I wasn’t one of those amateur assholes who gets two inches into a green beer and starts laughing like a gassed-up dental patient. Remind me on March 17th to avoid Lower Broad like the plague. I can do without a sea of loud people in green party hats and those “Kiss me! I’m Irish!” buttons. I’m sorry to break it to you Mr. O’Brien, Ms. McSorley; you’re not Irish.
I’ve been to Ireland several times and you’re not even in the same libationary ballpark. Irish people start drinking at the age of five. Go there, try it, step inside a pub in Belfast and belly up to the bar next to a guy whose name really is Paddy. After the first Guinness, he’s your new best friend. After two, you wind up paying for your third while buying him one too, as is his plan. Sometime in that third Guinness everything will go black like the end of the Sopranos finale, and you’ll wake up on the sidewalk soaked in the morning rain with no wallet and no shoes. THAT’S Irish. You’ll be lucky if Paddy doesn’t take your pants. Amateur.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Shitville. I’d like to announce my candidacy for Mayor of Shitville. My first promise I can’t keep is a warm sunny February. With no rain! No running to the car in a cold downpour with your shoulders hunched up. And that reminds me of something: why do we hunch up our shoulders when walking in the rain? It doesn’t keep you the slightest bit drier to hunch up your shoulders when walking in the rain. I wish the local weathercasters would just be honest in February: “Well Ron, the weekend’s going to suck with a rainy high of 42 and a low you don’t want to think about. Looking to Monday, a high-pressure wave of suck will be moving in from the northwest and the sky will be the color of your grandfather’s underpants. I’ll be back with the extended forecast right after this from Bart Durham.”
“Oh, it can’t be that bad, Tommy. Lighten up!” Lighten up my ass. You don’t remember Shitville last year? Or Shitville the year before that? Only now do we have the added bonus of masks and social distancing and me playing gigs for seven people who don’t care if they live or die.
But at least we have Groundhog Day, right Tommy? Oh goodie, the morning when they name a poor mistreated varmint Phil and hold its terrified ass up in the air for all the cameras. When it comes up to bigwigs ripping off my top hat vibe gauging how much winter we’ll have left by the sunshine on a mammal that looks like a throw pillow with eyes … You can’t get much more useless outside the halls of Congress. Besides, every day in February IS Groundhog Day. We’re all Bill Murray and when the digits flip to 6 a.m., we hear the same song. Oh yeah, sing a song of Shitville, oh baby yeah yeah.
There is ONE good thing that happens in Shitville though. The weather draws a moratorium on bridal parties on top of busses hollering, “Woo Woo Woo Woo Woo!” Thank God for small favors. See you in the spring.