Monday, March 16, 2009

Corned Beef and Cabbage and "Another Irishman" from Chicago



I grew up in the city of Chicago during the reign of Hizzoner da Mare, Daley I. My family came from Sweden, but even so, everybody was Irish on St. Patrick's Day. The city even dyed the river green. So now, as we come to this year's St. Patrick's Day, I feel a need to salute a Chicago Irish politician who made it big. This is a little ditty co-written by a friend of mine, Fritz Baue, and yours truly, Charlie Henrickson, the wag tailoring the doggerel. Click one of the music links and sing along!

ANOTHER IRISHMAN (In Old Chicago Town)
Tune: "The Wearing of the Green"
MIDI 1 MIDI 2 MIDI 3
By Fritz Baue and Charlie Henrickson


Oh, Paddy dear, and did you hear
The news that's goin' round?
They found another Irishman
In old Chicago town!

O'Bama's just as Irish
As Daley and O'Hare
He's one of them "Black Irish"
As come from County Clare

He worked his lucky shamrock
On Hillary, as is known
And when he gets up to speak you know
He's kissed the blarney stone

The leprechauns all love him
Or so I have been told
He's bailin' out the country
With their lovely crock of gold

We eat corned beef and cabbage
When we're in County Cork
But at O'Bama's White House
They're only servin' pork

Colleen and all the lasses
Just think that Barry's great
They say he's got a package
That's sure to stimulate

He's like an Irish tenor
A-singin' "Danny Boy"
The hope and change he's singin'
Bring Oprah tears of joy

He is a new St. Patrick
A-drivin' out the snakes
Like Rezko, Wright, and Blago
They'll pay for their mistakes

Let's lift a glass of Guinness
And Irish whiskey too . . .
Hawaiian-Kenyan-Irish
Is quite a pot of stew!

Oh, Paddy dear, and did you hear
The news that's goin' round?
They found another Irishman
In old Chicago town!

Now to the DUmmies. I find it ironic that the DUmmies would observe St. Patrick's Day, since St. Patrick was A CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY! Oh well, any excuse to get drunk, I suppose. Let's go to the DUmmieland Lounge and check out their
THREAD, "The problem with corned beef and cabbage." For this special edition of the DUmmie FUnnies, we will put their comments in Chicago River Green, while the commentary of your humble guest correspondent, Charles Henrickson, interrupting his Lenten hiatus to serve you people with your DUFU fix, is in the [brackets]:

The problem with corned beef and cabbage . . .

[. . . is that it's not beer.]

whenever I eat it I roll over about 4 am the next morning, belch and taste cabbage all over again. . . .

[T.M.I.!!]

Well, yesterday was the county St Paddy's Day Parade and they made 200 forken pounds of corned beef (plus who know how much cabbage and spuds) down at Vinny's Boom Boom Room and I passed it up.

[Otherwise, you would have gassed it up and passed it out. 200+ pounds is an awful lot of food.]

So tonight when I go down there to pick up the loot (I am Treasurer). . . .

[A typical Democrat. You want to spend other people's money, but you don't want to pay in yourself.]

I am going to have to answer about a brazillion questions about how come I didn't show up for the BIG MEAL.

[Say you're sorry if anybody's offended, and it's time for everybody to take a deep breath and move on and turn the page. That's what Democrats do when they get caught at something.]

I'm gonna fib, say I had to go to a kid's birthday party.

[Well, that's the other Democrat option: Lie.]

Does this make me a bad person?

[Yes. But then, you're a DUmmie, so who cares?]

Off topic? Well, "Yay, Obama!"

[Make that, "O'Bama."]

Just send me the leftovers. . . .

[Leftover cabbage, sent through the mails. . . . Ar-o-matic!]

I don't eat the cabbage for that very reason.

[You're belchin' when you should be Irish!]

But I love the corned beef!

[MURDERER! Cattle-killer! And think of all those corns who died, too!]

I've got to get some buttermilk to make the soda bread to go with the corned beef tomorrow. . . .

[You kill the cow and you steal the poor mother's milk! How low can you go?]

Irish food is vile. . . .

[Especially Irish REPUBLICAN food!]

HATER ! You're dead to me now. . . .

[When Irish eyes are smilin'. . . .]

I grew up on boiled dinners. . . .

[Sounds painful.]

Now Scotland... there's a country with vile food!

[They make up for it with the Scotch.]

In the 12 hours or so after eating a big corned beef meal, I must go through 3 quarts of water (choose whatever liquid you prefer) because of the salt. Then I have to get up 4-5 times during the night to use the bathroom.

[It's a "European" meal.]

Try Irish Stew made with Guiness next time.

[Hold the stew.]

Try soaking the beef before cooking it. . . .

[Soaking the beef AFTER cooking it does not work as well.]

Tell them to mind their own business Or yuir gonna bash their faces in with yuir shillelagh. I think that's the proper Irish response.

[That, or a car bomb.]

I love it, but it comes out the other end for me. . . .

[T. M. I. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

We never drank much in my house. . . .

[We usually went out back. . . .]

but none of this nauseating green beer.

[You're not one of those Green Beer Backers.]

It's amusing to imagine what other ethnicities would do if they behaved in as cliched a way as the Irish.

[If you're Swedish, you'd have lutfisk for Christmas Eve, like we did. Lutfisk: the piece of cod that passes all understanding.]

I thank every deity at every meal that I was born Italian.

[Praise Gaia!]

Irish people (or any self-respecting human) do not drink green beer. . . .

[I wonder what the English pig William Pitt the Drunker will be drinking at O'Bukowski's tonight.]

If it's light enough to dye it green, it's too light for me!

[Unless you're a member of the Green Party. At a Green Party you would drink Green Beer.]

Corned beef and cabbage (with yellow mustard) is sublime.

[Would corned beef and lime be subcabbage?]

How do you corn beef?

[With kernel mustard?]

First, you buy it a drink. . . .

[No, that's how you pickle Pitt.]

Very few people cook cabbage correctly. "Boiling the hell out of it" is not the right recipe. . . . cook it with leprechaun blood, bled from its ears after smashing its skull with a shillelagh. . . .

[The Joy of Cooking.]

Your problem is that you didn't drink enough alcohol after you ate the cabbage. drink at least 6 mugs of Guiness followed by an equal number of shots of either Jamison's or Bushmill's Irish Whiskey. Then puke. You won't notice the cabbage so much after that.

[Then drink more whiskey so you won't notice the puke.]

I personally embrace the cabbage and the gas. . . . Yay, Obama, I'll second that.

[Embrace the gas: Support Obama!]

16 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Leftover cabbage, sent through the mails. . . . Ar-o-matic!"

...Kimchi!

8:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I find it ironic that the DUmmies would observe St. Patrick's Day, since St. Patrick was A CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY! Oh well, any excuse to get drunk, I suppose." P Jinc

Oh and you go to church and THEN get drunk. Sure. Super ironic.

And, I'm tellin ya, this line from your scathing, yet somehow arousing, poetic satire really speaks for itself:

"Let's lift a glass of Guinness
And Irish whiskey too . . .
Hawaiian-Kenyan-Irish
Is quite a pot of stew!"

Fucking transcendent.

12:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trog, you're the most bigoted person I've ever seen, online or off. You need diversity training.

9:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trog.........

It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

No, listen......it's not your fault.


-Corona

11:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Lutfisk: the piece of cod that passes all understanding."

OMG. Madison, Minn. Lutefisk capitol of the world.
Statue of a Cod at south end of the town.

Skul

12:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Corona, which would Trog choose? The belt, the stick or the wrench?

2:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Trog, you're the most bigoted person I've ever seen, online or off. You need diversity training." ray

What? I'm honestly interested, ray. Was it something I said? I swear to God I'm not being ironic. What gave you the impression I, troglaman, am the biggest fucking bigot you've ever seen.

'Because you're eight feet tall and covered with hair' is not an acceptable answer.

11:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Trog.........It's not your fault." Corona

Nice Mork, corona.

And it's comforting that you see me as I, the mighty troglaman, am - A KICK ASS MATHEMATICAL GENIUS!!!

Thanks man. Means a lot to me.

11:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Corona, which would Trog choose? The belt, the stick or the wrench?" he-who-must-not-be-named

What kind of fucked up question is this? Jesus.

If it's about my, troglaman's, choice of punishment for myself, then I'll go with the belt.

If its about my, troglaman's, choice of punishment INFLICTED on he-who-must-not-be-named, I'd bargain hard for the wrench-duct-taped-to-the-end-of-the-stick concept.

12:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Oh and you go to church and THEN get drunk. Sure. Super ironic."
I didn't do that.
I went to my classes at seminary (Which included a worship service that could be counted as "Going to church"), picked up a few things on the way home, and that night as part of my own St. Patrick's Day tradition, I read the story of Patrick's life and recited his prayer "The Breastplate." He was a good, godly man whose legacy shouldn't be tarnished by the day of drunkenness and debauchery that St. Patrick's Day has become.

10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I went to my classes at seminary." Adam

I KNEW it! You ARE him. A cyber miracle in the making, my friends.

-So was Eve hot, or what.

-Did the rib thing hurt?

-Did you ever have to call on God to smite the TRex smashing his way through Eden?

-What the heck is up with the talking snake? Could've it been the TRex? Speaking from experience, it's much more likely were talkin the wily TRex. They're smarter than they look.

Good to see you back, bro.

11:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Um, okaaay, trog.
I've been here for many months, and have had to put up with 'Adam & Eve' jokes in my own life too many times to count, generally by people much smarter than you.

8:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trog, could it be that you constantly refer to everyone you don't like as "idiots," "expletive deleted (heh)," "morons," and the like? No, that couldn't be it, could it, you bigot?

Trog, despite your self-denial, you ARE a bigot.

12:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"bigĀ·ot (bgt) n. One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ. French, by the way."

Shit. Caught me, ray. I was sad to see the word "politics", weren't you? But I'm glad you brought it up. Given the above definition, isn't everyone here (except Adam) a bigot? Honestly?

Of course we are.

Maybe it's a matter of who knows it and who doesn't. Gotta start somewhere.

1:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I've been here for many months, and have had to put up with 'Adam & Eve' jokes in my own life too many times to count, generally by people much smarter than you." Adam

I see. Forgive me. I, troglaman am but a cave dweller. A mere speck of dust. A small sardine in the vast oceans of time. A meager crumb of bread lost on a gentle breeze. And yet, sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. Is that so wrong?

2:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy...

trog is really John Denver, eh? How'd you fake the plane crash thing? :)

8:48 AM  

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