So the whole reason for going to Bard in the first place was to see Ben's sketch comedy group
Olde English perform. I loved them for many reasons, most of them being partially narcissistic.
1) Ben runs the group exactly as we ran our underground newspaper in highschool. This means that the underlying goal is to push things further by fucking around with them (onstage sketch involving pregnacy melds into later onscreen video from planned parenthood). It works because the core people involved essentially forget about leading normal lives and work on it every day.
2) I've been to alot of shitty sketch comedy, and there's nothing worse than people who think they are funny and aren't. ("What's that on you pizza?" "Why it looks like a
retarded baby!") OE is hilarious, and when they aren't, they have enough of an analytical talent to find out why they weren't at maximum laughter.
3) Someone pulled the fire alarm twice during the show. It may have been an accident, but it is still a pants-shitting caliber stressor on the performance. The first time they worked it into a short skit ("Jesus, will somebody get the phone?") and then brought everyone outside for a round of "Bohemian Rhapsody". The second time, they used the buzzer as a beat (taking it up a notch with clapping) while one member did the "robot" on stage. Minutes later, they brought up loud music and turned it into a dance party. The first alarm came during a sketch involving a newscaster, when they returned they set up on stage again, "..And, we're back."
4) They're quick. The typical saturday night live problem is knowing when to end a sketch and on the very last sketch they pulled it to the limits of credibility and then gave it a perfect ending (It won't translate through if I tell you, but it went something like this: two people on stage at a time, other members come in and tap people off the stage and change up the scene. Wife says to husband: "I want you to kill our son." "You want me to kill our son?" (wife tapped out, another enters) "You want me to kill your son?" (tapped out, son enters) "You want me to kill myself?")
5) One of their best sketches got cut because Ben couldn't finish it they way he would like it by showtime. It reminded me of the time when Ben actually asked our printer to stop the presses and cost us $200 to reprint four pages.
6) They had maybe five short sketches on video, which sounds like a shortcut so that they don't have to remember a whole show of lines, but it's better than that. The videos always relate. (again, hard to make you understand:Two lip-sync to a prerecorded rap on stage and run off, sketch continues on screen where they are in the cafeteria, minutes later they return without finding food and rap to mom in third row about not having any food to eat. Mother stands up and raps in sync back that she brought him a sandwich.)
Before I leave for Bard to see Ben, I have a little belated gift from my mother, which she emailed to me today:
Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over
by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and
bruised and he's walking with a limp.
"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.
"Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.
"That little sod, O'Conner?" says Sean. "He couldn't do that to you, he must
have had something in his hand."
"That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin'he
gave me with it."
"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself. Didn't you have
something in your hand?"
"That I did," said Paddy. "Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it
is, but useless in a fight."
Are all Irish jokes so man-centric? She also sent:
Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady's after his Sunday morning service, and
she's in tears.
He says, "So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?"
She says, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last
night."
The priest says, "Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, did he have any last
requests?" She says, "That he did, Father..."
The priest says, "What did he ask, Mary?"
She says, "He said, 'Please Mary, put down that damn gun!'"
A Long-Ass Story for Today's Holiday
"Sew, you're Arish American, then?" the cab driver said in his thick Liverpool accent. "Lock the Kenneties?
"Yes," I said, deciphering his words. "Just like the Kennedies."
The last ferry to Dublin was leaving in five minutes.
"Dew you have an Arish surname then?" he said, fumbling with my change.
"Sure do," I said. "Sullivan, Brendan Sullivan."
For my entire life I had always like thinking of myself as Irish American. It was just so convenient. We got a great big green holiday to dull the Valentine's pain. We had all sorts of jokes and old signs to laugh at. Growing up, I knew three other families who had a pseudo vintage notice posted in their house saying "Help Wanted: Irish Need Not Apply."
Whenever a family member fell into what other would call alcoholism, we would just say they were getting in touch with their roots. As I got older and developed white-guilt, I thought of all the things I didn't have to take credit for: we came after the emancipation proclamation, we were never puritans, we never owned slave ships, we pushed few people off their land.
Boarding the ferry boat, I thought about the man who brought his last name to the US for me, personally.
Before the American Civil War the fields of Ireland provided meat and vegetables for nearly the entire island of Britain. Anything that could be farmed was, but the English landlords took it all as rent to their Irish tenants. And left them with potatoes.
By the time the potatoes began their famine campaign, a young man named Eugene O'Sullivan had had enough. So he left his farm in County Cork and found his way to Dublin to the Liverpool Ferry, and eventually to New York.
I've always pictured him with red curly mutton-chops, wearing a stovepipe hat with a clover tucked in the band for luck. He buttons up his heavy brown woollen coat and packs his few belongings into a wooden trunk. In my mind, he looks behind him as he boards the coffin ship. At the gang-plank, he plucks the clover and lets it fall seaward as he says, "Erin, slait go bragh." which in Gaelic means "Goodbye Ireland, forever."
Of course, those are the only four words I know in Irish, I realized while walking into the ship’s cabin. At the doorway, I prepared myself to feel the Irish middle passage, as I slung my backpack over my shoulder and threw out a Styrofoam cup of coffee. But there was no one at the gates to check my passports, no Ellis Island for me. The longest line on the ship was for the bathroom next to the bar on deck.
On the boat, I had a hard time understanding anything of my supposed history, because they were playing the movie "Flubber" at top volume on TV screens in every room.
Two fears clouded me as I stared into the Irish sea. 1) That I would hate Ireland altogether and have to find another convenient way to deal with white guilt. 2) That I would love it and never want to go back to the old New World.
As graduation neared at my large suburban high school, I noticed that a number of my classmates had full family graduation parties before we even came to finals week.
When I asked my dad about this he said, "We Irish know something they don't. They see freedom ahead and think they're set. But we know there's still examinations, long lines to wait in, and names to be mispronounced before you're truly free."
We pulled into the port and I thought here it comes, the lines, the health inspections. But as one of the few passengers without an automobile below decks, I only had to walk off and join the short customs lines.
As part of the European Union, most passengers merely walk by a fat man who kept saying "Nationality? Nationality? Nationality? Nationality?.." as they rifle past, saying "German," "French," "British," "British," "British." I strolled up to the non-European Union desk and seconds later the ink was drying on an immigration control stamp in my pocketed passport.
As I crossed O'Connell Bridge and headed for Trinity College, family loyalty filled me as I saw a big green, plush store window ahead of me.
Wherever my family traveled when back home in the states, we always went to the local Irish store. Most touristy places have them, and they all sell the same woolen sweaters, shamrock ashtrays, and family crests.
We always wondered if people who actually lived in Ireland felt the need to buy "Irish Parking Only" signs or if their nephews wore bibs that said "Luck o' the Irish!"
This one was overstuffed with all of the same things as all the Irish stores back home, and then some. They had 6-foot inflatable mallets printed in orange and green saying "I got Hammered in Dublin!" Employees in Guinness Brand t-shirts had to use long poles to take down sweatshirts from higher racks. "No not that one," an American grandmother shouted to the man over the piercing Irish Pub Favorites CD.
"The one that says, 'I'm Not Drunk—I'm Irish.'"
Each shopper toted around a basket with a flag in it, and any arrangement of cold drink holders, blankets, beer mugs, scarves, or t-shirts. They had a proud display of James Joyce postcards, which would be a bit like making Bruce Springsteen the state bird of New Jersey.
The whole point is that he couldn't stand it here and had to leave.
The clever and culturally sensitive people who brought you the "Rasta Hat"—a knit cap with a forest of black dreadlocks falling out the sides—have moved their business to another former British colony. Here the "Paddy Cap" is a green newsboy's hat with a mullet of red locks coming out the back.
The place began to feel like the school store for a University that just made it to the rose bowl. ("Go Erin! Beat Navy!") Everywhere around me, middle aged Americans searched for their last name on the coat of arms key chain rack and picked out t-shirts for their inevitably baseball-team-sized families.
I had to leave.
When the Irish Republican Brotherhood took control of the General Post office on Easter of 1916, they did so in the name of "Irishmen and Irishwomen, and her exiled children in America."
They fought with what little they had. Many of them hurling back stones blasted out of the walls by British bombs only moments before.
They were fighting extinction as more and more boys and girls grew up without speaking a word of Irish. Some of them getting on boats to
America with a days notice or a letter from an obscure relative. They fought to stand on their own feet and to become their own nation and hoped the exiled could return. During a rather bleak period in Irish history, children as young as nine found themselves on boats headed down under for crimes as simple as stealing candy, or getting on a train without a ticket. At the same time, the fortunate others boarded the coffin ships for a rather unfortunate voyage.
But right now I really wanted to re-exile them all myself. Everywhere you went there were Nortre Dame students filling their thick necks with Guinness or Australians searching convenience store shelves for Marmite.
I continued walking through the historic downtown on the slick, cobblestone streets. After 700 years of British rule, Ireland gained its independence in 1922 and became the model for others to give Old George the boot. Even India chose Orange, white, and green for their flag in solidarity.
But I couldn't see many signs of independence—everything had a certain British element to it. Ireland and Britain are the only nations in Europe that drive on the left side of the road. The only chocolate in stores is Cadburry. Busses run into the double decks. I know nothing about economics, but I understand that it is important to export more than you import.
The problem with this is that Ireland only became a second world country in the 50s, and it's still climbing. But it seems that the only things they export are Guinness and Guinness sweatshirts. Thus they've replaced the market system with tourism that brings outside money in and exports goods in peoples luggage and stomachs.
Everything is for sale. The chapel at the national cemetery has been converted into a flower shop where you can buy a five dollar rose to put on Michael Collin's grave.
Bars everywhere promise "Traditional Irish Pub," "Authentic Irish Food," or play "Real Celtic Hits!"
Their government offices all have Irish names. For example, the police are called The Garda.
All street signs are written first in Irish and then in English, although the language is spoken mostly by those in remote rural villages, most of them illiterate. My guidebook offered one horrible statistic: there are more people in the world who can speak and write in Klingon, than in Irish.
I had with me two completely worthless guidebooks on the city, which I will not name here, except to say that one should have been called Lets Go Get Another Guidebook, and the other was Fromer's (I was lying just then.)
The language has made its own comeback among college students, who learn enough in class to match wits with a rural four year old, so long as they speak in the present tense.
The surge of tourism and the aid of the European Union has created a large class of nouveaux riche. On one street you’ll have blue tarp covered tables selling cow parts and muddy potatoes and on the next one over you can find young Irish Denizens sipping lattes or eating croissants at "McCafé"—a Starbucks style desert bistro inside of a certain fast food place that we know all to well in America.
"Oh! You're an American!" a cashier says as I order a coffee.
"Actually, my family came from—"
"You know I've always wanted to try a twinkie."
"I'm sorry? You..." I suddenly find myself in a horrible position. Unable and unwilling to represent the country of my birth and doubly questioning the heritage I've always loved to think about.
I escape into the crowded city, which in itself is beautiful. Hitchting posts line Victorian buildings. There are no sky scrapers. No T.G.I. Fridays, now Walmart, no Starbucks.
In the middle of my fourth day I scrambled out of a city bus along the river when the sun came out for the first time since I arrived. On the river, I took pictures of the foot bridges just down the street from St. Patrick's cathedral.
In front of the Guinness building, and beautiful bucktoothed horse stood at attention while his owner unloaded sacks of grain. I attempted to speak to the equally snaggletoothed man, but soon found that he had very little use of the English language.
"The sun's out, huh?" I smiled.
He garbled something in a sing song accent. And I motioned towards his horse to explain how beguiling I found it. Raising my camera, I made more gestures. "Can I take a picture of your horse?"
More garbles, "Dew yeo."
"I—I can? Yeah?"
"Eh, eh," he insisted. "Dew yeo." And then pulled a two Euro coin from his pocket.
"You want me to pay you two Euros to take a picture of your horse?
I got on the next bus.
In the states, our bus system is called Greyhound. The mascot stands for speed, agility, reliability. In Ireland, Bus Eeire is emblazoned with a golden retreiver, which explains why I waited three hours for the hourly bus from Dublin to Cork.
At the bus station I had reserved a ticket to Cork City, Ireland’s Boston.
"Reservation for Sullivan?"
"Welcome to Ireland, is this your first time?"
"Yes, it is…"
"So are you one of those Americans coming back to find your roots? God there everywhere in Dublin, rolling around the streets pissed as a priest going, "Oh yeah, I'm a 16th McMurphy!" Like having a Celtic arsecheek makes you Irish."
"Oh no," I lied. "My grandparents are from Cork, and I’m on my way to see them." Eugene O'Sullivan would be my great great great great grandfather, or roughly 1/16th of me. I have less to do with him than the rest of us have to do with Abraham Lincoln. My mother's grandparents were born on the Island, but I know even less about them.
"Oh, from here in Cork, what part?"
I checked an imaginary cell phone in my pocket and slipped away.
As a rule, the people you meet in Ireland are friendly. This is a detail that is not worth mentioning, I should sooner note that the clovers on the ground were green or that the rain came from clouds. They only grow friendlier the further you get from Dublin. It’s the difference between New York City and New England.
I find myself never alone, although I travel that way.
On the Cork city bus, I asked a woman which stop would take me to the downtown train station. "Stick with me, lad, I’ll litchew you know when it’s coming up and you can get off when I do. What do you think of our city?"
"I prefer it to Dublin, it’s much nicer to walk around in at least."
"Would be, if we could fix the roof over it." She says as if in the good old days it didn’t rain quite so much. "Tell me, do they really drink green beer on St. Patrick's day in America?"
"Some do."
"Sin against God it is."
I took a seat in the bus station to collect myself, historically. 150 years of my family talking about this country, saving to get back, playing the songs at Christmas and here I am feeling like an alien in both places at once.
A woman my age sat next to me in the airport. She glanced at my tattered guidebook, which at this point was nothing more than a ticket envelope to me. "First time in Dublin, eh? So many Americans and Australians running around that city. Hope you didn't get lost in them."
"They didn't bother me too much." May God strike me dead.
"Oh," she said. "You’re not from Ireland are you?"
I lifted the book from my desk revealing my passport, which she snatched and flipped immediately to the photo. "Brendan Sullivan, eh? So you’re Irish American then?"
A loudspeaker crackled our boarding call and we both stood up. I looked out the windows and said goodbye to the green hills anf funny looking buses. "Something like that," I said and walked to the gate.
