I am especially proud to pass this tradition along to my niece and nephew.  They both love to rock.  When we were kids Mom would rig it up in the bathroom when my dipshit brother was a Junior High badass.  He could have sworn that he hid the tape.  But you can't hide things from mom.  He woke up, had to piss in the middle of the night and flipped on the bathroom light.  The hair dryer plug was rigged with the blaring tape deck.  The rest of us are in bed and we hear that killer baseline.

Minutes later we're all up in pajamas, "YOU SAY ITS YOUR BIRTHDAY? DUHNUNUNUNUNUH IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TOO, YEAH!"

So last night the girls were all yaking about girl shit and my brother and I were like, "Sweeneys?"  Sweeneys is the pub down the street from moms where the dumb Mc bartenders "have been asking after you."

I normally don't go to bars with TV because it really cuts into my time of being pretentious.  Think of how many films I could have screened while you were yelling at grown men in funny uniforms?  Imagine all the books I haven't read that I could talk about!

But when you're visiting the fam and the ladies won't stop talking about the complicated relationship between mothers and daughter (honestly: learned everything I need to about it in Lolita no joke "...I found a book with the unintentionally biblical title Know Your Daughter and...One of my guides in these matters was an anthropometric* entry made by her mother on Lo's twelfth birthday. I had the feeling that Charlotte, moved by obscure motives of envy and dislike, had added an inch here, a pound there.").

So when you haven't seen your brother in godknowshowlong, why not kick over to Sweeney's and have yourself a Killians?  After all, Seamus has been asking after you.

The sport on TV was Ultimate Fighting Championship and the two dudes next to us in the bar could not have been more into it.  These are the kinds of morons I like to get in touch with, first of all because they still buy rock records (every ad in UFC stars Greenday or a cellphone that plays rockin' tracks).  They go to the gym alot and I'm sure they think UFC fighting is dead sexy, but haven't managed to rectify that with the fact that they don't have a girlfriend.  Also, jumping rope and punching a bag doesn't make you a killing machine.  It makes you a six-year-old girl.

The fun thing about UFC is that the fighters are all regular dudes.  The fights are on the weekend because these guys are carpenters and personal trainers and, like, poolboys.  My brother's favorite fighter isn't sponsored by boxing gloves or sweatpants.  He's sponsored by his local union.

It's also the super-gayest way to fight because you can wrestle and if you run out of breath you can pin someone (pinning isn't the goal) and run the clock so you don't lose match points.  To keep a man down you have to put you sweaty shirtless body on him and (I'm not making this up) constantly thrust your hips into him so he doesn't get the strength to free his hands.

Bleeding doesn't stop the fight.  The referees having to wear those thick black rubber gloves that tattoo artists use.

"I'd put five bucks down on Carpenter."

"I'd take that bet." called a voice from beyond the bar.  My brother slammed down the money.

"Ye boys betting?"

"Seamus," I said, "In a proper liquor establishment like this?"  He laughed and we left the money on the bar.

The fight was brutal and totally, totally gay.  The guys also had really long sweaty hair so if you squinted it might look like a topless catfight.

The final result would only come after the commercial break.  We all sat around making fun of Greenday's Makeup, "Hey, you guys gotta check out this new song we wrote for Guitar Hero, I mean our record..."

After the break the announced that Carpenter was not the champion.  "We gotta go."  My brother announced and we bounced.

It was rainy heavily on the walk home.  We lit cigarettes and tried to shield them from the rain.

"You know what the real bitch about it is?"

"What?"

"I coulda made five bucks off that bet if I hadn't fallen asleep when I saw the same fight on last week."

I love my brother.

*Literally "measurements of a person."