I found myself at the Irish American Home a day early, drinking Smithwick, chatting with the regulars and pining away for fair Dublin. What is nice about the Irish Club is that despite a lack of bartenders with brogues, thanks to the die-hard regulars, they’ve managed to nail the essence of a real Irish pub. This relies completely on the ability to be both crotchety and friendly at the same time.

    The longer I sat there, listening to the band, eyeing the Tayto chips and Cadbury Flakes behind the bar, the more I wished this were last year and I had escaped the dreary late-winter weather of Connecticut for the rainy, always dreary weather of Ireland. But several Smithwicks and a jack and ginger later I’d forgotten all about the green shores of Erin and pretty much everything else.

    After sleeping it off, I discovered that most of my friends had succumbed to Strep throat or crippling stomach cramps and I realized I had to rethink my game plan for Saturday. Rather than tracking down friends who weren’t dying, I decided to rent “Once” and lay around feeling melancholy and possibly drinking by myself.

    The movie opens on Grafton Street, with the Irishest looking guy you have ever seen singing his mildly depressed heart out. He chases what appears to be Colin Farrell’s skeevier cousin down the road and into St. Stephen’s Green after the little creep steals his money. You can’t understand much of what they’re saying as they yell back and forth at one another in accents so thick you could cut them with a scian.  

    Of course, all of this was mildly disillusioning since when I was in Ireland I did not meet the talented and handsome Glen Hansard on Grafton Street, but was instead serenaded with Britney Spears songs by a talentless but charming group of teenaged boys. But I digress… I damn on Demand for not having the forethought to have a whole Irish-themed move line-up for me to watch. I could have wasted countless hours watching Daniel Day-Lewis in Kilmainham Gaol or trying to kill Leonardo DiCaprio.

    By Monday morning, walking to work I’d almost forgotten about the holiday. But I was soon reminded by the four hour onslaught of bagpipers that marched outside of our office on Fifth Avenue. I love the bagpipes more than the next girl but I had no idea there were this many of them in America. Not to mention the fife and drum corps. Where do they find these people? I’ve been looking for a bagpiper to marry for years and I haven’t found a single one but on Monday, you would have thought it was taught in schools the same as reading or arithmetic.

    It wasn’t until a few hours after the parade ended that I was reminded why it is often preferable not to actually live in New York City. I left work at five o’clock and rounded the corner onto Madison Avenue and found a very drunk young man sitting in vomit – presumably his own, but one can never be sure. Not once have I found someone sitting on a Connecticut sidewalk in their own vomit in the middle of the afternoon, not even outside of the Irish Club.