Big Pinting: The Full Mickey on Paddy Gras

It’s March 18 as I write this, and I am exhausted. Try as I might to uphold the Irish stereotypes, by 10:30 p.m. Saturday I was in bed settling in for a long winter’s nap.

And it still is winter here in Chicago, that weird part of it when it’s sunny and bright until 7 p.m. but colder than Fairbanks.

Anyway, the fatigue comes from the fact that St. Patrick’s Day has turned into at least seven days worth of celebrations, a Paddy Gras, if you will, which for me began a week ago on the South Side of Chicago at the parade along Western Avenue.

If you haven’t gone, the streets off the parade route host a sort of collective block party while the bars turn into some MTV Spring Break Special, but in wool sweaters and green T-shirts instead of thongs and muscle shirts.

They don’t use dye for the Chicago River the following weekend - it’s the vomit collected from these places tossed in the water as chum for the bottom feeders.

Anyway, as the time change came the night before, having Bloody Marys for breakfast seemed like a good way to adjust to the basically changing time zones without the benefit of actually going anywhere.

The day was nice enough, and I only witnessed a few odd or disturbing things, which on the South Side come parade time isn’t so bad.

Worst was being in a car heading to a cop’s family party in Marquette Park and seeing a guy jump on the hood of a cab then reach through the window and punch an elderly cabbie. We yelled at him to stop, which worked until we were about five car lengths away.

Then the doofus’s girlfriend got out of the car with a crowbar. Apparently words had been exchanged, the N one in particular.

Ironic, because if these mooks had been hauled off it would have been in a paddy wagon, which actually is a derogatory term for a vehicle that used to haul a lot of Irish ass to jail.

The next foolishness was standing with the smokers in the laundry room at this party. We had been warned about one of the guests, a guy in his 20s who was best man at the host’s son’s wedding, a guy with a shirt on that said “Kiss My Irish,” under a flannel.

When he showed his newly married buddy the saying, in the spirit of the day, his buddy kissed him on the chest, then on the belly.

That wasn’t what we had been warned about. That happened next when the husky guy with the aforementioned sexually intriguing shirt dropped his pants to show off his Irish boxer shorts.

I see your shamrock is shaking, I say, which made the newly married guys mom laugh.

Always leave ‘em laughing, which we wanted to do. But first we saw one of the cops others kids get into a mini brawl with another young drunk in the kitchen. As one of my friends said, he’s glad he’s not in his 20s anymore and having to deal with all that testosterone.

But hey, half the fun of going to a parade is seeing what passes by, or passes out. All in all it was a very pleasant day, 12 hours out of the house in fact and a fine way to start Paddy Gras.

The next episode came Wednesday when an Irish band played a local club, which is where it hit me how the Irish revel in their caricatures.

I mean the band’s new album is going to be called Get to the Pint and the shirt for it has glasses aligned to form a shamrock.

It’s like hair metal or rap sometimes, which is why I took to calling myself Big Baby Guinness for the rest of the SPD, my mick hip-hop name.

I’m thinking about becoming an Irish lap dancer, too, and I’d rub corned beef all over my belly, have a cabbage cod piece with a potato stuffed inside. For my finale I would pour a green beer over my head, sort of like a Gaelic Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. ANd it would all be done to the music of Celtic Women.

Hey, it would be almost as seductive as wearing one of those huge ass Mad Hatter/Cat in the Hat seasonal hats, which are about the most annoying parade items ever invented.

Still, the week was just half over, and there was the going away thing for someone at work Thursday (at least the 20th in the last 5 years and I am not exaggerating: I feel like my job is like being one of the actors on ER who stick around too long because they aren’t George Clooney),

By Friday, I was tired. It didn’t help that I was working on a story about deep fried pickles, cheesecake and brownies, which made me groggy. So in a vat of stupor I watched college hoops, the other excessive event going on this time of year.

Saturday I combined the two. I was going to head downtown but plans fell through. My actually Irish friends didn’t need my help with their Irish business set ups, and I could find no one at the last minute to go with me to the city.

Nor could I find anyone to go to the local parade, so I walked down by my lonesome. Yes, the glamorous life of a middle aged single guy who isn’t George Clooney.

The parade was short and sweet, maybe 20 minutes tops, which is good because only great sex with someone you’re really into or maybe a Bruce Springsteen concert should last 3 hours like parades in the big city are won’t to do. And nothing says “Proud to Be Irish” like folks dressed up like giant Dairy Queen hot dogs and Blizzards or Italian guys in kilts.

Anyway, I ran into some people I had not seen in years and they were kind enough to let me hang out with them from noon until 10 p.m.

I drank, ate corned beef, drank more, ate more corned beef, drank more, watched basketball out of the corner of my eye, then with corned beef and Guinness oozing out of my pores, decided it was time to get a ride home.

The deciding factor: at least three other guys in the pub had shaved heads and goatees, which is confusing and disturbing even if you haven’t been having pints in plastic cups all afternoon.

And by Sunday morning my head was clear and life was back to laundry, a perfect chore for watching the rest of the basketball.