can anyone say the 'c' word...?

so after a delightlful, restful and tummyful break in san francisco over the weekend i was forced to return to temperatures 35 degrees lower, a heavily laden inbox and a rather scandalous account of a girl really screwing over a buddy of mine. as we all know, mardi gras in new orleans is a time for drinking, dancing and general debauchary and, for one friend of mine, a time for meeting -at least at the time she appeared as such- the perfect girl. hailing from louisiana, this girl had the cute southern drawl, a vivacious persona and a pair of gazoonkas that star jones would be proud of.

however, the first alarm bell went off in my ever pellucid head when i was informed, about 6 weeks after the creole adventure, that miss mardi gras was relocating her 28 year old ass to new york, more specifically into my bud's apartment. alright i say, let's let it slide for now, maybe she's up for some adventure, needs a place to crash for a while and is keeping the man happy in the four post inn. this set of circumstances continues for a few months, and gradually, thanks to several nights out, some tete-a-tete interchanges with said louisiana exile and many reports from said bud my opinion of the lady in question went from 'new-in-town southern belle' to 'kicked-out-trailer-park free loader'.

it subsequently transpired that this conniving trollop was not only offering zero green towards rent, bills or any other expenditures but that she accepted, or should i say, expected an all expenses sojourn in ireland for a month over christmas! the poor guy hadn't seen home in near four years and he had to endure his welcome home hugs with lurchio hovering nearby!

so, it needn't be said, but i, and many more concerned friends were recommending, for some time, all sorts of ways of severing the link with this harbinger of bankruptcy and my friend had finally reached a point of realization where he knew it must happen soon. little was i to know the events would unfold while i was kickin back with a couple of sierra nevadas in a hot tub 2 and half thousand miles away. anyway, i called mister lightpocket this morning for a quick catch up on the local weekend news and he proceeds to inform me of a blazing hot fight with miss loafer on saturday that prompted him to persue a night of drinking, a drunken hook up with some bit on the LES and finally a bedroom stumble-in at 7am sunday.

my man is a dedicated athlete it must be said and amazingly hauled his toxic carcass out of bed and off to football practice at 9am....when he returned at 12pm....tired, dirty, sore, broke and very likely at the end of his frayed rope he finds what? an apartment, wonderfully relieved of the personage of "short-of-arm-deep-of-purse" and also his tv, dvd player, play-station and myriad other objects including footwear and other articles of clothing given to him as gifts over the last year...

let that soak in folks...

what a prize fucking bitch!...not happy with living rent free, ten minutes from manhattan....trips to lake george, ac, ireland and others, no financial input in terms of apartment accoutrements...a guy who doted after her for months till the inevitable white trash virus started to ooze out of her greazy, southern fried pores...now, i know people will consider him a pussy for ever letting it get as bad as it did...but i assure you he's not...he may have been duped but girls have the power to do that...even trailer park, banjo plucking, "ma mom's ma sistuh" ones.....c@*t!!!!

i want to work in a meat plant...

it's not a very original wish and i'm sure it has come across the mind of pretty much everyone once in a while, but to read about eight meat processors in nebraska winning over 15,000,000 each on the powerball lottery gets the old grey matter working and perhaps tinges it a shade of green.

i mean, i know i should be happy for these people but, and you can call me bitter, i can't help but feel a tad resentful. ever since i was young i have memorised a pretty extensive list of "lottery intentions". things i will do and buy once i acquire the required 10 or so million. from the yacht to the 'every country in the world' tour to the carefully allocated money to friends and family.

i can't help but think that the cow killers from nebraska will settle for a new dodge hemi, multi pack of skoal and weekend in vegas with the whole family (the whole trailer park)...and to confound the situation there are three of the eight STILL working their night shifts at the slaughter house! are you fucking crazy??? don't give me any crap about "sure, what else would i do?" or "i can't just let them down at work." don't worry buddy, they can train a blind, one-legged chimp to slice the ass off dead pigs in about 2 hours...go give a million to cancer research ( but not that armstrong fools charity) and stop acting like a retard.

one dude is a 56 yr old blow in from vietnam...this guy leaves a no doubt poor vietnam and moves 16 years ago to a no doubt poor nebraska where he spends the next 15 years lopping heads off little calves...are you telling me that such a guy will be able to fathom anything over 5,000 bucks? i don't think DB9 is even in his vernacular!!

right, that's it. i'm headin out to buy a bunch of mega million tickets. you'll all get 10,000 each i promise. just leave the contact info and the dosh will be yours...and you can all party on my yacht too...but no driving the DB9...

bush, bombers, boats, ben...brainless?

so the latest in a litany of loony moves by bush and his bozos is signing off on a $6.8billion deal that gives control of the ports of new york, newark, phili, baltimore, miami and new orleans to a united arab emirates owned company. the investigation into the company was at best shallow and the entire deal seems to hinge on a 'promise' that the company can keep osama bin laden from infiltrating it. does that just sound completely fuckin nuts to me or what? and all this just days after the promise of more attacks on american home turf and a new audiotape from bin laden himself stating he will never be captured alive despite the $50 million on his head...

it is mind-boggling that such a deal can go down without a word until after the ink has actually dried on the contract...i reckon dick the dick cheney shot that old timer on purpose, its was genius! what a master puppeteer!, a superb effort in keeping a retarded media focused on a dimestore piece of news while a monumental, turban-topped dildo was being simultaneously rammed into the the ass of the entire US population by way of this port control deal. do they really believe that they can keep out weapons of mass destruction when the guys now checking cargo holds on US bound ships are the cousins and brothers of the 9/11 maniacs? (2 of them having been citizens of dubai)

i remember once catching some of a ben affleck movie (shame on me, i know); the premise was a nuclear bomb coming over to the states in the shell of a soda can machine...and a graphic scene of a football stadium being atomised...after reading the news today i just hope to fuck that pepsi and the like are fast checking where they get their supplies from...

snow, mc sorley's, theatre electricians and more...

so its 10pm, saturday night. a buddy of mine and i are are lazing on my couch sipping a couple of amstel's, salsafying some tostitos and generally being bums. the snow was falling, the phone was quiet and i figured that we would have to make do with what had been a damn good friday night spent in the red lion as our weekend.

but low and behold the dog and bone starts jingling and the news is that a bunch of the guys are en route to doc watson's and for the two of us to get the ass in gear and come on down. so, seven minutes, a shower, shave and shot of JD later we are in a traction defying cab, UES bound. to keep it short, the mothership gang of guys started to split into several satellite pairs and triplets and proceeded to disperse themselves about the town...a good thing i always think, a marauding gang of dude can be fun, raucous and good for gettin kicked out of bars but when it comes to chatting up members of the opposite sex it tends to be as successful as something akin to an ashtray on a motorcycle.

we tried social on 48th, it was quiet. we tried tempest on 29th, it was quiet. we finally settle upon going to central bar on 9th and agree that even if we are to be the only people in the joint we would stay. now, astor place, at 1230am, in the midst of a record breaking blizzard is both confusing and lip splittingly cold...we stumble with eyelashs laden with the white stuff and manage to make it to mc sorley's. we're wet, cold and 2 blocks south of our desired destination.

some people probably find mc sorley's quaint, historic and cozy. and judging by the many bookwormish, hair-productless, back clapping, accountant looking dweebs in the bar...it is a certain type of people too. i, on the other hand, believe that a saturday night deserves, by law, a button down shirt, something to fix the hair in a stylishly ruffled look and some shoes that once said moo. gap v-necks, boston red sox hats and converse are just not cool on a saturday night...unless you are pulling the all nighter at the local mobil station...and by the way, chugging a glass with a dribble of beer and a two inch foamy head is not impressive, stop fucking shouting about it!!

needless to say, i mustered the two guys with me and did a captain oates on it and braved the swirling night once more...making it to central bar without losses and ready for some serious boozing. we had a great night in central, it was jam packed with the clientele i desired, heel wearing girls and capless gents...i even got talking to a girl who works the lighting in an off-broadway theatre...i thought it was cool anyway.

we hit mc carthy's as our chosen late bar before venturing out once more at nearly 6am in search of what we fear will be a taxi cab as easy to find as chicken's teeth. but we hit the jackpot, a dude willing to head westchester way and for a minimal bribe too. my companions pass out...i keep our driver company with confused ramblings about the importance of dax wax and dusting the antiques in old famous bars.

its 645am before the weary warriors fall in through my door. the pullout is extracted, the glasses of water are consumed and the sleep commences. 1138am comes round like a flash and i peel my self out of the warmth and head, shovel in hand, to dig out the trusty bronco... t'was a good weekend...

craic...

so here it is, a gem of literary lunacy with the aim of explaining the strange phenomenon referred to by the irish as craic! what is it? where does it come from? how is it created? it’s a difficult thing to explain that’s for sure, for craic is a fickle, short-lived creature and impossible to capture.

loosely, it means to have fun with good friends, accompanied by the preferred, though not entirely necessary, elements of wild music and bellies of drink. craic can happen anywhere, on a sunday morning at mass (though rarely), during lunch at work, even at a funeral or just simply a-sitting on your ass watching the world go by. one essential factor is that craic must be spontaneous: planned craic is pathetic and useless, as much fun as being kevin federline's press secretary. you can diligently assemble all the most desirable ingredients – friday night after work, a bunch of the lads, a rake of pints, some classic rock blaring in the background – yet the result can be as satisfying as a white castle quarter pounder and as exciting as a chess match on a rainy wednesday evening. you could take all the craic in the world and get rid of it, and that’s how much craic there would be.

but drop in for a quick one, the “i’ve got to work in the morning” drink, not a drop more, and you will probably be in for the best night of your life. the craic, as we say, will be 90.

in the same way you can’t be too objective, too judgemental, and too self-congratulatory; if at any time you stand back from the group and think to yourself, “ain’t this mighty craic…” you are committing the ancient sin. pride goes before a fall and you are in grave danger of losing the spirit. you must yield completely to the experience, allow the waves of laughter and shouting, the repartee and little one-liners to wash over you, and resist any temptation to actually start thinking.

quantum physics helps us to understand this phenomenon; heisenburg’s uncertainty principle explained that looking at the nba league tells us very little about its position, as by the time the light arrives back at our eyes there will have been more losses, sexual harressment scandals, bloated manager salaries and the knicks will be fucked for another year. and similarly, by the time you comprehend you are having a bit of craic, the craic will have moved on and you won't part of it no more. and by withdrawing your own mindless input you may have fatally damaged the vital chemistry for everyone else.

so it seems the universally accepted way of having craic is to not acknowledge having it in the first place. it appears that we can alter not only what we touch but even what we think of. ah, the frail world we live in!

last of the independents...

about 20 miles from my home place in ireland is a town called ballyshannon. meaning "mouth of the shannon" this town is famous for two things. first, it claims the title as the oldest town in ireland and secondly, on march 2 1949 it became the birth place of a legend, one rory gallagher.

rory lived in this area until his family relocated to cork when he was 9 years old. it was in cork that he first started listening to blues music on the radio. in the same year he got his first guitar, taught himself to play and started performing at local talent shows. at the age of 15 he bought is now famous 1961 sunburst fender stratocaster, reported to have been the first such guitar in ireland at the time. this guitar would become rory's most recognisable trademark over the next 30 years.

he played in the fontana showband and the impact before forming 'taste' in 1966. for four years taste toured europe and the states before rory formed his namesake solo band in 1970. it was with rory gallagher and his band that rory expanded and cultivated his gift for electrifying guitar work and rich blues music. in 1972 he won the melody maker musician of the year award, knocking eric clapton off the top spot.

off stage he was a shy, humble man, ever aware of his talents and true to his blues calling. on stage though, there lived a different person. he was a tornado of energy, passion and excitement. marathon live shows highlighted a career that saw him sell over 30 million albums and tour dozens of countries. the faces, deep purple, jimi hendrix, and a youthful U2 were just some of the bands that played on the same bills as rory gallagher.

unfortunately the lights that burn brightest tend sometimes to go out quickly and during the late 1980s and early 90s rory's life was marred by ill health. he continued to tour nevertheless and his last performance by a visibly unwell man was in the netherlands in february 1995. rory gallagher died on june 14th in london following complications from a liver transplant. he was 46.

you may be wondering why you have never heard of rory gallagher. surely someone of such musical stature would be a well known figure, even after his death. well in reality, rory's conviction to pure music has also made him the best kept secret in the business. he never released a single, refusing to pander to the commercial aspect of the industry. in 1970 he was asked to join the rolling stones as their permanent guitarist. rory said no, again citing his rhythm and blues calling as something he must remain true to.

rory gallagher continues to make top ten guitarist lists and his 2005 release of songs named 'big guns' was voted in at number 5 of the best classic rock collections of the year.

"An uncompromisingly serious musician" - The Times, June 16 1995

• "I was with Free when I first saw Rory, and I remember thinking: "God, what I wouldn't do to have that guy in this band."

Paul Rogers, Bad Company

• "A beautiful man and an amazing guitar player. We'll miss him very much".

The Edge, U2

• "Rory was a really big influence. One of the all-time great guitar players. Playing with him in LA was one of my biggest thrills ever".

Slash

• "Rory was a beautiful man. I've never met anybody who has spoken badly of him".

Mark Feltham, Rory's harmonica player during his final years of performing

• "Rory's death really upset me. He was such a nice guy and a great player".

Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin

• "One of the top ten players of all time, but more importantly one of the top ten good guys".

Bono, U2

• "Rory was such a purist. He wouldn't sell out. He wouldn't do singles, he didn't want to do videos. How many people in the music business today would have that kind of stand? It's so dangerous".

Gary Moore

weekend in limbo...

its friday, the 'feeling' is kickin in and all i want to do is hit the city and let the good times roll. however, a drawback to being an out of towner living in new york is that from time to time you may have to return home in less than happy circumstances. and for the past couple of days i've been in the midst of such a scenario. grandmothers, by very nature of their positions, tend to be a bit older than the rest of us and as such are a few places further up the queue and therefore closer to the check out. back in the rural west of ireland i have such a grandmother; who now appears to be ready to say adios to the rest of us poor, overworked soldier ants and go to her eternal rest.

i had an excellent upbringing and am lucky to have a wonderful family back home with all of whom i am close to. however, death is something that has never upset me in the way it can others. this often leads people to think i am (a) a cold hearted asshole or (b) a result of regular childhood beatings. neither are true. i just think of the whole process of life and death with a rational outlook and as a result it tends not to effect me. to be honest it would not bother me to stay in new york if and when my grandmother dies...however, i fear the desicion could possibly result in some resentment and hurt on the part of my mother. something that must be avoided.

therefore, i am in a limbonic state of mind as i enter the much needed weekend. my ear is ever constant in its wait for the sound of the phone and the inevitable news that her time is over. then, i must race to find the next flight back to ireland, attend to my duties as a member of the grieving family before racing back to new york to achieve a minimal loss of work time. i also want to enjoy my weekend as normal, comprising plenty of JD and coke, good movies, good (female) company, bar hopping through a multitude of 100 zip codes and generally letting the proverbial hair down...what to do!

and yes i'm quite bloody sure there is no such word as limbonic but i think there should be...."limbonic" lim-bon-ick being in a state of limbo....sounds good anyway....limbonic, limbonic, limbonic.....limbonic.........it has lost all meaning, wait, it may never have had any...hmmm. a word that never existed...is that possible? i mean even if it is made up...its still a word right? so then it did exist. or is there a really rigid definition of a word, or like a wordmaster who has final say or something? uh oh, here come the men in white coats............

infame in the membrane...

so bobby de niro's housekeeper just pleaded guilty to pilfering some goodies from the bedroom of the former raging bull. a pair of diamond earrings to be exact...worth a cool $95,500. the report of the sticky-fingered bed-maker got me thinking about what would drive a person to steal from the famous. i mean surely the thieving polock should have enjoyed her prestigious position and kept her roaming digits firmly wrapped around her broom...however, i happen to know that de niro is, in person, quite the prima donna...to the point of dickness and the dog puke wiper-upper was probably well pissed off by the time she decided to nab herself some booty.

the construction industry in NYC is often quite fascinating and a catalyst for some interesting situations. personally i've worked for clients such as the army, pfizer, the empire state building, columbia university and tons more. one particular job i was involved in was the renovation of a palatial mansion on 5th avenue. this building contained 4 apartments each going for around 22 million a piece!...such a plush address brought some upper end clientele. yankee slugger a-rod visited one day to inspect a possible investment, lenny kravitz came too for a look at another pad to splash his cash on.....he's quite a friendly guy i must say. and of course we had old bobby boy arriving one sunny summer afternoon, complete with some hired beef as security. but don't be thinking mr fuckin meet the fockers is happy in his quest for a multi million bucks pad. no no, he is quite the pissy little bitch...and why is that? because there are men working there, i mean on a construction job, in the middle of the day!! how dare they? and they are actually looking at him as he surveys the rooms, what idiots we are, i mean you're only the fucking biggest actor in the last 30 years!!...finally he can take no more and storms off, promising never to set foot in the place again! am i wrong in thinkin that this guy is a prize nut job? are we supposed to have taken the day off work so that taxi driver can have the place to himself?

i guess its a fairly pointless rant today but the news article reminded of this experience. i'd love to know exactly what went on in de niro's house on a daily basis. that poor woman was no doubt down on her hands and knees scrubbing the deer hunter's scuzzy toilet bowl with a tooth brush and for a bout $5.25 an hour too i bet...stealing isn't cool, but thanks to a few honest guys doing a day's work de niro has about $22 million burning a hole in his goodfella pocket....that's a lot of earrings huh?

the difference a year makes...

just about this time last year i was edging my way north, along the east coast of australia. in a misty blur of castlemaine xxxx and rollies of questionable content (passively of course, smoking is a mug's game!) i bounced from beach to beach, hostel to hostel during a trip that quite aptly sustains the suffix "of a lifetime".

when i first breached the different shores of another eastern seaboard in 2001 i came to NYC expecting a city driven by the work ethic, a labyrinth of labour and endeavour. i was not to be disappointed. work is number one in this city, there is no question. be it the early risers of the blue collar brigade or the midnight oilers of the white collar posse there is a universal drive in all; to work hard and work a lot. family, friends, health and fun all come a lowly second, third or worse on the list of life. however, to some this is tantamount to nothing else.....to them work must come first. i however, though a willing member of this general mindset at present, am, quite frankly, not one for life.

it was during my few months lazing around in the southern hemisphere, oz and new zealand to be exact, that i first came to realise that the NYC work ethos is not the only one, probably not the healthiest one and definitely not the most enjoyable one.
in australia the lifestyle is one of a slower pace, laid back....less stress. the aussies work, as all creatures must, but it is not the most important thing in life. the weather, the beaches, the proximity to such gems as fiji, thailand and tahiti.....it all adds up to a one thing....fun.
instead of trudging homeward in the gloom of night the natives are home at 4pm.....tying the surfboard to the roof of the truck, filling the cooler with cans of toohey's new and heading off with the gang for a barbie (and thats got nothing to do with dolls). instead of working weekends they head up the coast to party meccas like byron bay, frazer island and cairns. and its year round!! no winter to speak of......sun all the time.....warm pacific water to sooth the soul....i miss it.

but here i am, little less than a year later i am back in the rat race. just another donkey chasing the proverbial carrot......and hey! the donkey thing has nothing to do with being irish. fielding bullshit phonecalls a hundred times a day, driving 30, 000 miles a year around the busiest streets in the world and generally not reclining in a sand armchair while sipping a jack and coke on the rocks and enjoying a panoramic of bondi beach and scantily clad scandanavian chicks. what a difference a year makes...

prancing lance...

i'm fairly sure not many people will agree with me here but i simply cannot stand the very existence of lance armstrong. a friend of mine was surprised yesterday when we agreed on this point after his mug was on the news again after the break up with that tour de france groupie sheryl crow. don't worry, this won't be a long rant; as currently i'm feeling like 2 lbs of crap squeezed into a 1 lb bag as a direct result of a long night touring multiple bars in manhattan....a tour that took in such gems as the nassau bar, mike's pizzeria and higher end establishments like the gaslight.

anyway, back to armstrong. do the words sanctimonious, narcissistic or self-congratulatory mean anything in texas? the world already has to put up with that bush idiot but for the past few years we've had to endure prancing lance as well. so you beat cancer? well done, get over it already! and the whole bicycle thing? i mean for fuck sake, richard simmons wearing a face mask while watching queer as folk is less gay than cycling for a living. with the spandex, the sperm destroying saddle, and the dumb little hats, its just not cool.

now if that isn't bad enough we have the bracelet thing. that concept has got to top the most retarded list of things in the world, ever. fools running around wearing yellow rubber bangles, pretending to care about cancer research? what the fuck is that about? people actually buy these things on ebay!!...anyone caught wearing a yellow band should first of all be shot repeatedly with balls of their own shit and then made give a whole pay check to actual cancer research...morons, the half of them don't even know what the band represents!

the problem is you can't really blame the general masses, i mean after all, such crap as american idol, britney spears and tofu remain popular because of those very people. so, the bottom line is that its armstrong's fault for inventing the bloody things....with the yellow band brainstorm he has propelled himself into the elite group of people that i truly detest, rubbing shoulders with the likes of haley joel osmond, kevin federline and dakota fanning.

so stop with the bicycles lance, quit trying to elevate yourself to celebrity status by dating flaky, pseudo rock stars, and finally, please go on global television and ask for every yellow band in the world to be burned before settling on an island somewhere....far, far away.

an island, a stag do & oiled boobs...

back home in the emerald isle, we irish use different terms for everday things that are used here in the U S of A; sidewalk=footpath, hood of a car=bonnet of a car, stove=cooker...the list goes on. another of these anomalies is the bachelor party. back in the land of poets, painters, priests and perverts (the last two, being quite often an almalgamation) we call the bachelor party a "stag do". don't ask me why, i'm sure there is some rambling, bullshit history about the derivation of the term somewhere in the depths of the internet but right now that's not my beef.
my beef, gangster talk for problem, is a particular stag do that i was supposed to be helping plan. my friend from school, as in grammar school, paddy, is the first fool in my gang of growing up friends that is getting married. the grand day is july 11 of this year and the arranged stag do date was agreed upon as april 29, or that weekend anyway. irish stag dos tend to be something more than a one night affair.

anyway, to get back on point. during my christmas vacation back in ireland i managed to reignite a friendship with another buddy of mine, eamonn, whom i had sort of slipped out of contact with over the past couple of years (for reasons that will make for riveting reading at a later date). we resurrected the camaraderie and agreed that we would be the main organisers of paddy's stag do...job's a good one, deal done.

now, for a stag do, i prefer to follow the lines of top shelf alcohol, kegs of guinness, pussy ping-pong and well oiled boobs. so the first ideas that came to me were along the lines of a weekend in amsterdam, prague, berlin or some other european getaway. this was instantly shot down by the groom himself. "no, i want it in ireland"....ok, so we agree on ireland, after all, we do know how to throw a party! so i said to eamonn, "it has to be a city then, galway, cork, belfast...maybe dublin" (though i hate the place).
so at the time of my departure from ireland after christmas, back to the grind in NYC, we had at least sorted out what country we would experience the debauchery.

i was still thinking about getting some strippers on board, some good ones, willing to get up to crazy shit, some super-soakers maybe, white t-shirts, k/y wrestling...i mean its a man's goodbye to singlehood, it has to be raucous and memorable right? well, imagine my serious disappointment today to learn, not via the groom, nor even my supposed co-planner but through a completely different third party, that the stag do was to be held on an island, off the coast of donegal in north western ireland!

an island? off the coast of ireland? with the wind and rain and not even a fuckin shrub between there and america to protect us!! fuck me, isn't that where they send lepers and goats? where there lives about 23 people, 18 of whom are over 86 and the other 5 are paid help to change the sheets? i honestly couldn't believe it. i mean how are we to have any craic in a place like that (craic as in fun...another irish term). am i to smuggle in some divas under cover of dark in a goddam trawler? someone smell fish in here?

its a sad day i suppose, it appears paddy has already checked in his balls to hotel matrimony, not even his last hurrah to the concept of "another woman's breasts" is to happen. the future bride is already wielding the axe of doom that usually befalleth with "i do" and by the way i don't mean anything wrong at the stag do, nothing improper, i respect the honour of the engagement, in fact i don't give a crap if the paddy doesn't even look at a stripper, but the rest of us, we need fun, gettin the groove on sorta stuff.....beer caps off with butt cheeks sorta stuff, ya know? its just not fair waaaaaaa:(

god i need i drink, i'm hittin the bars early tonight....nassau maybe for a while, doc watson's later......mmmm well oiled boobs:)

a deadly sin that keeps us fit...

i have just returned from a fairly arduous 3 mile run. yes, i know 3 miles is nothing to write home about but i get so bored running you have no idea, i find a heart busting 3 mile grunt is both rewarding and less mind numbing than its 5 or 10 mile cousins, so for now, desist with the tutting. now, i must confess i am a bonafide member of what i like to call the "fake/real runner's club". how so, i hear the cry! fake and real at the same time? well, any of you who do a bit of running know fine well that a run on a deserted beach, or down the leaf strewn country lane or through the empty park never gives the same workout as a dash around some local streets. with plenty of fellow joggers and passersby, the local route always coaxes that little extra out of the winter stiff limbs. it all stems from that age old sin of pride.....let me explain, when i am at my wheezing worst i refuse to let that balding, greek looking guy coming back from the corner deli with a quarter pound of turkey and a pack of red man know that i am about to die of a heart attack! no sir, i am robust, i am a machine, i grit the teeth, crank up the ipod and storm past him for a good twenty paces. then the heart screams in disagreement, the lungs groan with discomfort and the legs start a decline toward snail's pace. but hold up!! is that a 15 year old punk with zits and a look of slyness that is very likely accidental hanging out in front of the pizza place? by jove it is!......come on pulmonary artery, no point crying about the 13 jack and cokes last friday eh? get on with it!!......speed increases again, all bodily functions maxed out......there are little red lights flashing in front of my eyes, the oil lamp is on! the battery is flat!! i am nearly out of gas!!!......but past the skulker i go, like the wind i round the corner and like an emphysemic retired miner i grind to a shuddering halt under the cover of a dark street.
my face is a red usually reserved for well thrashed arses but the pride is intact....i have just completed 3 miles several minutes faster than ever would be possible on a more secluded thoroughfare.......and impressed not only the greek and the thief but also my own wicked little jiminy cricket......don't knock the deadly sins just yet.....some at least are keeping us fit.

the chastity belt is off...

i've been hearing about blogs, bloggers and all things from blogville for a couple of years now but never really considered myself a member of the blogable brigade. we like alliteration round these parts as you'll notice. i mean, i still have reservations regarding the purpose of the things, the need for them or the interest in them.....yet here i am, a blog virgin, shakily disrobing myself of my protective blog resistant garments and climbing into a bed with a temptress who knows no limits when it comes to revealing my inner workings.
what's more, i'm going to stick at it, i intend to add, to expand, nay, to culture my little plot of ramblings and commentaries. I don't aspire to be funny....to be informative or even interesting. what i will provide is a view on New York through the eyes of an Irishman, an immigrant, a man away from home.
i love this city and all it has to offer. here's what i think.