Irish Festival
Whoever's steering the stars continues to pitch both the good and the bad at me, and I'll continue to try and focus on the good. Here's part of it:
Kate found out about an Irish heritage festival that's held every year in Dublin, Ohio through the Flogging Molly website. They're always booked and it's never anywhere around here, so we seized the opportunity and ran off for the weekend. We hopped in the car Saturday morning, where I promptly fell back to sleep and slept through Kate's long hours of traffic-jam suffering. I woke up about an hour from our destination, which was the cheapest hotel that Kate could find within driving distance of the festival.
It showed, to be honest. The walls had spackle spots on them, the window-mounted AC unit was plugged into this ghetto free-standing outlet that came up through a pipe in the floor, and our wonderful window view was as such:
What's funnier was the toiletries. They had some rather explicit instructions on them, which I suppose created a delicate atmosphere of "HOTELS FOR DUMMIES". I'm kinda surprised that the toilet paper didn't have "BUTT" printed on it:
But really, that's not what we were there for, the room was just a hole in the wall to sleep in. We grabbed our stuff and headed back out into the blazing hot sun. Parking was packed, so we ended up walking a ways to the main entrance. We got our hands stamped and walked around a bit. The vendors didn't really impress me, to be honest. Most of them were selling the same tapestries, jewelry, and crafty thematic knick-knacks that we've found in cheap mail-order catalogs since I started working in Mackinaw. The rest of it was pretty neat, though.
They had one historical section where I got to see re-enactments of what life was like in ancient Ireland, day-to-day duties like baking and toolmaking. They had an exhibit on the history of Irish rock, especially the bands like U2 that got popular in the US. I got to read neat things about the history of Ireland, like how my ancestors were plantation slaves whose masters felt were of "inferior stock" and thus outlawed interbreeding with the Chosen People. Whitey indeed. They also had a watercolor screen of the Celtic zodiac. Guess which sign I fell under. Go ahead, guess.
Oh, and the food was wonderful. I had lamb stew, vegetable stew, Guinness chicken-and-potato kebabs, and delicious meat pies that I plan to make soon. Oh, and wouldn't you know? BUBBLIE PIES! These alone made the festival worth your time.
We headed over to the KILLIANS IRISH SHAM-ROCK stage an hour or two early, because I was worried about things getting packed. Ten bucks for a ticket to see Flogging Molly isn't anything, really, I'd imagine every teen-to-young-adult within driving distance would be all over it. We plopped down behind the beer tent to wait and stare intently at the growing pile of boxes (which grew just about as tall as the tent by the end of the night).
At precisely 8:55 pm, something very interesting happened. All the bands ceased playing their music, and started playing the exact same Irish jig. And accordingly, 99% of the festival attendees dropped what they were doing and did THE SAME THING. Several thousand people all doing the Irish jig at the same time. No, I am not kidding you. Apparently they broke some Guinness Book Of World Record at the tenth anniversary of the festival, and they decided that it was time to do it again at the 20th. Fair enough!
Finally, the band started to wind up their set, and Kate and I made our way to the back of the growing crowd. The next half hour or so made me infuriated with the kids I'll be counseling one day. First, a table full of kids in green emo neckerchiefs and Atreyu hoodies sat there WHILE THE OPENING BAND PLAYED and listened to their iPods. THEIR I-PODS. You're at a show, and you're...you're...as;dfalkdsjafs;dlkfj.
Once the police got those losers cleared out, we progressed up the age scale to the older kids. Carving out a chunk of crowd space the size of my truck bed as Flogging Molly took the stage, a group of sorority chicks and their idiot boyfriends pushed the crowd back so that they could take pictures of each others' feet as they danced, and of their outstretched beer-clutching arms as they intentionally made themselves look more stoned. When people finally started ignoring them and standing in their photo-op space (I had nothing to do with that *cough*), they stopped their act COMPLETELY and just stood there motionless staring at the stage, way too cool for school. My mind combined this with the fact that I didn't know a single person for a couple hundred miles, the sight of flailing white kids, and several of my favorite songs in a row, and I actually ended up dancing for probably the first time since I've been married. Until the end of the concert. I felt like I was having a heat stroke on the way back to the car. But hey. Dancing.
Back to the hotel to collapse into an exhausted pile of sweat-soaked flesh and up the next morning to go back again. This time it was a lot cooler, and overcast, and we got to walk around and have a cool time learning to pronounce "slainte" and "failte". (Hint, it involves the word "lawnchair".) I bought a ring regardless of its origin because it was really pretty and I hadn't bought much so far. More food was gorged upon, just in time for the first crack of thunder. That's right, it was raining time. Everything started closing and people started pulling back the canvases on the merch tents, so we figured it was just time to leave. All in all, an enjoyable weekend.
Kate found out about an Irish heritage festival that's held every year in Dublin, Ohio through the Flogging Molly website. They're always booked and it's never anywhere around here, so we seized the opportunity and ran off for the weekend. We hopped in the car Saturday morning, where I promptly fell back to sleep and slept through Kate's long hours of traffic-jam suffering. I woke up about an hour from our destination, which was the cheapest hotel that Kate could find within driving distance of the festival.
It showed, to be honest. The walls had spackle spots on them, the window-mounted AC unit was plugged into this ghetto free-standing outlet that came up through a pipe in the floor, and our wonderful window view was as such:
What's funnier was the toiletries. They had some rather explicit instructions on them, which I suppose created a delicate atmosphere of "HOTELS FOR DUMMIES". I'm kinda surprised that the toilet paper didn't have "BUTT" printed on it:
But really, that's not what we were there for, the room was just a hole in the wall to sleep in. We grabbed our stuff and headed back out into the blazing hot sun. Parking was packed, so we ended up walking a ways to the main entrance. We got our hands stamped and walked around a bit. The vendors didn't really impress me, to be honest. Most of them were selling the same tapestries, jewelry, and crafty thematic knick-knacks that we've found in cheap mail-order catalogs since I started working in Mackinaw. The rest of it was pretty neat, though.
They had one historical section where I got to see re-enactments of what life was like in ancient Ireland, day-to-day duties like baking and toolmaking. They had an exhibit on the history of Irish rock, especially the bands like U2 that got popular in the US. I got to read neat things about the history of Ireland, like how my ancestors were plantation slaves whose masters felt were of "inferior stock" and thus outlawed interbreeding with the Chosen People. Whitey indeed. They also had a watercolor screen of the Celtic zodiac. Guess which sign I fell under. Go ahead, guess.
Oh, and the food was wonderful. I had lamb stew, vegetable stew, Guinness chicken-and-potato kebabs, and delicious meat pies that I plan to make soon. Oh, and wouldn't you know? BUBBLIE PIES! These alone made the festival worth your time.
We headed over to the KILLIANS IRISH SHAM-ROCK stage an hour or two early, because I was worried about things getting packed. Ten bucks for a ticket to see Flogging Molly isn't anything, really, I'd imagine every teen-to-young-adult within driving distance would be all over it. We plopped down behind the beer tent to wait and stare intently at the growing pile of boxes (which grew just about as tall as the tent by the end of the night).
At precisely 8:55 pm, something very interesting happened. All the bands ceased playing their music, and started playing the exact same Irish jig. And accordingly, 99% of the festival attendees dropped what they were doing and did THE SAME THING. Several thousand people all doing the Irish jig at the same time. No, I am not kidding you. Apparently they broke some Guinness Book Of World Record at the tenth anniversary of the festival, and they decided that it was time to do it again at the 20th. Fair enough!
Finally, the band started to wind up their set, and Kate and I made our way to the back of the growing crowd. The next half hour or so made me infuriated with the kids I'll be counseling one day. First, a table full of kids in green emo neckerchiefs and Atreyu hoodies sat there WHILE THE OPENING BAND PLAYED and listened to their iPods. THEIR I-PODS. You're at a show, and you're...you're...as;dfalkdsjafs;dlkfj.
Once the police got those losers cleared out, we progressed up the age scale to the older kids. Carving out a chunk of crowd space the size of my truck bed as Flogging Molly took the stage, a group of sorority chicks and their idiot boyfriends pushed the crowd back so that they could take pictures of each others' feet as they danced, and of their outstretched beer-clutching arms as they intentionally made themselves look more stoned. When people finally started ignoring them and standing in their photo-op space (I had nothing to do with that *cough*), they stopped their act COMPLETELY and just stood there motionless staring at the stage, way too cool for school. My mind combined this with the fact that I didn't know a single person for a couple hundred miles, the sight of flailing white kids, and several of my favorite songs in a row, and I actually ended up dancing for probably the first time since I've been married. Until the end of the concert. I felt like I was having a heat stroke on the way back to the car. But hey. Dancing.
Back to the hotel to collapse into an exhausted pile of sweat-soaked flesh and up the next morning to go back again. This time it was a lot cooler, and overcast, and we got to walk around and have a cool time learning to pronounce "slainte" and "failte". (Hint, it involves the word "lawnchair".) I bought a ring regardless of its origin because it was really pretty and I hadn't bought much so far. More food was gorged upon, just in time for the first crack of thunder. That's right, it was raining time. Everything started closing and people started pulling back the canvases on the merch tents, so we figured it was just time to leave. All in all, an enjoyable weekend.