Normally, I would not draw a cartoon with a holiday theme the day before that holiday. I like to draw them a few days ahead so editors have plenty of time to place the cartoons on their pages for the holiday. But I’m bending my rule this time because I saved this for CNN, showed it to them yesterday, and they chose something else…so here we are (what they chose is really good, so no worries). Eh, a lot of my clients have been running the holiday-themed stuff after the holiday even when I do give it to them in advance.
I’m just having some fun with this today as Trump keeps trying to delay his trials or having them tossed out for bogus reasons. I don’t feel like writing about him at the moment, so Let’s go with some fun Irish facts about me.
Fun fact number one: I don’t own a green shirt. I don’t know why. I guess they all got too old and ragged or I got too fat for them. Don’t pinch me.
Fun fact number two: I don’t go out on St. Patrick’s Day. I stopped doing that during my bar days because too many lunatics and amateur drinkers go out that night. Even when I was young, I felt too old for that nonsense. Also, it’s kinda dangerous. There are a lot of drunk lunatics driving that night. I don’t go out on New Year’s Eve for the same reasons.
Fun fact number three: I’m Irish. Big deal. Doesn’t everyone in this nation have some Irish in them? I was often told as a kid about our family being Irish and it was something my mother was very proud of but according to Ancestry, I’m only ten percent Irish. The rest of me is English (49 percent), Welsh (12 percent), and Scottish (28 percent). I am more Scot than Irish and I’m OK with that because I like blue more than I like green. I was also told we were German only to find out later that’s not true at all. My father also told me we were related to Tom Jones even though Jones was his stepfather’s name (I think) and the famous singer wasn’t born a Jones. Dad also told me he grew up in Louisiana with John Fogerty even though that guy’s from northern California.
Fun fact number four: I hate Celtic rock bands like Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys. I don’t know what it is but that stuff makes my skin crawl the same way ska annoys me. It’s not good music. I think you do have to be drunk to get into it. Great, now it’s in my head. Fuck.
Fun fact number five: There is an Irish store in downtown Fredericksburg where I live. It’s called Irish Eyes and I also enjoyed perusing the offerings even though I haven’t been to it in a long time. Everything in there is imported from Ireland. You can buy products from tea, candy, jewelry, to kilts. I bought my little sister, Sarah, a necklace there in the 2000s when she got dumped and I wanted to cheer her up. If found out afterward that the guy who dumped her made his entire thing about being Irish. Oops. I just texted her to see if she still has it.
Fun fact number six: I don’t mind drinking green beer. I was in a bar in DC last year a day or two after St. Patrick’s Day and they were trying to get rid of the stuff, so I drank it with a discount. It’s just any old domestic beer with green dye in it.
Fun fact number seven: I have never been to Ireland but I hope to change that someday soon.
Fun fact number eight: I’m out of fun facts.
Since I talked about myself, tell me some fun Irish facts about you in the comments, even if those “fun facts” are that you’re not Irish.
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Watch me draw:
CLAYTOONZ 
No fun facts but thanks for the fun. I see our favorite rodent is into the spirit of the day.
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My Great-great-grandmother was from County Cork, Ireland and my grandmother took great pride in that fact. When we were little she would often dance a jig in the kitchen and tell us she was part leprechaun and, gullible little shits that we were, we actually believed her for years! :) We were so disappointed to learn she was lying to us about that. We found out later that she lied to us about all sorts of things, such as feeding salt to snails made them happy, and that the Easter Bunny had come to the front porch while we sat on the back porch waiting for him – that was the Sunday morning after the night she and my mom got drunk and forgot to set out the Easter baskets, so they were scrambling to get them ready while we sat out back), and way too many other things that burst our bubble. We realized when we got older that she was really a very awful woman in many ways – cruel to my mother, didn’t really like us kids (we were the ‘hippie kids’ who lived too close to Berkeley, and the black sheep out of all her other grand-kids), and she used to bad-mouth us to her friends, and she even disowned me when I was unmarried and pregnant. Not the nice leprechaun Nana we grew up with, that’s for sure! Just an mean ol’ drunk.
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I just realized my post sound like I should bring this up in therapy – sorry guys! LOL!
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This is therapy for a lot of us.
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I am Irish on my Dad’s side, but was shocked when Ancestry dot com pegged me at only something like 5-6 percent Irish, when we’d all thought there would be a much higher percentage than that (though siblings inherit different amounts from various countries than one another, which makes sense but was interesting to discover). So fast forward to more recent years, and the percentages keep changing as more people send in their DNA samples. It now says that I’m 16 percent Irish, which is more like it.
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My maternal grandmother was a Stephens, a family name that (if I recall correctly) has roots in county Cork, but the verified family records only go back to one Thomas Stephens, born in Virginia in 1735, fought under Washington’s command and married a woman named Jane Jefferson, which makes her brother my great-great-great-great-great-great-great Uncle Tom. This relationship also gives my family a fondness for nickels and two dollar bills.
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Alex Barry here, so I can claim some Irish ancestry. Supposedly our family is out of County Cork, but that would have been an easy fun fact to make up, since nearly all Barry’s originated somewhere in County Cork. The Irish Republican martyr Kevin Barry shares my surname, but he probably wasn’t a direct line ancestor, since he was not yet 19 years old when executed by the British in 1920.
Fun fact: I’ve befriended about a dozen other Alex Barry’s on the Facebook. We have a sort of online social club. Three are in Australia, a few are in England, and the others here in the states. Some of them are even females (I’m not). One of the Aussies even made it to Milwaukee for a visit a few years ago.
Along with the Irish in me, I’ve also got German, Scots and English ancestry. Haven’t done the DNA sampling yet, but I always feel most closely akin to my German roots. Love the language, the country, its culture, and its beer. Far better beer than anything Irish-made, although I do love me a Guinness. Fun fact: I own six pair of Lederhosen, a few Loden jackets, and all manner of Tracht accessories – hats, pins, shirts, vests, knee socks, shoes. But then I also own three kilts, one in the Irish National tartan, one in my paternal grandmother’s family tartan, Leslie, and one that’s a Utilikilt, for casual everyday wear around the neighborhood where people look at me funny.
Clay, some of those really hard rocking Celtic-rock bands can be a little challenging, but good company and a few drinks will help a listener with their appreciation. However, on the other hand, some of the most beautiful music you’ll ever hear comes from Ireland. I’m thinking of the fabulous band Clannad, who I’ve been listening to for forty years, and who I’ve seen a half-dozen times in concert. Give them a try. Fun fact: I’ve met the band’s beautiful lead singer and harpist Máire Ní Bhraonáin (Moya Brennan) a couple times, and she even kissed me once!
The last thing I would consider doing in Milwaukee is to go out to a pub on St Patrick’s Day. Our sober drivers are bad enough, our drunk drivers are the stuff of legend, and our St Patrick’s Day traffic incidents are relentless and sometimes violent. So I’ll stay home as usual, where I plan to sip some Knappogue Castle Irish single malt whiskey (only the Scots spell it whisky) with some Guinness chasers. Slàinte Mhath!
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I’m a descendant of one of the families who occupied what are now castle ruins in Castleconnell, County Limerick. My Dad and a few of his siblings visited Castleconnell in the 1970s when I was a teenager, and then my husband and I traveled there in the early Aughts. I also have ancestry in Dunloy, County Antrim. There are gravestones in the Dunloy cemetery with my maiden name, which has been Anglicized over the years, and the headstones have the current spelling. It would be really cool to find headstones with the original spelling, which looks absolutely nothing like the current surname. I’d actually prefer it if we’d kept the original spelling, or a variant of it, before it was phoneticized into what it is now.
When my Dad visited Ireland in the ’70s, he brought back an Irish bodhrám drum for me. I still have it, but lost the beater stick over the years. I also have a couple of gold Claddagh rings, and a beautiful Waterford crystal shamrock that my Dad brought home from a more recent trip about 15 years ago
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Thin Lizzy is my favorite Irish Band and “Whisky in a Jar” is a great rockin song about an Irishman robbing an Englishman, which is also great on St. Paddies day. Metallica does a remake of it. Great Song, Highly recommended. Both Irelanders I know, know that song. I’m Irish too on both sides till at least my Grand Parents, but I’m American. It’s only fun to say I’m Irish on St. Patrick’s day, or when I’m singing. “Whisky in Jar”. Gary Moore, btw, is the best guitarist ever, especially his duets with BB King. 🙂
Wish I could post a Shamrock emoji! Cheers!
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Thin Lizzy was awesome. Jailbreak, the album, is a masterpiece.
As far as heritage goes, German/Italian roots. AFAIK.
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“Wish I could post a Shamrock emoji!”
You can!!!☘️☘️☘️☘️☘️😉
If you can’t find it in your Emoji Library, copy and paste them into a text file, from which you can copy and paste them wherever you want. 😉
⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
⚠️ONLY THE
⚠️ VOTERS CAN
⚠️ SAVE US
⚠️ NOW!!!!!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
🇺🇸November 5th, 2024.
🇺🇸Save the Date.
🇺🇸Save the Country.
🇺🇸Susan B_A from
🇺🇸 Resistanceville
🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
🌊(We Need A
🌊( Blue Wave
🌊( that is
🌊TOO BIG TO RIG
🌊TOO REAL TO STEAL
🌊*Glenn Kirshner
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“Fun fact number four: I hate Celtic rock bands like Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys. “
“Great, now it’s in my head. Fuck.”
Not exactly an IRISH Fun Fact, but here goes:
Maybe some More Traditional CELTIC Music by Alan Stivell will drive the Celtic rock out of your head.
My favorite, Gaeltacht (From Renaissance Of The Celtic Harp) is last in the album, so here is a direct link to it first:
And here’s the full album Renaissance of the Celtic Harp:
Alan Stivell is from Brittany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany
“Renaissance” is one of his earliest, most traditional, and most popular albums. He and I are contemporaries, which makes him an Old Fart like me. His later albums are still “Celtic”, but with more “Rock” mixed in, like these:
Alan Stivell A l’Olympia
Alan Stivell Live in Dublin
⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
⚠️ONLY THE VOTERS CAN
⚠️ SAVE US NOW!!!!!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
🇺🇸November 5th, 2024.
🇺🇸Save the Date.
🇺🇸Save the Country.
🇺🇸Susan B_A from Resistanceville 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 🌊[We Need A Blue Wave
🌊that is]
🌊TOO BIG TO RIG
🌊TOO REAL TO STEAL
🌊Glenn Kirshner
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No.
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Sorry, no Irish. From Eastern Europe I am mainly Polish, and Ukrainian, with probably a little Hun or Mongol thrown in along with any other nationality that had empires in that part of Europe — our history is full of being overrun by rapist armies. From Western Europe I would say mainly French, but who knows. From North America I am Huron, Ojibway, Mohawk, Saultaux, Cree and possibly Blackfoot. All of that makes me distinctly Métis, and generally Canadian.
As for Gropy McPaddy, LOCK HIM UP! He probably drinks Gold Beer sitting on his Gold Toilet!
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I don’t know which county in Ireland the O’Toole clan hails from. My Irish roots are predominantly from the Kerry Patch of St. Louis.
Fun Fact:
Leprechauns are the elves Santa fired for drinking on the job.
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Now, I gotta post my favorite version of “Whisky in the Jar.” I hope it goes through. Sometimes YT blocks Gary Moore vids in America. I’m an American expat in Japan.
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Thanks for the link.
Did you check out the Alan Stivell links that I posted?
If you don’t care for Traditional Celtic, at least check out “Pop Plinn” from “A l’Olympia”, in 1972.
“A l’Olympia is the first live album and fourth original album by Alan Stivell, released in May 1972 by the Fontana label. It was recorded in public at the Olympia on February 28, 1972.”
And I just stumbled onto an “updated” version from “Olympia 2012”, forty years later.
Dan Ar Braz was the guitarist, the same guy as in the 1972 version.
I was 23 in 1972.
I imagine that those guys were in their 20’s or 30’s in 1972, they were a little bit older in 2012, as was I. 😉
Yes, I am an Old Fart!😉
⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
⚠️ONLY THE
⚠️ VOTERS CAN
⚠️ SAVE US
⚠️ NOW!!!!!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
🇺🇸November 5th, 2024.
🇺🇸Save the Date.
🇺🇸Save the Country.
🇺🇸Susan B_A from
🇺🇸 Resistanceville
🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
🌊(We Need A
🌊( Blue Wave
🌊( that is
🌊TOO BIG TO RIG
🌊TOO REAL TO STEAL
🌊*Glenn Kirshner
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