Happy St. Patrick's Day with Sherman and Van Morrison

 
Every St. Patrick's Day, I think of my friend Sherman.  Funny thing is, he wasn't even Irish.  Sherman was an African American man from up in Harlem.  My husband Jerry and I knew Sherman and his partner Fatima from Manhattan Jazz clubs, and they became close friends of ours. 

Fatima was born in Portugal, and moved to New Orleans as a little girl.  As a young adult, she attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and received an MFA in sculpture.   Her specialty was abstract sculpture, and she also had a catering business in Manhattan. 

Sherman was a writer and wrote jokes for Bill Cosby, Slappy White, Sammy Davis Jr. Godfrey Cambridge, Richard Pryor and others.  He wrote for the newspapers: The New York Daily News, The New York Post and The Village Voice.  He was also a board member on The New York City Council for the Arts.  Sherman was, without doubt, the funniest person I've ever met.

Sherman and Fatima are no longer with us, and I think of them often.

So what does this have to do with St. Patrick's Day, you ask?

Well, on St. Patrick's Day 1975 my husband Jerry, Sherman, Fatima and I dropped some pyramid shaped red "Windowpane", and went to the St. Patrick's Day Parade, here in Manhattan.  Needless to say, we had a blast.

Afterward, we headed downtown to McSorley’s Old Ale House to drink beer.  From the moment we walked in, to the time we left, Sherman spoke with a convincing Irish accent, and had everyone he spoke with believing he was Irish.

At one point during the festivities, Sherman shared that he had written a St. Patrick’s Day Survival Guide.  He rummaged through his jacket, pulled out a piece of paper, gave it a quick scan, and then shared the following:

Sherman’s St. Patrick's Day Survival Guide

St. Patrick's Day: the one day of the year when the 2% of the world’s population that's Irish gets the other 98% completely shitfaced.

Leg 1:
7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Rise and shine early.  Take a long, hot shower, and liberally use aftershave, perfume, cologne, deodorant, and powders afterward, because by 3 p.m., you will be excreting raw alcohol and other poisons.  Without proper preparations, you will smell like a three-day dead cat wrapped in a massage parlor carpet.

The bars open at 9AM, so use this time to prepare.  Collect the following supplies and put them in a place where you will easily be able to find it in an impaired condition.  I recommend the bathroom floor, between the toilet and the baseboard heater, since that's where you'll probably end up:

• 1 quart spring water
• 1 bottle aspirin
• 5 pairs Depends (adult diapers)
• 1 bottle Percocet
• 1 gram morphine sulfate
• 1 oz. human adrenaline extract
• 1 precharged electric defibrillator
• 4 Cardiac needles
• 1 trauma surgeon

Brew a strong pot of coffee.  Add 9 oz. Jameson Irish whiskey, drink.  Note that coffee should be drunk liberally throughout the day.  There is a reason that the Irish invented Irish Coffee; unless you ingest a large volume of artificial stimulants throughout the course of St. Patrick's Day, you are going to die.

Arrange to be picked up to be taken to the bar by 8:45 a.m.  I cannot stress enough that you should not drink and drive.  There is no reason to chance losing your license or killing someone in a drunken state when you have plenty of idiot friends willing to take that risk on your behalf.

Leg 2:
9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Arrive at the bar right when it opens.  Make sure this is an Irish bar if at all possible.  Almost every city in America has bars called "The Blarney Stone", "Molly McGuire’s", "The Dirty Mick" or "McSomethings-or-Another".  Just try to ignore the fact that the bar is probably owned by Koreans.

Secure a barstool and do not leave it under any circumstances.  The bar is liable to be packed by noon, and real Irish people do not wait in line for drinks, no matter what the consequences.

Order a few more Irish Coffees to spike the stimulant level.  However, you should not order an "Irish Coffee" as you will be given a fruity little glass mug topped with whipped cream and a cherry, and some guy named Seamus will call you a pussy while putting a cigarette out on your neck.  Ask for coffee with whiskey and ask the bartender to leave the whipped cream can, as nothing will add spice to your day like the occasional hit of whippet (nitrous oxide).

Leg 3:
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

It's lunchtime!  You may not be hungry, but it's important to eat something, because like Sheriff Bart said in 'Blazing Saddles': "Man drink like that, and don't eat, he is going to die."

If you want to maintain your buzz and not get that hideous, bloated feeling that could slow down your drinking, there are only two options: popcorn or Pop-Tarts.  Both have the carbohydrates you'll need to give you energy, both will soak up excess bile in your stomach, and both have names that are hard to slur.   If you start slurring your words too early, you'll hear the second most frightening phrase in the English language on St. Patrick's Day: "You're cut off".  The most frightening phrase? As on all other days, it is simply "I'm pregnant", especially when followed by "It's definitely yours."

By now, you should switch off of coffee drinks to beer.  You have only one option here: Guinness stout.  You may be tempted to order green beer, but remember: beer doesn't always turn green because of food coloring.

Leg 4:
2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

By now, the bar is definitely crowded as people take long lunches and bail out of work early to “tie one on”.  If you're doing your job correctly, the bar should look two to three times as crowded as it really is.

Also, by now, you may be in conversation with some real Irish people, since the person you came with has likely been taken away by ambulance.  Some conversational points to remember when talking to the Irish are: Football, really means Soccer, and you should be more passionate about it than you are about than anything else.  You may want to have another Irish Coffee if your heartbeat has become irregular.

The Home Stretch:
7 p.m. to Closing

Your goal, of course, is to be the last person to leave the bar at closing time.  This will be impossible, since a blood alcohol content of .50 usually equals death, and you should be pushing a .35 or .40 by now.

The only way for a true Irishman to leave a bar before closing time with honor is to be hauled away by the police.  Throw a punch.  It doesn't matter who you hit or why; no one's made any sense since 3 o'clock, anyway.  You will be beaten mercilessly, since your fine motor control has been gone since the late morning, but it doesn't matter since you can't feel anything.

Depending on your community, the police should arrive within fifteen minutes to scrape you off the floor and clap you in irons.  The final impression you leave is the most important: as you are being dragged from the bar, begin screaming that you want to take your drink with you.  You will be a legend, and by now the friend who took you to the bar should have had his or her stomach pumped, and will be able to bail you out.

By following these simple guidelines, your St. Patrick's Day experience will be one you will never forget, if it weren't physically and biologically impossible for you to remember any of it.

When Sherman finished, we were in hysterics, as were people at the neighboring tables, and gave him a round of applause.  Sherman gave me the paper, which I still have, and cherish.

Today's freeloads are from a man whom I'm sure can tell a drunken St. Patrick's Day story or two…

'Veedon Fleece'

This is a nice limited edition, remastered Japanese SHM-CD, from 2008.

'..It's Too Late To Stop Now... Volume I (Live)'

This is a 24-bit 96 kHz Reissue from 2016.

Both make for nice upgrades

For the freeload, tell us one of your favorite "drunk stories"