Long, Long, Long

Last Friday I made the trip down to St. Paul/ Minneapolis for what was designated "Free Fun Friday" because "Fun Free Friday" inferred that there would be no fun to be had.

The day started like any other in that I got a chicken pox immunization at the ripe old age of 20, but I digress. I went with Josh, Julie, and Jeff first to the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the first time since Junior year in AP Art History. It was as sweet as I remembered and I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would and was thoroughly impressed. As a plus, we grabbed Mick from his place as a tour guide and all around stellar host to our day. We were planning on going to the Walker Sculpture garden, but we essentially had a collective "fuck it" because the real goal of the day was fast approaching and we wanted to experience it as well as we could... Irish Fest.

It's exactly how it sounds. An Irish Fair in a park in St. Paul and it was sick as shit. There were all sorts of Irish foods to sample like cabbage, potato stew, and Guinness. We saw Irish dancing, Irish inspired face painting and of course dudes beating the shit out of each other for no apparent reason. Well, I guess there was a reason, the festival organizers decided to have boxing matches throughout the day with what I'll assume were consenting coherent semi-pro boxers who knew what day it was.

Once the boxing was done, and the sun was setting, we went towards the main stage to see The Dropkick Murpheys perform a free concert of their songs and shanties. I used to dig they quite a bit back in the day and to see them live for free was pretty damn sweet.

Highlights --
-Their rendition of "Amazing Grace" which made it's way up to the list of songs I want played at my funeral.
-Their Encore of "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" complete with some lord of the dance inspired jigs from some girls who were earlier performing to traditional music.
-Seeing an empty glass bottle of whiskey thrown from one section of the crowd to a yard behind me, smoking some poor dude in the neck/shoulder. I'm hoping he was too drunk to feel too much pain.