Servings of A Devilish Pint

Shamrockin' Spring 2019 Book Tour Dates!

2019-03-01T16:43:00.006-08:00

Friday, 3/8 7-10PM Shamrock n’ Read with Seamus Kelleher at The Dubliner on the Delaware, 34 North Main Street in New Hope, PA http://www.thedublinernewhope.com

Friday 3/15 5:30-6:30PM A Literary Shamrock Shake Happy Hour with Mike Farragher, Booktowne, 171 Main St Manasquan, NJ https://www.booktowne.com/event

Saturday, 3/16 12-2PM. Shamrockin’ Read with an acoustic What’s What at Short Stories Books, 23 Main St, Madison, NJ http://www.shortstoriesnj.com

Saturday, 3/16 4-6:30PM Crossroads, 78 North Avenue, Garwood, NJ part of the “What’s Your Story?” Series https://www.wysusa.com/events/

What Just Happened?!

2018-05-19T18:25:00.001-07:00

Remember the good old days, when a cast iron stomach could withstand a sack of White Castle burgers and the only worry about dinner was a mild case of indigestion from the pineapple on a Domino’s Pizza?

It was a simpler time then.

Now? I’ve spent the last few hours attempting to make reservations to gather some of my dearest friends for a long overdue dinner out, and we are all bringing new “toppings” to the menu.
One of us has taken on an allergy to pesto over the years. My best friend has torpedoed the Italian restaurant we had all agreed on, the very notion of tomato seeds setting off land mines in his spasming intestines now that diverticulitis has set in. Our reservation got reduced by one at the last minute because a sinus surgery took longer than expected to recover from.

Just two years ago, the same friends smugly toasted one another on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday; we raised our glasses and spat in the face of Father Time. Yessiree, we made it this long, looking this fabulous, and were still defying age in the gym with punishing workouts doled out by stunned personal trainers that were half our age. “Fifties, here we come!” we squealed with middle-fingered glee.

How did it go this south this quickly?

How did I go from crossing my legs at a Starbucks as I pursued my great American novel to writing about my friends’ ailments in the waiting room of my podiatrist’s office while I await a fitting for my custom orthotics to relief my chronic planter fasciitis?

“We stand and we won't fall/We're one and one for all/We are the youth gone wild.”

Those were lyrics that blared from the Trans Am speakers in college back in 1985, courtesy of Jersey-born local boys in Skid Row. In 2018, I am stuffing the hatchback of my Subaru Outback to the brim with the contents of my daughter's dorm room as the Sirius "Watercolors" channel to reduce my blood pressure (which I am on medication for, by the way) wafts from the speakers. When did I become the parent?

It’s not all fuddy-duddy in your fifties: rock and roll rebellion still can occur every now and then, it just looks different. Back then, we would effortlessly leap over security barricades to snake to the front of the stage for the privilege of having Joan Jett sweat on us. Now, “sticking it to the man” looks like sticking your mother-in-law’s handicapped placard on the rearview mirror to sneak into the premier parking lot of the PNC Bank Arts Center that cost everyone else $30 so that we can watch Joan Jett croak out the oldies with Heart and REO Speedwagon in tow. #badass

Dr. Thomas Gill, a geriatric professor at Yale University, laid out a sobering road map on aging in a recent interview with the Chicago Sun Times. Susceptibility to diseases like shingles will increase in our sixties, chronic conditions and joint replacements crop up in our seventies, and the chances of falling and breaking bones in our homes increases threefold in our eighties. These petty ailments making today’s meal planning so difficult today are just the appetizers for a buffet of dry-rot decline on the horizon, so we have that to look forward to. Not!

Despite the minor aches and pains, the dinner conversation is even richer than the chocolate lava cake served at dessert. We share with our friends about our recent trip to mark our 25th wedding anniversary in Amsterdam as we visited our daughter while she studies abroad there. My best friend’s spouse has just accepted an assignment in China that will finish off a career full of dizzying highs in the financial planning industry. The college buddies that stood at the altar in our wedding are now planning nuptials with their oldest daughter and her fiancé. The mother of the bride is a bundle of electric energy as she shares details on the latest deal in her second act as a real estate mogul.

No one can predict what life has in store for them but the future’s so bright for this beloved group of souls gathered around this table, we gotta wear shades—or in our case, transition progressive lenses!

Empty Nesting

2017-11-25T20:09:00.001-08:00

I looked at the receipt again. This is impossible! These figures can’t be right!

How can I get out of Costco for under $100?

I remember when I first got the Costco membership in 2000 because they were the hands-down cheapest place around for baby formula and diapers. Over the years, I’ve built my own wing in this place as I fed my family of four, never getting out of there for less than $400 and a cart stuffed with value priced cartons of grapes and pillowcase-sized bags of potato chips.

The lower Costco bill is just one of the many downshifts I’ve had to get used to in my new reality as my youngest daughter flew the coop for college a few weeks back and leaves my wife and I alone in this empty nest.

“I bet the house is quiet now” is the comment I get the most and yes, it is. For years, I prayed for a peaceful space in which to write and now that I have it, I miss the noise. Yes, there has been a flood of productivity since the summer; I wrote a book in record time, a play, 9 pages of a movie script, and I am halfway done recording an audiobook. Yet the silence is at times so deafening that it’s hard to concentrate.

Maura (L) and Annie (R) Farragher

Irish guilt has also taken on a new flavor in this life phase. While I’m up here writing this, my wife is downstairs, unstimulated save for the iPad that never seems to leave her lap nowadays. For years I could go unnoticed when I snuck upstairs to get creative because there was always someone who needed help picking out an outfit or a ride to dance practice. Without those distractions, my presence is missed and I now feel bad about removing myself from her side.

One thing we are never apart for: we are finished with dinner and are on the couch like clockwork at 6:30 for Lester Holt and the NBC Nightly News! As if the news of the day wasn’t depressing enough, the realization that the commercials for blue pills and AARP are now targeting us make us downright despondent!

All of the clichés are true; your day lifts when they call or FaceTime you. You tend to keep the doors closed to their rooms because it’s sometimes too painful to view all of the personal artifacts that conjure up one memory of another; the canvas that won first place at the high school art show in Maura’s room or the Billy Joel and Paul McCartney concert posters on Annie’s walls commemorating the shows you saw together. There’s a dull, sludgy ache at the bottom tip of your heart that seems to be the new normal now.

Technology definitely makes things a little less lonesome and worrisome. “I could care less if you don’t like it--as long as I’m paying the bills, you’ll both keep the ‘Find My Friends’ featured turned on at all times on your phone so I know where you are,” I replied in an assertive tone reminiscent of my mother when the girls accused me of spying on them with technology. Damn straight I am!

Speaking of my mother, Michael Chabon once wrote that “every woman has the heart of a policeman” and we all know an Irish mother has that and the interrogator’s skills to match. I cannot thank God enough for allowing me to grow up in an age where all of this smart technology didn’t exist. My mother had the nose of a bloodhound back then, routinely and effortlessly sniffing out the open contraband smuggled into my room. I shudder to think how she would have used this tracking technology today to amplify her detective skills!

While my youngest hits the gym to ward off the “freshman fifteen” weight gain, we have also tried to keep the waistline in check as our dance card fills with dinner dates. The parents in our carpools over the years are now empty nesters themselves and it has been interesting to watch how other couples are coping. One mom reports falling into a depression that lasts for days after her children return to college after a weekend home. The husband turns his head away from her and toward me, rolling his eyes as she prattles on about her misery. There are some other couples in our purview struggling to find common ground now that they don’t have the kids they have in common anymore.

Alison Hawes, partner at Irwin Mitchell solicitors, said in the UK’s “Daily Mail” in a 2015 article, "the issue of so-called silver separation is now more common and acknowledged than ever before. We have seen a number of cases when people at this point in their life simply drift apart, often as a result of empty nest syndrome. This shifts the dynamics of a relationship and can mean that issues or animosity which had been placed to one side in the past comes once again to the fore. Similarly, with life expectancy rising, those in unhappy relationships may simply not be looking to spend another 20 or 30 years in their current situation."

I look back on the life my wife and I created and I am grateful that we pursued interests both together and separately over the years in such a way that has allowed us to grow up with one another instead of a marriage that’s about “keeping it together for the sake of the kids” as some of our acquaintances seemed to have done.

I also look back in gratitude at the sacrifices my Irish parents made over the years. The continuous loop of overtime shifts on the New Jersey Turnpike and the aprons full of grubby dollar diner tips that made it possible for a dimwitted son (or “the learned eejit” as I am now called) to bypass the college loan slaughterhouse and get a head start saving for the onslaught of college bills that are now coming through the door. I had the pleasure of strolling around my daughter’s college campus with them this week and we all walked in silent celebration over the fact that an immigrant’s dream of a college education, uncertain and improbable in my youth, is the new normal of our family today.

My youngest made her way home not long ago and I was sent to Costco for yogurts and water bottles for her tiny dorm fridge. I passed two skids of adult diaper boxes; one was the Depends brand and the other was the Kirkland generic.

“I’m putting you through college so I never sit in a Kirkland adult diaper,” I texted.

“Only the best for you, dad!” came the reply, punctuated by a smiley face.

Will she follow through when I’m older? That “depends!”

Mike Farragher’s collection of humorous essays can be found at www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com

Escaping Irma: Notes from the 95 Rest Stops

2017-09-10T12:31:00.002-07:00

A rest stop in North Carolina

by Mike Farragher

The day started out in the lap of luxury; we had just finished our final day celebrating our new status as empty nesters in The Pelican Grand, an upscale Fort Lauderdale hotel. We were eating a breakfast of fluffy cream cheese and slices of salmon over a coarse everything bagel while overlooking a calm Atlantic Ocean.

The Pelican Grand

Within hours, our flight would be cancelled (Spirit Airlines can suck it!). We would soon find ourselves, grabbing a distressed friend of our daughter paralyzed by panic in the corner, wading through a chaotic airport to secure a rental car with a full tank of gas, and joining millions of “Hurricane Irma refugees” clogging the northbound interstates seeking shelter. We didn’t expect to suffer through 37 hours of brutal traffic back to our New Jersey home and certainly didn’t expect to be moved, touched, and inspired by the discoveries at the southern rest stops along the way. Here are a few of them:

It’s time we expand the definition of hero: We routinely acknowledge the contributions of first responders and rightly so. It was hard to look and not find a new breed of hero in every corner, like the attendant standing at the ready to pump fuel into thirsty cars driven by desperate people in a fuel shortage. “I’m going to stay out here as long as I can to make sure people get what they need,” he told me. How many times do I

Power cruise staged in Richmond, VA

grunt “fill ‘er up” to a minimum-waged guy like this back home without making so much as a blink of eye contact? NEVER AGAIN. I witnessed heroism in the aisle of the Rite Aid in Fort Lauderdale, where a beautiful, black and braided soul escorted a verbally abusive frail white woman through the aisles to stock up on her medicines. After surviving Hurricane Sandy, I already felt firsthand the heroism of power crews that trucked from out of state to get us back on our feet. I was reminded of their greatness each time I saw hundreds of their rigs hurtling into harm’s way down the south bound lanes. Florida sustained a gas emergency (more on that in a second) and tanker drivers joined their power crew truckers to provide life saving supplies and services. These are fathers and mothers behind those wheels leaving their own families to care for others. If that’s not a hero, I don’t know what is.

Mammals and memories are all that matter: We live in a materialistic society with an economy bought on overextended plastic cards but a look inside the vehicles packed by people who had a few short hours to collect their belongings tells you a lot about what’s really important. I saw lots of photo albums stashed in waterproof large totes. At one rest stop, I spotted a late model minivan with two rows of seats jammed with three generations of family, a caged rabbit on the lap of one child thrown in for good measure. I spent about 4 hours behind the cab of a truck containing a large caged pitbull mix, a piece of tarp shielding her from the elements. The cage was so large it covered the precious real estate of that entire cab, leaving no room for anything else to be packed in that truck. This focus on what's really important might be something to consider the next time we contemplate our next budget bulging trip to Costco.

Yes, greatness and kindness can still be found in our government: At the South Carolina rest stops, free bottles and cases of water were readily available for the taking. The Jamaican American state employee I met at one of the help desks intentionally handed out each bottle. She made sure she looked you in the eye, encouraged you to “be safe,” and nodded assuringly that yes, you had the courage to get through this. More than one motorist broke down at this gesture and she was there to offer them a hug. The spirit of this great American public servant and many like her I witnessed along the interstate deserves not only our highest honor but better leadership than Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, and Schumer are currently offering.

It’s time to get impolite about an inconvenient truth: The hurricane was sustained and propelled by the FUEL of 88 degree waters from our warming planet. Florida ran out of FUEL and we passed by many cars stranded on the road, the anguished expressions of the faces pressed up against the glass were far too much to bear. This lack of FUEL will likely seal many motorists into four-wheeled coffins along the interstates as this merciless storm claims more real estate.

Love your Earth Mother!

Are you starting to see a villain emerge in this paragraph? It's no longer enough to tie your recycled newspapers in a neat package on the curb and look at the solar panels on your roof with a smug satisfaction that you're doing your part. If you haven’t been newly radicalized into a steward of our taxed out planet after witnessing the fires out west and the flooding multiple “storms of the century” slamming the southeast in the last week alone, take the case that you really haven’t been paying attention.

I also observed some lighter notes:

Country music is dead: long live reggae! In deference to our daughter's friend and country music fan we carried in the back seat, we listened to “The Highway Channel” on SiriusXM a lot over those 37 hours in the car. I can report that sadly, ‘new country’ is truly soulless. The "hillbilly soap opera charm" of old has been replaced by thin plots written for placement in beer and chewing tobacco commercials. We also spent time on “The Joint” channel as well and I can happily report that “new reggae” is still all about the cannabis. Praise the Lord!

Love bugs have NO shame!

New grammar frontier! “Truck” is a noun and “stop” is an adjective. When fused together and slapped in front of the word “ass,” the words transform into an alluring adjective. Here's how I heard it used in a sentence at one rest stop: "fifty miles to go before I can get a shower and take care of this truckstop ass." For me, it conjured up an olfactory experience best left to your imagination.

Sex is rampant on the interstate! The lovebug (Plecia nearctica) is a species of march fly we encountered in swarms at the South Carolina border. While we

stood in standstill traffic, the steam of our engines and heads escaping our vehicles provided an ambient heat for the entomological equivalent of Caligula above and around us. It provided some comic relief yet made us wonder what the next manner of biblical plague awaited us at the next exit.

2016-03-13T16:25:00.004-07:00

Listen to Sinead O'Connor and the Afrocelts here:

"A Devilish Pint" Book Tour Fall 2015 Dates

2015-07-26T19:07:00.002-07:00

SAT 11/21 KinoKuniya Bookstore, 1073 6th Ave NYC 2PM

Bingo Love (Excerpt from "A Devilish Pint")

2014-10-29T17:24:00.001-07:00

The air brakes on the coach from Lisdoonvarna hissed below him. It wouldn’t be the first time today that he felt the experience of deflation; the only time he got lucky during this entire matchmaking festival weekend was at the bingo.

A man behind him hobbled down the aisle. He nodded and offered a tight smile as your man passed. Mickey’s gaze returned to the coarse fingers tangled together like nettles in his lap.

The bus jerked forward and Mickey grimaced, just as he had when each of the countless potholes rattled his old bones. Ye’d think the ride would shake some sense into yeh after all these years, he thought to himself. Mickey was the last passenger as the deluxe coach clattered up the n17 toward Tuam.

“How was the week end for ye?” the driver offered. “They were predicting this year’s matchmaking would be the mightiest one altogether.”

The last thing Mickey wanted to do was make small talk. He was just released from three days in a prison constructed entirely from the bars of his own insecurities and shyness. His milky blue eyes had avoided the gaze of many a woman that stared down the bar in his general direction. His Pioneer oath swore him off the drink for life, which meant he couldn’t even drown his sorrows like the rest of the bachelor farmers that swayed to the beat laid down by a tinny drum machine and accordion.

“Fine,” he said. “Faith’n, ye wouldn’t know the place nowadays.”

“Not with all the quare fellas walkin’ around all arm and arm,” the driver huffed. “Two men throwin’ shapes at one another on the dance floor is somethin’ I’ll never get useta. They ruined

Looking for Love

a good matchmaking thing when they let that lot in.”

“Yerra, they aren’t harmin’ anyone,” Mickey replied. “They kinda bring a bit of life into the place, like. They deserve love like the rest of us, I suppose.”

The driver shrugged his shoulders then looked at him in the rearview mirror.

“So...did ye run into Miss Right?”

Mickey shook his head.

“Och, sure that girleen hasn’t been born yet and her mother’s dead,” he replied. That made the driver slap the steering wheel with a meaty palm and howl with laughter.

It was a lie, of course. That ‘girleen’ was Maeve and she has been right under his nose for most of his life.

“Ye can do better than a hairdresser,” his mother said some 60 years ago, the last word of that damned sentence dripping curdled judgment into the mug of tea she stirred. Mickey never went against his mother’s wishes. He broke it off with Maeve straight away and sentenced himself to a life of living with Mammy, trotting his brother’s yank sons on the back of the old horse Tom every year, and pining for a family of his own. Tom joined his mother in the greener pastures of the afterlife last year and Mickey’s heavy heart weighed on his rib cage like a lead vest ever since.

Maeve would hold out for as long as she could before the bells on her biological clock were deafening. That old tomcat Paddy Finn sweet talked her into a marriage that would go on to produce three kids and a few grandchildren. She looked happy enough whenever they nodded to one another in Tuam but he could not shake the feelings of guilt in recent years when he heard the gossip at the bingo hall about the abuse Maeve suffered at the hands of this raging alcoholic. He found himself thanking God at Paddy’s coffin that Maeve’s suffering was over when he knew he should have been praying for the poor man’s troubled soul.

They made small talk about the mad water tax idea and how the property values were coming back in the west of Ireland, slowly but surely. Both Mickey and the driver made the sign of the cross when the bus passed his mother’s graveyard at the crossroads. The brilliant autumn sunset painted the sky in strokes of pink and orange, which were in sharp contrast to the heavy grey clouds and the dark shadows cast by the cobblestone walls and tombstones. He heard the turn signal click as the bus made a right down his narrow boreen.

“Would it be any trouble to take me as far as the bingo hall in Abbeyknockmoy?” he asked.

“I really shouldn’t, Mickey,” the driver said, his voice trailing. “It’s not really on the route, like.”

“Aw g’wan,” Mickey pleaded. “I can’t face that cold and lonely house just yet. ‘Tis like a tomb in there when the sun goes down for an auld fella like me.”

“Ah, we will, so,” the driver replied. “Sure, the night is young and a man’s luck can change in a second.”

Paddy nodded.
“With the help of God, anything’s possible.”

The wheels of the bus crushed the gravel in the parking lot. The driver waved to the bus that passed them; that would be the one that carried Mickey’s sister from Corbally to the bingo. Mickey wiped the crumbs of bread from an earlier lunch that fell on his gray suit jacket and tucked the collar of a French blue shirt under his black sweater. Another bus blocked their view of the bingo hall as he made his way down the aisle and transferred a few euros into the palm of the driver as they shook hands.

He crossed the front grill of his bus and almost plowed into Maeve. The seconds passed by in slow motion between them.

“Howaya Mickey?”

He lowered his gaze.

“I’m well, Missus. Lovely night.”

She nodded and made her way toward the hall.

He watched her back for a long moment, his nerves like thumbs pressing the bile up to his esophagus like toothpaste through a tube.

“Maeve, I don’t suppose...”

She stopped in her tracks.
“Jaysis, Mickey, I thought you’d never ask,” Maeve replied. She didn’t bother turning around.

“Maybe we could grab some tea sometime?” he offered.

She turned and smiled; the years melted off her face.

“Och, sure there’s plenty of tea inside, isn’t there? Lots of prying eyes as well. Of course, we can get back on the bus you came in on and head to my house. The kettle is still warm on my stove.

Mickey smiled sheepishly, leaned back, and gently knocked on the side of the bus.

The air brakes hissed below him once again and the door clattered open. The driver scurried down the steps to help Maeve to her seat. When she was settled, he went back to the door and held his hand out to Mickey, whose calves were rubbery as he ambled up the first big step. Mickey gripped the hand rail to steady himself as the driver leaned into him.

“Bingo!” he whispered, rattling Mickey’s old bones once again with a hard slap on the back.

Stayng Alive, Praying Alive!

2014-04-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been praying a lot lately. It might be because it’s Holy Week, but all this praying has made me reflect on all the times I converse with the Man Upstairs and what prompts me to lift the eyes to the heavens nowadays.

I haven’t darkened the door of a confessional in many moons and though my soul is probably blacker than a raisin on a lunar eclipse as a result, I pray for forgiveness nonetheless. Take this past Friday around lunchtime, for instance. I gazed upwards and mouth the words “I’m sorry” right after I spit “OH F*CK! It’s a Lent!” through a mouthful of corned beef reuben. Mindful of this spiritual faux pas, I raise my gaze yet again to say an Act of Contrition for making “the F word” part of my prayer.

Heyyy! I got yer back, bro!

I call my mother, the penultimate church lady, to find time on her busy calendar for a wee visit. HA! Good luck! It’s the week leading up to Easter and don’t I know how the date book is chock full of Holy Thursday feet washings and Stations of the Cross this time of year? That brings back a memory of the Stations. How I dreaded them in grade school! The kneeling! The genuflecting! The empty fasting Lenten stomach that churned louder than a gas generator during a blackout! “He died for your sins and this is the LEAST you can do for him,” mom would hiss to deflect our incessant complaining in the pew. “He fell hard on the stone road carrying that cross for your sins through Jerusalem--he would have killed to have the cushion on that kneeler yer knees are on, so be grateful!” As the sun sets on this Friday, I nod my head and thank Jesus for shouldering my burden as I motor on past the church and drive through McDonalds for the Lenten penance that is a filet o’fish sandwich.

The clock struck midnight a few hours later and I find myself on the horseshoe in front of the high school. I’ve just loaded my daughter’s stuffed backpack into the shuttle van. A knot of worry tightens my stomach and I want to throw up as I give her a hug and send her off to JFK Airport on her Environmental Club trip to Costa Rica. I look up at the night sky with moistening eyes and beg the Lord to take over . I am scarcely able to be with the vulnerability that it takes to entrust anyone, even my own Maker, with the task of keeping my baby safe when she’s so far away.

A few weeks ago I reported in these very pages that I took up meditating with mixed results. It took a while to get the hang of it, but now, as they say in Tuam, “I’m flyin’ it, like!” I start this past Saturday morning by lighting the candle and closing my eyes. Perhaps it is because of the leftover Baltimore Catechism binding that’s stitched in my DNA from 13 years of Catholic school, but I can’t seem to bring myself to use the Buddhist chants the yoga instructor recommended. She encouraged me to say anything mindless, so I chose the Hail Mary instead. Yes, like you, I read what I just wrote and felt sad that all of that mechanical recitation over the years has rendered this sacred prayer empty and meaningless to me. Yet I can report that the image of the Blessed Mother’s face never fails to bring the peace and tranquility during these meditative sessions.

I shake off the dream like state and check my voicemail, alarmed by the sense of alarm in a friend’s voice. I call him back and discover that a dear friend and mentor that we shared lost her overnight battle with sudden heart failure. A thick syrup of shock drizzles through my skull as I hold my head in my hands, praying that St. Peter is greeting this kind soul with open arms at the top of the elevator that empties out in front of the Pearly Gates.

I run to the barber shop for a shave and a haircut and soon discover that my long-time sylist died of a massive stroke the night before. I’m stunned with shock yet again! A cloud passes by and I can almost see the barrel-chested and Mike riding it, hair dryer in hand. I squint and notice his heavily inked arms are crossed. Uh-oh! It seems the dead know and see all, so he awaits my apology for years of hypnotic gazes I made in the direction of his buxom daughter’s bountiful gifts while she bent over me to shampoo my cares away with those deliciously long nails. I shrug, whisper “I’m sorry” sheepishly, and pray for his soul.

The clock now says 1:57AM...the weekend is over, we are now into Monday, and I am racing to make a 9AM deadline for this column. I will click “send” now, just in case I don’t wake up after this piece of potential blasphemy.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep....

Meditating: Clearing a Brain on Shamrocks

2014-03-31T07:40:00.004-07:00

“Interested?”

This was the text I got from my wife, along with a web link to a beginners’ meditation class that our local parks and recreation branch was hosting. I read all about the benefits of meditation on the class website: clearer thinking and less emotional turmoil, lower blood pressure, greater intimacy with friends and family members, and a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. But was it for me? I couldn’t think of one person in my family who meditated and looked at the idea with a mixture of suspicion and interest.

“Believe me, it will be good for you--you need this,” I was told by my better half. I didn’t need much convincing. I have felt woefully unbalanced these last few months as I have attempted to absorb an ocean of information that comes with taking on a new job. My mind often wanders upstairs lately to fuss over a bottomless inbox in my home office as I am sitting downstairs at the family dinner table. I am months behind where I should be in my new writing project. If the lobes of my brain were canned cling peaches, any creative spark would be drowned in the syrupy sludge of deadlines and commitments before it connected to the gray matter. Maybe this would be just what the doctor ordered, I tried to tell myself.

Nah.

I should have known that my brain on shamrocks would have none of it.

For those of you unfamiliar with this affliction, I submit a brief explanation. We all have that little voice inside our head that judges, assesses, and guides us through life: some call it a conscience. If you are of Irish descent, that inner voice has a brogue and sounds remarkably like one or both of your parents.

The drum beat of blood coursing through my tense veins began to quiet a bit as we drove through Monmouth Country’s majestic horse farms en route to the recreation center. A wispy woman in wrinkled hemp clothing had dimmed the lights of the room before lighting candles and incense to create the right environment. The brain on shamrocks went into overdrive once it got the first whiff of pungent incense.

“Jaysis, what kind of hippy-trippy nonsense have ye gotten yerself into? a voice sounding remarkably like my father’s whispered in my ear. “What’s next? Shavin’ yer head and passing out prayer cards in airports? For the love of God.”

“Incense--remember that smell?” remarked a voice sounding like Mom’s in my other ear. “You first smelled that in a church. IN. A. CHURCH. A CATHOLIC one, might I add. One that looks remarkably like the one you drove past to get here. I’ll be quiet now and let’s hear what yer wan over there is sellin’.”

I squinted my eyes hard as the instructor encouraged us to focus those internal thoughts on an image of a silver garbage can on a hill. She asked us in slow, pulse-reducing tones to tilt our head to the right, shaking any thoughts we had into the garbage can so that we could clear our mind. That worked for a little while; I could feel the tension lift from the base of my neck and shoulders. Then the instructor had to open her big fat trap and reveal how long stretches of meditation can get us in touch with our soul at the level of self, which allows for a new access to the mysteries of our spirituality.

That wasn’t my stomach growling; that was my mother’s voice grumbling in the other ear.

“Access to the ‘mystery of spirituality: did yeh hear that?” she said incredulously. “I’ll tell yeh where to find the mysteries yer lookin’ for: in the decades of the Rosary! Joyful, sorrowful, they’re all in the beads, luv. Ye’d remember that if you darkened the door of the church once in a while, the Lord save us and guard us!”

“You can put yourself in that special place anytime you want,” the instructor cooed. “There are plenty of meditation apps on your phone that can help. They play nature sounds like the wind blowing that can really help refresh your soul.”

“That’s the sound of wasted money, whistlin’ through the auld trees,” my father’s voice snickered in my ear. My mother’s voice giggled in the other.

“Your soul benefits from this singular focus on the present,” whispered the instructor as we closed our eyes for another round. “Focus on the here and now. Right now.”
“Yerra, I could have told you that,” my dad’s voice whispered in disgust. “Ye’d be better off focusing on the present. Any eejit knows that. There’s incredible healing powers when yeh take a roller full of paint and go back and forth on those scuffed walls at home--‘twould be a better use of time on a Sunday than this nonsense.”

The class ended and my wife strode hand in hand into the brilliant sunshine.

“I feel like a new woman,” my wife sighed. “Good for you,” I mumbled back.

According to Endocrinologist and self-help author Eckhart Tolle “ Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease”. My wife is cured, so I’ll roll up the ol’ yoga mat and head over to the sick bay known as my local pub...whiskey is a disinfectant, isn’t it?

Fall "50 Shades o' Green" Book Tour Dates for 2013

2013-08-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

It's looking a lot greener this autumn with a series of fun book signing dates!

9/14 Jersey Shore Irish Festival, Sea Girt, NJ 10-4. I'll read from the main stage at some point and spend most of the time hanging in the literature/culture tent http://www.njshoreirishfestival.com

9/17 1/2 Way to St. Patrick's Day Bash with Patrick Clifford, Irish dancers, and more! All to raise awareness for "Love, Hope, Strength," a rockin' organization that bolsters the National Bone Marrow Database.http://blackthornpub.com 7PM-??

9/20 Booktowne, 171 Main Street Manasquan, NJ 7-9 http://www.booktowne.com

9/28 Jersey City Irish Festival, Jersey City, NJ details TBA

10/9 Rock and Read with Seamus Kelleher, Women of Irish Heritage Night at Doolan's Shore Club, Spring Lake Hts, NJ 7-9 PM

Back to School Shopping no Longer "Tough"

2012-08-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

Like so many dads, I find myself this past Sunday in an outlet mall with my elbows hooked around the back of a bench while my girls diminish my net wealth by the millisecond. There’s a heightened sense of urgency around back to school shopping this year for three reasons: the hurricane wiped out a whole week of buying, the first day of autumn came early and ushered in a chill that invalidated our shorts, and one daughter is obsessed with getting her look right as she steps into high school for the first time.

As they ping-pong between stores and the bags at my feet pile up, I can’t help but be envious at the choices they have at this age. Both girls are zaftig, just like their mom and dad were in their teens. Unlike them, I didn’t have much decision in clothes at a time I needed it the most.

We certainly didn’t benefit from the proliferation of cheap Chinese clothing or sympathetic designers that catered to plus-sized teens back in the Seventies. Then there was the small matter of budget: any extra money Mom and Dad had when I was growing up either got sent home to their parents in Ireland or toward a fund to spring us out of the cramped two-family house in Jersey City and into the suburbs.

When you were an irregular shape, you had two choices: the hand-me-downs from my older cousin Robert or the husky section of Sears. Like my brother Brendan, Rob had a wiry, athletic build, so my brother usually benefitted from Rob’s clothes pile.

Vertigo was the best way to describe the dizzying effect the loud checkered patterns had when stacked next to one another on the racks at Sears. The Toughskin jean was the fabric of choice for your favorite fatty, according to the sadistic designers that thought putting loud patterns on a wide rump would look attractive.

I remember how well Sears touted the new line of Toughskins children's pants as "The toughest of Sears tough jeans...lab tests prove it!" The pants were manufactured with a blend of materials, including Dacron Type 59 polyester, DuPont 420 nylon, and cotton. If the cotton part makes you think the fabric was breathable, think again. And good look trying to bend your knees in them the first few months after purchase!

To demonstrate just how tough the new jeans were, Sears launched a famous "Tough Jeans Territory" ad campaign in 1974, in which the department store constructed a trampoline out of the Toughskin material. Sears was so sure of the new line of pants that they were sold with a guarantee that children would grow out of their Toughskin jeans before the jeans wore out!

That was all my mother had to see. Durability was the most important feature for my mom because there wasn’t a lot of money to spend and the chore of trying to shoe-horn my flab into new back to school gear was the kind of torture she would endure but once a year.

Altering this tough fabric was impossible. Mom would either slice the fabric with industrial sewing scissors that left a jagged edge of a hem or she’d make a cuff by rolling the seem away from my shoelaces.

Through countless years of continuous overtime work at the NJ Turnpike, my father had finally saved enough to move one summer and when I stepped into my new suburban school that September, I was a sight to behold.

Two wires strained to pull the tombstone buck teeth back into a mouth, which was situated below the bowl haircut and just above the pillowy double chin. My pale flesh spilled like an albino muffin top over the unforgiving fabric, which resisted the flab avalanche with the aid of a thick white belt. Of course, I was the laughingstock of the school while my wiry brother assimilated by scoring countless goals with the soccer team.

I took a job on a lawn service one summer and lost weight, which allowed me to fit in. Today, I just try to fit into a plane seat because I now look like the thin lawn boy Mike if he had taken on water-bloat after his lifeless self was dredged from the bottom of a lake.

“I saw some nice shirts in there,” my wife said gamely, glancing over to the Guess outlet. I know better than to waste the energy to move from the bench. I know Guess makes those “slim fit” shirts, that have no tolerance for distended stomachs like mine. If they come up with a “husky” section, maybe they’ll get my business during the next back to school season.

Watch the old Toughskin commercial below! :)

Brain on Shamrock Defined: The Lincoln Center OurLand Transcript

2012-08-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

Mike Farragher planting "Shamrocks" at Lincoln Center

Note: I recently had the pleasure of reading to 3,000+ people as part of the Lincoln Center OurLand Festival. Many of you have asked for a transcript---here 'tis! :)

We all have that inner voice, that conscience, if you will.

If you’re an Irish American born to Irish parents, your inner voice has a brogue that sounds remarkably like your mother’s or father’s. It’s that “Celtic consciousness” that gets to work as you’re sitting on yer fat arse reading the Sunday New York Times once the last Mass of the day begins.

“Not going to church this morning, are we? Well, I’m sure the Lord Jesus Christ didn’t want to get up the day he died for yer sins! Yerra, I’m sure he would have had more fun doing the crossword puzzle on his back deck instead of hanging on the cross for the likes of you!”

On the motorcycle road trip of your life, that inner voice will be in the sidecar, offering color commentary on the scenery that whizzes by. God forbid you pull into the parking lot of a tattoo parlor for your 46th birthday.

“Is there a church nearby? While you’re in there marking up your arm so that it looks like a coloring book, I want to get a few decades of the rosary in. I will be praying to the Mother of God that ye’ll come to your senses. Are ye trying to set an example for my granddaughters? I’m sure they’re gonna wanna run off and get one of dem ‘tramp stamps’ above their rumps.

You try to argue with that voice but there is no winning the battle. The voice always triumphs with a guilt-punch that lands below the belt.

“Nine pushes. ‘Twas nine of the most agonizing hours a mother ever had to suffer through to give birth to a child and if I could have known then that ye’d grow up to talk to me like that, sure, I wouldn’t have bothered pushing at all.”

If you became a priest or nun, your parents would die with a smile on their face. But if all you did was scale a few rungs higher on the economic ladder, fair play to you. Whatever you do, just don’t embarrass this inner voice. Worrying about what the neighbors think is as elemental in the Irish DNA as the symbols in the family Coat of Arms.

And PLEASE don’t get too ahead of yourself when you get some success! Indeed, the inner voice might mock you once your income bracket rises.

“So, I guess we’re all high-fallutin’ now, are we? Too good to clean your own house and mow your own feckin’ lawn? I’m glad ye got that fancy title ye have at work, luv. Really. Ye went a lot further in life than I ever thought ye would. But it wouldn’t kill yeh to clean the auld toilet yourself once in a while.”

Your parents never spent money on things like maids and landscapers. Every penny they got went to provide for you and what was left was sent over to their parents in Ireland. A good year of overtime wages and tips meant you were taken over to see your grandparents. Those childhood trips to Ballylanders and Athenry in the motherland are stitched into the fabric of your soul and Ireland still calls you, her traveling child, to come home every few years.

Boy, that inner voice has a belly full of Irish pride on St. Patrick’s Day, furious at the portrayal of our culture in those green stereotypes.

“Do they all think we are all eejits swillin’ green beer and puking our guts out along the parade route?! You’re handy with a pen---dash off a few words to the Hallmark Card Company and tell them that we’ll burn a leprechaun card every hour on the youtube until they start printing greetings with St. Patrick on ‘em!”

“Now. I like the way you ended this, luv. Fair play to yeh. Maybe I didn’t do such a bad job raising yeh after all.”

This is your brain on shamrocks.

An Auld Fella: A Contractor’s Worst Nightmare

2012-07-01T20:49:00.003-07:00

Mick power: Mick Farragher and Mick Madden the 'auld fellas'

Despite living a safe distance from the coast, my friend Peggie bore the brunt of the last hurricane that cut a path through the Garden State. Right after trees crashed on top of her cars and house, the insurance company dispatched contractors to make the repairs. On one Saturday morning, her 89 year-old father Mick Madden from Portumna County Galway went to inspect the work of the Brazillian crew that buzzed around her property.

I’m told he shook his head in disgust as soon as he got out of the car.

“Ye nail two pieces of wood together in this country and they call him a carpenter.”

This sounds a lot like my dad, who was born not far away from Madden in Athenry. He would always offer to “let the fellas in” while I was on the road and workers were doing something around my house. That would put him in the catbird seat to be a contracting equivalent of an America’s Got Talent judge. He’d never be more than a few paces away from the work at hand, making sure we got what we paid for and more. “I didn’t think anyone was more useless than you are with a wrench, but I stand corrected,” he might say to me after a plumber left behind a shoddy job when he left it to me to supervise things.

Though they are too gentlemanly to boast, the fact is that guys like Mick Madden and my dad Mick Farragher (“no one was called ‘Mike’ over at home,” Madden informed me) came from the lush farms of Ireland to either build this country and/or kept it running. Dad was a roofer for a while to keep the roof over our heads while Madden kept the lights on and everything humming as a superintendent of his Jersey City apartment building.

These ‘auld fellas’ are in their seventies and eighties now and they just don’t build ‘em like them anymore. They have forgotten more about common sense approaches to broken things than most modern workers have learned and these workers know it, which makes the old guys a contractor’s nightmare.

If God forbid a painter drips something on the carpet, the auld fella hovering nearby might suggest he places a rubber band around an open paint can to wipe your brush on---it keeps paint off the side of the can as well. On the rare event when this hopeless “narrowback”” tried to build something, I might have been advised by my auld fella that a simple pocket comb was the secret weapon to keep that wobbly nail in place before you laid a hammer onto one of your fingers.

My Uncle Tom was a master mason and all-around handyman in his day. He could make something out of nothing; I remember how he would cut patterns from discarded plywood at a construction site he worked on, paint it white, and voila! You had life-size reindeer ornaments that he sold on his lawn by the truckloads for a small fortune during the holidays.

He also isn’t short of opinions and is a bit of a loud talker, two weapons I have used to my advantage while I was shopping for houses a few years ago.

“Jaysis, did Stevie Wonder set this stone?” he might exclaim as he’d stare up the side of the brick facing on a potential house. “’Tis a miracle that it stayed up as long as it has. And don’t get me started on the inside, with all those brown splotches on the ceiling. It tells me that there was a lot of water damage once—and yer man did a woeful job covering it up before he put it on the market, like.”

When we would submit a low bid for the property, Uncle Tom’s booming voice would echo in the heads of the real estate agents before any higher counter-proposal was suggested.

They may label themselves as an uneducated lot because they left school at the tender age of 15, yet the ‘auld fellas’ have common sense smarts to burn that you just can’t hire nowadays.

Barbecue Season: Pray for My Wife..

2012-05-28T08:07:00.001-07:00

There’s a little magnet on the door of my refrigerator that says, “pray for me I married an Irishman.” My Jewish wife bought it at one of those novelty gift shops while on vacation a few years back and it has become like a Buddhist's mantra that she has chanted, at times through a clenched jaw, ever since.

Take today, for example. We seem to have an ongoing disagreement on the definition of a house party. Her vision is a small and strategically picked exclusive guest list that will produce the perfect chemical reaction of spirited conversation over a succulent meal that allows her to try all those Food Network recipes she’s been stockpiling with my girls.

My house party is more Animal House and if John Belushi and Martha Stewart had a baby, it would produce a host like me. The bigger the better, I always say and there is nowhere bigger than a Costco warehouse. When you can’t turn the hat trick of turning loaves into fishes, this is the go-to place when you have to feed the masses. Dreams of frilly Food Network fare are mothballed in favor of feeding the masses with pillow-sized bags of chips, sleeves of frozen burgers the size of manhole covers, and tubs of brownie bites that will play well with a belly full of Guinness at the end of the night.

As a precaution, I make the last minute decision to stock up on black trash can liners for the base of the toilet in case someone blows groceries in our small half-bath. And might as well pick up a fistful of fresh flowers near the checkout to place as a peace offering on the altar of a woman that has been chanting “pray for me I married an Irishman” since we woke up this morning.

The flowers were a good call. The fact that I’m up here typing this little missive upstairs while the house sits in disrepair a mere three hours before 36 people descend on our backyard has created muck-thick tension in our humble abode.

“Lighten up,” I say patronizingly. “The grillmeister general has everything under control, m’love.”

She ain’t buyin’ it.

Any woman reading this knows what happens next. The “I cook/you clean” bargain struck between man and wife on the morning of the barbecue means that I marinade my liver in booze while I flip the marinated chicken on the barbie a few times for a grand total of twenty minutes. While I am doing this, you will spend the rest of the night arranging the side dishes, fetching the drinks, ushering my drunk friends around the house with coasters and Windex, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, ensuring everything is put back in its place, and then when all is said and done, you lovingly hoist me upstairs into the guest bed because the snoring and belching required to shake off a hangover this pronounced will prove too much to sleep through.

“These beers are room temperature,” my wife says, passing the office as I type this. “You better get a move-on and get some ice.”

I’ll sign off for now in search of something as cold as the tone in her voice. But first, I’ll stop at a church and say a decade of the rosary for my loving and patient wife, who did nothing to deserve being married to this particular Irishman. It’s gonna be a long summer and she’s going to need all the prayers she can get!

To read more essays like these or to purchase Mike Farragher’s book, check out www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com

"Write On" and Pursue Your Creative Dreams in the New Year!

2012-01-07T06:56:00.000-08:00

So, is writing that book you always wanted to write on your list of New Year’s resolutions? I say, go for it! My book tour made 2011 the best year of my life!

I shook a lot of hands and kissed a lot of babies campaigning for the first installment of This is your Brain on Shamrocks and I ran across a lot of people with unfulfilled writing dreams.

“I always wanted to write a book,” they would sigh. “But I could never get that done.”

I remember the last time I said that. I was a cub reporter for The Irish Voice a number of years ago and I found myself on the breezy porch of Mary Higgins Clark’s beach house. She had just written Kitchen Privileges, a short autobiographical story that she wrote for her grandchildren until her publisher snatched it away for public domain.

I had just gone through a litany of reasons and considerations on why I couldn’t write: the toddlers always in diapers, the freakish travel, hectic meeting schedules, yadda, yadda, and yadda. She sipped demurely from her dainty Beleek tea cup, nodding occasionally. When I asked how she pulled a book each year out of thin air, she leaned in and gazed intently with those milky blue eyes.

“Y’know, there’s a difference between me and you. I wanted it worse than you did. The best place to start a writing career is to shut up and start writing. There’s no magic here.”

When one of the top selling authors on the planet tells you to shut up and write, well, you shut up and write!

It was the best advice I had ever gotten before or since because I had a book outline within nine months of our interview and had a published novel within eighteen months.

So, dear reader, my first advice to you is to shut up and write. Don’t worry about whether or not it’s good enough such that someone might buy it. That stops most people from even picking up a pen and that’s just a copout.

There are plenty of self publishers out there that will happily load the book into B&N and Amazon for you, which means your book will be on an e-reader without any need for an agent or big book company marketing arm, thank you very much. Who the hell are they to judge and assess your words?

And speaking of big book companies: if there’s anything I heard on the book tour more often than, “gee, I always wanted to write a book,” it was, “I never saw a dime after that crappy little advance check and I am convinced that my book company is screwing me over.”

So, as the Irish say, all mountains look green from far away. I’ve run into dozens of famous writers out there crying in their beer and complaining about their book contracts. Think about that next time you waste a decade of the rosary moaning to the Lord about the rejection letters from would-be agents and publishers that make their way into your mailbox on a daily basis.

I got every royalty check that was owed to me like clockwork, on a quarterly basis, no less--from my self-publisher. Scoff all you want about selling your book out of the trunk of the car: you make more per book that way and you know where every dollar goes. You maintain complete creative control over how the cover looks and how it gets into the right audience’s hands.

I always cite Prince as a model of how to market your own art. He got so fed up by his restrictive record contract that he wrote the word “slave” on his face and submitted one crappy album after another to spite Warner Brothers. Once he was released from his contract, he began marketing directly to his fan base, making up to $5 more per unit sold when he rang the register, and created art on his terms. Not many people looked down their nose at him for being “self published” when he took to the Superbowl halftime show stage in high heels a decade later. I rest my case.

The creative process doesn’t just include writing the book, which is another common myth. You have to be a Mick Jagger type of artist: make a product that rocks, make a spectacle out of yourself as you promote it, and always have an eye on the bottom line. All at once.

Many of the snobby writers in the social circle I run in (this includes most of them) think the selling of art is beneath them. But I am of the belief that the marketing process is an extension of my self expression. Using a combination of print media, websites, Facebook, Twitter, e-book signings posted on youtube, and free excerpts placed on appropriate newsletters are the tools to build a buzz about the book. For this book, as an example, I enlisted the help of some musician friends and we staged “rock and read” events that enabled us to draw new sales from fans of one another’s works.

A well-executed launch strategy doesn’t have to be a chore, nor does it have to be a commercial concern and sellout that is beneath your creativity. Let it be an extension of your creativity!

We would like to think that the whole world is waiting for your first book and that once you write it, you will be set for life. I’m sorry to tell you that neither one of these statements are true. People are so fixated on their smart phones that many folks are contracting a “text message attention span” when it comes to reading. You literally have to compete with an iPad and a Facebook post for the entertainment mindshare of a consumer nowadays, something that never concerned Hemmingway or Twain. Short blogs and essays increase the chances of the actual book being read. At least that’s my experience---more people read my last book of essays than my 382 page expense novel.

Murder mysteries are among my favorite things to read, but they are tricky for a new novelist. They look at the idea of writing volumes of fact or fiction and then get completely stopped and overwhelmed in their creative pursuits. Try writing little essays first and see what happens! You can either stitch the essays together into a larger plot line, see where the mind takes you in the writing process to unconceal a plot line that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of, or perhaps end up publishing a book of essays. I began writing essays about three years ago as an exercise in breaking a long streak of writing block. They amused me, people liked reading them in the Irish press, and now we have one volume of This is your Brain on Shamrocks in the can and a sequel halfway written out of this little exercise!

One more sore point before I get to the good stuff: less than 100 writers are walking around America slinging ink as their primary source of income. Many self-published books sell about the same amount of books as there are family members and Facebook friends, so you can do your own personal math. Some folks like me are lucky enough to get some national and international press, but even that only brings in a couple of thousand more than the average bear. If your book turns $5,000 in profit, consider yourself in the 1% of an “Occupy Bookshelves” movement. So, don’t quit yer day job, laddies and lassies!

Are you discouraged yet? That wasn’t my intent---quite the opposite. My writing life has made my life rich and delicious beyond my dreams and beyond any measure. While there are very few zeroes in my royalty checks, I have almost tripled my income in my chosen profession of medical device sales during a decade that has seen that industry shed jobs by the thousands in the last decade.

The funny thing about being fully self expressed 24/7 is that your creativity is off the charts and your poor boss has trouble finding things to keep you challenged. They throw anything and everything at your insatiable creative engine just to feed it. You find yourself getting immersed in fun projects that give you a corner office perspective and in a blink of an eye, you begin to think and act like someone who has a corner office, and then voila! You find yourself with a Vice President’s title and are bestowed your very own corner office.

I remember moaning to Mary Higgins Clark about how little time I had to write. Now, I never complain about how busy I am because writing fulfills me and most of what life throws me doesn’t seem so burdensome. Now that I just shut up and write, I find I have more time on my hands. That has allowed me to go back for my Master’s degree, learn bass guitar, start a web business venture, write a weekly column for The Irish Voice, consult for businesses on sales force effectiveness, coach people on their effectiveness and power through Landmark Education, and write at a quicker pace since I began working on my first book.

So, let’s review, shall we? If 2012 is your year to write it all down, you need to be prepared for some things:

Be prepared for lonely nights at a monitor, getting more frustrated each time the cursor blinks.

Be prepared to laugh and cry at the monitor so much that you fear the day will come when the monitor writes a tell-all book of its own.

Be prepared to not have a lot to show in the bank account.

Be prepared to have other riches show up in your life.

Be prepared to play big or go home.

Be prepared to shut up and write.

Write on! Happy New Year!!!!

What Exactly is a Brain on Shamrocks?

2011-11-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

Mike with Mom and Dad--

This is your brain on shamrocks.

Like most minds, your thought process is guided by that inner voice that judges and assesses everyone and everything. In fact, that voice might have just asked, “what voice is he talking about?” Yup. It’s that voice.

But you’re an Irish American born to Irish parents, which means your inner voice has a brogue that sounds remarkably like your mother’s. It’s that “Celtic consciousness” that gets to work as you’re sitting on the back deck of your house reading the Sunday New York Times just as the last Mass of the day begins.

On the motorcycle road trip of your life, that inner voice will be in the sidecar, offering color commentary on the scenery that whizzes by. If you find yourself putting the kickstand down in the parking lot of a tattoo parlor at the age of 44, for example, that voice will encourage you to stick to the bright light of the interstate.

“Is there a church nearby? While you’re in there marking up your arm so that it looks like a coloring book, I want to get a few decades of the rosary in. I will be praying to the Mother of God that ye’ll come to your senses. Not sure what ye are tryin’ to prove here. Are ye trying to set an example for my granddaughters? I’m sure they’re gonna wanna run off and get one of dem ‘tramp stamps’ above their rumps. Sure, that’ll be a marvelous look. But ye go ahead and do what ye want, luv. What do I know?”

You try to argue with that voice but there is no winning the battle. The voice always triumphs with a guilt-punch that lands below the belt and radiates pain throughout the body as you lay in a fetal position on the curb.

“Nine pushes. ‘Twas nine of the most agonizing pushes a mother ever had to suffer through to give birth to a child and if I could have known that the son I gave birth to would talk to his mother’s inner voice like that, sure, I wouldn’t have bothered pushing at all.”

Everyone needs a vacation and your inner voice is no exception. When and if you are able to shut it off, a new voice that sounds remarkably like Sister Rita slides into the sidecar next to your brain.

She was the servant of God who taught your sex-education course in the sixth grade. Like a rabbit under the shadow of a hawk swooping overhead, you can remember how your breathing became labored as the woman you affectionately nicknamed “Fish Face” walked down the aisle of your classroom.

Her delight as she described Hell was palpable; the way the Earth periodically parted to burp out the stench of burning flesh, the cold gurgling sludge of eternal suffering, and the loss of the Lord’s light. How you got your ticket punched for a one-way trip to eternal damnation was the favorite part of her lecture. Sister Rita’s voice usually screeches in your ear whenever a hint of intimacy is in the air.

“Violating your body with pleasures of the flesh is a mortal sin, especially when you are alone. A mortal sin produces a macula that stains the soul and if it is not immediately repented in Confession, you will be eternally separated from God in Hell. If you die and a mortal sin like premarital canoodling is not confessed and repented for at the time of your death, it will result in an internal and agonizing damnation!”

You never thought you’d ever beg for your mother’s voice to make an encore performance inside your skull, but Sister Rita can do that to you. Sister Rita and the inner voice are partners in the shaping of your life: the fear of internal damnation and an Irish mother’s guilt allows you to stay in a narrow lane of good behavior.

You were raised at a time and culture where parents and teachers never encouraged their children to be anything they wanted to be. The world was painted as just a big blue ball orbiting the sun, it was never positioned as your oyster! They paid enough for your education, but all that was expected of you was to not embarrass them in front of the neighbors. If you became a priest or nun, your parents would die with a smile on their face. But if all you did was managed by some miracle to scale a few rungs higher on the socioeconomic ladder, fair play to you.

Indeed, the inner voice might mock you once your income bracket rises. It’s a cruel irony that your parents toiled in lower-middle class drudgery so that you could get a college degree and then hire lower-middle class people to do the menial jobs around the house that are no longer worth your time. Rest assured that your head never gets as big as your bank accounts, thanks to that voice inside your head.

“So, I guess we’re all high-fallutin’ now, are we? Too good to clean your own house and mow your own lawn? Yes, I know ye’ll tell yourself that ye have made enough money for ye to allow yer wife to stay home and raise the kids, and I’m glad for ye, luv. Really. Ye went a lot further in life than I ever thought ye would. But it wouldn’t kill yeh to clean the auld toilet once in a while.”

Your parents never spent money on maids and landscapers. They tended their own house and saved every penny they could to provide for you and send what little money was left home to their parents in Ireland. If overtime wages and tips were good on any given year, they may have taken you over to see your grandparents. Those childhood trips to Ballylanders and Athenry in the motherland are stitched into the fabric of your soul and Ireland calls you, her traveling child, to come home every few years.

The inner voice has a belly full of Irish pride on St. Patrick’s Day, furious at the portrayal of our culture.

“Do they all think we are all eejits swillin’ green beer and puking our guts out along the parade route?! Ye are handy with a pen---dash off a few words to the Hallmark Card Company and tell them that we’ll burn a leprechaun card every day until they start printing greetings with St. Patrick instead of green beer!”

You thought that voice was stark raving mad all these years but now you won’t hoist a pint before first stopping at church on March 17. It is there that you reflect on God’s many blessings in your life. You married way above your station, your girls are angels, your parents are in fine health into their seventies, and you live with your friends and family in which abundant love is given and taken freely. You say a silent prayer to the saint who was captured and carried off as a slave to Ireland in his teens, asking him to watch over your economically battered homeland right before you light a candle and bow to your Maker.

“I like the way you ended this, luv. Fair play to yeh. Maybe I didn’t do such a bad job raising yeh after all.”

This is your brain on shamrocks.

Fall Book Tour Dates!

2011-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

9/17 2-4PM Sea Girt Irish Festival at the Celtic Reader tent!
10/1: Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, 2:30-4:30PM Corralea Court Hotel http://www.corralea-court-hotel.com/
10/15: Time TBA Rock and Read with Beannacht at Booktowne, Manasquan, NJhttp://www.booktowne.com/Events.htm

My Big Fat Review of "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding"

2011-06-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

I’m not much of a reality TV watcher, but the constant onslaught of teasers and trailers for My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding tempted me like the smell of baked bread wafting out of an Annie’s Pretzel mall kiosk For years I was fascinated by the traveling gypsy caravan communities perched alongside Irish roadways. The gypsies selling us oils and scarves on the cobblestone walkways were an exotic delicacy in the sea of pale people and thanks to the good folks at The Learning Channel (TLC), I was about to gain access into the mysterious shadow of Irish culture known as the traveler people.

Mind you, travelers was not the first name I heard to describe these people—tinkers and knackers was more like it, with these nouns usually prefaced by the word “feckin’” thrown in for good measure. One mild-mannered uncle on my dad’s side grips the steering wheel hard and spits curse words every time he passes the new government housing in the section of Tuam where the travelers live. “Faith’n they’re a fair bit nicer than the house I broke my back to build,” he’d shout in disgust. I have seen firsthand the mounds of trash they left on our family’s fields when someone encouraged them to move on and though there was never proof, I have heard friends and family blame them for every petty crime in the bog.

Of course, these bile-tinged accusations only added to the curiosity I had when I tuned into the first episode of Wedding. Like all television in this programming genre, the camera casts a wide-eye on white trash playing into their stereotypes for the pleasure of the film crew. An eight year-old little girl emerges on her Communion day from momma’s trailer with false eyelashes, a spray tan, faux rhinestones along her eyelids, and a taffeta dress so large it has trouble fitting between two parked cars. She joins her little prosti-tot friends at the party afterwards and no girl on the dance floor is over 10 with heels under 6 inches. Despite assurances of purity, morality, and spirituality from a self-professed traveler expert on the program, the puddles of flesh spilling out of the tight silk gowns on the big wedding days looked more like a brothel on prom night than a bridal party. Perceived slights from the macho young men in the trailer park are settled—where else?—behind the cement wall at the back of the trailer park in a bare-knuckle brawl that the announcer assures us is a traveler ritual.

The breakout stars of the show are Paddy and Roseanne Doherty, the owners of one trailer park. “Queen Elizabeth has her place but I swear to God and my babies, this is my Buckingham Palace,” Paddy announces before hopping into his convertible Audi (he gets a new car every six months whether he needs it or not). A former bare-knuckle boxing champion, Paddy, 52, has painted “PD” on the blacktop in front of his trailer park, a fitting Coat of Arms for the likes of him if ever there was one. He is a study in conflicts, a man that cries at his son’s grave while delivering rough justice to anyone administering domestic violence within the comfort of their trailer if it happens to be parked on his land. With his bulging biceps and affinity for sleeveless shirts, he looks like a cross between a juicing Fred Flintstone and The Situation’s Neanderthal ancestor.

“You’d never see a traveling man shopping,” he says without a hint of irony as he lies on a store mattress. The camera pans across the store and finds his wife looking at a white lacquered dining room set that’s so gaudy it would give Elvis Presley vertigo. His purpose is soon clear when it comes time to pay the bill and Paddy takes yer man out back to hammer out a price. “Even if you give a traveling man a pound off the price, he feels like he got a good deal,” muses Roseanne. With her cottony bleached hair, rhinestone jewels in the shape of a crown on each back pocket, and loopy mannerisms, she could easily be the main character in every Loretta Lynn or Judd song.

One recently married bride explains that education is not something that’s regarded in the traveler community.

No! Really? Ya don’t say! I kinda figured that out when I saw Irishman Johnny leave his trailer home, hop in a helicopter, ride to his reception, and take the ring out of a pouch held in the talons of a trained owl that flies to him. If he had any education in math, he’d know that money on this costly circus could be put to better use. Oh, I dunno. How about a new set of teeth for the missus?

When Paddy and Roseanne pull up to their son’s grave and she begins to sob uncontrollably while a crowd of travelers drink beer around the grave, your heart goes out to her. I soon joined her in a cry with the knowledge that I’d never get the three hours back that I wasted watching this marathon of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding—nor will I ever recoup the time spent watching the rest of the episodes.

Mike Farragher's collection of essays, This is Your Brain on Shamrocks, can be found on www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com

What Will the Neighbors Think? Who Cares?????

2011-05-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

“What will the neighbors think?”

Anyone with Irish blood in their veins has heard those five words strung in an accusatory question from their parents at one time or another.

You come home with long hair and a piercing from college. You get off the tarmac at the Aer Lingus terminal packing a chin that wasn’t there the last time you were in Ireland. You’re in counseling and popping anti-depressants like Pez candy. News of a rough spot in your marriage gets out. Or worse, you write about any of the above “family business topics” in a column like this. No matter what the circumstance, a furrowed brow and a shot of worry about what others will think about this latest development is the Irish knee-jerk reaction to every twist and turn of life’s road.

Of course, each one of those ‘neighbors’ in the parish of my youth have skeletons in their closet that could outpace the jigs and reels that our family’s skeletons have done in the dark corners of our house, but that didn’t seem to matter as we analyzed and sterilized rough spots in our lives and appearance before we left the house growing up so that the best possible image was put forth into the world.

Y’know, I thought I mothballed my rebellious streak when I graduated college twenty-some years ago. I find it’s been raging these last few weeks as the This Is Your Brain on Shamrocks book tour shows no sign of stopping at the same time that a select few in my family sit on the sidelines worrying what the neighbors will think of the perceived vulgarities in the book. In a weird way, it has fueled a fire in me to get this thing in as many hands as possible, so I thank the (precious few) naysayers in my clan for the much-needed inspiration behind all this perspiration.

The week of September 2001 has dark significance in the world, but it has an element of joy and rebirth for me because that was the month that two significant conversations allowed me to break free of a life manufacturing a charade to please a collection of people whose opinion I could care less about.

I had gone to a personal empowerment course shortly before the towers fell and the instructor encouraged us to reflect on how much time we spent trying to look good and avoid looking bad. When you’re Irish and forced to spend a weekend taking inventory of what you invested in this ridiculous and vicious cycle, you are struck with how many years you robbed yourself of power, freedom, and self-expression in your life. It boggles the mind and I resolved never to put those confines on myself ever again.

I guess I was still in that self awareness fog a few days later when I met none other than Sir Bob Geldof for coffee in midtown. I remember marveling how his disheveled hair matched the grey pinstripes of his Saville Row jacket perfectly. I was interviewing him for this column about Sex, Age, & Death, a highly personal album about the high-profile suicide of his ex-wife and the affair she had with INXS singer Michael Hutchence that he had just released. During our chat I had the temerity to ask him what he thought the family would think of the lyrics.

“I could give two sh*tes about that,” he said with a sneer. “You worry about what the neighbors think and art dies. You die. I never would have accomplished Live Aid or anything else in my life if I thought much about looking bad or feeling a failure.”

Imagine that. Thousands of Africans were saved because one Irishman pushed through the worry about how he would be perceived. I was so inspired that afternoon that I gave birth to writer right then and there. It was no longer enough to be a scribbler that merely comments on the creations of others as a music critic. It had suddenly become critical that I transform into someone who creates something unique.

I rolled up my sleeves that day and published my first novel within 18 months of meeting Geldof. This new pathway of unconstrained self-expression through writing has added dimensions of joy and creativity to my life ever since that I cannot possibly describe in this space.

I am now promoting my second book and I have been touched by how many people from all walks of life, Irish and non-Irish alike, are taking the personal essays of This Is Your Brain on Shamrocks to heart. They see the love and wit of their deceased mother in how I describe my living mom and it moves them to tears. They hear an essay about my deceased Uncle Bob in Yonkers and Bob is brought to life once again on McClean Avenue as someone recalls hearing his band The Limerick Weavers. Above all, they reflect on the common themes of family, guilt, love, and unity that run through our lives.

This book tour taught me that being a writer means a dedication to writing things that make your neighbors think without worrying much about what they will think about you. I wouldn’t live my life any other way.

Updated Book Signing Schedule and Appearances

2011-04-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Sat. 5/7 Belmar Public Library, afternoon time TBD Rock and Read event with Beannacht!
Wed. 5/11 The Playwright Bar and Restaurant (35th St. betw 5th and 6th) NYC
Sunday 5/15 Irish Cultural Center, 1 Lackawanna Place, Morristown, NJ 07960 2PM

Reflections on Lent: English Muffin Pizza Penance

2011-03-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

“I gave up social networking for Lent.”

I posted this on my Facebook profile on the morning of Ash Wednesday and within seconds, got the following reply.

“Lent started already, dumbass. You’re not into it one day and already you have to find something new to give up.”

It made me swallow hard on my Egg McMuffin, which I realized had meat in it. My brain on shamrocks kicks into guilt mode.

“Perhaps your kind is more suited for Spy Wednesday,” that little voice inside my head whispers in my ear. “That’s the day before Holy Thursday, when Judas gave Jesus up. Enjoy that Canadian bacon now, luv, ‘cos I don’t think they serve that down below where yer goin’.

When it comes to Lent, I just give up. Period.

It says here on the AboutCatholics.com website, “Christian faithful are to do penance through prayer, fasting, abstinence and by exercising works of piety and charity during Lent. All Fridays through the year, and especially during Lent, are penitential days.”

I can remember the penitential meals that were served on Fridays during Lent in my house. Though I can recall growing up in a Jersey City neighborhood with a killer pizzeria on virtually every corner, we did culinary penance with the English muffin pizza. The Irish mother’s recipe went something like this in our house:

set oven to broil.
split all of the English muffins and place on a baking dish,
uncap a large jar of Ragu marinara sauce, placing a dollop in the center of each muffin.
Release 8 slices of Kraft American cheese from the contents of their plastic sleeves.
Broil until cheese bubbles, about 10 minutes.

Of course, the cheese was more processed than a Britney Spears vocal, which meant it only melted if it struck the surface of the sun. The poor English muffin would be a charcoal disc long before the broiler got to work on the bright orange faux dairy blanket.

It wasn’t until my cousin Rob married an Italian that we got a proper education on the sumptuous delights of snow white shavings of mozzarella cheese melting into the molten, slow-cooked Sunday gravy.

“Faith’n, ye all ate the Ragu that was put in front of yeh and it was good enough at the time,” my Aunt Mary sniffed, finding the prospect of a daughter-in-law outgunning her in the kitchen too hard to swallow.

Can I count dodging my daughters’ pointed questions about what I am giving up for Lent as penance enough? To them, Lent is an adventure in endurance---can a body really go without chocolate and iCarly reruns for 40 days?

Back in my day, we were all given small cardboard piggy banks and encouraged to beg on behalf of the “mission babies” in Africa during the Lenten season. I remember the thrill when we hit $100 in donations as a class--that’s when we got to name our very own mission babies! That was back in the Seventies, so I am sure there are plenty of middle-aged Africans running around the jungle angry at their parents for giving them names like Farrah, Fonz, LaVerne, and Shirley.

They would probably be a good deal angrier if they knew how many coins I siphoned off the top of the mission baby collection for ice cream and candy. Indeed, I have lots to atone for in my life. It makes a guy change his McDonald’s order from a Big Mac to a Filet o’ Fish on this particular Friday, just in case this whole Lenten sacrifice thing saves me from the fires of hell. I’d imagine having your soul broiled like an English Muffin pizza would be just a tad painful.....

Updated Book Signing Dates and Times!

2011-03-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Book Signings and readings: Check them out!

Wed 3/30 4 Green Fields, Boston, MA Time 6:30 http://www.fourgreenfields.com/homepage.php
Thu 3/31 The Harp, Amherst. MA 7-?? http://www.theharp.net/
Sat 4/16 New York Public Library, Castleton Ave., Staten Island, 2PM
Tue 4/26 New York Public Library, Woodlawn, NY 5:30 PM

Pogues Review: "Parting" Is Such Sweet Sorrow...

2011-03-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

The claustrophobia of a sweaty, packed club. Hopscotching over vomit and spilled beer. The excruciatingly long lines to both purchase and eliminate beer. I’m sure it was a combination of all of those things that made me look to the heavens and sigh, “I’m too old for this sh*t” as I bowed out early on The Pogues “A Parting Glass” show at Terminal 5 on St. Patrick’s Day.

At first I panicked when I read into the “parting glass” reference as a hint of retirement; the band reformed at the turn of the millennium and we’ve all become so accustomed to an annual visit from the lads each March that the possibility of the world without touring was a world we wanted no part of.

“It does and it doesn’t mean retirement,” guitarist Phil Chevron said during an interview with me a few weeks back. “A parting glass was performed for many years. It is A Parting Glass, not THE Parting Glass. We have been doing it longer than this lineup existed -- 1987-2003. We have been in this lineup since 2001 and this is a moment of pause to see what to do next. It marks the end of a phase. There is a keenness to do some new things as well. We are artificially putting a stop to this phase of our career. It has been a nice surprise for us but it might be time for something else.”

I am in no means filing a bad review here; nothing could be further from the truth. The Pogues are legends for good reason; very few bands are capable of streaming sparks from banjoes, flutes, and accordions the way The Pogues can. Every nicked note and nuance of Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys can be heard in the band’s read through “Streams of Whiskey,” a cultural tour de force that spun the crowd into a dizzying whirlpool of cheers, fist pumps, and sing-alongs. “If I Should Fall From Grace with God” had a similar reaction. It was at this point that I looked around to see jaws wide open on fans not born when Rum, Sodomy & the Lash came out. It validates in a way your own slavish devotion to the band and in a more smug moment, you snicker to yourself and say, “you won’t find J. Lo judging this on American Idol, kiddies!”

Indeed, you wonder what Randy Jackson, Lopez, and Stephen Tyler would make of a singer like Shane MacGowan if he was just starting out now. At 53, he shuffled onstage in a way that hinted at an inability to twist his waist; it was as though his lower vertebrae was fused to his hip. He was dressed entirely in black, including a knit cap and dark sunglasses. The spotlight shone on everyone brightly this evening, yet his was a dark blue hue, creating a Paddy the Cryptkeeper vibe that was simultaneously creepy and captivating. He might be broken and a shell of his former self, yet he has more charisma in his yellowed and tarred forefinger than the new crop of Idols hopefuls combined.

I can report that the singer was swilling liquid all night, but it looked from my vantage point like Poland Spring instead of poitin, though toxicology reports were inconclusive as of this writing.

His voice is less of a voice nowadays; the grunts and slurs make his contribution more like an instrument that joins the flutes and fiddles. We’ve grown accustomed on these reunion shows to that beautiful Pogue prose spit out of a rotted mouth that coughs up cemetery dirt every other syllable, but when he sat in a chair and sang “Waltzing Matilda,” the audience heard a voice that was clear and spine-tingling.

People debating how the lead singer’s new teeth will impact his singing is an odd conversation in this crowds, but not this one. New choppers in his gob are akin to restringing an lute in an orchestra.

While it was a satisfying evening of the old standards delivered by the best in the business, there was a part of me that felt a little awkward and foolish about the whole evening. It was like spending the night with a college buddy twenty years after graduation, finding in little in common while trying to avoid the topic that everyone in the room is middle-aged.

I’m 44 with kids and a mortgage in the suburbs, and I am no longer a Hot Topic punk rocker. Some of The Pogues are old enough to be grandfathers, no longer new and dangerous themselves. Maybe Phil Chevron is right: it might be time to swallow the contents in this parting glass and raise a toast for something new between us when and if we ever meet again.

St. Patrick's 2011 Essay in the Irish Voice

2011-03-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

This is your brain on shamrocks.

But you’re an Irish American born to Irish parents, which means your inner voice has a brogue that sounds remarkably like your mother’s. It’s that “Celtic consciousness” that gets to work as you’re sitting on the back deck of your house reading the Sunday New York Times just as the last Mass of the day begins.

“Is there a church nearby? While you’re in there marking up your arm so that it looks like a coloring book, I want to get a few decades of the rosary in. I will be praying to the Mother of God that ye’ll come to your senses. Not sure what ye are tryin’ to prove here. Are ye trying to set an example for my granddaughters? I’m sure they’re gonna wanna run off and get one of dem ‘tramp stamps’ above their rumps. Sure, that’ll be a marvelous look. But ye go ahead and do what ye want, luv. What do I know?”

The inner voice has a belly full of Irish pride on St. Patrick’s Day, furious at the portrayal of our culture.

“I like the way you ended this, luv. Fair play to yeh. Maybe I didn’t do such a bad job raising yeh after all.”

This is your brain on shamrocks.

Mike Farragher’s collection of light-hearted essays, This Is Your Brain on Shamrocks, is available now at www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com . For excerpts, log onto IrishCentral.com

Book Signing and Reading Dates!

2011-02-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

Book Signings and readings: Check them out!

Wed 3/30 4 Green Fields, Boston, MA Time TBD http://www.fourgreenfields.com/homepage.php
Thu 3/31 The Harp, Amherst. MA 7-?? http://www.theharp.net/
Sat 4/16 New York Public Library, Castleton Ave., Staten Island, 2PM
Tue 4/26 New York Public Library, Woodlawn, NY 5:30 PM