Off the List

How the St. Patrick's Day Parade made a Jew green with envy

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade is an excuse to get drunk during the day and wear your Marti Gras beads again. In the past, I only saw the St. Patrick's Day Parade in that limited light, but that all changed for me this weekend as I accidently discovered a St. Patrick's Day parade in my own backyard, in Park Slope, Brooklyn along the commercial stretch of 7^th Ave that was buzzing with goodwill and brimming with Irish pride.  As I took in the loving embrace of those heavenly bag pipes, I got green with envy and felt excluded from the party.  My people the Jews, don’t have a national holiday that celebrates our roots, the closest thing we have to celebrating our interest charging roots are your standard bank holidays.

First, this parade made me green with envy because Jews don’t play cool instruments like the bag pipes, the only thing we blow these days are our investor’s portfolios.  Second, the parade me green with envy because Irish people look good in green no matter how bad they look. Third, I got envious because Jews can’t watch a parade without thinking that the Nazi’s are trailing behind. Forth, I got green with envy because Jews don’t get that excited about alcohol unless they can sit at a bar and stare at flakes of gold swim around a bottle of Gold Schlager, that’s our idea of happy hour. Fifth, it made me green with envy because everyone looked like a bad ass, especially the Irish grandma’s; they looked like they kicked the potato famine in the ass.  Last, it made me green with envy because everyone there reminded me of the Boston Celtics, and all the four leaf clovers in the world, won’t win the Knicks a championship in my lifetime.

Jews have a tendency to write off Irish people as small brained, drunken bullies, and that’s unfortunate because they helped build this great Island of Manhattan, and its other boroughs from the ground up. The Irish were treated as reject castaways the moment they arrived on Ellis Island, just like the Jews, nobody, wanted them, but America accepted them, thick accents and all.  On St. Patty’s Day, the Irish have every reason to beam with pride as they March through streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Irish continue to make tremendous additions to our police and fire department as they shoulder the heavy load almost all on their own; their work keeps our city safe and prosperous.  I only wish that my people the Jews had a day where we can celebrate our accomplishments and everything we’ve done to make our country a funnier, wiser more humane place to live.  When Bloomberg becomes mayor again for a record breaking third term, he could push through a Jewish day parade and wear pin that says kiss my royal ass, I’m Jewish.

Written By,

Josh Kornbluth  

White Plains is Off the List

I started a blog called Off the List, yet I have not explained what that means, so here we go. Bars in White Plains are off the list and what I mean by this is that they are no longer worth my time or my friend's money, they were the ones buying me drinks Saturday Night, that changed once I switched to scotch, my cherished mircrobrews lost their bite. I'm assuming that 99% of you don't know about White Plains unless your a guido groupie who goes to the tanning salon almost as often as your gudio boyfriend.Technically speaking, White Plains is a city located in the sleepy confines of Weschester County, it's about a forty minute drive north of Manhattan yet the locals chose to hang out there because there is something comforting about being surrounded by plastic four leaf clovers that cling to the wall like tar on teeth.  

White Plains is off the list, because it's not a real city, yet people try to spin it that way, now that the city has multiple shitty bars to waste away in whereas in the past there was only one. The city of White Plains has become a victim of it's own hype, everyone that parties there thinks that the city has arrived since Donald Trump built a condo building next to a state of the art movie theatre yet that's not enough to distract you from the dumpy stretch along Mamaroneck Ave, that's about as scenic as the parking lot outside of Yonker's Raceway. And the girls that hang out there lean toward the grimy side, their complexions are dried out the way glue sticks get when you forget to put on the cap. Plus, the girls powder their noses every two seconds, if you catch my drift. If they hear last call, chances are, it's from the bathroom stall.

 

I'm coming down hard on White Plains because I partied there Saturday Night with some old, dear friends to celebrate my new job, well that was my reason, some came for the eye candy, some came for the steady flow of booze, some came to disappear in the bathroom for hours at a time while others came to just enjoy their friends when they weren't groveling over some sweaty browed,Irish lassie who was about as stable as a bi polar actress studying at Julliard. My problem wasn't so much with the bar, but the fact that we were partying in White Plains on a Saturday Night which is amusing in your twenties but depressing in your thirties. Will we ever outgrow it?  When it's all said and done, we revisit our old stomping grounds because it's predictable and convenient which isn't a recipe for getting laid last time I checked, especially when you consider our group history of striking out. On a more personal level, White Plains is off the list because it reminds me of my lower self and the perpetual drunken haze that choked off my soul during my twenties. Also, it represents my aimless past, and that's not something I want to associate with anymore.

 

If anything, this past Saturday night, reinforced to me why, I turned into such a lush.  More importantly, it made me see how much White Plains sucks. White Plains is a sorry excuse for a city, it has no skyline, no diversity and no personality. The only thing this place has going for is that it attracts feisty, young Irish girls yet most them can't hold their liquor let alone hold themselves up against the bar without slipping away into the drunken night like a washed up barmaid, who wouldn't know what class is, if it fell into their clammy drink. My advice for all of you White Plains groupies, get out while you can, before you become another moldy fixture like the disheveled looking four leaf clovers surrounding you. Suck it up and take Metro North into the city. At the very least, you can enjoy a skyline that isn't limited to a mish mosh of decrepit looking Irish bars that are drowning in delusions of grandeur. But if you want White Plains, you go it, that city is a stationary spot to nowhere, it's stuck in a permanent rut of indifference to the world outside it, it can't break free of it's loser past, that's why White Plains is off the list. 

 

Written By, 

Josh Kornbluth