Irishman of the Year

The Joyce clan, as I see it, began in Vailsburg, Newark, an upper middle class section of a now formerly upper middle class city.

My great-grandmother, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, ruled her flock with an iron fist. Though Irish, the descriptions that have been passed down to me lend themselves better to the notion of a Victorian matriarch than a second generation mick. Difficult to say which came first; the upward mobility or assimilation. Chicken? Egg? I kid I kid. I am sure she was a wonderful woman. A wonderful woman who happened to dress like Queen Elizabeth I.

Bob, my grandfather, went to Notre Dame. His brother Jack went to Dartmouth. Upon graduation they set out to succeed their father in running the family business, a commercial contracting operation. For the purposes of the following anecdote, perhaps little else in terms of detail is warranted. Be that as it may, I am inclined to include also this generation's affinity for alcohol, canoodling, plaid pants, the United States of America, topsiders, and being Irish. For all of which was quite substantial.

Without further ado...

Though not sure what governing body resides over such ceremonious occasions, I can resolutely say that there is a certain organization in New Jersey that doles out an award for Irishman of the year. I can also say with confidence that my Uncle Jack, my grandfather's brother, from whom I seem to have inherited my unruly eyebrows and thick hair, has won the award at least once. And also that the ceremony had been attended with a religious fervor by all of the adult men in the family until the death of my grandfather in 1996, may he Rest In Peace.

On one of these occasions, as I'm sure was the case with all of them, an O'Connell, a Daly, an O'Brien, a Kerwin, and the Joyce brothers all overindulged. The Daly, a relation by marriage to my grandfather's sister, was an attorney with an affinity for golf and plaid pants that was without vice. This must have been one of the rare occasions he was able to extricate himself from the control of his domineering wife, my aunt. Normally, she told him when to jump and how high. Which was usually not often or not very high. Exceptionally vulnerable to the active ingredients in whisky, much like a child in a candy store to the ill-effects of a sugar buzz, he was an absolute mess by the ceremony's conclusion. Weekend at Bernie's style.

When all was said and done, my father, uncles, and grandfather (my father's father in-law) were reluctant delivery boys. And I can't help but laugh at the notion of my grandfather and my dad joining forces, as dew glistened on manicured suburban lawns and birds sang their morning songs, to prop up my uncle up against the screen door of his home only to ring the doorbell.....and sprint back to the car and speed away.

I can only imagine the inadvertant hilarity that ensued when my aunt found her true love that morning, drunk as a skunk, propped up against their front door as lawn sprinklers hummed away up and down the street and adjacent neighbors went for their morning papers, scratching their heads at what had befallen the Daly residence at its front entrance.

If you're interested in hearing my interpretation of the exchange, which includes impersonations, all you have to do is hand me a couple beers and ask. It's pretty good if I do say so myself. Just ask my mom.

The Trouble with Alpha Males

I'll have to preface this entry by letting you all know that my sister has never ever been characterized as "tough" or a "tomboy" in her entire life. To the contrary, the very notion makes me laugh out loud. I should also mention explicitly that the following is an email I received from my sister who is doing monkey research in Costa Rica. It was brought to my attention a few weeks ago that this was not always clear. A friend of mine thought I was in Costa Rica. I assured him I spend my days in a cubicle just like him. :(


Hey Dude.

So all is well here. Two new girls arrived. One, a Canadian who is 27 and the other a Brit who is I think my age. Both very nice. Both a little overwhelmed I think. They aren't quite as tough as me. Ha ha. But seriously, they aren't. They have only been going in the field one day, then a day off, then one day, and another day off. I went right into two days in a row, and was all bloody and messed up but never complained. These newbies are getting pampered. And they got tired yesterday and just sat in the car for a few hours. I certainly never did that!

I'm saying this with a little sarcasm....they are very nice girls and I hope they don't get too overwhelmed.

I was aggresively chased my a monkey the other day. He ' s a new alpha male who has become quite a dickhead. That does not happen often, that they act out towards us like that. He chased one of my co-workers and I away from the group twice while aggressive coughing, which they very rarely do, so he meant business. I think it may be because he is new as alpha male, and that group had not been observed on a month, so he was just a little out of sorts. He has been fine since then. And no one has ever been attacked (bitten) by a monkey in 17 years of this project. So no need to worry.

Oh! I thought this was pretty funny........ I was at a bar last night meeting some of the other gringos in town...some Canadians and Brits that work for a computer company. I overheard Isaac describing me to some girls as ''kind of a tomboy'', and I laughed and thought he was being sarcastic. He turned around, and was like, '' Oh, I dont mean it in a bad way. But you are definitely sort of a tomboy.'' He was SERIOUS. I am fairly certain that is a first for me....being called a tomboy. When I asked why he thought that, he said "I don't know you just are....and you love Pearl Jam; that's pretty tomboy. And you might be tougher than me.''

I just thought that you might find that entertaining because I did. Ha ha. I'm a tomboy. ???????????

Vacation starts on the 26th or 27th. Going to Monteverde with some peeps. Supposed to be so amazingly beautiful. We're going to take a canopy tour of the rainforest. You get strapped into a harness and go on a zip line in the canopy. Supposed to be real cool. We'll see some active volcanoes too. You can see lava and everything. There is one active one very nearby me as well, that I can see on the way into and out of the field every day. Pretty cool, right?

Barry Bonds

Red Ball

I have this stressball on my desk. Today, as I worked, it suddenly began to roll accross my desk slower than I've ever seen anything role anywhere in my entire life, accross the length of my desk. Know how when you roll a ball really slowly it always ends up stopping pretty much immediately? Like once they deccelerate below a certain point, you know the end is near. Well, this ball was substantially below that point but just kept on going. And it rolled itself! Thank god none of my superiors walked by because I honestly spent a solid 2 minutes watching this red ball roll ever so slowly accross my desk like it was the most important/fascinating thing to ever transpire on god's green earth. Actually, come to think of it, it may have been.

Happy Friday.

Fade to Black...and Intermittent Vagaries

Nope. Not a Metallica reference. A James reference.

I figure I should get this down now before any and all memories thereof are lost and gone forever.

I am pretty sure I was in NYC for a bachelor party last weekend. This time it's James taking the plunge. I would like to preface everything I am about to spew into 0's and 1's by saying I could never live in NYC. Fun place to visit for a day or two but it's just too much....of everything. A city of excesses.

At 9:00, our first open bar commenced at 7:00, a buddy who never drinks (already married) ripped the sink out of the wall at the bar. Big sink too. He must have turned green and hulked out. Another buddy had to run into the bathroom and turn some valve off to keep the place from flooding. As if this weren't bad enough, he sat down at a table just outside the bathroom and ended up puking everywhere. Everyone I spoke to was pretty sure we were getting thrown out immediately... but they actually took the whole episode in stride. The staff was Irish so perhaps they're used to this sort of thing, yes?

Damage control entailed checking drunko into an expensive hotel while he was pretty much incapacitated. Some amongst us felt this was a dick move. I thought it was deserved. Only person allowed to put on a performance like this should be the one about to get married....and seventeen year-old girls. Apparently he woke up a few hours later and met us back out. By that point, however, I was no longer capable of making or holding onto memories. As such, I don't remember seeing him again.

During the aforementioned episode, Casey was conspicuously absent. All we knew was that he wasn't there. Honestly, knowing Casey, he could have been anywhere. Space, New Jersey, a penthouse apartment with Paris Hilton, backstage with a notorious reggae musician, the Caribbean, anywhere. Only after someone had made the trip downstairs to use the bathroom not decorated in vomit did we discover he had mistakenly put a $50 bill into the jukebox. So for about 45 minutes, while no one knew where he was, he was downstairs amongst strangers, flipping out, trying to set up the jukebox with $50 worth of music. He was found panic stricken, trying to use the last $20 worth. I'm pretty sure the bar is still playing his selections now.

The subsequent jaunt to the strip joint was uneventful. Obviously I did not pay for, nor did I receive, nor did I see anyone else receive for that matter, any lap dances. I speak only for myself when I say I wanted one very badly but for fear of retribution World War II dictator style, I respectfully declined. I assume my compatriots had similar rationales.

Later on, after we were done ignoring naked women for fear of varying degrees of retribution from girlfriends, spouses, and soon-to-be spouses, we went to another bar. En route, Timmy decided it'd be funny to lift up his shirt and press his chest and gut against the windows of various swanky Manhattan restaurants brimming with yuppies who had formerly served as inspiration for Sex and the City writers. This wasn't funny. IT WAS HILARIOUS!

Upon our arrival at the next bar, I was apparently singing Ween tunes loudly enough for everyone in Manhattan to be overcome by the majesty of Boog Nish, Ween's god. As drawing attention to myself is very uncharacteristic, I'm tempted to cast this memory aside as a implant, a fake, a phony. But Kev adamantly maintains the very same memory and his part in it. Afraid we'd get tossed for excessive belligerence, he had tried to make nice with the bartender on our behalf. "Do you like Ween?" he offered.

Apparently, the bartender loved Ween. Loved 'em so much, in fact, he went to Bonnaroo this year expressly to see them. Quasi-crisis averted. (It's funny when you bump into random people who like Ween. Doesn't happen often.) So the bartender told us there were tons of Ween tunes on the jukebox. Kev and the bartender urged me to put some on. I turned and walked toward the thing but must have been sidetracked by something shiny because I never quite made it. This is the part of the episode I remember best; walking toward the jukebox intent on picking out tons of Ween tunes. Only in a New York City bar would you find a jukebox stocked with Ween's catalogue. Ironically, the shiny object that diverted me from the task at hand brought with it the darkness that had only moments before been lifted. My inability to focus on anything was apparently amusing to watch though, because Kev couldn't stop laughing when recounted the episode for me the following day.

I can't say with any amount of certainty what happened between that moment and the following morning. The next thing I knew I was waking up in an apartment. Could have been anywhere. As luck would have it, when I looked to my left, on the other side of the couch: Kenyon. After a bout of nausea, I went to the bathroom where I discovered a uni-brow had been drawn in on my face. Kenyon confirmed I'd fallen asleep with my shoes on. I was unaware those rules still applied. At bachelor parties....they apparently still do.

Best of luck James!