Monday, December 13, 2010

Happy Belated Birfday

moi ICI:
we didn't have a pot to piss in growing up, but somewhere along the line my Dad decided he wanted to be a bit of a wine connoisseur. I don't know where these wines came from, probably Safeway, but at every Sunday dinner my Dad would make a big production with the wine: checking the wine in the light, passing the cork around to be smelled, tasting the wine etc etc. The best part was after the meal, as it was my job to walk over to the hutch and come back to the table both with the post-dinner Port AND my Dad's "wine journal." As he'd be thoughtfully writing his take on the latest wine he would ask my mother for her own opinion, to which he would look up and see her merely shaking her empty glass around at him as in "whatever, just fill it up again jackass."
Besides my buddy Serge, yesterday was also my dad's birthday. Of the two, one was born in 1942, and the other is my dad  HIYOOOOOOOOO!!!!  ;)

It's tuff to think what I got from him - he was a sober, serious man who I saw laugh out loud exactly once. I'm a fucking ass-clown. He liked being a super-Catholic and reading exceedingly dry books on things like the 14th Canadian Regiment of 1849, and dragging his sons around to any historical site/battlefield/church within 200 miles. I don't believe in God, religion and churches scare the hell out of me, and while I love reading history books I rarely find myself reading The Story of Civilization.

The older I get, one thing about him I find myself wanting to be is a little more refined. He loved being Irish and spoke longingly of his days going throughout Europe and the Mediterranean as a Marine while a young buck; he liked to class up Sunday Dinner with our weekly Port ritual. I guess that's where my desire to move to London and being a francophile comes from. Of course, me being more refined means using utensils at the table, so.

He also loved music; he played the trumpet in the Marines (I think - god knows he tortured us with that thing from time to time) and embarrassed his kids (and wife, presumably) by singing as loud as he could at Mass every Sunday (for which we were there before they turned the lights on.)

Ansd he wisely let my mother administer my daily ass-whuppins  :)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Word to the greatest mormon guitar player, but I'm over on the Marah Facebook page and I see this sergesatz motherfudger palling around with MLP and I about busted up my keyboard:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=77386070&o=all&op=1&view=all&subj=136615318920&id=9350922

If this is not her post-xmastime-coital beer, I am sad.