A man nods at a woman over the counter and says, “Thanks love, can I get a pint of Guinness and a packet of crisps, please?”

The woman smiles. “You must be Irish.”

The man, a bit offended, says, “Oh, because I ordered a Guinness? If I asked for pasta, would you think I was Italian?”

“No, but this is McDonalds.”
——————–



Sweden. Shit. I’m still only in Sweden.

Another St Patrick’s came and went, a day that only became meaningful for me in 2006, despite my “Irish” heritage. On my mother’s side, my great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Newfoundland, then to the US, where my grandfather married another Irish immigrant, so pretty pure Irish until my mom married my dad. My stepfather jokingly referred to me as Heinz Ketchup- 57 varieties- and he wasn’t far off; in the late Eighties, my dad did some digging into our family tree and discovered a Scottish ancestor named Buzzle had arrived at Ellis Island and the official signing his admission papers said, “It’s Bussell now,” condemning me to a lifetime of correcting people who think my name has one s or one l or both.

Recently, my dad did one of those DNA tests and the results revealed over 60% Scandinavian, likely due to Vikings, long before they would devolve from aggressive aggression to passive aggression. That said, no one is more passive aggressive than an Irish-Catholic woman, so not only was a move, nay, a return to Sweden in my blood, my mother had prepared me for life here. Any time a Swede tries to be passive aggressive towards me, I laugh. They bring a knife to a gun fight.

Anyway, I can’t say that St Patrick’s held any special weight for me until 2006, as I’d moved to Sweden just a few days prior. My then wife made a cake with a shamrock on it, a sweet gesture, no pun intended. A few years later, around the same time, we decided to separate. A few years after that, around the same time, I stepped onto a stage and did my first three minutes as a comic.

Three huge milestones in my life, within a handful of years, all around the same holiday, makes St Patrick’s an important day for me, with no thought at all of snakes being driven out of Ireland. While I wouldn’t say my first marriage coming to an end is something to celebrate, it was a monumental life change, a start of a new chapter, full of unknowns and challenges.

It almost pains me to write about my life as having chapters, but it is how I see my history. Maybe it’s how everyone looks back at their lives, but it’s strange to me. It’s like I’m the same person throughout, but not, that my life is obviously one continuous chain of events, yet full of distinct periods somehow independent of each other.

One of the all-time greatest first lines in a novel is, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” Vonnegut’s protagonist is living his life in his forties one moment, suddenly back in time to his twenties the next. For him it’s literal, his consciousness continuous despite the drastic changes in time and age, but it’s close to how I see memory working for me. When I think back to playing with toys when I was eight years old, or playing with other things back in college, I’m projecting my mind as it is now back into who I was then. I wasn’t the same person then, except of course I was.

I see my time in standup as a whole, but also in chapters. My first year, wide-eyed and hungry and out five nights a week. Founding and running Taboo Comedy Club with a partner. That falling apart, founding and running Crossfire Comedy Club on my own. That coming to an end and having my first burnout, taking a step back. Founding and running Cash Comedy Club, but as a silent partner. Having a good time doing that, founding and running Power Comedy Club with partners. That being great until it wasn’t, burning out again, taking a huge step back. And now, still taking tentative steps back in.

Time got…weird during covid, but it’s always been weird. Looking back, it’s strange to think how long a certain period of my life lasted. Like having amnesia and someone tells me my life story. “Wait… I ran Taboo for how long? In three different venues?!” Friends that have come and gone, relationships forming and falling apart, people who have moved away or moved… on. It’s all so abstract to me.

That goes especially for the times I felt like my life was on pause, like I was just waiting for something to happen. Those periods being generally defined by unemployment. Man, I’ve had some long droughts. Thank Goodness for a patient wife and a generous welfare system! In any case, my first, very long stretch without a job coincides, well, is responsible for my start in standup. There’s no way I could’ve juggled a full-time job and fourteen gigs a week.

I remember an interview with Dustin Hoffman where he said that age never mattered to him as long as he could double it. When he turned thirty, so what, he could picture himself at sixty. At forty, he could see himself at eighty. Fifty… he knew he was pushing it, but he could imagine himself at a hundred. When he turned sixty, though, he knew there was far less ahead than there was behind, but it gave him a sense of peace.

Maybe I’m getting more likely to look back with less to look forward to. And by that, I mean the number of years. I’ve never been a nostalgic person, because that isn’t just looking back at the past fondly, it’s longing for it. It’s inevitable, but I never want to feel like my best days are behind me, like people who peaked in high school. I remember the good times and the bad, and they led me to where I am right now. I like where I am right now. It’s not perfect, of course, and I’ll keep pushing for more, but I’m at point where I’m fully employed, I go to the gym every day (with rare exception), I’m performing more often. Whether this is a continuation of a chapter or the start of a new one remains to be seen.

I even put a beef behind me. So, Sláinte! Here’s to all the beefs, past, present, and future.