446 Comments

Yeah, well, I guess that kind of parade was pioneered here by the Irish.San Francisco has some weird thing where someone wades ashore pretending to be Columbus. Isabella gets in there, too, somehow. Which, at least, is kinda random and wacky. Which can happen on Indigenous Peoples' Day, as far as I'm concerned.

Expand full comment

What's the difference between a violin and a viola?

A viola burns longer.

Expand full comment

My grandfather, married in the 1920s, so growing up in the oughts and teens? was targeted by the boys in the german neighborhood next to the Polish neighborhood if he crossed the line. It's the same old story...

Expand full comment

Think of how many Berlusconi regimes you would have had to live through.

Expand full comment

Pesto hit in the 80s, didn't it? And Salami is wonderful. Landjagar, also, too. I like hard sausage. I like sausage. I find the idea of haggis distasteful, even though it's basically sausage. Go figure.

Expand full comment

In my mother's time, they weren't *really* Catholic. The Poles broke away from the Catholic Church and founded the Polish National Catholic Church--with the mass in Polish (this was well before Vatican II.) Buffalo, and other rust belt cities to be.

Expand full comment

I expect you'll come out here some time in your life, and then you can see for yourself.

Expand full comment

I don't remember when pesto first became popular, but I didn't run into many people who made their own until the late 90's, and now practically everyone I know makes it. I can't eat haggis. I can't eat anything that looks as if someone else has already eaten it once already. Corned beef hash is like that - it's very tasty as long as I don't look at what I'm eating. My cat throws up stuff that looks just like corned beef hash or haggis.

They have a lot of delicious hard sausages in Spain, but I can't get any of them here.

Expand full comment

Why don't you guys have a day honoring Marco Polo? He seemed like a pretty okay guy.

Expand full comment

Lady MS is directly descended from a guy who is mentioned in MD's state song. Neither proud, nor ashamed. Rather, uninvolved, if you catch my drift. Entitled to join DAR/DOC, chose to do neither, but plowed on to make my own history. Do understand Robyn's ambivalence, but it is anyone's choice to embrace or reject the behavior of their forebears. Have never believed in collective/ancestral guilt. You are accountable only for what you accomplish in your lifetime. Any other construct appears, to me, as an adaptation of original sin, which I also don't accept. Rest of you Wonkers are entitled (by virtue of our 1st Am.) to your own opinion, and we'll fight for your right to defend it:)

Expand full comment

Happy Birthday, John Lennon. Sorry about all the guns in the US, sir.

Expand full comment

Well, there's always prosciutto for unobtanium.

Expand full comment

That's good, I'm going to steal that. It reminds me of a story I read about a woman who loved to garden, but who was annoyed by show-offs who always had to use the Latin names for plants. When they would ask her for the name of some flower she was growing, she would reply "It's No-namicus In-a-poticus."

Expand full comment

So, if you run upon a place, and the people who live there are staring at you, I don't think you discovered it.

Expand full comment

What, the dude from the swimming pool game?

Expand full comment

Repeal and replace with statues of Joe Pesci!!!!

Also too, Pesci can replace the Duhnald for the remainder of his term?

Expand full comment