i know you're feeling incredibly irish today even though you are one hundred percent italian. it's the one day a year you can be irish no questions asked, so you're half bombed from the south side irish parade, (one does not go to the south side irish parade for the parade). you're in a very festive mood, enjoying the company of him and her and her, and thusly you're wanting the day's revelry to never end, but if i may, if you eat a corned beef and cabbage dinner with a triple portion of meat, you might very well die.

that's fifteen ounces of corned beef. in layman's terms, that's too much corned beef. by far. if you don't believe me, if you think i'm being overly cautious, look no further than the fact that steve asked me to come over and dissuade you. even STEVE knows it's unhealthy, your dinner request.

my god, steve's the one who encouraged the guy who wanted to order the Most Disgusting Burger Ever Ordered And Subsequently Eaten (see annex). steve kept suggesting toppings and writing 'em down as the guy said yeah, gimme some of that too (again, see annex), so if STEVE doesn't want to be associated with your meal, you better believe your meal has the potential to be a widow-making, heart-stopping, knee-buckling, chest-clutching, prepare-to-meet-your-maker-ing plate. you eat that much, it's entirely possible they will cart you outta here. on a stretcher. with a sheet draped over you because you could not be revived/resuscitated/successfully given mouth to mouth or the paddles.

please don't make us make you all that corned beef. i can see you getting upset. i can see your neck flushing, and it's not just from the beer. you have the drunk temper right now. drunk tempers can be tricky to deal with. i will speak to you calmly. plainly. even-keeled-ly.

"i am sorry, sir, we will not serve you corned beef and cabbage with a triple portion of meat. the most you will get is single-and-a-half portion. which is seven and a half ounces which is almost half a pound which is enough for any man. we will not serve you more."

okay?

this falls under the thing of management reserves the right to refuse service. (somewhat akin to if you strolled in here with no shirt or shoes, if you think about it.) we reserve the right to refuse to serve you something that just might make you keel over. it's for your own good. do you know how long it'd take the ambulance to get here? too long. specially with traffic being what it is tonight. bumper to bumper between there and here. you'd be dead by the time it pulled up to the front door, all sirens and lights.

well, look around you. look over there and over there and over there. do you see anyone else with a triple portion? no. you see sensible rational single portions. even on the plates of fat people. yes. uh-huh, even the fat people know when enough's enough.

now, you're not in the best of shape right now. several sheets to the wind, so your eyes are a mess. you can't even look at me without your eyes crossing, and you hafta focus on my mouth to keep track of what i'm saying to you. only drunks look at mouths to keep track. (well, there's the deaf, too, sometimes, but that's a different can of worms entirely.) you don't know what you're doing, you've taken leave of your senses. what do you spose will happen when you try to eat as much corned beef as you're asking us to serve you.

no, that's what i'm saying. it won't be happy time. anything but.

hey, look. i've been there. i have. i know the drunk hungries. little bit ago, i was so desperate to get drunk and not be alone while doing so i sat down with alan for a few. ALAN. julie and sarah were sposed to come with but they thought better of it, so it was just me and alan over at this place over there and a few rounds in, i got those drunk hungries like nobody's business. ordered chicken fingers, chips with onion gravy, mozzarella sticks, then made alan split a steak sandwich with me even though he's off red meat cause his doctor told him to or something like that. he protested but i told him i'd fire his ass if he didn't split it with me. he split it with me and then i got a slice of pepperoni on the way home. you better believe the nightmares i had were weird.

i woke up convinced i was having a heart attack. it's not a good sign when just walking down the hall to the bathroom first thing in the morning makes your heart go thump-thump-thumpity-thump. i asked jesus to not let me die hungover on the bathroom floor even though i don't particularly believe he exists or listens when drunks like me beseech him.

so what i'm trying to say is i understand where you're at right now but i ... no, no, it's ... no, don't, i ... i'm not, i ... hey, no, i don't. i'm not.

it's not an issue of me trying to embarrass you in front of him and her and her. that's not what i'm trying to do. the only thing i'm trying to do, the ONLY thing, is avoid being on channel two or five or seven or nine or eleven or thirty-two as the co-owner of the place that killed a drunk from giving him all the corned beef he wanted. i don't wanna be ... talking to some local reporter who's got his/her microphone right in my face, and i get nervous when i feel put on the spot so i'd be stammering, hemming and hawing, which would look like i was trying to hide something. plus of course the camera lights are real bright so i hafta squint which'd make me look shifty. i don't wanna have that happen to me just cause you're drunk and too hungry for your own good. it's just not worth it. it really isn't.

i don't wanna lose all kindsa business cause of us being on television like that. i wanna be on television for a good reason. like someone actually had something good to say about us. imagine if something as great as THAT happened. someone came here in an official television capacity and walked away impressed or the VERY least not bitterly disappointed and hell bent on taking us down. just imagine.

there's that hungry hound guy on channel seven. i wish he'd swing by once, just once, and eat a little something-something. we all know exactly what he looks like, so we'd make sure alan wasn't waiting on him, we'd make sure it was cheryl or julie, we'd helpfully guide him to the menu items we couldn't screw up (i'm sure we have a few screw-up-proof menu items, we must). and he'd take into account all we're trying to achieve here (i'm sure we're trying to achieve something here, we must be) and he'd go on channel seven and tell the chicagoland area this place isn't half bad. (or if we REALLY wanted to rig things in our favor, we'd sic laura on him. she'd sleep with him and his praise would be FULSOME.)

yeah, that'd be a real feather in our cap.

or to have someone from that check please show recommend us so then the whole panel'd swing by. i'd take my chances with only having to impress three regular people who aren't snobs or very particular bout things like food and service and 'ambience.' even though there's always ONE dick in the crowd, one contrarian dick on every episode who has to shoot down a perfectly fantastic place just to prove some kinda point bout something. (like that one time they reviewed a very nice counter service mediterranean joint up on dempster. falafel, shawarma, hummus, all that. it's a great, low budget change of pace from all the dinner only places normally on the show. but there was a guy who just had to keep shaking his head and clucking his tongue and tsk-tsking everything cause he's a businessman who needs to take clients out to dinner and blah blah blah. made me nuts.)

the only drawback i can see to either the hungry hound scenario or the check please scenario (other than we could very well screw it up royally, from the moment they walked in to the moment they stormed out) is they do a little video segment where the owner(s) get on camera to talk bout the place for a few minutes, a little spiel promoting the place, and dollars to donuts it'd be jimmy who nominated himself to do that spiel.

yeah, when someone dies here, it's me forced to face the music of local reporters, but soon as there's potential GLORY to be had, the possibility of PRAISE or FAME, i'm brushed aside and jimmy's front and center. he'd sit at a table with the hubbub in the background and wax whatever bout how great we are here, how it's a passion or labor of love or he's not in it for the money or it all comes from the heart or whatever and he wouldn't mention me once.

and it'd be just my luck that my mom would somehow find it online, like on their websites most likely, and call me wondering, in her own special way, why i was nowhere to be found. then i'd hafta get in a thing with her about it, a prolonged thing where it somehow becomes about my shortcomings and i couldn't get off the phone for almost an hour and i'd feel like crap for having to explain my shortcomings to her. (shortcomings never get any easier to explain, no matter how often i do it.)