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If You Toast Alone in a Forest, Does It Make a ‘Clink’?

What the hell is wrong with people, anyway?

(Yeah, yeah, I know — I could start about three-quarters of my posts that way, more or less. ‘What the hell is wrong with scalpers?’ ‘What the hell is wrong with the weather?’ ‘What the hell is wrong with pandas?’ Or, most often, what the hell is wrong with me?’

Eh. It’s Friday. I’m in lazy weekend mode. Get over it.)

Anyway, here’s my latest beef — apparently, tonight is the annual Great Guinness Toast, an event that in years past has been celebrated with much hoopla, hops, and hullaballoo.

(But mostly hops, ’cause that’s what’s in the beer. It is the Great Guinness toast, after all.)

So, I’m a big fan of Guinness. I drink it. I buy it for the house. I’ve attended Guinness Believer events — and even waxed poetic and soggy about it afterward. And I’m a proud member of the 1759 Society.

(And a charter member, I might add, back when you had to pay $17.59 for a lifetime membership. And don’t think it doesn’t cheese me off that now any old drunken schmuck can join, and mooch off my hard-earned pennies dontaed to the cause.

I want a return to the old days… you know, when only drunken schmucks with seventeen bucks and change could join. Now, it’s just meaningless. Bah.)

Hell, I was even responsible for naming our softball team ‘Team Guinness’. I’m a fan, is all I’m saying. So when I heard from a buddy of mine that tonight is the 2005 Great Guinness Toast, I expected something… well, great. Some hype. A buzz. Fanfare.

I was sorely disappointed. What little faith I had left in humanity is waning.

First of all, I had lunch at a local Irish pub. Not the most authentic of its kind, even in Boston, but still — obviously Irish. Guinness on tap. Shamrocks all over the place. Fish ‘n’ chips on the menu, apostrophes and all. And was there one advertisement, or one word spoken, about any sort of Guinness-geared festivities? No. Not one. Disappointing.

But that’s fine, I thought. They’re really not a proper pub. Surely, I can check online and find a more suitable establishment for the occasion. So, I tried the Guinness web site. Nothing. Nothing at all. No mention of a toast, or a gathering, or anything. Yow.

So, in desperation, I tried searching Yahoo! News for ‘Great Guinness Toast‘.

Go ahead. Click the link. Go on — see what I saw. I’ll wait.

See? That’s slim fucking pickings, folks. In all of the vast online domain, there are exactly three references to ‘da Toast’. They’re all local entertainment notes from piddly little papers in Pittsburgh, Toledo, and Bradenton, Florida. That’s just sad.

Boston has nothing? Nobody, nationwide, in New York or L.A. or anywhere else, has hyped this event? The website has no mention? Have people all gone fucking crazy? Damn.

I don’t know. And right now, I don’t care. My buddy and I are going out — to somewhere passably Irish — and we’re going to drink Guinness tonight. All night. And at some point, we’ll raise a toast, even if no one else will. We’ll have our Guinness Toast, and dammit, it’ll be Great, with a capital ‘G’. Screw the website. To hell with the lack of hype. Fuck da po-lice. We’ll raise our glasses high, knowing that somewhere out there, our Toledan and Bradentonian and Pittsburghesian comrades are doing the same.

We may lament how far the world has fallen — this used to be our goddamned Christmas, people — but we’ll make the best of it, ne’ertheless. And maybe — just maybe, if you read this in time — you’ll do the same. So toast with me, gentle reader, at midnight tonight, to times gone by and toasts and adventures yet to come. We may be the only ones in the world who are going to bother, but at least we’ve got each other, right?

Um, right? Hello? Where’d everybody go? Meh. Buncha wussy wine cooler drinkers, probably. Pffffttt.