Corcoran Brothers

So we’ve been selling shirts for a bit now, and I think the sales (considering we have not yet rolled out the advertising) have been pretty damned strong.  Seamus and Sean have had more to do with the day-to-day operations and whatnot, so mayhaps they can comment with some insight below.  If you read this site, like the Sox, and haven’t bought a shirt yet, than that proves you don’t love us.  Sniffle.

But in all seriousness, we’ve got some pissah vinyl Viva El Papi stickers, about the size of a postcard, that are suitable for display on a car, window, or highway sign.  Not that the last one is appropriate.  If you want a sticker, let Sean know and he’ll prolly get one to you.

Whene’er I wear my Viva El Papi or J.V-Tek shirt, I get an immediate and intense reaction from people, whether they are fans of the Sox or not.  A Spankees fan axed me for a Papi sticker because he thought it was mad cool.

So buy early and buy often before the ad machine starts rolling and you wish you were ahead of the power curve.

So Sean, Seamus, and I are now virtual business owners. We’ve got a website what sells t-shirts for the discriminating Boston sports fan. It’s a project we’ve been working on for a while, but it has now come to fruition! I am the artist/money man, Seamus is the web guru, and Sean is the guy who has to deal with t-shirt shops without getting an ulcer, plus that whole “doing all the real work” thing. Behold 4/5s of the beautiful results:

In clockwise fashion starting from the top left, the shirts are:

Sox Fan Being a Sox Fan: Anyone who has heard the expression “Manny Being Manny” probably gets this. People who have never heard the expression are probably very confused about a lot of things right now.

Coco Classy: Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I think that parody is. This one speaks for itself and has actually been very highly rated by folks who have checked out the designs.

Manny’s Kidz: There is no really good explanation for this one, but it is funny as hell. That is all the explanation one should need.

And finally, the centerpiece of our lineup:

Viva El Papi:Obviously, a parody of the Che Guevara shirts kids are fond of wearing, I’m pretty sure this will be the most popular seller. As an added bonus for the ladies, here is the sexy eldest brother of the family rocking the Papi:

Damn, that’s some high quality t-shirt! There are two additional designs that are not pictured: J.V-Tek and Ortizzle in the Heezy. J. V-Tek is available now, but Ortizzle won’t be out for a little bit more.

So, tell you friends and family to visit the site, buy early, and buy often! There will be vinyl Viva El Papi stickers (approximately postcard size) available for purchase and distribution to members of the CorcoranBrothers community in the near future, also. So you got that going for you.

For those of you who aren’t Irish, or are ignorant in the history of your own music, the title of the post is a parody of an Irish song which states that “Whiskey is the life of man…” I don’t know how, but I made the mistake of telling Sean about a beverage I enjoy, and now every time I talk to him, he tries to incorporate it into a rap song, pop culture reference, or political discussion. Background:
2001: I am in Kita Kumamoto, Japan, for Yama Sakura (Mount Cherry Blossom) XXIX. Each night, the American and Japanese soldiers meet together in the “Friendship Hall” to sing karaoke, interact with their international officemates from the exercise, and get hammid. My cell consisted of me, three E5s, two E4s, and a Japanese LTC and CSM who didn’t like us. (They came to like us later, but it doesn’t fit into the story.) Each night, in the spirit of international friendship, I would buy a case of beer in the miniature American shoppette, take it to a random table full of Japanese soldiers, slap it down, and say, “Hajimemashite! Watashi no nomae wa Shane Corcoran desu! Kampai!” (Nice to meet you. My name is Shane Corcoran. Cheers!). They would then start spouting off in English and throwing back beers. You see, Japanese soldiers had to pay mad loot for beers, maybe 2-3 dollars a bottle, whilst we Americans could buy a case of Miller light for five dollars (no shit)! Something to do with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) or whatevah. Anyway, just as we could get beer mad cheap, my Nihonjin brothers could get Soju (shoju, shochu) mad cheap - and you know them: a gift received means a gift must be returned. For 7 nights, during the trainup for the exercise itself, it was a non-stop party. I could go on ad nauseum with funny stories about cultural misunderstandings, karaokes mishaps, and Japanese privates hitting on American captains, but I shan’t. Here is the essence of this long tirade:

One night, we ran out of cheap beer (which the Japanese soldiers loved), so we had to resort to drinking Soju, a Korean liquor which is made from rice, but is nothing like sake. The soldiers of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force seemed almost ashamed to be giving us this stuff, but they taught me a valuable lesson. Put some soju into a Diet Coke. Drink. Let time pass in a fun way. Stand up to go back to your sleeping quarters, and realize you are friggin’ hammid! My strange love of soju began then.

2001-2005: Stupidity and love of beer and beer alone.

2005+: After working with (but not drinking with) Korean soldiers in Afghanistan, I remembered the strange kick of Soju from Japan, and decided to explore it when I again came to Hawaii. In all seriousness, one can drink half a bottle of Soju, feel pissah, and not realize they are drunk until they try to stand up to take a pee and fall over. Since I’ve been back and able to drink, I have reacquainted myself with my favoritest drink (besides Harpoon IPA): Diet Coke and Soju. Try for yourself:

Empty 16 oz. glass

(1) 12-oz. Can of Diet Coke

(3) ice cubes

Jinro Shoju to top of glass

Put them together and stir them with a chopstick. (I don’t know if they use chopsticks in Korea, but they use them in Japan where I first sampled the drink, so I keep the tradition up for the sake of diplomacy.)

What is Jinro? Oh, it’s a bottle of 24% Alcohol by Volume (48 proof) Korean Soju that costs less than 10$US here in Hawaii, mixes so well with Diet Coke that it makes it taste like unsticky regular Coke, and gives you a lovely feeling of buzz with no identifiable hangover. Was it worth reading that long bullshit I just wrote to get a drink recipe that consists of four lines? I dunno. Make a Jinro/Diet Coke cocktail and tell me.

(The category is ‘drunken posting’, but I actually can’t drink Soju for another week or two. This should be categorized as RoxiPosting, but I don’t feel like making a one-off category.)

This is probably violating all manner of protocols for teh internets, but I have a question for Jake.

How do you react, viscerally, to the politcal musings of the Clan Corcoran? I am thinking specifically of the slightly right-wing bend of our discourse. Hell, lets extend it beyond Jake. What do other folks who weren’t raised on Woodlawn Street think? (Joe da Yuz, Jenn, et al.)
As a way of alleviating any fear you have of your blogmates being fascist Bushitler lovers, I must say that there are two kinds of libertarians: those who were Republicans and said to themselves, “If we don’t want the gubmint interfering, then why do we care about gay marriag we?” and those who were Democrats and said, “I don’t want the government to tell me what to do with my body and speech, so why should I let them determine what I should do with my money, etc.?”

Based on our dearly departed father’s influence, we all came from the former school of thought. The Late Michael never once said he was a Republican before I was in high school, but I have realized lately that he let it creep into conversations and discourse without ever actually saying it.

I guess my point is: ex-Repub libertarians still tend to get ornery about issues of national security and taxes, whilst ex-Demos get ornery about civil liberty-type stuff, so anyone reading our rantings should have a grain of salt ready for tossing.

PS: That’s right, I implied three Corcoran libertarians. Seamus and I became libertarians in the early ’90s, totally independent of each other. It was quite a bonding point, since up until ‘94 or so, we despised each the other. The big deal is that Sean confided to me not a week ago that he is about a full-fledged libertarian (again, probably violating teh internets protocols).

Cheers! and please respond below for anyone who wasn’t a registered repub at the age of 18.

This is way late is coming….

First, note Ute-free-Rachel, incredible artist and whore extrodinaire has opened a Cafe Press Shop. Please visit and buy a lot… She’s good

As for Rebel, former girlfriend and now great friend to me and Kin-Girl is now engaged! She is to marry a liberal software engineer on Veteren’s day this year of of Lord. She has promised an open bar. God bless her!

It’s been 5 years since joedayuz killed my father.

stridency. heck you don’t hear that a lot.

my christmas morning was truly made when ed showed up for breakfast. that’s right, from somewhere dusty to beautiful somerset in mere days. i cried like a baby, a hungry angry baby. and then we ate a lot of bacon, eggs, breads, sausage, etc. it was great to see him (and in one piece, i might add). and for the ladies… ed looked very hunky.

new years weekend was exhausting. tim and i backfilled around the foundation that we excavated months ago, installed the stone in the basement and dug two trenches, one 120 feet and another 160 feet. when digging the water line trench, i had to pull out a boulder the size of a yugo. wasn’t too sure how that was gonna work. turned out okay.

additionally, on new year’s eve i put in a grueling shift at the pub working the door for a private party. very difficult. $60 for open bar (7pm - 2am) and unreal eats, beef tenderloin, chicken cordon bleu, baked stuffed shrimp, littlenecks, etc. the only real problems were the six or so gate crashers. no fisticuffs, but very close to raising my voice.

somehow i only gained four pounds over the holidays. i think it’s because i didn’t drink enough. oh well, there’s always next year.

I can’t remember the exact context, but recently, Courtney and I were discussing the finer points of football etiquette. Specifically, she wanted to know what the deal was with NFL players celebrating like newby poker bitches after every tackle and offensive gain of more than 2 yards. She asked me about my experience, and I related the following to her:

When I played football in high school, I played both offensive and defensive line. I hated offensive line because I thought I sucked at it, but coach though I was good and started me all the time at offensive tackle. Conversely, I loved defensive line, and I guess my coach thought I was pretty good at that, too, because I usually started defensive tackle or nose guard. For folks who haven’t known me too long, I used to tip the scaled at close to 3 bills and bench 250: downright Hayes-like in both size and strength (although Chris still had to add plates at the bench when we worked out together). Back to the point:

As a nose guard in one game, I had 5.5 sacks against Brockton’s JV squad. Not tackles, but sacks. What was my reaction? None, because I didn’t realize I’d done anything good until coach told me after the game that five and a half sacks is worth something. What was my manner of celebration when I made a sack, recovered a fumble, or made an interception (which happened once or twice)? None. I just went back to the defensive huddle and listed to my man Jon Kirk call the next set.

That might make it sound like I was some manner of puppy dog or something, but I wasn’t. I can honestly say that during my time on the defensive line, I was more violence-prone and angry than I was during those long months in Afghanistan, when I was getting rocketed quite frequently. I ain’t bullshitting. In Afghanistan, we would kibbitz while rockets were coming in: making jokes about how poor Ahmed’s aim was, or talking about future sandwich franchises we hoped to own. In contrast, when I was in a 4-point stance at 15 years of age, waiting for the snap as a frigging sophomore in high school, I was thinking of nothing less than busting through the offensive line like a freight train and ruinating the quarterback…putting such a hit on him that he would not get up off the ground.

Once, against New Bedford, I did indeed put a sick hit on the QB, laying him out for several minutes and putting him out of the game. I was the first person to call for first aid, yelling like a nancy until they came to help him. I felt sick to my stomach until they evacuated him and replaced him with someone else. Before the next snap, I was back to thinking about how the offensive line needed to be subjugated to my will and the quarterback laid out like a body at the morgue. Strange, indeed.

What’s my point? I’m not quite sure. It boils down to this, though: I understand what goes through the mind of a football player, because I’ve been there. I understand the desire to triumph in the most spectacular manner possible. What I don’t understand is the voluminous amounts of celebration that happen after every play. I wanted to win, but each play is only part of the game. Wait until the refs blow the whistle ending the 4th quarter, because then, and only then, have you won the game. Then it is appropriate to celebrate. To celebrate before then makes you a hooker. Suck on that, TO, while you sit at home watching the game on TV.

First, I want to give a shout-out to my man B3. He is an OPS co-worker who does data analytics. He, Ghost Dog and two VP’s went mountain biking last night. B3 apparently had street tires on, not having time to change them out. He went over, his guts eating the handlebar. He hit so hard, that the current thinking is they are going to remove his kidney as he had shattered it. That’s fucking hard-core, hitting your front side so hard it shatters parts in the back.

I hope he has a quick recovery, we’re thinking of you 3.

Second - The triumphant return of Da Kine!

Shane and Wife are en route right now (or shortly) home. They will be arriving tomorrow morning, kinyah is picking them up. They will be staying for around 10 days, and will surely be at Kalin’s big birfday bash on Satdee. Stop on by.

for the last few days, magzilla has been a little out of sorts. on wednesday, she received two innoculations at her one year doctor visit. she’s had a slight fever off and on and has been waking up two or three times a night, which is very unusual for her.

cut to this morning. maggie woke up at 3:30am, 5:30am, and 6:30am. after the last wake-up, colleen had gone to work, so i brought maggie in with me to try and settle her down. she just didn’t seem comfortable in her skin, rolling around, squirming, fussing and whining.

finally around 7:30am, she stood up on the bed and let a nasty wet fart rip. it was followed up with the sound of a decent amount of baby soft serve straight into the dish. then, she laid down across my chest, looking away from me. i rubbed her back a bit , said ‘there, there, maggie’ and got ready to go and change her diaper. except… she… was… fast… asleep… arrrrrggghhh.

for the next half hour, i lay there, in the stench, with a huge baby across my chest, unable to sleep myself. twenty minutes after i passed out from sheer boredom, my sister-in-law kerry called and woke everyone up (including cate). lucky me!!

by the way, for the record, maggie’s height is in the 95th percentile, weight 75th, and head size 99.9th percentile at 19 inches around. the pediatrician actually measured the mommy and daddy heads to be sure there wasn’t some kind of problem. the normal range for head size in an adult is 19- 22 inches. daddy comes in at 23 inches and mommy at 22. for the next few weeks, i will be referring to my bride as the doctor did: “top normal”