I'm gonna get right to it...

I'm the kind of person who looks waaay ahead to upcoming holidays. For example, the first Christmas songs start playing from my iHome towards the end of October (just for a day or two, then they go away until mid- November).

So you may be wondering what's left to look forward to now that it's January. Well, there's MLK day tomorrow (YEAH, UP YOURS JESSE HELMS). And then there's St. Patrick's Day.

It's a fierce duel between New Year's and St. Patrick's Day for the greatest "don't give a shit what's supposed to happen the next day because tonight I'm going all out" day of the year, but in the end, St. Patrick's takes the cake. It's wonderful to sing "Auld Sang Lyne" (download the Guy Lombardo version, it's incredible) while watching Dick Clark fuck up the countdown (poor bastard), but on St. Patrick's, you get the corned beef n' cabbage, the people wearing collared soccer jerseys who talk cooler than you and make better jokes than you, and you get the MUSIC.

For everyone who read that and yelled "DROPKICK MURPHYS," that's great, because I'm a fan. But this year, we have to pay tribute to this man:

This is the year of the one-and-only Shane MacGowan. It's the first year in the past three decades he'll be able to bite through his corned beef, because after years of having the most unfortunately horrid set of chompers (that is, before they fell out and he was left with less than a handful), this man has a brand new smile. Google Image it. Not only that, but there's a new show on Ireland's RTE that, by it's premise, sounds like the GREATEST SHOW EVER MADE. "Victoria and Shane Grow Their Own" is a reality show in which MacGowan and his girlfriend grow their own garden, where they plant the food that they hope will end up on the dinner table. It's an outrage that the program hasn't made its way across the Atlantic and into our hopeless, diabolically awful cycle of reality television, because I'd rather watch a man who has shocked millions by simply still being alive talk about celery than anything on VH1 or E!. The best possible solution is to take the apocalyptic failure that is "The Jay Leno Show" off the TV for the remainder of this earth's existence, and to replace it with none other than "Victoria and Shane." NBC is all about being "green" (regardless of the fact that they are still owned by G.E. for the next few months), so why not replace an egomaniac who has not touched a vegetable in years with a show entirely about legumes and salad greens? To me, there's no debate here.

So even though many of you will not be looking forward to St. Patrick's Day for another while, I hope that when you do, a Pogues song makes its way onto your playlist.

And eat your goddam brussel sprouts.