With friends like these, who needs bad habits?

Facilitator.

Devil on your shoulder.

Bad idea machine.

Reason everyone is chain smoking and throwing bottle caps at cars off a bridge.

Assuredly you know a couple of people that fit these descriptions. That bad apple who's always saying "let's just have ONE more shot of patron...and you're buying." The genius who thinks "if we order the whole pizza we're actually saving money in the long run." You bitch about it later and wonder aloud why you hang out with them until 4 in the morning on Tuesday evenings, and you cough up a lung as you question your choice to smoke half a pack of American Spirits while sipping on Coors Light in a rocking chair.

The problem isn't having a couple of these friends. It's having them all in the room at the same time...then shit gets crazy. Such special occassions are normally reserved for holidays and reunions, fraternity get-togethers, and possibly seder at your cousins' house (depending on how badly you hate the pharaoh that year). Luckily the US Government and my fraternity alumni board have conspired to host these events almost exclusively on weekend evenings, preventing the ever so unpleasant waking up for work the next day.

St. Patrick's Day is not as forgiving. It shows up whenever it feels like it...a drunk college roommate who ignores the sock on the handle...an ex girlfriend who is always at the same karaoke bar as you...that facial tick you get every time you watch Just Shoot Me on TBS. The best approach in all of those situations is the same - grin, bear it, and start drinking, cause god help you none of that shit is just about to go away if you ask it nicely. Me and my reckless buddies visited Lederhosen down in the West Village to sup 'pon finest weisswursts and spaetzel, downing litres of black lager in the finest Irish tradition until the St Patty storm passed. It was fun...it was grand...it was on a Wednesday night and I had to be up at 7am the next morning.

It was brutal. But like I said, two things you don't want to fight are drunk Englishman and fate, and St Pattys really encompasses both those sentiments... I grinned... I bore it... I drank my black lager. Tastemasters, I hope you did too. When else can you play quarters on a Wednesday without anyone batting an eye?