at the cat and the fiddle, i was cradling a pear cider, trying to understand a mumbling british boy named ali who had pretty eyes but not much else. his friend, an older british man, with messy salt-and-pepper hair approached me and -- within an inch from my face -- said, "you have the loveliest chinese eyes."

"but i'm not chinese," i said.

"you have lovely eyes," he repeated, and stumbled away.

a half hour later, our friends were still in line to get into this drunken haven (it was packed). it would be an hour and a half more, at least. we decided to leave and search elsewhere for a place to pay homage to the irish.

somebody suggested a bar in china town, thinking it certainly would not be crowded. so we ended up in the dark, sleeping downtown streets looking for the kwan bros., a bar that friends of my friends frequent. we followed the directions exactly, made a few circles around, each of us looking out our car windows to make sure we didn't miss it, but we couldn't find it. nothing was even open.

forget it, we said, so we headed to the good luck bar in silver lake, a tiny, hip i-never-knew-this-was-here bar with chinese decor and an ecletic assortment of music. it was around 11pm by now and the place was very packed and very stuffy. there was nowhere to sit, so we stood in the middle of the room, eyeballing a sofa in the corner where two lovers were loving. their friends finally called them away, and we lept onto the sofa and toasted frothy white drinks, bottles of newcastle and midori sours to our victory.

i couldn't help but notice the irony -- the chinese and irish both believe in good luck, after all -- and decided perhaps it was an appropriate way to spend st. patrick's day, after all.