men in kilts

What they say about kilts is true. It takes a real man to wear one. I learned that at a Scottish dinner I went to in late January. My friend Tom is a member of the Caledonia Society of Baton Rouge. He invited me to a night out to celebrate Scottish Poet Robert Burns' birthday. He cooked up a great dish, called cock-a-leeky. [Insert obvious joke here.] It was a scrumpy soup with an oniony/thyme thing going on. Here's Tom dressed in a handsome "everyday" tartan kilt he bought from the Shakey's Pizza estate. (The owner of the pizza chain was a fanatic Scotsman.)

This was actually my second Burns night. So I knew what to expect. Here's a picture of the star of the show. No, it's not the big guy -- it's the lump of sheep intestine stuffed with liver on the table. Cooked to absolute perfection, when he sliced it open, the dewy nectar seeped out like... like liver juice.. I forced myself to eat about a teaspoon of the stuff. That was enough. More than enough. But haggis is huge on Burns Night.

I described to Tom my first experience with a Burns Night. It was in Japan a few years ago. A very tall, dark, dramatic Scotsman asked me to put on a kilt and act like a woman for him. I was open to the request. I played "the maiden fair" in a recitation of an olde faerie tale, where the lovely young thing, me, turns into an awful ogre halfway through the story. Here I am acting out the ogre bit for Tom.

Fortunately, there is no photographic evidence of a waltz that I performed with a dozen or so of the women present. Thank God that I managed to avoid all of their toes. I guess the ghost of Robert Burns was there to protect the feet of the innocent.

Some of the neighborhood girls danced a little jig for us, to the accompaniment of CD bagpipe music. Here they are dancing around ceremonial swords.

You can't have Burns night -- or Scottish pride for that matter -- without the bone-warping sounds of a dying cat's wailing. Or, if you prefer the politically correct term, "bagpiping." This little drum and pipe corps did its best to entertain and educate. It managed to educate. I learned that I don't like hearing bagpipes indoors. Outdoors are fine for their distinctive sound -- mainly because I can walk away from it. Inside, I was more or less trapped by polite convention.

Tom and I took an official picture right before we left. Can you tell I've had half a bottle of red wine? Well, I can. That faraway look in my eye means one thing: drunken Jeffrey.

Thanks to Tom for all the pictures above.

Trivia: I'm not saying that Scottish food is bad, but January 27th is the only night of the year when the stomach pump area of the Emergency Room is called the "Burns" ward.