Bram Stoker, though Irish, imagines Transylvania

The werewolf is described, in one part, as a stinky, shaggy-haired hippie with long fingernails and grooming issues. Don’t worry, when it snarls at me it’s perfectly harmless: it lives in Manhattan. In fact, it’s currently sitting in a fireside chair in the office of Doctor Stanley as the werewolf and his wife try to work out how they can constructively raise a child when, every month, the husband turns into a werewolf. This is my play, ideally debuting in Jacksonville next year, and the day has seen some great rewriting.

We miss the afternoon milking because of the muse and Ryan’s much-needed nap. The next day, we make up for it by heaving the entire pile of goat/horse/dog (but not pig) manure and straw and wood chips over several feet into our neighbor’s field, where he will eventually spread it as fertilizer over the entire acreage. Though it is not often this way, it appears to Ryan and me that the fields cannot keep pace with the animals, as the pile grows higher and higher.

We aren’t asked to finish the project, and are beckoned to come down every now and again, our time obligation to Phil and Chris being done, but we finish it because it’s nice to have it done and because now there is room for several more levels to our nutrient-rich, stinking ziggurat.

A moment of departure for Father Ted: Father Ted is a Catholic priest living in the Irish countryside, the leader to his parish – the old, alcoholic priest, who tends to fall down the stairs and the young, naïve and gullible priest – and the upstanding figure that keeps the town community in line. He is a serious man of faith, which is never brought into question, though anyone who sees him realizes his flaws, many of which are quite silly. “Father Ted” is a TV show; syndicated, it’s still one of the most popular shows in Ireland.

Phil and Chris feel obligated to introduce us to it, “To show us the true Ireland.” This “true Ireland” involves, in the first episode, such quintessential moments as a local couple knocking on the parish door and, when Father Ted answers, presenting him with a very inviting Eastertime gift: “Father,” they say, “we thought you’d love a Lenten fruit basket.” He takes it and thanks them and gives a big smile. They say, “That’ll be eight Euro.” And our hosts laugh gregariously.

At the cornerstone of “Father Ted”, however, are plots that could only be made in Ireland. In one episode, Father Ted bets the parish heating bill on a sheep fair and, when his bet is scared by a terrifying beast, he takes it into the parish, gives it a spa treatment, puts on relaxing chant music, etc. and the sheep recovers (albeit with a few more twists and turns). First, we watch “Cigarettes, Alcohol, and Rollerblading,” in which the leader of the rival parish (who is Newman to Father Ted’s Jerry) calls Father Ted and says, “At our parish, we’ve given up smoking, drinking, and skateboarding. And, in the spirit of sacrifice to our Lord, will you give up something similar in solidarity?”

Not to be beaten in the “giving-things-up competition”, Father Ted cuts his cigarettes in half, buries the older priest’s liquor in a cave along the Cliffs of Moher, and forbids the younger one from rollerblading, to much chagrin. Unable to do this on their own, they call a Lenten enforcer: a nun who enjoys sacrifice to the extent of sadism: she pours ice into the tub, wakes them up at five AM, and feeds them only simple porridge; oh, the joys of Lenten remembrance!

In any case, when Father Ted visits the rival parish, he first peeks into the window to find the three rival priests in the library, affronting our hero by smoking a pipe and drinking a beer while pulling the other on a skateboard! They didn’t give up a single thing! Additionally, the nun winds up gorging herself on chocolate while Father Ted is gone, breaking her Lenten vow! A deal is made, and the chocolate is forgotten in order to hold the rival parish accountable to their vows with the fury of a nun scorned: the last scene is the three rival priests running through the countryside in their boxers, screaming, chased by a nun in full habit, wielding a huge tree branch as a switch, a penance stick like a vicious, Catholic firedrake.

I am greatly intrigued by the film and television portrayals of men and women of faith. So often they are either judgmental or so on-the-nose unrealistic that I cannot relate to them. I’m not saying that “Father Ted” is on par with the faithful reality of Dead Man Walking, but it says a lot about a culture to have a popular sitcom that both deeply respects religious leaders while recognizing their humanity and having fun with it.

Our English hosts have been in stitches the whole program, and tell us how “to a T” this is of the Irish. I can’t vouch for that, but can say that the Irish language also has a prominent role in the show. I’m not talking about Gaelic, however. Ryan and I were rather surprised when, in “Father Ted”, one of the parishioners would lament, without censoring, “f***ing hell,” whereas, in “Scrubs” reruns from the States, the word “bastard” is censored. Different strokes for different folks, and though it jars us, we came to learn about our brothers and sisters across the sea. Little did we know that, to our standards, our Irish brothers and sisters are pottymouths, and perhaps, to their standards (though I don’t quite know what they are yet), maybe we are too.