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Yeah We're Drunks! Admit It!

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Leary, the actor/comic/ writer who stars in the hit show Rescue Me, has written a really hilarious book chronicling his thoughts on just about everything (it's due to be released by Viking next month). He says right off the bat that the book is "parody, satire and poking fun," but anyone flipping through its 240 pages will quickly note that there's plenty of truth behind his wicked sense of humor. ("Nicole Kidman's face doesn't move." "We have celebutards who can't make it past age 19 without downing $1,100 bottles of champagne and vodka." So true!)

What about us Irish? Well, according to Denis the stereotype is true - we do love to drink.

"Don't tell me the Irish don't' love to drink. I AM Irish," he writes. "We invented whiskey, for crissakes. You know what whiskey means in Gaelic? Water of life.

"I rest my case. Of whiskey. On YOUR politically correct goddam lap!"

Then Leary goes into a rant about how his Irish and Puerto Rican friends would love to get drunk at St. Patrick's Day parades. They would "spend the unofficial holy day painting their faces green and getting drunk, and then beating the living s*** out of each other after an argument broke out over who had better pitching, the Yankees or the Mets."

He recalls writing a piece about his buddies for the New York Post and receiving word afterwards that a group called the Irish Defamation Society was throwing the word lawsuit around because the piece perpetrated "an awful and ruinous myth about Irish Americans."

But no lawsuit. Why? TV cameras would have too much footage of drunken punch ups on March 17 between "green faced Irish Americans . . . with their own cousins and best friends and actual brothers, right in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral."

Leary's Co. Kerry-born parents feature prominently in the book. Dad "grew up with a s***load of other kids on a farm adjacent to the one my mom grew up on - real storybook romance territory . . . In those days you had as many kids as possible because you figured some would die, some would get killed and the rest would still be able to carry stuff . . . So if you wanted to complain about ANYTHING in our house - you were up s***'s creek without a paddle."

But don't think he's complaining. Leary's love for his parents shines throughout the book, and he holds them out as role models for how to raise a family. "I am grateful that my dad told us the truth and my mom always gave us a hug and a kiss, and they both never failed to let us know how much they loved us . . . that to me is what a functional family is all about," he writes.

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