My name is Matt Drufke and I have been doing standup comedy while based in the Chicago suburbs for almost eighteen years. I love being a suburban comedian. I have always found the scene out here so supportive and caring and filled with people who care as much about how you’re doing as they care about how much you make them laugh. And perhaps this is why I find myself needing to write this. Because something happened this week and it bothered me enough where I wanted to write this.
When something happens with Dave Chappelle, it’s a near guarantee that my Facebook feed will be littered with my comedian friends all wanting to give their thoughts. An event that happened last week got some traction, so last night, I started seeing all kind of thoughts and comments about what happened to the comedian this week. You, dear reader, are now stuck hearing my thoughts.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria AKA Pablo Escobar, in case you were unaware, wasn’t merely Colombia’s drug trafficker, he was Colombia’s drug lord. When you’re a drug lord you have both time and money.
Theory with the relationship of time and money is such – you generally have, and should have, one or the other. When you have a lot of money, you probably don’t have a lot of time; when you have a lot of time, you generally do not have a lot of money. Trouble happens when you either have a lot – or a little – of both.
Pablo Escobar had a lot of both. The idle mind so to speak which is, according to the world’s most popular book thrusted upon millions, the devil’s workshop. And, to compound this dilemma, Pablo Escobar was a man who was constantly hiding in plain sight. Why? Again, drug lord. Lords, given time and money, can do what they want when they wish.
Therein lied his problem. When you have scads of money but can’t go anywhere since a better part of the world pretty much wants you eradicated, what do you do? You build a palatial estate. A given in my mind. But what do you fill it with? Things you would like to see but can’t. Pablo couldn’t travel without an army of muchachos, low flight pattern and a private landing strip. There’s only so far you can travel in that manner.
Fuck it, he may have claimed, you won’t let me see them in person, then they will come to see me. So, he brought four hippos to put in his own mini-zoo and let them have the run of his 7,000-acre estate, Hacienda Nápoles. He had other animals, but giraffes and camels are apparently easier to control.
A hippo is not even as controllable as Pablo Escobar and he was nowhere near being controllable. Nearly two decades of drugs, money, bribes, women, etcetera is a long run. Pablo, as a drug lord, eventually had his jig come up. No matter how many police and politicians you buy, the end will come sooner or later. For Pablo Escobar, it came with a self-designed “maximum” security prison built for him on property he owned through an agent. This, in a few years, took a turn once the people of Colombia found out the luxurious life he was leading continued in “prison.” They protested, he was scheduled to be sent to a harsher place, escaped via a bribed guard (naturally), then was gunned down in his Medellín hideout the day after his 44th birthday on December 2, 1993.
At this point you may be asking yourself, and you should, “wow what an insane life of crime and excess, but what of the lives of those 4 hippos?”
Did you hear about the Colombian who tried to cross the Magdalena River? Of course, you didn’t because I killed him. I’ll be here… well, forever.Continue reading “Escobar’s Hippos”→
I confess. I have had quite the love affair with you Chipotle, and not from afar either. It’s been a passionate cornucopia of taste bud delightfulness from the first day I met you. But now, my heart is speaking here not my taste buds, we are on the verge of a divorce.
Even though you did come riding out on your burro burritos-ablazin’ in 1993 in Denver, it wasn’t until a fall day in Chicago in the year 2000 (or so, details are fuzzy when it comes to love) when I first encountered you. I was in awe of your selection, your speed and the quality of your fare. Frankly, without apologies, it was love at first bite.
You, however, were not my first love. Way back in the days when phones still had cords that were (unless your parents were rich) only 3 feet long so everyone within the confines of the kitchen knew who and what you were talking about I fell for the new fast-food kid on the block. I was a niño of seven, and these Americans pretending to be Mexicans were fresh, lovely and enticing.
Well maybe not so fresh but again, I was seven. Everything was fresh back then at Taco Bell. Yes, they were the first to hold me to their faux-Mexican bosom and feed me Mexican-Americanized delights. The first offering I tasted I loved – the Chili Burger which was soon changed to the Bellburger then soon after changed to the Bell Beefer. Yep. Taco Bell had a burger which was effectively a Mexicanish sloppy joe. Imagine if you will, Taco Bell’s basic ground beef liberally splashed with mild sauce, topped with cheese and squished between soft luscious buns. Loved it, but it went away. Was I crushed? A bit sad for certain but there were so many other delights on the Taco Bell menu board to try. Plus, at the time ALL of them (except for the Bellburger) had pronunciations next to them. I could get a “buh-ree-toh” or a “toh-stah-dah” or just a plain old “tah-coh.”
Look at that menu! No, ‘free-ho-lays’ were not free.
It was an affair that would last the better part of 45 years.
A staple of the Chicagoan suburban comedy scene for over a decade, there are few comics working more than Jack Baker. Clubs and shows love him. Audiences love him. Other comedians love him. It’s really kind of gross.
This Sunday, Jack is preparing to record his first special at The Comedy Vault in Batavia. He agreed to sit down with us and let us ask him some questions…
Last night, I attended a stand-up comedy open mic. If you’re unfamiliar, that is where you are guaranteed four minutes of stage time so long as you’re able to write you name down on a sheet of paper. It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned pro with jokes on jokes to spare, or someone who has always wanted to go up and nervously has a few things jotted down. Just want to get up and yell horrible things about people you don’t like? As long as you can write your name, an open mic will not only have you but tell you that you’re just the same as everyone else.
It’s a well known fact to both casual and hardcore Taylor Swift fans that she got her start in “The Toilet Nashville” the preeminent all girls GWAR cover band in the preeminent bachelorette party town in the country. It’s canon in Swift fandom that she went by the pseudonym Swiftcake The Mighty. After the band broke up due to creative differences, Swift would go on to have one of the most successful singles act careers in the history of terrible music.
What isn’t brought up as much, due to Swift and her army’s maniacal desire to hide this part of her musical history by scrubbing the internet by only clicking on posts about Taylor that are in Teen Vogue, is that there is a very noticeable influence in the lyrics that Taylor Swift has manufactured for her and the lyrics of the band she once vomited on people at Acme Feed and Seed in honor of.
Now, with the release of Taylor Swift’s newest album Midnight, lets play everyone’s favorite game!
How hard is it to tell the difference between a Taylor Swift lyric and a Gwar lyric? Let’s find out by playing WHOSE LYRIC IS IT? TAYLOR SWIFT OR GWAR?!?
There is a lot rattling around in site co-founder Brandon Andreasen’s head. He can’t spend 5000 words on everything that he wants to, because it would heavily interfere in his time normally spent drinking, watching King of the Hill reruns, and just generally being lazy. So every week, Brandon is going to do a scattershot of smaller stories he won’t commit to writing full stories about.
Bullet Train is Pure Insansity
It’s always refreshing to go to a movie and enjoy yourself. This is difficult for me because I don’t like the horror genre, and the only thing that makes me break out in hives more than super hero movies is bee stings. (very literally on the bee sting front. My buddy Chabus had to drive me to the hospital one time because I nearly My Girl’d myself.)
There is a lot rattling around in site co-founder Brandon Andreasen’s head. He can’t spend 5000 words on everything that he wants to, because it would heavily interfere in his time normally spent drinking, watching King of the Hill reruns, and just generally being lazy. So every week, Brandon is going to do a scattershot of smaller stories he won’t commit to writing full stories about.
RIP To The Choco Taco
Companies reveal and remove food items from our lives all the time. When you are a fat, this hits you particularly hard. And as a noted fat, I was heartbroken to learn that Klondike had decided to discontinue the Choco Taco, a sweet treat of a taco made of a waffle cone, ice cream, and then dipped in chocolate. It’s July, a month that is specifically taxing on people of girth. We need our cool treats (shout out to my buddy Mongoloid Mike who was out of town on my birthday, so he Door Dash’d me ice cream sandwiches from Coldstone) to help us survive the sweltering heat. We don’t melt like snowmen, we die of heat stroke while trying to mow the yard.
There is a lot rattling around in site co-founder Brandon Andreasen’s head. He can’t spend 5000 words on everything that he wants to, because it would heavily interfere in his time normally spent drinking, watching King of the Hill reruns, and just generally being lazy. So every week, Brandon is going to do a scattershot of smaller stories he won’t commit to writing full stories about.
Ted Cruz Is An Idiot: Part 8,128,903
Everyone’s favorite dumpy uncle who has gotten scammed by three ponzi schemes has decided to go and run his mouth, again. Ted Cruz, whose main existence was to make Jeb Bush seem likeable in 2016, said on Saturday that he thinks that the Supreme Court should repeal same sex marriage. Remember when, after Roe vs. Wade was overturned, everyone was concerned that Republicans were going to come for gay marriage next, and then every conservative said “nooooo, we would never do that,” well that lasted all of three weeks.
Fancy Boys Club 