It is rare that something that is culturally dominant somehow slips by me. However, apparently this was the summer of Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night”, and I didn’t even know. I’ve never even heard the song. I’m clearly in the minority.
Six days ago, “Last Night” was the #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the sixteenth week in a row. In doing so, it set the record for the longest running song at #1 for a non-collaboration in the 65-year history of the chart. If Wallen’s song can keep it’s streak going for number one, it will set the record for the longest time on top of this chart for all songs. And since the Hot 100 measures streaming, sales, and radio plays, to have this record would make the country tune, in my opinion, the most popular song of all time.
I would like to point out again that I have never heard this song. But that is about to change.
A few days ago, I wrote about the hypocrisy of conservatives. I stand by every word I meant, but I also forgot one of the biggest contradictions. A conservative will claim to love America. In fact, that is what they will claim is the difference between the two parties: one side (theirs) loves America so much because it’s so star-spangled awesome, and one side (not theirs) doesn’t and is aggressively seeking it’s destruction.
And a member of the GOP will feel that way until they find something about America they don’t like. Then all bets are off as they root for failure. There’s no better example of this than what happened in women’s soccer this weekend.
This week should have been momentous as Donald J. Trump, a man who somehow got voted president in 2016, was indicted. However, because it is Donald Trump, it’s completely and utterly mundane. Honestly, I’m not sure how many times he’s been indicted now. Three times? Six times? Who knows? All I know is that it happened and is probably going to happen again soon (if all things from Georgia seem like they’re going to happen) and will probably keep happening until the slimy fuck is in the ground.
I’d been hearing about it forever. Long before a single brick had been laid. No foundation. No down home decor. I was hearing about Pizza Ranch coming to Shorewood. Apparently a crowd pleaser among people who are easily pleased, they were slapping the pizza buffet right on the frontage road next to the highway, ,for everyone to see! Then nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen.
What felt like years passed before building commenced, and even then, the process was long and drawn out. I’d already lost interest by the time they announced the Grand Opening. I was drawn back in. How can you not be when you are a man of my girth? All You Can Eat pizza and fried chicken. That’s a damn fine time, to me. Damn fine.
Early reports were positive, but I decided to wait until a special day to go. I wanted to go on a holiday to get a real feel for the place, and I found my opportunity. I visited Pizza Ranch for the first time on the 30th anniversary of Nolan Ryan beating up Robin Ventura. What a glorious day!
The day that Fancy Boys Club went live, Taylor Swift released Lover. Since then, I have reviewed every album she has released since then. Unlike Jordan Holmes. whose series known as “The Swiftening” was an aggressive evisceration of her entire catalog, I have been able to find positive highlights in all of the music from pop’s reigning queen. However, today, when thinking about the song “Cruel Summer”, finally released as a single, I slowly realized something: I had forgotten to review Midnights, Swift’s tenth studio album which came out nine months ago.
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”→
He married my mother. She’s a God-fearing woman who has kept the gutsy farm girl in her for her entire life. She’s not one to shy away from anything… and apparently neither was Ernest John Cubbon.
Ernie and my mother met at church. She was the hottie with 2 young kids in tow in a failing marriage and he was the pastor/minister/reverend – I’ll stick with pastor purely for the alliteration. Being a Presbyterian pastor was his vocation for most of his working life after he finished his stint in the Air Force. He was the pastor at five different churches in his lifetime. Helping people became commonplace. Never mattered why or what they needed assistance for, or if they were monied or poor, Ernie was there.
