Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: fidel castro

Justin Trudeau’s Statement On Fidel Castro’s Death (First Draft)

I have had two fathers in my life: one maybe blew a Beatle or something, and had a Frenchy sort of name; the other was Fidel Castro. He was a baseball enthusiast, and a maestro of the jumpsuit, but most of all he was a leader.

Tears flow like syrup in Canada’s capital city of Toronto today, all in memory of a man who loved Cuba, and who was in turn loved so much by Cubans that they went forth in leaky boats and homemade rafts just to tell the world about him. His popularity was such that you never saw a negative article about him in the Cuban press.

Did Fidel Castro ever have an enemy? Not for long.

As a small and handsome child, I went with my “father” to meet Papa (I called Fidel Castro “Papa”) and we hit it off. I remember Papa saying to me that we “went together like homosexuals and firing squads,” and then he gave me a cigar and a 1952 Packard Clipper.

Once more, 2016 strikes at our best and humbles the hearts of those that thought themselves mighty.

FIDEL! the world cries.

EL PRESIDENTE! Cuba weeps.

Papa, I sob.

Camionetas Para La Gente!

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The Cuban car thing. Which avenue shall we take: the technical, wherein we masturbate over VIN numbers at the exclusion of the drivers; the high-priced longread, where a novelist from Brooklyn talks about himself in the passenger seat of a Packard; the pedant who reminds us of the bullshit that required Cubans to keep these deathtraps running instead of just buying a Toyota?

ISIS has a fleet of Toyotas, but Jose from Havana had to keep his Hudson running. The rule about importing automobiles was just lifted a few years ago, and not fully; I may have overstated my case: you can now buy a Toyota, but it’ll cost you $40,000.

Before that, all the cars on the island were pre-embargo American cars, which means 1960, and a constant refrain of this blog has and always will be: the past was worse. Everything about it. There was no Golden Age, there’s just nostalgia and fantasy covering up a whole lot of lynchings and shit flowing through the streets.

Yes, these cars are sculptural and sublime and other “s” words, but they don’t have seatbelts or air conditioners. There aren’t even a lot of them: the estimate is around 60,000 privately owned cars in the country.

Population 11,000,000.

Fuck Castro. And his little brother, Frank Stallone.

Havana Party

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Fidel?

“El Presidente!”

Ah, kiss my ass.

“Who are you?”

Don’t worry about it.

“Am I still alive?”

Amazingly, yeah.

“LBJ?”

Dead.

“No, I was asking for a beej in Spanish.”

Well done.

“Gracias. But, seriously: Johnson dead?”

What year is it?

“No clue.”

Figured. Listen, I got a favor to ask.

“I am a generous man.”

You’re an asshole. Anyway, Brother and Sister-in-Law on the Dead are visiting Cuba.

“BotD and SiLotD?”

Sure. They’re decent sorts and non-political.

“Shouldn’t line ’em up against a wall and shoot ’em?”

If it could be avoided, I’d owe you one.

“Used to line people up all the time.”

Yeah, you’re a prince.

“Che still alive?”

Thankfully, no. He lives on via t-shirts.

“Che was great, man.”

He was a dentist who executed homosexuals.

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

Why won’t you die?

“Good genes.”

Yeah.

“Also: your CIA is completely incompetent.

That, too.

“Exploding cigar?”

Don’t bring up the exploding cigar.

“Exploding seashell?”

Don’t bring up that, either.

“There’s a very obvious Wile E. Coyote joke here.”

Yes, I know.

“The joke is just laying right on front of us.”

Listen: it was the Sixties. All the smart people were assigned to the space program.

“Cuba had a space program, y’know.”

Really? How’d that work out.

“Can’t get into orbit in a Packard.”

No.

“But we proved it! It was just a theory before that. So, something was accomplished.”

If you say so. Just don’t imprison my family, please.

“They’re coming to see Cuba before it gets ruined?”

Yup.

“Do the people who say that think that they’re not going to be the people ruining it?”

Yup.

“Okay. I watch out for them. Steinbrenner still alive?”

Nope.

“You’re shitting me.”

Few years now. Why?

“Fucker owes me money.”

Ok.