By Scott Sullivan
Editor
High Fidelity
Colombia has a cocaine hippo problem. Three imported from Africa by drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped his compound after he died in 1993, found homes on the Magdalena River and have multiplied to between 181 and 215, say people paid to track them.
Southern invaders riding drug-crazed hippos crashing through Trump’s wall to invade our capitol led by a spear-chucking, shirtless shaman wearing a river horse-skin crown to reinstate Donald who can’t duck losing is surely next. Not to be mistaken for drug-crazed hippies who invaded long ago and these days are corporate.
Wait, there’s more. Hippopotami seeking rhyme and reason at Potawatomi burial grounds are bound for Saugatuck-Douglas flanked by lawyers seeking reparations for our ancestors’ defilements. Yesterday I saw laborers — Free the working class! — filling potholes under which untold indigenous persons at some untold time may have trod.
“Throw down your shovels!” I cried. “You have nothing to lose but unemployment claims should you strike!” One struck me with a pickaxe; another dumped hot bituminous on my head spurting artery blood like Old Faithful.
There was only one thing to do: “Expedia?” I told Siri. “Book the next direct flight to Pullman … What? 747s from Saugatuck’s old airport land to Pullman are booked forever? Airbus 380s bound for Bravo hourly are packed beyond Judgment Day?” The post-Covid supply chain had struck again.
With no way out, I looked inward. Saugatuck-Douglas boast rainbow flag-flying buddhas everywhere to guide dead souls. Tibet’s Bardo Thodol (Book of the Dead) teaches brilliant blue light — from this column’s name, although dimmer — leads to liberation.
Don’t have time for instant karma? Through bardos (transition stages) colored buddhas ferry you between life, death and back again.
“What your point?” asked the buddha chorus.
“This,” I said, pointing to my head. “See the axe protruding? The point isn’t bardos, buddhas or whoever, but hippo-mounted hippies breaking HPPA laws.”
“They’ll get nowhere in government telling people what they want to hear,” said a buddha. “Private pays better.”
“You’re just a color,” I accused.
“If that matters, why do you discriminate and articulate between us in photos?”
“I can shoot black-and-white,” I said.
“They’re not colors? Also, sound has colors.”
“I grew up listening to mono.”
“Through two ears,” said Buddhas. “What about grays?”
“Look!”
Sure enough, hippos were grazing on downtown Saugatuck pots garden club members and sixth graders planted last month. The three-ton, marauding beasts in Colombia tear off people’s limbs, then trample them for good measure. The world’s largest invasive species are raising hell on the Magdalena and hallumphing east we speak on the Kalamazoo River bound for Pullman.
“Saddle up,” I said.
Joined by the rainbow buddhas at Pullman Tavern, I was reincarnated into San Francisco Drag Laureate-in-Waiting. Seems after throwing out the first pitch at a Giants game, incumbent D’Arcy Drollinger was assailed by Bud Lite reactionaries, shuffled off her bouffant-blonde mortal coil and was bound for Light Beyond. She hadn’t even left her flashbulb.
James Brown was there though. “I fe-e-e-e-l good,” sang Soul’s Godfather … I feel nice, like sugar and spice. Ain’t no drag. Papa’s got a brand-new …”
“Bag it,” I said. “You can run, but do you have hippo hide on your head?”
“You, Ma’am or Sir,” said the Pullman Mayor who was also the bartender, decreed, “are our brand-new Shaman.”
“Want to squeeze mine?” I told Marjorie Taylor Green sitting next to me. “I don’t need he capitol,” I told the Main Mix Master, “Just the capital. I can even count hippos for money.”
“You’ll go far in government,” sang the buddhas.
“What are they drinking?” I asked the Hizzoner.
“Zombies.”
“And the hippos?”
“I thought you were paying for their drinks,” he said.
Miles Davis came on stage blowing “Kind of Blue” numbers; John Coltrane, Bill Evans and “Canonball” Adderly also firing.
“In Colombia,” said the Blue Buddha, “some want to capture, anesthetize and haul invasive male hippos by helicopter to a castration complex.”
“Wouldn’t getting married have the same effect?” I asked. “What’s that sound?”
Overhead, chopper pilots were shaking fists at runways below choked with Saugatuck-Douglas refugees fleeing disbarred lawyer waving subpoenas at them.
“Can’t they waive them?” my BB asked.
“For a fee,” I said.