The Private Zoo of President Hank of Tijuana

From @Astro_Ron International Space Station: Caught this marsh fire near New Orleans #FromSpace on 8/27/11 @ 7:31pm GMT NOFD allowed it to burn out (inaccessible); via Sandsteps

Four words for you: DRIVE, BY, TRUCKERS, Y’ALL + Patti Smith + Stephen Malkmus in the Record Crate for 225 Magazine  http://ow.ly/6hUMD

XTC, Oranges and Lemons
The Velvet Underground, Loaded
Television, Marquee Moon
The Only Ones, Special View
Small Faces, 78 in the Shade
Traffic, Welcome to the Canteen
Todd Rundgren, A Wizard, A True Star
Drive-By Truckers, Gangstabilly

• Last night the air was thick and smoky like my neighborhood was on fire. I was walking up the street to walk Maya home from a friend's house, thinking, their house is the house on fire, I'm gonna have to walk through fire, I'll get everybody out and then one of them will go, 'the cat!' and I'll be all 'first goddamn time that cat didn't run out the door when I showed up! OK, cough, cough, wade through fire, here, kitty kitty...', then I checked Twitter and was all, whew, just a massive marsh fire! That is pretty much what parenthood is like all the time.
  
  
• The kids informed me they are all doing the Spotify and I do all I do for the kids. I thought I didn't like their search thing, but I was all wrong about it. It's fine, plus I like that I can get my local stuff through the player. The links changes with the times. I can't testify to the mobile Spotification experience since you have to pay for that, and I already pay for Rhapsody. I can live with the ads. The play queue is a little counter-intuitive.
  
  
• My protests against Loaded as a quality listening experience are as foolish as my ones against Spotify as a means to listen to it. When Maya was extolling her new love for XTC yesterday, she said, "That nerd at the record store was right, the one talking about Velvet Underground or whatever; he said, 'You are gonna like bands other than the Beatles and he was right.'" Mark this day, nerd; a female person said you were right about music.
  
  
• Offbeat editor and birthday boy Alex Rawls has a great review of the new 33 1/3 books about Marquee Moon and Some Girls. Oxford American editor Marc Smirnoff has an insightful head-to-head with a former intern on the subject of internships. Any other of my editors - current, past, and prospective - out there with new articles needing a kind breeze blown up their sundress? Where y'at, Hails and Horns?
  
  
• After that Drug Kingpin Hippos show, I'm into the idea of plutocrats and their private zoos, and particularly how the animals invariably get loose when the plutocrat falls. Do they go around and open the cages on their last Humvee ride around the compound? I might. Prince Rainier used a tour of his zoo to woo Grace Kelly. Gaddafi's son had one, and now there is nothing but peacocks roaming the grounds. Incidentally, Time.com seems to be the go to source about private zoo exposés. What do they have?
  
  From Wikipedia's "List of Zoos", I found out that their a shit-ton of zoos in the Philippines and that Jorge Hank Rhon, president of the municipality of Tijuana from 2004-7, had a private zoo and was
  
  also known as an animal lover and trader. However, his purported love for animals has been fouled by reports that many of his animals are the result of smuggling. Jorge Hank says his favorite animal is women. In 1991, he was directly linked to a failed illicit deal for an endangered gorilla, but was never formally charged.
  
  and
  
  Hank was first arrested in 1995 at the Mexico City airport when he was caught carrying a suitcase full of articles made of ivory tusks, pearl vests and coats made from the skins of endangered ocelots, but Hank claimed that no law had been broken and the merchandise was legal. He was released on bail and was later acquitted.^[21][22]
  
  as always with Wiki, I cannot vouch for the veracity of this story nor can I really condone their  editorializing (bold: mine) without offering a quote or something in support. I'm just saying, roll the phrase "The Private Zoo of President Hank of Tijuana" around on your tongue and see how it tastes. Like a marsh fire but better and worse at once.