Given the butterfly effect of time and history, it is not a stretch to say that if LMFAO had not announced their indefinite hiatus, Donald Trump may never have been elected president. The COVID-19 pandemic may never have settled its jaws over our great nation. We could honestly be, rather than working from home in our sweatpants, out on the dance floor, shuffling to whatever genius music LMFAO released in this alternate timeline.

I kept it mostly to early Beatles stuff at that age. I was too young for the drugs and weird outfits that came later, some 25 years before. Once, as I was checking out library books about the band – I just grabbed them without looking too closely – I discovered one that detailed their sexual escapades. I read a passage about passing girls around from bed to bed – that was as far as I got before something about the appearance of the book tipped my mom off to its contents, and it disappeared. She firmly grabbed the wheel and turned the car around before I could travel too far down that road.

“1, 2, 3!” they chant, and slice into the ribbon with a satisfying snip. There’s cheers, Traci and Mikey kiss, long and drawn out, all tongue and injected lips. Their matching baseball caps emblazoned with the Slim logo knock against each other. Mikey grabs Traci’s ass, tight in yoga pants, ready to work out. The ribbon holders stand by awkwardly, smiling nervously to each other and waiting for them to stop, flaccid halves of ribbon dangling.

Crumble reads the script aloud for herself. “I want to help students understand why they feel so lost. It’s just biology. The amygdala develops first in a teenager’s brain. It controls emotions and all the bad decisions that kids make.” She agrees with the sentiment. But she can’t reconcile the bad decisions she sees herself making in these visions.

Jon Sherman was in his early 20s in a building on Tujunga in Studio City, in office space used by the network, the day the news hit. But he wasn’t privy to all the details of the devastating death, as he was preoccupied with finishing his writing for MTV’s first original scripted live action drama series. “I don’t know what I’m doing exactly, I hope someone knows what they’re doing,” he remembers thinking. “And no one did. What am I doing here? How did I get here? How do I get out?” Two months later, “Dead At 21” premiered.

It was only when I began high school that I was no longer satisfied with the life I was living. The farm wasn’t enough for me, my parents weren’t enough. I felt sick with isolation, with alienation. My mother told me the things I was feeling were normal. I told her there was nothing normal about me, there never was. She turned from me and stared out the kitchen window, into the distant horizon. Her grey hair was piled into a bun on her head, looking as if she belonged to a century gone. Without a word she left the room and came back with a folded blanket held out before her.

“You were wrapped in this when we found you.”

But I’ve always had a special bond with birds. Years ago at Tenney Park in Madison when it wasn’t winter, I’d go listen to the ducks lampoon the world so often that they’d waddle up and sit with me, though I never fed them. One let me pet its emerald neck.

Originally elected by the cardinals as a compromise candidate that they thought would be easy to control Pious instead takes charge of the Catholic Church as a radical reactionary that seeks to bring brimstone and fire back to the Catholic church. He launches a campaign to teach the Catholic faithful that it takes suffering to find God, and will trample anyone inside the Vatican that stands in his way.

When Dillon offers his thanks for the scorpion-plucking, Mac responds with one word, “Anytime,” shaping it into a menacing whisper-growl, as cool as mist rising from ice. It’s the first indication that things may not be what they seem. Mac doesn’t trust Dillon – correctly, it turns out, as Dillon has, with typical CIA wiliness, brought this team to Central America on false pretenses. Later, when Dutch learns of the betrayal, he asks Dillon, “What happened to you?”

I woke up,” Dillon says. “Why don’t you?

Seeing the city in the rear-view mirror was a relief. A blessing. I’m no country boy. Don’t get me wrong on that score. But even a bona fide city-slicker like myself recognizes that the metropolitan life is a deviation from a healthy, natural existence. I mean, I enjoy it’s perks as well as the next man. For instance, who can count on a decent curry, some palatable sushi, in the country? Your not going to come across a classy cinema in the boondocks. And I do like me some classy cinema venues. Look, I’m no fashion guru, hell, I’m a bit of a slob…. but I do appreciate that my wardrobe isn’t limited to the town Super Target or the county Walmart.