A month or so ago, on my birthday, along with a couple of buddies, after we pre-gamed a couple cocktails, I grabbed a giant popcorn at a movie theater, where you add you own butter, and sat down to be entertained by a movie which is based on a true story I thought I was familiar with. The flick was just about what I unexpected and could have been named “Bambi’s bear friend goes all Pulp Fiction and shit, on Friday the 13th, but that title was deemed too long by the front office so it was named “Cocaine Bear”.
I know, I know! Cocaine is so passe. Today, society’s drugs of choice are legalized weed and the Chinese Fentanyl flowing across our sieve-like Southern border into the veins of our youth. But for this movie we need to hearken back to a simpler time – the 1980’s, when Crockett & Tubb’s ruled Miami Vice and John Belushi lost a game of eight-ball.
Like many of us, I spend my fair share of time exploring the internet finding interesting topics and stories. I often read some of the more trivial or fringe blogs where I can go through a number of wormholes and end up in some remote dusty corner of the web where I find the good stuff.
A couple of years ago, I was reading through what I believe was likely Mentalfloss or AtlasObscura when I happened upon the rather strange story about a “cocaine bear” affectionately known as Pablo Escobear. We’ve all heard that “puns are the lowest form of humor”, so I was hooked by the wordplay and had to learn more.
The story of Pablo began unceremoniously in 1985 when a man fetching his morning paper in his driveway, outside Knoxville, noticed another man’s body smooshed in his driveway. The deceased was outfitted in a parachute, night vision goggles and was carrying a number of firearms, thousands in cash, and seventy-five pounds of cocaine. He was a former law enforcement officer and was known as a shifty guy. The driveway stain was also wearing Gucci loafers, so being the shoe-whore I am, it seemed imperative to read on.
This was interesting, but later, and unconnected at the time, a black bear was found dead in the woods of Northern Georgia. Since the bear wasn’t shot and didn’t have any external cause of death, the wildlife and game commission conducted a necropsy (animal autopsy). What they discovered was the bear’s whole stomach was filled with cocaine and it died of a massive overdose.
The story went on to say that the bear was then stuffed and changed hands as a novelty decoration in various locations, a pawn shop or two, a traditional Chinese medicine shop, and the Las Vegas home of Waylon Jennings. The bear then moved into (and currently resides) a Lexington Kentucky “Fun Mall”.
As luck would have it, my wife and I, with another couple usually take a trip to Lexington annually to catch the horse-racing meet at Keeneland Racetrack, betting thoroughbreds and sampling Kentucky’s finest bourbons. I related the story to my friend and advised that we’d all have to make a special stop to see this piece of significant cultural history.
Cocaine bear holds it place of honor as a full body mount wearing a hat near the door to the Kentucky Fun Mall. Whether it’s happier there rather than a musician’s home or Chinese herbal medicine show I don’t know, but it seems cheerful enough.
A few days after our trip I received a small package in the mail but didn’t recall ordering anything. Like a child, I excitedly tore into the package and found a small “Cocaine Bear” snow globe which my friend had ordered and shipped to me. For the past four years cocaine bear snow globe has held a place of honor on my desk where I shake it infrequently, but for the most part, I thought our story was over.
Imagine my surprise a couple months ago when my buddy called and asked:
Do you remember Pablo Escobear?
Remember?!?, I’m the one enthusiastically encouraged us all to visit it!
Well,…… they’re making a movie about it……..and it premiers on your birthday.
Get us tickets?
Done!
Not a movie I would likely see twice but I was happy with it, given my long history with Pablo. The movie was one of the last films for the now deceased Ray Liotta and it seemed like a good send off to a great actor.
Cocaine Bear was nostalgic as the sound track solidly hits hit one’s new wave nerve with Patty Smyth, Depeche Mode, and Berlin. There’s nothing like singing along to the songs of one’s youth while watching a bear do a line off a severed human leg I always say. There are other throw backs to the heady days of the 80’s and I particularly enjoyed seeing the cracked egg sizzling again while Nancy Reagan told us all to “just say no”.
The second part of my Price is Right’s birthday winning showcase showdown inspired by Cocaine Bear was a book titled “The Bluegrass Conspiracy”. Which is close to 500 pages of the whole story before Pablo Escobear’s drug discovery. The book is a wonderfully confusingly complex story involving drugs, sex, money and murder involving the blue-bloods of Kentucky and all manner of government agencies like the CIA, DEA, ATF, FBI and each and every other law enforcement agency imagineable, as well as the corrupt officials of foreign governments and our own. After I finished reading the book, I understood why they made the movie only about the bear.
The book is a true crime story, it was fun to read all the local references and establishments mentioned. I learned that the drug runner/mercenary/driveway-stain had once been allegedly shot at my favorite Lexington restaurant. I write allegedly because he was knocked down and there were numerous slugs in the bullet-proof vest he wore to dinner that night. No one heard the shots, but he claimed the shooter used a silencer. Others claimed he shot his own bulletproof vest alone earlier and wore it to the restaurant and made the attempt on his life story up.
The whole book is full of misdirection.
But, the book is good enough to pass along, so later this week or so, one of my friends will get a little hit of postal prozac in their mailbox.
Recently, I read an interview with Shooter Jennings where he unequivocally stated that his father, Waylon, never owned Cocaine Bear….but he never said he didn’t stay at his house for a while…..