Conrad Black: forgotten but not gone

Both the Globe and Mail and the CBC have the happy story this morning about Conrad Black getting a pardon from Donald Trump. What particularly caught my eye was the roll-call of character witnesses who interceded on Mr. Blacks's behalf: Henry Kissinger, Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, and...
Elton John!?

Huh? Which of those is not like the other ones? Do you suppose it was Elton John's word that tipped the balance? Or was the pardon granted in spite of Elton John?

Aside from having been Palm Beach neighbours, Connie and Donnie have something else in common; they were both born to great wealth and worked assiduously to squander it. Conrad seems to have been more successful in that endeavour than has Donald, but continues to live the high life thanks mainly to the largesse of the few friends who stuck by him when the going got tough.

Conrad was somewhat ahead of his time in terms of his business career. He was a pioneer in the looting of employee pension plans back in the 1980s, a practice that has since become commonplace. That episode may have earned him the opprobrium of the general public, but didn't derail his long-term campaign for a seat in the UK's House of Lords, where he remains Baron Black of Crossharbour.

Baron Black redeemed himself somewhat, at least in my eye, with how he handled his US prison term. If you look at the articles he wrote from prison, there's not a lot of woe-is-me griping. Instead, we see an actual mensch developing a surprising (for a pension fiddler) empathy for his fellow inmates.

Maybe that's what caught Elton John's eye too.

Throwing up at U of Goo

To my everlasting amazement I actually have a degree from the University of Guelph. That must have happened during those mornings when I was waiting for the Brass Taps to open up.

That was the campus bar at the time, the main campus bar, located in the University Center. They also had a place called the Roundhouse, which was round.

One night, or I should say early one morning, I got my car stuck on the stairs between Johnson Hall and the academic building as I was leaving the Roundhouse, which is probably more than anyone needs to know about my university career.

At the time the U of Goo's main claim to fame was that when Elton John stopped in for a visit the campus cops towed his illegally parked limo from in front of the University Center.

The campus cops were pretty decent really. They let me park there all the time.

But I digress. One night I was at the Brass Taps with my good buddy Karen. We'd had a few pitchers of beer, and as we were making our way out I stopped off at my mailbox in the basement to see if my latest government grant had arrived.

There we were in one of the basement hallways, when suddenly Karen left all the beer she had consumed that evening right there on the floor.

Couple of weeks after that, I was treating my good buddy Kipling to a few pitchers at the self-same Brass Taps. Long story short, ya, you guessed it! Same hall and everything!

Not a week later, I'm in the food court at the UC with my six year old daughter. Can't even remember what we ate, but as we're leaving we swing down to the mailboxes. Sure enough, same hall, same deal,  except this time it's my six year old daughter leaving back everything she'd just had at the food court.

I never checked my mailbox again.