Henry, Earl of Lancaster

I don't know who did this, but I owe them a beer. My favorite is the one where you can see a white police officer's arm holding his head up because he's too drunk to stand.

For those of you that don't know, this man's name is Henry Earl. He was arrested for the 1,333rd time on Thursday, making the Associated Press newswire, which made him a national story.

Henry Earl lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where he is mostly arrested for being drunk in public. I also used to live in Lexington. Literally, he calls the whole town home; I'm fairly sure he's homeless, making him one of about three homeless people in the city. There is the lady who stands at the stoplight on Upper Street and hurls expletives at you, the guy with the trash bag full of soup cans, and Henry. I have had many run-ins with Henry Earl, and most of them have been awesome. In fact, he is sort of a celebrity at the University of Kentucky.

When I was in college, I had a lot of keg parties, often attended by more than 200 people, meaning that they spanned my entire house and filled the backyard. Henry Earl used to show up at these parties, begging for a free beer. A large portion of the time, if you gave him one, he would turn around and disappear, leaving only the stench of a thousand unwashed evenings in jail behind him.

Because he is literally certifiably insane, oftentimes he would show up in character. Many times, he would pretend to be James Brown, which involved muttering incoherently and dancing all over my driveway until someone gave him alcohol, at which point he would leave. He would not answer you or leave until you referred to him as James Brown. Sometimes, you had to call him "Wild Wild West", and then he would perform, with choreography, the entire Will Smith song.

Sometimes he would show up and pretend to be a ninja. These were the times that I wished he would leave. One time when I was at a gas station inflating my tires, he kung-fu kicked and punched all the way around my car.

I'm also fairly sure he has Hepatitis.

Love Lockdown

If you're any sort of Kanye fan, I'm sure you've heard about the release of Love Lockdown, which is available for streaming on Kanye's blog. If you haven't heard it, I will warn you that it's not quite what you would expect from him. It does, however, become extremely catchy after one or two listens. The heartbeat drum pattern in the back is genius, and that chorus gets stuck in your head like whoa.

More importantly, that album is not going to be called Good Ass Job, as Kanye has previously stated, continuing his trend of titling albums after his rise to fame as a metaphor for a normal life. It's reported to be called 808s & Heartbreak. Other than the fact that the title is awesome, consider this: have you ever heard a hip-hop breakup album? That's because they do not exist. Being emotional is generally viewed as weak by hip-hop artists, and in turn, hip-hop listeners. Kanye's taking a huge chance here if he releases an album all about his struggle with the end of his recent relationship. Forgive me for sounding fifty years old, but here are all these rappers yammering on about violence and sex and how tough they are, and here comes Kanye, crying into his cereal bowl and burning all her photos and throwing her clothes out the window, and you know he's going to completely blow them out of the water. He always does, which is why his "I'm better than you" persona works so well for him, and also why I buy everything he does.

I mean, imagine if Kanye came out with Tidal for the gangster set, and it sold three million copies? It would completely blow the industry wide open, because it destroys every established hip-hop convention there is. I mean yeah, LL Cool J came out with "I Need Love" and everything, but no one's ever really done this. It's been Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur for years now. It's all become eye-rollingly predictable, and this is exactly what needs to happen.