Duck Hunting!

“You hand in your ticket, and go watch the geek, who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak, and says, ‘How does it feel to be such a freak?’
And you say, ‘Impossible’ as he hands you a bone."

Bob Dylan “Ballad of a Thin Man”

One of our favourite sections of The Shark Book comprised tales involving alcohol and animals (in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom rather than the John Belushi/ National Lampoon sense of the word) – a sure bet when it comes to hilarity as anyone who has ever been bored with nothing but a house-pet and a 24 to entertain themselves with will know. This section entitled “You Animal” chronicles animals with alcoholic tendencies – among them “Bongo”, the NYC chimp who raided his family’s liquor cabinet and went on a wild, destructive bender that ended in the biting of an interfering human’s toe – and also daring drunks who challenged mother nature while drunk and found out that mother nature can be, well, a mother.

Recently we’ve been following a story (full story here) that could have fit among the latter, though unfortunately in this case the disturbed drunkard had all the odds. He committed an act that one would have hoped had went the way of the pay-a-dime-and-glimpse-the-freak circuses of the past – geeking, which has nothing to do with this, but rather refers to the act of biting the head off an animal, usually a live chicken (though it is said a snake will do in a pinch), in public (Alan Prendergast, from the “Latest Word” blog, found quite a telling description of what it takes to “get a man to geek” from a 40s noir novel here).

In this case , it was a duck, one of many that a hotel in Minnesota had purchased as mascots to fill their lobby (the bird is pretty popular in the land of 10,000 lakes and immeasurably more hunters once duck season begins). The man in question, who in a nice twist was a visiting health auditor from Colorado traveling on the taxpayer’s dime, arrived at the hotel drunk in the wee small hours and proceeded to chase down the duck (one of a crew of “domesticated ducks” that the hotel had brought in for $400 a head), trap it in a corner and, in an unexpected finale, tear its head off.

As other customers and hotel staff looked at him in shock and revulsion the man explained, “I’m hungry, I’m gonna eat it”. Now, while both of us can attest to the fact that duck, particularly when prepared with just the right sauce, is rather toothsome, the man’s explanation points to alcohol’s tendency to push one toward the irrational. It is unlikely that the hotel, where the duck was later referred to as “part of the family”, would have prepared it for him in the kitchen, and it is unlikely indeed that the man’s room had any means by which he could properly cook such demanding fare.

Arrested for his actions, the man who, weirdly, already has a record for wrongful duck death, couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. “Big deal, it's just a *sensitive eyes spared an expletive* duck,” he said. The auditor was freed on $10,000 bail (!), put on administrative leave and now faces charges in duck-loving Minnesota of animal cruelty, which, given the potential jury pool and his “devil may care about our wetlands friends” attitude, could mean a big headache down the road.

Crazy Drunk Stuck in Chimney: Talk about blowing your stack!

The term "chimney sweep” conjures up, for us at least, thoughts of Dickensian pickpockets with toothless grins at the age of eight and quips at the ready working in an environment rife with epidemic poisonings and all of the adults off on freewheeling sexual escapades that predated penicillin.

Chimney sweeps in these times were unfortunate children (note the accompanying graphic, presumably the showpiece of Royal Daulton’s “Celebrating Child Slavery Through the Ages” specialty collection) popped into chimneys by exploitive employers who figured, rightly, that their small sizes would be ideal for giving the insides of chimneys a good scrub. What’s more malnutrition in those days was far more successful at keeping the kids trim than modern-day physical education classes. By the time more civilized labour standards become fashionable and laws concerning child labour were enacted, grownups began taking over the work – their size disadvantage overcome by a big long brush that essentially did the same job. The importance of the brush in the task of chimney sweeping was likely apparent to the very first grown man who looked at a chimney and thought “Hell, I can’t fit down there! Someone should make a real long brush [or hire a kid off the books]”.

Such common sense escaped one lovelorn man in Evansville Indiana who figured the chimney was a good option when he found the door to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment locked. Of course he got stuck and firefighters were called to the rescue. His irate ex, who said she had “dated a lot of psychos” but nobody quite like this, went on to decree: “I told them to leave him in the chimney and let him die" (words that were backed up with actions, as she was charged with disorderly conduct for blocking firefighter access to the chimney).

The man, whose impassioned defence included, “Everyone does stupid things sometimes when they’re drunk”, [Indeed, they do] returned and was captured by local media getting pelted with bottles and garbage by the still fuming ex.

Editor's Note: Keeping up with chimney-related drunks in the news is an onerous task. No sooner had we posted the above then another game drunk, this one German and celebrating Oktoberfest (the original in Bavaria, not the one that street cleaners in Kitchener, Ontario get overtime for every year) repeated a similar stunt -- this time while trying to get into his friend's locked apartment. Though he didn't have an ill-tempered ex to contend with, this poor plonker did have to wait an incredible 12 hours before an 82-year-old janitor heard his screams and called in help to pull him out.

Humor Book Takes World by Storm!! Welcome to The Shark Book

Welcome to the official blog for “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery” (to be known henceforth as “The Shark Book” and ourselves as 'The Shark Guys' in the interest of preserving keystrokes and somehow helping the environment). Along with providing all the latest information on various goings-on related to The Shark Book, this blog will also be where we will post updates about the authors – articles, appearances, arrest warrants, and of course news on the next book. Stories that did not make the final version of the book for various reasons – considerations of good taste (I believe only one failed to rise over that decidedly low bar), length concerns, or because we had one-too-many stories involving a circus animal getting its own back from a drunken trainer etc – will occasionally be posted here.

We will also be continuing in our Shark-like tradition of pointing to and commenting heavily on various news stories of folks compromised by the drink, or, well, any other weird item that one of us finds similarly appealing.

When we originally set about writing The Shark Book our intention was to compile stories that one could thumb through after a night of being downright beastly on booze and from which one could draw a measure of comfort and some welcome perspective while the guilt and recriminations set in. (It must be said though that some readers might find that the book hits a little too close to home. In these cases, finding next-day comfort through reading materials would likely be less of a concern than, say, coming up with bail money).

We hope that the book can still fill that need, however both of us at some point came to the same conclusion about what makes for a good laugh, and it, more than anything, will influence what we post here. Mel Brooks put it about as well as anybody has when he said “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a sewer and die”.*

We welcome your comments, your own tales of drunken derring-do and your personal banking information. Wait, no! That must have been the daiquiris talking.

First round's on us! Sante!

(Note: While we kept away from the usually downright unfunny tales of people drinking themselves to death – mostly [a tale of a couple of Irish drinking buddies in a “Weekend at Bernie’s”-type scenario, where one expires in the backseat of a car after an incredible multiple-gallon session of boozing only to be chauffeured around the next day by his unknowing pal comes to mind] – we did have a chapter in the book called “Last call and last rites: funereal debauchery”).