The Top Bouncers of All Time!

If your job description includes being able to thrash someone within an inch of their miserable lives and doing so with impunity while enjoying the odd drink on the job, you're either a cop or a bouncer.

Recently, we shone the spotlight on everyone's favorite enablers, bartenders, in our Top 10 Coolest Bartenders of All Time, but what of the guys whose job it is to look menacing and keep raging, violent drunks on the other side of the velvet rope (so they can beat up random strangers, instead of the good folks who patronize your pub)?

Bouncers, like cops, are there to maintain the status quo: ensuring that the good-looking, monied classes get preferential treatment and aren't made to shuffle their feet with the rest of the lumpenproles in line, however this isn't their sole responsibility: they're also called upon to do the kind of math long forgotten since the 5th grade: being able to calculate how old someone is, simply by looking at the date of birth on their authentic, state of Hawaii Driver's License.

Bouncers face occupational hazards that the average cop doesn't have to deal with, the "I could take that guy" delusion that drunks with superhuman Popeye strength brought on by cheap bourbon rather than leafy greens think they possess. A cop faced with a similar notion could, say, have you quickly chalk outlined on the street, whereas a bouncer has to put aside their headset and determine whether a disorderly patron can be talked down, or separated from both their dental work/teary girlfriend and sent a-packing.

You'd think a profession where there's a near constant threat of having a pinot bottle slammed off the side of your noggin like a newly christened cruise ship would land bouncers more film and TV gigs beyond the usual "Sorry sir, I don't see a 'Lindonhoffer', party of two, anywhere on the list?" roles. Generally though, it's their biceps that are called upon to wring the neck of the depressed, drunk protagonist, ignoring pleas of the leading lady as they toss them out of their favorite watering hole.

The doormen we've focused on here however, have accomplished more than simply folding burly arms and wearing suits three sizes too small, they've become pop culture icons.

So, for those who get paid to kick some gluteus max outside the confines of a ring or the auspices of an Athletic Commission, and who'd rather hold out for bribes than slave for tips, we honor the humble bouncer, with our Top Bouncers of All Time!

9) Pat Roach, "A Clockwork Orange": Roach, a Judo black-belt and former wrestler, played a red-bearded bouncer in the Stanley Kubrick classic (below), and though he didn't actually utter any lines, he impressed the director so much that he was cast in "Barry Lyndon" and then famously, as the guy who gets his ass beat twice in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and is dispatched by propeller (right). The mute Clockwork role eventually led to parts in "Never Say Never Again", "Willow" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". For making the most of being menacing, and doing security detail for one of the coolest bars around, the Korova, which serves up narcotics-laced milk rather than the use with which we're more familiar---as a tasty dairy adjunct to Kahlua, Roach lands a spot here.










8) Michael Clarke Duncan, "A Night at the Roxbury": SNL, for the better part of a decade, has brought us mirth-free Saturday nights, but prior to this, they were known to broaden eight-minute sketches into gray matter-atrophying, feature-length forgettables. "A Night at the Roxbury" bucked this trend somewhat, and did its best to derive Toyota Prius-like comic mileage from heads bopping along to the beat of What is Love? (baby don't hurt me). Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking gawk who later starred alongside Tom Hanks in the Green Mile, is no stranger to holding onto a clipboard having held down bouncer roles in both Bulworth and Married with Children for the doorman trifecta.






7) Craig Robinson, "Knocked Up": In most movies, bouncers get about as much dialogue and have as much on-screen presence as a large cactus, but "Knocked Up" bucked that trend with its hilarious exchange between Craig Robinson, of "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "The Office" fame and Lesley Mann. Striking a blow on behalf of anyone ever deemed too ugly or old to enter a club, the Mann character lays into the bouncer, "What the fuck is your problem? I'm not going anywhere, you're just some roided out freak with a fucking clipboard!" Robinson, showing that, although all appearances may at times point otherwise, bouncers are human after all admits that the system is unfair, "It's not cause you're not hot, I would love to tap that ass. I would tear that ass up. I can't let you in cause you're old as fuck. For this club, you know, not for the earth."









6) Max Baer, "The Prizefighter and the Lady": Boxer Baer famously got Hitler's mustache in a twist by dispatching Max Schmeling at Yankee stadium, while sporting Star of David trunks. "Madcap Maxie" also laid out 6'6 Italian strongman Primo "The Ambling Alp" Carnera, who, along with former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey make appearances in the 1933 flick, "The Prizefighter and the Lady", about a bouncer-turned boxer who tries to not let fame, fortune and loose women get to his punching bag rattled head. Baer also famously killed a man in the ring, an achievement he appears to relish if we're to take the Ron Howard movie "Cinderella Man" at its word. With that kind of resume, he's the exact kind of guy you'd want to be standing at your door if you're a bar owner to pound a hippy into the dust if need be.








5) Steve Collins and Lenny 'Gov-nor' Mclean, "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels": More former boxers to add to the list, same flick: one legit (well, as 'legit' as the current state of boxing could ever be), The "Celtic Warrior" Steve Collins, who once said of pound-for-pound champ Roy Jones after a deal fell through that he'd "fight him in a phone box in front of two men and a dog". The other bouncer pugilist, famous in the less than legit London East End bare-knuckle scene, was a 500 lb bench-presser, who tossed enough toothless yobs out the front door of enough taverns to be crowed 'King of Bouncers' in the city's pub scene. Though technically not portraying a bouncer in this film, The Guv-nor gets kudos here for his Barry the Baptist portrayal as well as for his scene stealing appearance in Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope


"No one in here but card-players tonight and I do mean no one!'





4) Ray Winstone, "Bouncer". The “Don’t forget to carry a big fuck off stick” and "This is the biggest irony. The ones that like you the least, normally those who have a degree in philosophy under their pacifist belts, and absolutely no fuckin' idea about the reality of life outside the college campus, they are the ones that need you most when shit and fan meet." bits of counsel, lands Winstone a spot here. Another former boxer, but more interestingly, another Indiana Jones connection here in that Winstone is to appear in the forthcoming flick Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Hollywood A-listers John Hurt, Cate Blanchett and the increasingly creaky piece of archeology that is Harrison Ford. Winstone, the actor, is a fan of the east London soccer team West Ham United, which neatly segues into our third position.





3) Ricki Harnett, "Rise of the Footsoldier" This Brit flick chronicles the rise of Carlton Leach, a West Ham soccer hooligan whose exploits randomly beating the crap out of opposing team supporters, were exactly the tools of the trade required to bounce in some of east London's dive bars before becoming an enforcer for the local neighborhood heroin dealers.
"Everybody got what they came for. If you came in looking for a drink and a couple of birds, that’s what you got. But if you came in for anything else, you’d end up with my fist in your face. And if you came back with your little army wrapped around ya, well, I’d just have to get my metal bar out."



2. Chow Yun Fat in "Full Contact" Chow Yun Fat plays a club bouncer in the seedy back streets of Bangkok, Thailand, where instead of laying the smack down on pudgy middle aged Dutch pedophiles, runs afoul of a sleazy underworld boss and has to flee with his dancer girlfriend, a fellow bouncer, and his best buddy. Shown here in full on switchblade, ass-beating glory, here's some 'Fat' camp.

Getting Pie-Eyed on Pizza Flavored Beer and Other Strange Brews

Recently we covered booze-flavored toothpaste, just the thing for those looking to spruce up in the morning by brushing their teeth with something that will give them an instant and sickening reminder of the 11 highballs from the night prior. More common is the trend towards making alcohol-related products taste like something else – hence the rise of alcopops and various other beverages that are commonly ordered by girl drink drunks.

Beer manufacturers are doing this by adding ingredients to their brews to excite the Budweiser-deadened tastebuds of your average guzzler, and, in some cases, to test their gag reflexes. Pizza-flavored beer seems like the type of unorthodox brew that would do the latter, as, up until this point, the only pizza-flavored beer familiar to the recreational boozer has been the end of the night palette clearing, known in some circles as “bending and sending” or more commonly blowing biscuits.

However, according to this review from the Fairfield County Weekly, Tom Seefurth’s Mamma Mia Pizza Beer is actually quite quaffable, if not actually the most authentic-tasting beer. While the brewers do include oregano, basil, tomato and garlic in the mix, it isn’t exactly a slice of pie crammed into a beer bottle. According to the reviewer, “…it resembled the taste of pizza-flavored Combos or Pringles… rather artificial, kind of like the Baco-Bits of the alcohol world.” The reviewer, a Shark Guy in spirit, scoffed at the pizza beer’s low alcohol content (4.5 percent) and said that he’d “just as soon knock back a beer-flavored beer.”

For those looking to explore the world of flavored beer, here is a quick look at what’s on offer. We take no responsibility for sickened stomachs. (Editor’s Note: The first one is not meant for humans, but like those sad stories of senior citizens on fixed budgets being left to dine on the Alpo, there is nothing to stop you from trying it out for yourself).

Steak-flavored beer for dogs: Who among us hasn’t emptied out the odd pint into Rover’s bowl just to see what would happen when he got a little tipsy? One of our favorite tales in the animals section of our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark (and other true tales of drunken debauchery), concerned a footman of the Queen of England who was fired for putting whiskey in the water bowls of the royal corgis. (They have since straightened out incidentally). The beer we’re talking about here though, the Dutch Kwispelbier - "tail-wagging beer" is non-alcoholic, and tastes like beef. The beer has recently gone on sale in the UK and is being imported from Holland. According to the distributors of the canine brew, while little Fido may not end up as hammered as his owners, he’ll at least be drinking in solidarity with them: "It means pets are even more a part of family life as they can enjoy a beer, too."

Beer and Milk Makes Bilk: According to the good folks over at PETA, beer is actually better for you (not to mention poor ole’ Bessie the cow) than milk. “Beer in moderation is good for you, while even one glass of milk supports animal abuse and harms your health,” says a PETA spokesperson. But for those of us not quite ready to throw dairy out the door and embrace the joys of soy, the good news is that the salutary effects of both milk and beer can be found in one ingeniously named Japanese product: Bilk. The brewer, dealing with an oversupply of milk due to lower consumption in Japan, decided to use surplus to create a beer that is 30% milk. According to Reuters, “apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer”. Currently, Bilk is available only in the region where it’s produced, Hokkaido, and by mail order. The manufacturer said that further distribution would depend on how the initial beer fared in local markets, and we’re guessing the lack of reports following on from its introduction last year tell us pretty much all we need to know about how that went.

Champagne Beer: Champagne tastes? Beer budget? Willing to drink anything we suggest? Well boy do we have the beer for you. The Krait Prestige Champagne Lager, the US named for the UK Cobra Beer, claims to be the world’s first champagne lager and the only lager to be refermented in the bottle, a process usually reserved for Trappist ales (drinking Trappist ales, incidentally, is the best thing about being a Trappist monk). The bottle is made to look like a champagne bottle, and offers a combination of the two products inside (throwing into complete chaos standard rules such as "beer after wine, you'll do just fine"). Whether such a mix would appeal to you depends on whether you enjoy champagne. If you are of a mind with the journalist Christopher Hitchens who once said, “The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics” then this may not be the product for you.

Chocolate Donut Beer: Brewed by Shenandoah Brewery in Alexandria Virginia, which, we shit thou not, offers a major discount for law-enforcement officials (the discount doesn’t specifically apply to the donut beer, but still…) comes the Chocolate Donut Beer. This begging-for-a-Homer-Simpson-reference beer is in league with pizza beer in terms of giving you something to drink to remind you of the unhealthy things that you like to eat. The beer overwhelmingly positive feedback on Beer Advocate, including an A+ rating from a guy who said it smelled “Like you just opened a pack of those cheap waxy corner store chocolate gem donuts”.

Soon to be Dancing Behind Bars: Drunk Dancer Does a Backflip onto a Police Car

For those of us who are not secretly pining to shimmy beneath the bright lights of Broadway, dancing in public is something that requires a considerable amount of inhibition-killing liquid courage to even consider. Before you can respond to an invitation to dance, you must first ensure that you are sufficiently drunk – i.e. that you have reached the point where you can hit the dance floor fully confident that you will not sober up and realize what you’re doing mid-boogaloo.

Drinking and dancing has its benefits though; providing you don’t slip on a puddle of beer, strutting your stuff on the dance floor slightly lowers your odds of going home alone. Slightly. However, there are some times when drunk dancing really only benefits the kind of people who chronicle and laugh at feats of drunken stupidity – namely, well, us.

A 25-year-old man in Australia’s Northern Territory was drunk in a casino parking lot at 3am and felt the need to keep the party going. A paddy wagon and police car were stationed at the casino to corral drunks just like him. Our drunken friend did not take the presence of the paddy wagon as a hint to walk as quickly and as upright as he possibly could in the opposite direction to avoid a night of having Barfy Ben whisper the secrets of life in his ear at the local drunk tank. Instead, he decided, he must dance, and thought that the top of the paddy wagon’s cage would be just the place to do that.

He hopped up first on the bonnet of the paddy wagon and then this lush Lord of the Dance did a little of the ole’ soft-shoe shuffle on top of the wagon’s cage. Clearly a showman, the man knew that every truly memorable dance performance needs a spectacular finish and decided to cap his act off with a backflip onto the police car behind the paddy wagon.

According to a local sergeant, the two cops sitting in the patrol car “got quite a surprise”, when the drunken dancer came hurtling toward them, crashing through the car’s windshield and severely damaging the hood. The officers weren’t hurt and neither was the dancer, the sergeant said: "He was very, very intoxicated -- maybe that's why he didn't get too hurt from the fall.''

UK Study Says One in Three Hungover at Work (Other Two Still Drunk)

Before the manufacturing base took a hit, it was not uncommon for Johnny Lunchbox to take a hit of his own from time to time from a flask kept in a flannel pocket to help alleviate the drudgery of the assembly line. After some people stumbled into deep vats and others were left with one less limb with which to raise a pint, drinking on the job became seen as dangerous, and people were encouraged to save their heavy drinking for evening television viewing with the wife and kids.

Now, with the greatest danger in most workplaces being the guy whose score you just topped in “Scrabulous” giving you a sock in the jaw, people are once again seeing the benefits of a morning eye-opener followed up with a liquid lunch.

According to a study by Norwich (kinda rhymes with porridge and that’s not the sort of thing it’s advisable to eat while hungover -- See our Hangover Tips) Union Healthcare in the UK, one in three employees has been to work with a hangover, while more than one in 10 reported being drunk at their desks, according to a recently released poll. These numbers increase significantly when you take into account the fact that everybody lies to people conducting surveys like this.

"It seems that alcohol and the workplace often do go hand in hand", said one researcher, noting a pairing that is as natural as, say, a glass of whiskey and a mint Nat Sherman, which can be tucked under the increasing-at-the-rate-of-a-landfill to-do pile (see picture).

The study also found that 25 percent of people did the minimum amount of work and went home as soon as possible. The remaining 75 percent are presumably indentured servants, or insane.

Hillary Clinton Takes Shots, Not at Rival Obama but of Whiskey

Based on the dismal two-term bargain basement presidency of George W, we can make this blanket statement: tipplers make better presidents than teetotalers as anyone up to this point, including notorious booze-hound Dick Nixon, has been a better president.

Dubya, who was a lot more fun back when his nose was more full of the white stuff than a face-planting Picabo Street or when he indulged in the occasional brew, hasn't enjoyed a drop in nearly a decade (he was photographed at a 2007 summit in Germany, swilling a piss-poor non alcoholic 'near beer', a nearly punishable offense in that country, not to mention a product brewed by mediocre foreign rival Heineken that luckily didn't result in an international incident)

The current crop of Oval Office aspirants, though, are no strangers to the odd bevvie, and currently reaching out to voters, by reaching for the occasional pint.

Automaton former first lady Hillary has been urged to 'loosen up a bit' and is taking this to heart as she compounded her populist rhetoric recently by pounding back a few on the campaign trail at a Fort Wayne, Indiana watering hole. [Editor's note: forced banter with someone sporting a 'DAD' sweatshirt and prominent under-bite, in a state more backward than the Hebrew alphabet is best undertaken with a few dollops of liquid courage]

According to a local wine-and-spirits representative with no vested interest whatsoever, "I think she'd loosen up better" [if she had a few]

In terms of jump starting the economy and decreasing income inequality, her campaign platform would be well served to include the following bit of wobbly, booze-friendly research (correlation not implying causation here, unless the profs are springing for the tab). According to a study out of San Jose State U, where you can major in advanced beachcombing, "drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking", with females representing the higher end of the spectrum.

Also, and this will provide a built-in pretext for browbeaten hubbies to have a few hours' respite from the missus--men who go to a bar at least once a month earn an additional 7 percent on top of the 10 percent drinking premium. Of course, we'd expect diminishing returns if this figure were to include more than ____(insert double digit figure deemed appropriate here)

Here's rival Obama gingerly sipping on a pint in PA, perhaps aiming to close the gap between beer drinkers and wine drinkers, the former predominantly GOP voters according to the latest CNN Lou Dobbs book-ending filler poll.