Cheap Booze Shoplifter: “You’re calling the cops over four beers?”

Who out there hasn’t, while gazing upon some luxury item that is beyond one’s means – a bottle of fine perfume perhaps, or a lady-in-a-bikini bottle opener – thought, “Would that it could be mine, but alas, I don’t have the requisite funds. If only I had the guts to steal it.” Barring a stint in our teens during which we may or may not have stolen anything that wasn’t nailed down, however, most of us feel that shoplifting is wrong – even when it’s a big corporation that couldn’t possibly miss one little item – or we just don’t want to be embarrassed by being hauled into some backroom and put under the bright lights for an interrogation by mall cops, so we either go without or go into debt when it comes to the things we want.

Call it nature, nurture, or Florida, but some people are unrepentant when it comes to availing themselves of the five-finger discount. A woman in Crestview Florida walked into a Tom Thumb 81 grocery store on Sunday, went straight for the cooler, pulled out a four-fer of Anheuser-Busch’s “Natural Ice Beer” – a 5.9% beer that scored 1.02 out of 5 on ratebeer.com, though one that is unlikely to be consumed by anybody who would think to Google a beer brand – and stuffed it under her sweater.

The clerk saw her take the beer and asked her if she planned on paying for it. The woman underscored the importance of non-verbal communication by walking out of the store silently and getting into her car. The clerk followed her out and said that she would write down the woman’s license plate number and call the cops if she didn’t return the beer, to which the woman replied: “You’re calling the cops for four beers?” And to which she might have added, “And four cheap beers at that?”

The clerk did not accept the woman’s attempt to put things into perspective in this manner, and decided that she would involve the police. A check was run on the woman’s car and her most recent address found. She wasn’t there, however -- she was apparently enjoying the shoplifted suds somewhere else.

Shia Laboeuf drunk: actor Shia's not so 'Sunni' Disposition

As our devoted readership may have noticed during down time between scheduled Thorazine dosages, we Shark Guys are very reluctant to comment on celebrity transgressions -- mainly because we hope to one day run in those circles and don't want future champagne and orange juice breakfasts ruined by tension resulting from a post here -- but since neither of us had heard of Shia LaBeouf (which sounds like a 'Bichon Frise' that would leave tiny clumps of poop in some of the finer manicured parkettes in Manhattan's Upper East Side, or a lip-synching drag act in the outer suburbs of Marseilles) we figured he/she/it was fair game.

Due to the fact that we're a good 2o or so years removed from sitting cross-legged on the living room floor and having our GI Joes violate Geneva Conventions with our sisters' Army Brat edition Barbies, neither of us had seen the Transformers movie, but upon cross-referencing of numerous Google sources it appears he was in it.

Since neither of us wakes up during daylight hours, we were also unable to confirm or deny (we'd grown weary of cross-referencing Google sources at this point) whether he'd won a Daytime Emmy Award either.

Be that as it may, Shia has somehow found himself on our boozing radar, the coordinates of which are typically more fine tuned and for which we likely now have to call a repairman. Regardless, the star of Surf's Up and the latest Indiana Jones installment was recently arrested for allegedly drunken disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing in the wee hours of the early morning, wandering around a Chicago chain drug store, and while we can appreciate the need to pick up some domes and perhaps a sugary late night snack for a lady friend at such an unorthodox hour, testing the wild-eyed, insomnious patience of a security guard with a billy club isn't advisable, especially without greater star recognition.

Speaking of which, Rebecca DeMornay, appropriately enough the star of Risky Business (whose tastes in men ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime--Tom Cruise and Leonard Cohen, respectively) was recently busted for a DUI in Beverly Hills.

The Shark Guys

Go Fish! The lush, the fish and the flush

For people who live in apartment buildings where successive years of poodle crap in the elevators and the enduring smell of cat piss in closed spaces with poor air circulation has resulted in a ban on all four-legged pets, the choice for animal companionship most typically falls between a fish and a bird (or a snake if you’re a lone male with a love of tattoos and skateboarding videos).

The latter option poses a problem for those in high-rise buildings – your balcony giving the creature a head start when it chooses to fly the coop while you’re vacuuming excrement out of its cage – and, besides, despite what that wily pet store owner might have had you believe, your average cockatoo can’t be counted on to sing a few verses of “Margaritaville” to entertain dinner guests upon a snap of the fingers. And if you’re in a house when Polly croaks its last tune, it will likely be dug out of the yard by the neighbour’s cat if the thing is too big to sink down the commode.

Fish make for easier pets to maintain, partly because they require about as much interaction as your average Nevada shrubbery. What’s more, they make for ideal teaching tools for your offspring who are lower down on the Piaget development scale, giving them both a sense of responsibility and, when they utterly fail to live up to that responsibility and the fish dies of neglect in a filthy tank, a life lesson in the fleeting nature of existence, as you stand together on the side of the porcelain bowl and hum the “Ave Maria” before flushing Phil the Gill to his great reward. (That is unless it is one of the more exotic varieties and can be turned into a fillet when the kids are over at the neighbours’.)

An 18-year-old in Brisbane, Australia recently ransacked the home of a vacationing woman, and conducted just such a ritual, but prior to receiving the belly-up notice that usually precedes it. From the reports on the story, the man, who was, of course, walleyed drunk at the time of the raid, did not steal anything, smashing a Sony Playstation console and ripping out the woman’s telephone from her wall. But, in a bizarre flourish at the raid’s end reminiscent of the man who bit off a duck's head in a drunken rage last month, the man dipped into the woman’s aquarium, scooped all of her exotic fish and flushed them down the toilet.

The presiding judge in the case was aghast. "Some may find that humorous," she said, correctly, continuing “I don't. I find it a bit sick and obviously distressing to the owners". Indeed, the judge was so taken aback by the man’s actions that she felt it necessary to stick in a final jab by saying “he’s also an unattractive human being”. As we are guessing that in general the most beautiful of Australia’s people are not the ones being paraded in the courts on charges relating to drunken raids, this comment seems as unnecessary as the fatal flush itself.

The fish flusher, a father of two who have our sympathies, was said to be in no position to pay a fine and was given a year of community service and told to receive treatment for his alcohol problem. (Full story here)

Drunk at Walmart

It’s fashionable in some lefty circles to bash Wal-Mart, and since we occasionally travel in those circles ourselves and fear getting our asses kicked (although it would at least 6-7 filthy hippies to take down the two-fisted authors of The Shark Book--and that's on a good day) we figured instead of giving the Walton Family a slap down and a shiner, we’d focus on the positives they bring to a community.

One, Wal-Mart’s mass purchasing power drives down the price of hooch, helping to generate much-needed material for a Shark sequel. Two, there’s the deep sense of camaraderie when everyone works for the same company (and all those fun ’guess which month I got hired/guess my state-penitentiary like employee number' games to boost workplace morale) and finally, any whistle stop where the 900-pound retail gorilla sets up shop, has its downtown core obliterated within several months--making it less of a go-to destination for the rummy set and thereby beautifying the town (and without having to invest in the maintenance and upkeep of all those flower baskets)

Also, by having the behemoth roll in like a Panzer tank with its brakes cut, it keeps those complacent Ma & Pa operations on their toes—time to pony up for that MBA Mr and Mrs Krakowski, and fire that slow kid who mops the walk-in fridge or your corner deli is going to be boarded up more quickly than a tin shack in hurricane season.

In rural Wisconsin, a man chose to endanger his health via channels other than a shopping spree involving lead-based Chinese imports, by helping himself to seven bottles of spiked Jack Daniels Lynchburg Lemonade at a Mukwonago Wal-Mart. (Editor's note: in the interest of full disclosure, the authors were treated to a very fine tour of the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee a few years back and had we been wandering down that same Wal-Mart aisle, there’s no doubt we would’ve steered the man in question down a better path—to a bottle of their premium Gentleman Jack)

According to police, who nabbed the man with security video, he “broke his 16-month streak and didn't know how he was going to tell his wife," when he was caught guzzling the 12 ounce bottles of the hard stuff. [read full story here]

Dui arrest for shortest drive EVER. Are we there yet? Yes!

The automobile has been singled out as a major contributor to obesity in Western nations, mostly by tweedy intellectual blowhards rich enough to live exactly where they want – within an argyle-sweatered walk to the organic squash market and work – who feel the need to criticize folks who’d rather not add the misery of a long bus ride to the day’s complaints.

In Ontario, Canada, where a government monopoly on the sale of beer and liquor puts a quest for a case on a winter’s weekend somewhere near the level of one of the early polar expeditions for those without a car, a service called “Dial-a-bottle” has stepped in, offering delivery of all of the essentials – beer, cigarettes and condoms – to your front door for a nominal fee.

Such services, however, are also popular in places where liquor stores are on every corner block (in less toney neighborhoods generally) and fetching one’s hooch would involve only a short stumble down the road. In these cases, unless one is disabled or seeks to avoid social interaction with anyone outside of their inner circle of lay-about friends, using a vehicle to procure one’s booze, or having it delivered, is indeed quite slothful. If nothing else, the walk to the liquor store helps circulate the blood in your legs for a brief period, buying you more time later to laze about and get blasted without fear of muscle atrophy.

A Welshman set a new standard in sloth and quite possibly a record for the shortest DUI run ever when he decided to drive the 30 meters from his home to the suitably named “Bargain Booze” completely blotto. Staff members at the store, despite what one might infer from the name of the place, are circumspect when it comes to refusing to serve the visibly inebriated and would not sell him any more booze. When they saw the man stumble out to his car bleary-eyed, they phoned police.

The man was arrested a mere five minutes later at his home address and told police that he couldn’t be bothered walking. Whether the sentence he received was fair – three months in jail and a suspended license for three years – is debatable. Given the short distance between home and liquor store, the odds were against him doing much harm (unless little Johnny Appleseed next door happened to be out on his new two-wheeler at the time) but on the basis of sheer laziness, perhaps the sentence was fitting. (Full story here)

Drunk mom picks up DUI son: That's NOT Alright, Mama

The following story proves that a maternal bond...er... can’t always be... posted.

Allow us to explain.

A precocious young’un in Hilltown, Pennsylvania, precocious not because he could solve cubic polynomials in his head or compose didactic sonnets but because he drove drunk at a middle-aged level-- was nabbed by cops engaging in the type of driving that would even cause road rage on the bumper car circuit.

The cops, sensing that the 16-year old had recently gotten his swerve on, administered a breathalyzer to the toasted young helmsman in the wee hours of the morning. Registering top marks on the device, the fuzz contacted the ruffian’s mom to come and pick up the blasted DUI valedictorian.

His mom, who we’ll call ‘stupid’ here to protect her identity, herself engaging in the ‘how the hell else am I supposed to get there, walk?’ school of drunk driving, failed the field sobriety tests at the police station upon arrival. Mama was promptly arrested on DUI charges as well.

“If she had admitted to us in the beginning she was drinking, we would have made other arrangements to get the (teen) home,” noted the police chief, who probably sprung for a cab just in case pops would've happened by for the blotto trifecta.

The Hurricane, and the Man the Authorities Came to Blame

Carny folk like the guy pictured here (from whom we feel no need whatsoever to dissociate ourselves, as anyone who goes to work with white knee-length socks and a personal fan is unlikely to consult legal advice on matters relating to libel) like firemen, police officers, bus drivers and rodeo clowns, are placed in positions of trust, and are counted upon daily to take good care to properly bolt down the Vomit Coasters and tilt-a-whirls of this world (keen-eyed readers will note an unprecedented, back to back referencing of tilt-a-whirls, in our estimation, a blogosphere first).

While we appreciate that the repeated exposure to objects going around and around in circles represents a rather obvious metaphor for the cards you've been dealt by the great blackjack dealer in the sky (an allegory Pat Sajak would flatly deny), that's no reason whatsoever to be asked to 'step, right up, don't be shy' to a Breathalyzer like the operator of a 'the Hurricane' ride was at a South Carolina county fairground. The carny, who might have made a double entendre out of the phrase 'ring toss' was found 'wobbling on his feet and yelling belligerently', and promptly fired and charged with public intoxication.

This was apparently not the first time the particular fair has come under fire, as the week prior, a 3-year old riding 'The Spider', a 'teacup ride' not nearly as genteel as the name might suggest, passed out--and the operator ignored repeated, frantic calls by the mother to stop the ride.

Heroes and knuckle sandwiches. Boozers beat back thugs from bar

With Marion Jones and company using more chemicals than your average factory farm, and the reputation of the Olympic Games more soiled than a pair of underpants after a ride on the tilt-a-whirl— your average sports fan clearly has to look further afield than the Citius, Altius, Fortius set for a sofa-sprawling and cheese doodle vicarious existence.

In The Shark Book, we chronicled sporting endeavors that were truly heroic, such as a member of the Russian Airforce who made a drunken wager that his head could withstand the force of a brick—in exchange for, off all things, a ‘box of vodka’ and when said brick could not be found, tested his cranium’s density (as if such proof was really required) by smashing successive beer bottles against it. Suffice it to say, physics won out (but only after a protracted battle, and 23 bottles shattered against the man's skull by 'friends'), leaving the party guests to utter ‘oh, my, it’s getting late’, vamoosing before the cops could arrive to find the guy sprawled out unconscious.

In a South West London pub, a team of barflies, all ‘heroes who should deserve an award’, according to the landlord, beat back a group of masked thugs who tried to rob them at gunpoint (full story here). Using whatever tools they had at their disposal—a lingering bitterness at their miserable existence, ashtrays, glasses, chairs and even bottles of champagne, the regulars sent the brigands packing. “The gang tried to intimidate us”, noted the landlord, “but the regulars said this was their place and they just weren’t having it.” One drinker, who did not want to be named, noted “They got what was coming to them."

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.