Sleeping it off in Seattle: Drunk Attacks Cafe Manager with Fireworks and Headbutt

Having not ever set foot in the place, we've familiarized ourselves with Seattle through Conan O'Brien, who had two guys in tower costumes, one representing the Space Needle and the other the larger CN Tower (both since dwarfed by a monolith in Dubai, leaving our fair cities feeling hopelessly inadequate) duke it out.

We've also learned quite a bit from the sitcom Frasier and though it was filmed in its entirety at a Paramount Studios sound stage, we feel that it's given us a pretty good idea as to what the city is all about. Besides, there was one episode, season 5 we believe, that was filmed there and though we didn't see it, it was probably a solid one.

[Editor's aside: It's a little known fact that Shelly Long did not care much for the Frasier character, and initially wanted him ousted from the show---Cheers that is, she wasn't holding a long-term grudge against him on his own show as her career took a nosedive from Space Needle-like heights]

Seattle, to the best of our knowledge is a lovely place. So lovely, in fact, that we've even agreed to promote our book The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery on one of their radio stations, marking our very first public appearance in the US of A!

[Editor's second aside: Special thanks to the posterior-kicking KISW, 99.9 FM, the very same station that, according to some random drunk warbling Livin' on Tulsa Time in a local karaoke bar, helped launch Nirvana and since we have no way whatsoever to confirm whether this is true, have to take him at his word]

Seattle, fortuitously, has come across our radar this week, as one of our parade of ornery, staggering pisstanks calls the Emerald City home.

According to the Seattle PI, which sounds like a failed Magnum PI spin-off without the glamorous Italian automobiles, reports that a man was refused entry to Cafe Amore recently. Not getting any 'love' at this cafe 'when the world seemed to shine like he'd had too much wine' the guy made several failed attempts to sneak by.

When these attempts failed miserably, the guy returned with a Roman candle [Editor's third and final aside: Did you hear about the happy Roman? He was glad he ate her] and struggled with the manager, who tried to wrest the firework from his hand, during which point the drunk head-butted him.

Next time make a reservation, and if the calamari are rubbery, THEN resort to head-butting.

See you soon Pacific Northwest!!!

Tune into KISW Thursday, July 17th at 4:30 PT, 7:30 EST. [Those left coasters are so laid back, they're 3 hours behind us]

Bear Stern: Ursa Major Mauls Mashed Mom and Have A Shark Sandwich on Us: The Shark Guys Mark 100 Blog Entries!

When a tiger nearly made an “uno” out of the duo Siegfried & Roy, the effete conjurer Siegfried did not heed this clear warning that wild animals do not belong in the world of men in sequined jumpsuits, but rather insisted that the tiger that mauled his sidekick was "protecting rather than attacking him".

A similarly baffling disconnect from reality guided the life of the sad lunatic Timothy Treadwell, subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man”, who took Winnie The Pooh as cinema verite and decided to spend his summers among grizzly bears. He didn’t survive his final trip, because, having been lulled into a false sense of security by previous trips when bears had not packed their lunchboxes with his innards, he didn’t bring along the arsenal that we would assume mandatory for such a camp-out: a portable drum of bear spray, sticks of dynamite to light and throw behind you when a bear doesn’t buy your “play dead” routine, a tank etc.

What makes these stories truly puzzling is that they cannot be blamed squarely on the drink – Siegfried and Roy have been performing for decades and heck even Charles Bukowski was known to sober up from time to time. Treadwell, although a recovering alcoholic (who might well still be alive today if he had just kept on boozing) at the time of his death, would have had to have had Budweiser air-dropped in to reach him at his remote Alaskan camps.

In our book, the first-ever published compendium of blue-ribbon drunk stories taken from newspapers around the world “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, we covered feats that were just as gallingly dangerous as the above, but at least those featured in the chapter “Man Bites Dog and Dog Bites Back” were plastered at the time.

One of the stories in that chapter, “Bear-ly Legal”, chronicles the exploits of a drunken Ukrainian man who thought himself so strong that no human could best him, and decided to seek out suitable competition in the bear cage of his local zoo – only alert zookeepers kept him from a Treadwell-ian-like fate.

You can imagine our surprise then when we came across an international news item involving yet another drunk mauled by a bear in the Ukraine. The woman reportedly wandered into the bear enclosure at a local farm, an intrusion which upset one of its occupants – the kind of upset that animals of that species tend to externalize by mauling to death the intruder. The next time you feel bad for opening a door on two lovers at a party thinking it’s the bathroom, just think of how much it might have been.

Along with making sure that our record of chronicling ursine-related drunk stories remains in tact, we also have an announcement to make: this is our 100th blog! It’s been quite the ride, with quite the number of DUI convictions along the way. While not as remarkable an accomplishment as, say, having lived 100 years and being first on your block to get a letter shuffled out by the lowly aid of a high-ranking government official (click here for an example of how to do it up right should you live to 100), we did want to mention it and thank everyone who has stopped by and had a round with us. We're enjoying the party and are glad to have made the acquaintance of a few new drinking buddies to add to our ever-expanding circle, among them the good folks at CollegeDrinker.com where we regularly contribute Shark material.

We'll continue to belly up to the bar three times a week to bring you the best drunk stories, drinking trends and all matter of alcohol-soaked news.

Salut!

The Shark Guys

Mile Pie-Eyed Club: Drunk Duct Taped to his Seat

Duct tape has many uses as you’ll know from jokes that have been hammered into the ground on a certain show set in a hunting lodge and based on the premise that men are, at the end of the day, basically stupid and that this observation contains enough material to mine for an eternity. In less family-friendly venues, duct-tape is most commonly used to seal the gobs of hostages to keep them from hollering for their freedom as they’re dumped into the trunk of a Cadillac. Your more sadistic baddies will let said hostage grow a moustache first, make sure that the tape covers it, and then, once in a soundproof room, inquire “What’s that you’re trying to say? I can’t quite hear you”, before ripping it off in one cruel tug and eliciting screams from the captive.

But duct-tape is not just for villains. It can be a tool for good as well, and just today was employed to restrain a troublemaker on a flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Details are sketchy so far, however what’s clear is that the passenger involved was putting some frequent flier miles on his liver when he decided perhaps that the drinks trolley was moving too slowly for his liking and went to attack a flight attendant.

About seven years ago or so something happened involving planes that makes doing anything of this sort while flying a really, really bad idea. Fellow passengers jumped in and came to the attendant’s assistance. Somebody was quick-thinking enough to produce duct tape, and we’re guessing that the better part of a roll of the stuff was used to make sure that the drunken lunatic would adhere to his seat, even if he wasn’t adhering to airline safety rules (that is your adhesion joke of the day).

An FBI spokeswoman says the Orange County man was arrested on suspicion of interfering with a flight crew when the United Airlines flight from Hong Kong landed in LA.

Punch Drunk in Aisle One: Barfly Picks Fight with Boxing Coach at Shop

In boxing parlance, a "tomato can" is a hand-picked schlub brought in to go a few rounds with the champ, whose odds of scoring an upset are comparable to say, Madison, Wisconsin landing the next games of the Olympiad.

While these guys are technically professional fighters, at least when they're not earning a living as roofers, drywallers and doing other jobs that don't require a background check, it's not uncommon for the town drunk to take one glassy-eyed look at one of these soft around the midriff ham 'n' eggers and think to themselves, "I could take 'em"--especially if he's facing the other way and I'm swinging a barstool. It's no accident then that "punch drunk" has become part of the lexicon as we'll see in this story.

A London man, on the back end of a two-day drink and cocaine-fueled bender, “weekends” as Keith Richards calls ‘em, walked up to a fellow shopper, 23, and accused him of "gie' in evils” to him. The shopper tried to ignore him (having no clue what “gie’ in evils” means, we would have done the same, though we assume the language barrier didn’t apply here), but the drunk would not quit. He got in the man’s face and punched him before pulling out a sharpened key and slashing the man across the chest. He then challenged the man to “Gie us your best shot”. What the cocaine-addled thug didn’t know about the man in the grocery store buying baby-wipes was that he coached boxing for a living, and a bare-knuckled punch from him is not something that most people would willingly invite.

The boxer laid out the drunk with one almighty shot that smashed his jaw and left him in hospital for two days. The judge took the accused’s having to stick to liquids for a long while into account when accepting his guilty plea to a charge of assault, rather than the attempted murder charge he had been brought in on. The judge gave our binging friend three years in prison, where he will no doubt have people “gie’in” him their best shot, invited or otherwise.

Man Streaking at Horse Race: And it's 'Drunk Idiot' by a nose!

As we noted in 'The Shark Book', horses once served man as a primary mode of transport and then were thanked for their years of service with new posts in society as fodder for glue and rendering plants and as a key ingredient in the nation's dog food.

Another popular use for horses has been to gather them at tracks, put lilliputian men atop them and force them to race one another while the audience bring ruination upon themselves through gambling, softening the blow of every lost dollar with a fortifying drink.

Occasionally, this spectacle of soaking up hooch like a dish rag, cursing and haggling with hookers is undertaken with pretension, as is the case with the running of the Royal Ascot. There, in '94 as we chronicled in the book, a drunk galoot, aiming to get a closer look at the 'gorgeous' (source newspaper's quotation marks) women in the Royal Enclosure, nearly got trampled to death in front of Her Majesty, the Queen Mother and the Duke of Edinburgh.

This recent example from NSW, Australia, though less benign (unless you count all the angry punters willing to put this man's life in danger for having nullified the race results) involved a man celebrating a stag party with his closest mates, who decided to strip down and offer up a photo finish [seen here]

Taxi Cab Confession: Cab driver backs over drunk guy

In many respects, big city drunks have it easy over their blotto backwoods brethren. There's no need to blow a sizable portion of your paycheck--the remainder of what's been left in the jukebox of a local saloon--on a cab fare into the hinterlands, if cabs even service those back roads at all. At least you're occasionally able to stumble home if you remember such details as your address (which you distinctly recall scribbling on a napkin and stuffing into a stranger's purse) or that the shortest distance between two points is the straight line you cannot walk.

Sure you might wander into an alley inhabited by a tire iron-wielding maniac (who doesn't look like they drive but who take out their bus-pass related frustrations on the noggins of unwitting passersby), but you're at greater risk of having your reasonable facsimile of 'home' be a yellowing mattress hauled out on garbage day.

A Sydney man after a night on the town and eschewing public transit (a good move generally, as we've shown here) found out that navigating home in an urban milieu is fraught with peril even if you're taking what should be the safest route. According to the Daily Telegraph, a cabbie was arrested after allegedly reversing over the man, who he thought was trying to abscond without paying the meter fare---cab drivers being second only to bartenders on the service industry's 'most often stiffed when it comes to paying the bill' hierarchy.

The Aussie partier, whose drunkenness cannot be called into dispute as he would only give his name as 'Columbus', claimed he was 'smacked to the footpath', by the cab driver, not once, but twice. In keeping with the 'seeing double' sensory experiences often occurring in these situations, police investigators later confirmed that the cab had only reversed once.

According to reports, the cab driver had looked bewildered as he was lead away in handcuffs, asking why they had arrested him and not the man who'd recently painted the town fire engine red and didn't have the good sense to get off the road. He was later released without charge.
It's unknown how 'Columbus' fared the rest of his voyage.

Astronauts NOT drunk, says NASA: No 'Ground Control to Major Bombed'

Apparently that 'one small step for man', and all subsequent steps, (and we're guessing space walks too) have been taken in a straight line.

According to no less esteemed a publication than the New York Times (of 'all the news that'll fit between 13 inches of broadsheet' fame), there is "no evidence of crew members’ going on space missions drunk or impaired by alcohol".

This NASA decree, based on an anonymous online survey of 31 flight surgeons and 87 current astronauts done in the wake of the Lisa Nowak debacle, will finally put to bed any rumors of pie-eyed shenanigans where 'nobody can hear you scream', i.e, 'space' to the pop culture-averse. It's highly unlikely this, or any other announcement by NASA will phase conspiracy theorists though, who believe "astronauts" landed on a Hollywood sound stage and for all they know, might've been drunker than ushers at a monster truck rally while pulling their elaborate ruse.

Airline pilots are much more used to such scrutiny, to the point that many passengers would rather test the physical limits of their bowels on a long-haul bus or risk hitchhiking with a taxidermy enthusiast rather than hop on a commercial flight and risk their flyboys having indulged in too many 'Whoopie Wednesday' cocktails.

Recently, a Virgin Airways jumbo jet pilot was arrested at Heathrow seconds before takeoff on suspicion of boozing---and led away in handcuffs in front of 266 gape-mouthed passengers (including several who'd fallen asleep while the plane was still on the tarmac and had begun drooling) before investigators determined that it was only a severe case of halitosis.

As this was the second incident of asbestos-singeing breath in the span of a few months, Virgin is now, according to a spokesman, "seriously considering ordering our pilots to freshen up in the cockpit in terms of their hygiene. We might even be forced to include mints as part of our compulsory uniform."

Using breath mints to foil roadside spot checks is a well-known bit of subterfuge for the diagonal driving set, and in terms of effectiveness, a notch above checking if you share the same Alma Mater as the arresting officer (or more likely offering sexual favors upon finding out they went to police academy straight from highschool).

In other, 'he was supposedly wasted but might not be' news, it seems the driver of Princess Di's doomed ride didn't appear drunk that night, at least if you believe the account of the bodyguard who survived the fatal wreck. Trevor Rees, the sole survivor of the crash that killed Princess Diana, her lover Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul, said he would have stopped the driver from getting behind the wheel if he had thought he was drunk, thereby preventing Di from getting 'car pole tunnel syndrome'.
Next week, faithful readers, rest assured we'll resume showcasing the who’s who of the world’s worst-behaved drunks, rather than simply those that were mistankenly thought to be.

Drunk graffiti artist all washed up... and The Joker's Wild Life: Heath Ledger

[From the recently spit-shined, mahogany editor's desk:


This morning, we figured we'd steer clear of commenting on the early demise of the talented Heath Ledger as revelling in the morbid is more the province of the folks over at The Darwin Awards. So, we figured we'd focus on a different Australian-themed story, a 'near death' one in this case.



Hip hop is universal and responsible for much of the pop culture we do our best to shield our eyes from on a daily basis, ideally, with a ball cap pulled way down and a hoodie.

It's given us, among other things: over-sized duds for fat and non-fat alike, athletic footwear thrown onto overhead wires to mark drug territory (a stern warning against crack dealers bold enough to ply their trade in penny loafers) and seizure inducing ditties.

Purists often cite the four pillars that prop up the Temple of Hip Hop, which include DJing (of the type not done at your cousin's Bar Mitzvah when a drunk uncle yells out for 'Hotel California'), emceeing, breakin' (not advisable beyond, let's say, the age of 25, or for anyone with lower back problems) and of course-- graffiti.

A piss drunk Australian graffiti artist who might've been overcome by the fumes of his art or vandalism, depending on your aesthetic sensibilities, and inside a storm water drain no less (presumably so that the surf could wash out his aerosol handiwork, Etch-a-Sketch-style) was rescued when he himself was swept out into the bay and nearly drowned.

In eastern Sydney, teens with a nose for trouble and one that's apparently lost its olfactory powers too, have been known to body board, or "sewer-slide", inside the drain when there is no surf.

According to a local witness, "The young kids from the area are always in the drain every weekend. I don't understand what the fascination is."

Energy Drinks: A lot of (Red) Bull?

We first took notice of Red Bull in a Thai red-light district. Okay, let’s rephrase that so it appears less sordid. We first took notice of Red Bull in a Thai red-light district where a bloody kick-boxing card was being held. Better. Alright, never mind. We were in attendance, VIP section, when the ref was conveniently looking the other way and one of the combatants took one for the team, right smack in the Red Bull logo where one hopes the Muay Thai tomato can in question was sporting a protective cup. (Said logo was placed nearer to home base than it is in the accompanying photo).

Speaking of cups, and in tribute of segues that hit you like a Muay Thai roundhouse to the head, we Shark Guys drink our coffee black -- you know, like real men. None of this foam that looks like it would line the mouth of that German Shepherd that guards the lumberyard. As coffee purists we’d never really taken notice of any other caffeinated beverages like Red Bull and generally steered clear of those who’d consume it, thinking them the type of people with far too much energy --and much of it misguided-- to begin with anyway.

Doing some investigative work though, which may or may not have included an ill-advised downing of a can of it during an amphetamine bender (for research purposes only you understand, and for safety reasons we may or may not have had a guy in tow who claimed to have done a year of med school in the Caribbean), we tentatively concluded that it could indeed be described as "an energy drink". However, given we’re pretty energetic already and known to fire off a few daybreak rounds from a rooftop balcony after being up for the duration of the night, we were indisposed to blaming the drink for this particularly animated state.

If you don't already know this (perhaps you were the last graduate of that nunnery before it got shuttered), mixing caffeinated beverages with alcohol makes many a delightful tonic. (Indeed, several Shark Book blogs have been written with the authors using dizzying centrifugal force to get just the right Cuba Libre mix in one hand and typing with the other) It's also the conduit for getting cheap whiskey down many a gullet as well as getting the irredeemably unattractive the sexual attention they don't usually garner—but now that the Coke or Pepsi in a highball has been replaced by something researchers have described as (like pretty much everything else a human can ingest) "dangerous to your health" and as potent as three cups of coffee at once.

Apparently the top watchdog, or monger of fear depending on who you ask, the FDA, does not subject dietary supplements to safety and efficacy testing prior to approval, meaning that the full slate of ingredients in energy drinks, much like hep A at your favorite lunch spot, are not fully screened.

The Shark Guys