Upsetting Day: Epic Benders

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to draw a dick on the sun. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…

The main pastime of drunk white people is describing the most wasted that we have ever been, usually followed by explaining the terrible things that happened to us because of it. I don't know why we're so proud of our terrible decisions and inevitable comeuppance. Maybe it’s catharsis, to frankly relive our past mistakes. Maybe the time Gary threw up on that cop is just really, really funny. Regardless, drunk white people are gonna have to figure out a new way to pass the time, because nobody has ever gotten more wasted and regretted it harder than...

Laura Hall is the patron saint of drunken consequences.

Laura Hall is the first human being to be banned from drinking in an entire country. I once got 86'ed from a bar for dry-humping a jukebox (it was playing Journey's "Separate Ways"). That's what it takes to get a single building to refuse to serve you alcohol again. Laura Hall did something so outrageous that an entire country put her picture up on the wall with the line "DO NOT SERVE" underlined six times. And the story somehow gets better from there:

That country ... was England.

Nobody is drunker than England! Except places that are kind of England anyway, like Wales -- where Laura Hall is also banned from drinking. That's right: Not one, but two countries are so frightened of what Laura Hall does with a few in her that they have instituted nationwide bans to keep her from consuming alcohol within their borders. And getting hilariously, criminally drunk is all Wales does! Wales is Europe's Florida. The words on the national crest of Wales are "Fuck you, you’re drunk!" but with 800 more consonants. Their national anthem is the sound of crying in the back of a bus -- and fucking Wales thought Hall was so out of control that they had every bouncer in the country memorize her face.

The judge who sentenced Hall said she "represented all that is despicable and rotten in society." He further elaborated that "it must be a frightening sight to see you in full sail." Holy shit! I'm pretty sure that's what grizzled old pirates whisper to each other when you bring up the Flying Dutchman, and that quote was from a judge! A man who does nothing but listen to crime reports all day.

So what, exactly, did Laura Hall do to earn her international 86'ing?

I DON'T KNOW.

Various news stories mention different charges -- drunk in public, assault, trespassing -- but nothing that hints at what earned her the wrath of two entire countries and a sentence that sounds like an exorcist’s condemnation of the devil. But I'm actually fine with that. See, Laura Hall is like a horror movie -- right now she's the unseen monster, leaving our imaginations to fill in the blanks. Finding out her actual crimes would likely just disappoint.

But really, though -- she definitely barfed in a queen’s guard hat, right?

Part of the reason we hear so many crazy crime stories coming out of Florida is because the disclosure laws work differently down there. And another, bigger part of the reason is because Florida is as far as the psychopath parade got before they ran into the ocean and decided to just make camp. An example:

Florida police arrested a woman for drunkenly wrangling and illegally mounting up a manatee, then riding it around the ocean.

She was charged with two counts of Aquamanning in the second degree.

Gloria Garcia Gutierrez, a 53-year-old Sears employee, explained to authorities that she just didn't know you couldn't do it, so she did it. Which is the best excuse for anything I have ever heard. In what I'm going to have to assume were her exact words:

"Ain't nobody said I couldn't ride that bitch, so I rode that bitch."

Obviously it’s a crime to jack a sea cow and tear it around like a flesh jet-ski. But Gloria came forward of her own volition when she realized that authorities were looking for her. God damn -- imagine the low-speed chase if she didn’t, though.

It was just another lovely summer day in Long Beach: The sand was warm, the waves were crashing, Sublime was playing on repeat while men in cargo shorts talked about longboards and smoked. And then a Nissan Maxima came careening through the parking lot, jumped the barrier, and made immediately for the water. The driver, leaning out of his window, yelled "THIS IS MY BEACH!" followed by his own Social Security number. No other words, just "THIS IS MY BEACH I CAN PROVE IT HERE IS MY SSN!" Over and over again, for his entire short but purposeful commute to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

After carefully parking his economy sedan in the surf, he opened the door, left the vehicle, and began swimming out to sea -- still yelling that he owned the beach. Nobody was hurt, not even the man himself, since lifeguards swam out and pulled him back in.

I don’t know how he reacted, but I’m going to guess he wasn’t happy that two criminals jumped into his pool and interrupted the first of his extremely long laps.

William Todd is not to be praised. William Todd hurt some folks. William Todd is a bastard. But goddamn, nobody has ever been as high as William Todd.

Todd's spree started, like all good sprees, when he got off a Greyhound bus in Nashville, Tennessee. Todd stepped off his bus for a nine-hour layover and instead went on a raging, nonsensical crime spree you'd need some fucked-up mods to replicate in Grand Theft Auto.

First, he "broke into the Slaughterhouse and stole a Taser, revolver, and shotgun."

That's first. That's how it starts. That's just his opening act.

The news story capitalizes that phrase, by the way -- "the Slaughterhouse" -- which makes me think it's the name of a business. Maybe a gun store with a morbid sense of humor. But no, basic Googling says the Slaughterhouse in Nashville, Tennessee is an annual haunted house containing, for some reason, a Taser, revolver, and shotgun. Nashville is super serious about the quality of their scares. Well, I should say "was super serious." Whatever the Slaughterhouse was, William Todd burned it to the ground. But not before stealing one more thing: a T-shirt. So just picture everything that happens from this point onward done by a man wearing this:

Todd then found a random group of people leaving a bar, so he Tased, pistol whipped, and robbed them. Five entire minutes later, he carjacked a taxi, took it to a Walmart, and bought $200 worth of food. Holy shit, he really was operating on video game logic: He was low on health after getting caught in the fire, so he jacked the very first car he found, drove it into a store, ran inside, and bought $200 worth of food to restore some bars.

Todd then broke into a law office, where he pooped on the desks and rubbed it into their law degrees. I don't know what the point of that was, I just don't think it ever occurred to him to wipe his ass with anything but the law. Todd then wandered around a hotel knocking on doors, pretending to be a housekeeper. A female housekeeper, mind you, funny voice and all. He robbed another couple while crying the entire time. Todd was sobbing, not his victims -- picture being held at gunpoint by a burned and overly-stuffed maniac, just absolutely weeping into his THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE shirt. You wouldn’t even try to survive that -- your priority would be dying in a way that ruined your orifices for posthumous use.

During all of this Todd somehow found time to shave his head completely bald, and then ran his stolen taxi into the side of a parking garage, totaling it.

SO HE STOLE A NEW ONE.

When police finally found William Todd, he was submerged inside a water tank on top of Opryland, just his eyes showing above the waterline like a lunatic criminal meth-frog.

Again, it's worth emphasizing that this was not an entire criminal rap sheet, cherry-picking the craziest examples from a few years of depravity. This wasn't a bad month, or an eventful week. Even after all of these crimes, should he have found a paint shop and lost his wanted level, William Todd would have made his bus.

This all happened in a single night. Nine hours. 540 minutes.

You're a dick, William Todd, but they will sing songs about you.