Soccer Player DUI Bust En Route to Practice

If you're in a bar and dragged into a discussion over what constitutes a sport and the waitress can't come quickly enough with your bill so that you can extricate yourself from the situation--- without suffering a pounding headache in addition to the one you've already sustained from the pitchers of stale beer--here are two definitions that will serve you well:

1. If you perspire during play, it's a sport (this disqualifies baseball and cricket).
[Editor's note: If the horse perspires, this doesn't count. If you're playing patio darts and you perspire, it doesn't count either]

2. If you're able to quaff a beer without interrupting the course of play, it's not a sport (this includes bowling, darts and the aforementioned baseball and cricket).

That being said, this doesn't diminish the athletic achievements of one John Daly, spotlighted earlier in the first installment of our Boozing Athletes series, whose ability to swing a golf club while simultaneously pinching the bottoms of clubhouse staff and swilling beers, leaves him in a class by himself, at least as far as athletes are concerned.

Today, we turn our attention to the world's most popular sport, soccer, or 'football' to those who take great pains in pointing out its proper name, despite this being news to absolutely no one. It's quite common for the average punter to lament how athletes sign a big fat extension, and proceed to phone in their performance once the pen has graced the surface of the contract. Of course, there are exceptions. One guy who can't be accused of dogging it, is Norwich midfielder Matthew Pattison, whose nightclub piss up the night before, or more accurately, three hours before, did not prevent him from attempting to make his morning practice.

What did, though, was the presence of cops tipped off by the hotel owner where Pattison was staying and, as a result, the first and only orange pylons he encountered that day were those of the roadside spot check.

It's not uncommon for a night on the town to blur into a day at the office, but in many cases, say that of the ornery bus driver who burps a reply when asked for directions, they're not the most physically demanding of jobs and you can blame your computer monitor for your bloodshot eyes if the bossman happens by the cubicle.

Now, if you're a professional athlete, it's a different story. Soccer players are well-known to shed 10 lbs during 90 minutes of play, and to keep up this level of match fitness, practice drills are intense enough to have even sober players rainbow retching all over the pitch. Luckily for Pattison, he was able to spend a few, less grueling hours, drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and filling out police paperwork.

Drink & Drive Your Way Through Grand Theft Auto!

Researching our book, we chronicled four separate, er, pastoral DUI incidences in which suspects slowly trundled away from authorities on lawn mowers or tractors at speeds that wouldn't test the warranty fine-print of even the cheapest, Chinese-made pacemakers. Most recently, a Michigan man with a bellyful of wine braved a snowstorm on his John Deere, and was busted en route to a nearby store.

Today's focus though, is on a related scourge afflicting rural and urban culture alike-- violent video games, in particular the popular series Grand Theft Auto.

Since youth culture emerged like so much acne, many a finger has been pointed at everything from the bikini and drag racing, to the broad chest of the guy who kicks sand in your face at the beach, and lately Facebook as the cause of whatever prevailing social ill. Now, the very latest calamity befalling youth culture appears to be the deviant, action adventure, role-playing game.
[Editor's Note: We acknowledge, given the age of a typical gamer is somewhere in the early 30s-- many of the same demographic having recently hung up their skateboards due to chronic lower back problems-- the term 'youth' might be a bit of a misnomer.]

The latest entry in the Grand Theft Auto video game series has many critics wondering how many more banana peels line that already slippery slope toward social upheaval.

Its maker, Rockstar Games---rather than showing greater social awareness and allowing users to jack up more green-friendly modes of transport like diesel buses or perhaps a bicycle---is instead allowing gamers to engage in, well, degenerate 'rock star'-like shenanigans. These include driving drunk, going to a strip club, flying a helicopter and fleeing from the cops--in short, recreating Motley Crue's 1987 world tour, ideally, during the course of one game.

According to Canadian Press, one of the game's characters, an Eastern European thug named 'Niko Bellic', has already become an icon to millions of viewers who've watched official trailers over 40 million times online. As Bellic, you can engage in a relatively benign mission, such as whacking a rival laid up in hospital, in addition to the usual fair: killing innocent bystanders, cops, hookers, etc as a latter-day couch-bound, cheese-doodle noshing Travis Bickle. The game, available for the first time on both Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, also contains 'sex secret scenes', which aren't too secret anymore (Sorry).

Rockstar's vice president notes, rather un-ironically: "We felt we owed it to the [fans] to have a game that was really amazing and really pushed the limit. It would've been foolish to rush something out and disrespectful to the audience."

Drunk Driver Calls 911 on Self: Hello Wisconsin!

As we've noted in previous posts, to the point of smacking our heads repeatedly against the steering wheel in frustration, we unequivocally, in no way whatsoever endorse impaired driving---our Top Ten Greatest Drinking & Driving Anthems of All Time referring solely to the soundtrack of a drunken, Grand Theft Auto game in the confines of one's moldy basement.

That being said, we've taken great pleasure here in pointing out the folly of those who do get behind the wheel blotto and while this may not garner any favor with those who fly red ribbons from their antennae, we'd be hypocrites if we claimed otherwise---as authors of a sizable chapter in our book entitled, Contents May Shift in Transit: Drunk and on the Move.

In a subsection of the above, Chariots of Firewater no less, we noted a drunk driver in Germany who got sidetracked with a flat, and in a breach of male etiquette dictating that you change your own damn tire drunk or otherwise, decided to phone for help. In his compromised state, he unwittingly called police instead of roadside assistance, presumably missing the 'Hello---police', on the other end and then blurting out that a mechanic should be dispatched post-haste as he was very drunk and things would turn ugly for him if the cops arrived. Which they did.

In Wisconsin, a woman decided to call 911 dispatch while driving home drunk from a local watering hole. The following is a transcript of the conversation.

Caller: I just want to know if somebody can follow me home because somebody seems to think I can't drive home straight.

911 Operator: OK, why is that?

Caller: He seems to think I am too intoxicated to drive.

911 Operator: OK, and so you called 911, or he called 911?

Caller: Well, he wanted me to call 911 because he thinks I'm too drunk to drive.

The 'he' in this case was a boyfriend who'd consumed a 12-pack by himself, yet still had the wherewithal to point out the driver, who'd knocked back 6, should not be getting behind the wheel (and yet no foresight or judgment whatsoever to pass up a ride home).

The woman failed the Breathalyzer and was ticketed in her own garage, but not before earning the unlikely kudos from a county sheriff (possibly, a distant relation):

"I think a judge will look at her and say, 'You know what? You stepped up to the plate. You did the right thing. I think it's commendable."