The 6 Most Aggressively Ridiculous Benders in Modern History

Written with Ian Fortey.

Sure, we've all gone on week-long benders and maybe ended up killing a few hobos with our bare hands or bonin' Pamela Anderson. (Not the famous one, the one from accounting. You know, the one with that... thing?) But some folks out there just take it to the next level. Some folks get so wasted on their mind-altering substance of choice that to hear their story retold is to be a part of something equal parts horrifying and beautiful, like watching a live birth. Here are the confused, bewildered, most certainly arrested souls that gave birth to our most majestic of benders:

A 19-year-old Nevada man was arrested at the border, when passing motorists called the authorities to report a nude man by the side of the highway. And right there you already see this is about drugs: The words "naked" and "highway" are never used together except in the company of inebriation. But of course, "found naked on a highway" isn't enough to make a list alone; that's barely enough to make a Saturday.

When authorities responded, the man fled on foot into a nearby casino (still naked) and when eventually cornered told police rather matter-of-factly that he was "a Terminator sent from the future."

Real robots from the future don't run, they just punch you mercilessly in the spine.

It is at this point that I would like to suggest this man be crowned God-King of excuses, because that is a goddamn good one. We all know, thanks to the Terminator mythos, that clothes cannot be transported back in time. That explains the nudity. And one cannot tell a Terminator from a human being, so there's no way to immediately disprove his claims. Finally, if you even suspect that something is a Terminator, the last thing you want to do is arrest it. So in a perfect world, this is the kind of idyllic excuse that would win the Lie Oscars. It fits every criteria of the situation, negates every negative consequence of said situation and is also just goddamn funny. However, because this is not a perfect world, he was sadly snubbed by the Academy of Awesome Hail Mary Untruths, and instead was awarded several Tasings... in front of a group of school children there for a field trip.

Authorities say the man had large amounts of LSD and marijuana in his system, which creates a quandary for me: Did he manage to think up the best excuse ever while naked on the freeway on LSD, or was this a very detailed, genre-specific acid trip and the entire reason he was naked on the highway was due to said Terminator Theology?

See? They really are oddly spine-focused robots, in the future.

Because if the former is true, this man deserves the slowest of slow claps, but if it's the latter, then this is the most effective anti-drug ad I have ever heard: This guy dropped acid thinking, at most, he's gonna see some sweet tracers and maybe figure out what Wings was really all about. So he flips over to TNT (where The Terminator is always, always on)--cut to two hours later, and Mrs. Warwick's fifth grade class is doing research on the variable speed of ball spasms in reaction to electric stimulation.

Wait... why the hell did you bring children to a casino for a field trip, Mrs. Warwick? You are not a very good teacher.

Nothing is quite so heartwarming as a child at Christmas; the holiday is just tailor made for the little tykes. And what could be more adorable than a four-year-old boy... drunk off his ass, wearing a dress and committing a few felonies for the holidays? The answer is that same four-year-old playing a rockin' drum solo. But that would never happen. That's silly. Just a silly, silly dream (for now). Little Hayden Wright, perhaps exhausted after a long week of playing at daycare, fed up with his old lady nagging at him and generally feeling beat down by the drudgery of life, decided he needed to kick back with an ice cold Bud. Happens to the best of us.

"That's what I love about these preschool girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."

Now where the four-year-old mind parts ways from most adults is in the execution of the ensuing bender: Many of us would happily sit in our gitch and watch SpongeBob for the rest of the day, punch out the mailman, hug the dog and cry. That'd be cool. But Hayden decided to roadtrip it Hunter S. Thompson style. Sometime around 1 AM, he left home behind and took his beer out into the world. He wandered down the street in the middle of the night and rang a neighbor's doorbell who, upon seeing a four-year-old drinking beer in the wee hours of the morning did what any of us would do. He sent him on his way. Hey, last thing you need is a drunken toddler fuckin' up your place in the middle of the night. I mean, can you imagine? Going on about how that slut Dora won't explore anything new anymore and then puking on the coffee table. Who needs that hassle?

So Hayden went to the next house and, finding they'd left their door unlocked, taught them why you shouldn't leave your door unlocked. He ransacked their Christmas presents, including stealing a brown dress which he was wearing when police finally found him.

Pictured: Hayden Wright, Sr.

Cops took the little wino to the hospital where he had his stomach pumped and presumably he swore he'd never drink again (but you know he was hitting the bottle again the next day). Mom eventually showed up with a pantload of excuses about how his dad is in prison and he just wanted to go see him, none of which even broach how confounding it must have been for cops to roll up at nearly 2 AM and see a four-year-old boy in a dress with a beer.

This is easily the greatest Christmas story I've ever heard and should be retold throughout the ages. It may even deserve its own claymation Christmas special. It really has everything: a felonious absentee father, cross dressing, irresponsible parents, irresponsible neighbors, several misdemeanors, a tall boy, a B&E and stomach pumping. If that's not the spirit of the season then Jesus has been hiding all those eggs in vain.

Graham Nickerson was out partying all night in Nova Scotia when he ran afoul of that most common scourge of the drunken get-together: disappearing pants. Presumably Graham scoured the area in search of the pants for some time and came up empty handed, though it seems just as plausible that he never had any pants to begin with. Thinking quickly--and with all the sharpness you'd expect from a piss drunk fish factory worker who was naked from the waist down in the woods at night--Graham made his way to the nearby home of a 92-year-old lady and let himself in. Luckily the woman was out, doing whatever elderly Nova Scotians do all night, while Graham helped himself to a pair of her Depends. Then, satisfied that he had managed to attire his undercarriage in a suitable fashion, he proceeded to pass the fuck out on her floor.

"Oh man, eh, I drank too much of the Molson there... eh?"

When the rightful owner of the diapers arrived on the scene the next morning and discovered a drunken idiot she hadn't left there the night before, she went to a neighbor's to call the cops. At his trial, Nickerson defended himself by pointing out that "he hadn't drank that much in a while." In legal terminology, this is known as the "Epically Piss-poor" Defense.

Normally when a drunk decides to drive somewhere it's not particularly hilarious or worthy of acclaim. But if you get drunk, are arrested and then brought to a hospital, where you decide to steal the most conspicuous vehicle you can find short of hunting down the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, well then you're on to something. And if the news shows up in time to see your drunk ass get arrested again the next town over, well that's just aces.

Mindy Jones, upset that The Man was keeping her down by arresting her and whatnot, was being checked out at a hospital to see if drinking had made her retarded. Unfortunately, drinking had made her retarded so she hoofed it outside and made off in an ambulance. Destination? 50 miles away in the next town over to see her ex-boyfriend. Hopefully Freebird was blasting on the radio. Local news was on the scene when she was arrested and they got a scoop of an interview. It's worth watching to see Mindy, as charming as a little shit-faced pixie with her hands cuffed behind her back say, "I had a pretty good time driving it." OK, so maybe it wasn't Freebird, but you know it was some kind of Skynyrd, man. You know it.

In Munich, two local men were drinking by the River Isar when an Eastern German tourist made the horrible mistake of being sort of around them. The men began verbally harassing the tourist and, when words were simply not enough to properly vent their frustration at the man's continued existence, the situation escalated. The inevitable happened. One assailant assaulted the tourist... with a swan.

That's not like, a brand name of Taser or bizarre European slang for a knife. It was an actual swan. He "grabbed a live swan by the neck and used the bird as a club to beat up another man."

A few things you should stop and appreciate:

1. Swans are quite large, with impressive wingspans.

2. The swan was alive, likely struggling and comically flapping the entire time.

3. Swans are actually total dicks, so it's OK to laugh (plus it was alive and unhurt afterward, if its dickery alone doesn't ease your guilt).

If you've been on the Internet for long enough, you've probably seen this image:

There is clearly an extra credit follow-up question now: "Have you ever been so drunk that you assaulted a man with waterfowl?"

An hour and a half later, police receive a call about a crazed man who "appeared, screaming, in front of Julie Donnelly, a 34-year-old woman out walking her dog." Note that: "Appeared, screaming." As in, he was already screaming when she just happened to show up. Just... just screaming at the sunrise. The man then "charged her, grabbed her dog by the neck, choked it and slammed it into the pavement before running off." Again, that is an instant decision from Mr. Lopez: "Nice dog you got there, you mind if I CHOKESLAM!" ... and then he is gone like some sort of dickhead Batman. A few minutes later police found Lopez at the Rancho San Clemente Tennis Club, completely naked, lying on the ground pouring hot coffee on himself. They arrested him, because it's outside of police procedure to give a man a viking funeral before he's technically dead.

"He may have been under the influence of drugs," police told the local newspaper. That is their actual quote. Here's his mugshot:

"He may have been on drugs."

Look at that picture! That guy isn't on drugs, that guy is drugs. That guy is the living avatar of drugs. He is their embodiment on Earth. As Jesus Christ was to the Lord, that picture is to narcotics. He leapt out a third story window, wrestled a dog to death with his bare hands after a passerby interrupted his screaming session, then stripped naked and covered himself in burning coffee... and police are not willing to commit to his status RE:Drugs.

Here's a hint: It's very. His status is "very drugs."