Social Drinking Excellence: Everett Lages

Just go ahead and read this excerpt from The Huffington Post while I continue the blank stare that I've had since reading the headline:

Everett Lages was arrested outside of Emerald City strip club in Murdock, Fla. on Tuesday for repeatedly calling 911 after the owner prohibited him from entering with a kitten, according to a Charlotte County Sheriff's press release.

When Emerald City's owner told the 47-year-old man to leave, he instead sat down outside and called the cops, the release said.

Lages appeared intoxicated when deputies arrived, prompting authorities to call him a taxi, according to the release.

The kitten-carrier refused to tell the cab driver where he lived and instead kept calling 911 -- despite sheriff's deputies still being at the scene -- so police arrested him.

Lages is charged with misuse of the 911 system, disorderly intoxication, trespassing after warning and resisting arrest without violence.

There was a time when Rummy candidates seemed to only come around once every so often. Now it's like they pop up everyday. Not only that, but more and more of them involve animals in some way, shape, or form. These are strange times, folks. I've got so many questions that it's hard to choose where to start. Let's go with this:

• Why the hell did he have a kitten? Was it his kitten, or did he find it or steal it from somewhere on his way to the strip club?
• ...Was he out drinking when he saw the kitten and—by process of word association—got the idea to go to the strip club?
• Why, exactly, does the strip club have an anti-kitten policy? What, are they worried about health and cleanliness standards? Because...
• Was the kitten his designated driver?
• I've got to say...as crazy as this tale reads, taking a kitten into a strip club actually sounds like a brilliant idea. There may be no better way to woo a dancer into some extras in the champagne room.

• This may be a whole new level of drunkenness; who has ever been so hammered that they didn't realize they were in the presence of the police? No matter how blacked-out blotto people are, the one thing that usually brings about some sense of awareness is a cop showing up. But Mr. Lages was so destroyed that he continued to call 9-1-1 despite the fact that the police were standing right in front of him. He seems to have discovered a black hole of inebriation.
• Considering how many crazy news stories come out of Florida these days (naked, face-eating man, anyone?), just how jaded do you think 9-1-1 operators in that state are? I can't help but wonder if the operator(s) taking Lages' calls even blinked when he explained he needed assistance because a strip club wasn't letting him into their establishment with his pet cat. These folks might be the closest thing America has to the Royal Guards in England.
  

Mr. Lages, your Rummy is in the mail. It can also be used as a cat carrier, and there's a compartment for storing your dollar bills.