Silent film re-edit of so-called "drunkest guy ever" surveillance video

I wonder if giving viral videos an old-timey silent movie treatment will become more popular. As for the actual content of the video, I thought it was sad. I hope the man in the video receives the help he needs to recover and stay well. He may not have been drunk. Maybe he was in insulin shock or something like that. (Here is the original video).

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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markbellis

Of course he was in insulin shock – that’s a twelve pack of isotonic glucose the poor man found too heavy to lift!
dbarak

Looks like it could have been a Ministry of Funny Walks skit from Monty Python.
jaypee

Personally I think he was all screwed up on K and was swirling around the event horizon of the k-hole.

When I first watched the original I was alternating between feeling sorry for homeboy, and laughing out loud.
- stegodon
  
  i thought the exact same thing – spastic, no balance – definitely looks like he’s gotten into some ketamine
folkclarinet

I am a type 1 diabetic and a couple of things come to mind in watching this.

First, whether drunk or not, it’s sad, not funny.

Second, if it were me having an insulin reaction like that (and boy have I ever), I’d be grabbing stuff *instinctually* that would raise my sugar. Any food, juice, milk, whatever. I _might_ if I were in serious denial insist I’m fine and just stopped by to buy beer, and therefore keep trying to hold onto the beer, BUT not for 7-8 minutes. After about 2-4 minutes of lying on the floor, I’d grab some sugar.

Yes, diabetics can insist they’re fine when they’re not. Yes they can behave like stubborn drunks. Yes they can fall over. HOWEVER, this guy is not convulsing and that strikes me as odd. When I’m this far gone on an insulin reaction, I’m also convulsing. Of course every diabetic is different and he may be exhibiting different behavior than mine.

And yes, some diabetics are permitted alcohol in moderation. Yes, my doctor says I can drink! :)
IshmaeLeaver

Thanks for reminding me of how painful living with an alcoholic was, and how messed up our culture’s response is to it. What’s next? Parodies of kids getting beat up by their parents at Walmart. Yay!
- mdh
  
  Next is the waaahmbulance.
- blueelm
  
  I think your projecting your vicimization onto him. There’s no “kid” in this video. He’s responsible for himself. I still don’t think it’s alcohol. Pcp in his weed, ketamine… something like that. He’s spastic, repeating movements over and over again with intent, his brain is sending the proper signal but his body’s not recieving it. Either he’s about to freaking die of some horrible disease I don’t know anything about or he’s way high.
HerkyDerky

True black comedy would show Mr. Jenkins helping him into his coach and buggy and sending him on his way.
2k

ahem.

I agree.
Alan

folkclarinet is spot on – usually people suffering from low blood sugar go for the candy – I’ve seen it first hand. And I don’t know why the store workers didn’t call 911 first thing, instead of letting this guy thrash about like that. Drunk, low or whatever, he needed immediate medical attention.

@bruhinb – yeah, your housemate had a diabolical disease, but I also know that if he had taken proper care of himself, and monitored himself, he wouldn’t have had so many problems like that. So yeah, it was partially not his fault, but partially is for not taking proper responsibility for his own well being.
- Dewi Morgan
  
  @Alan – so if you see a drunk, your first response is to call an ambulance? That seems a UK/Canada way of thinking. In the US, people tend not to call ambulances for eachother unless requested, or there’s arterial bleeding, since even the simplest ambulance trip will net you a bill for about $3k. It’s just not a “good samaritan” thing to do: ambulances wreck lives.
  
  Shoving him out of the shop might be harsh, but if he reeks of alcohol, and is trying to buy more, I can see it happening. I’d expect most people to check how he got there though. Odds are he didn’t drive; so he walked; so he’s a neighbour and a regular; and possibly a regular drunk, too. This may well be where he got the rest of the alcohol to get him to that state.
  
  Rather than give him a $3k bill every weekend, it’s arguably kinder to just push him to the door with a “go home and sleep it off”. Everyone might not come to the same conclusion, but the position is at least defensible.
  
  As for whether it’s ketamine or alcohol or pot or diabetes or some other ailment: the diabetes idea has been prettymuch excluded by above posts; I don’t know enough about K to comment; the blog post linked by El Mariachi has been removed, and I interpret that to mean “it was fake”; but I can totally see myself acting like this under the influence of alcohol, particularly if mixed with energy drinks or pot. Repetitive motions? Running about? Yup, that’s me when I’m off my face.
  
  Scary. The guy even looks a bit like me.
Anonymous

It seems like he is only off balance in one direction and that would strike me as unusual if he were drunk. I’m wondering if there is more going on with his condition, like Miniere’s. Saying that, I think if everyone saw how stupid they were while drunk, there would be fewer problems in the world.
JJR1971

There is nothing funnier than unhappiness — Samuel Beckett.

I also found the video ultimately more sad than funny, but I couldn’t help giggling a few times. I also agree with others who think there’s more at play here than mere alcohol.
skeptikos

I vacillated between laughing at him and finding him simply pathetic. In the end it was both. I do not feel sorry for him in the least; he made a decision to drink so much he couldn’t move or even stand properly. Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for one’s actions.

Oh, and I liked the silent film treatment.
Crispinus211

I still say it’s fake.
n/a

It looks like this person is suffering from a bad case of Vertigo.
farmfoodie

@Alan, it’s not always the case that diabetics are even partially at fault. My FIL got adult onset diabetes at 40, never having been overweight, nor a sugar junkie. Family predisposition, so not his fault. (There were diabetics even fifty years ago, before we all got fat and lazy.) He controlled it with diet and exercise for many years before becoming totally insulin dependent. He also monitors his blood levels like you would not believe, beyond even what his doctor recommends, and even he sometimes goes low without any warning. As bruhinb said, it happens from one second to another. He’s having a conversation and halfway through a sentence he’s howling, burbling, and arching his back.

But from what I’ve seen of FIL’s hypoglycemic fits, this video shows something else entirely.
Patrick Arcee

My take:

Not fake:
-he hits his head on the floor at least once,
-the original is way too long (y’know, like real life).

Not Diabetic:
-This severe a reaction would be paired with low energy/strength/animation

Not Drunk:
-(As mentioned) Too strong/animated, lacks that certain heighten-gravity old-man foot-shuffle character of very drunk

***Not Guilt Inducing:***
-We all owe favors to someone or know someone who needs and deserves a hand. If you care about people then stop shedding tears for some distant anonymous and go help someone. Seriously. Do it.

P.S. His limbs are acting like a bug sprayed by Raid. My guess is that he’s high.
(and a douchey boyfriend)
ill lich

If he were diabetic he probably wouldn’t be buying a case of beer (of course I say that, and I’ve known diabetics who drank, against doctors orders).

Is this a natural survival mechanism at work? Like, the body trying to stop itself from actually drinking more alcohol.
w000t

Real/fake? Ketamine/Tussin/Alcohol/other? All these and other questions are now rendered irrelevant by the (inevitable) Yakety-Sax version.
hassan-i-sabbah

Robo-tripping.Or K.Or both.
Still,poor fuuuucked up dude.didn,t even get his brewskis.
adonai

I’m still going for the mixing booze & weed theory. Either way, regardless of whether you think the incident is amusing or not, this video is inspired.
Anonymous

Not alcohol! This man’s very clearly on a lot of ketamine! Lots of ketamine! lots of ketamine. Watching someone do anything in this state is hilarious… Especially swimming.
Antinous / Moderator

He’s acting exactly like I acted the night that I drank a whole bottle of Arak. The only thing needed to complete the picture is waist-length hair crusted with licorice-flavored vomit.
- Itsumishi
  
  Hahaha, replace the waist length hair with nipple length hair and the Arak with Ouzo and you’ve just summed up a good portion of my youth.
El Mariachi

According to this blog post, the stumbling man, a friend of the author’s, had an unspecified serious illness which he has since died from.

I have no idea how credible the post is, but whatever the case, whatever was up with the guy, he clearly needed more help than a hustle out the front door. Even if he was simply very drunk, you don’t just send someone that incapacitated out onto the street to fend for himself.
jfrancis

It would probably be wrong of me to post links to other remixes.

http://www.urlesque.com/2009/10/20/drunkest-guy-ever-remixed/
Itsumishi

One Vote for the he’s had too much K camp.
markbellis

The guy seems to know where the beer is in the store and nobody is acting surprised about him being on the floor, so this might not have been his premiere performance at Jenkins’ Convenience!
niten

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyAGn2IZS3Q
Karl Elvis

Wow. That’s both hysterical and tragic. Even while worrying about the poor guy, I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s like setting something gruesome to ‘yakkity sax’; no matter how bad it looks, alternate input is driving the laugh center.
Anonymous

This is clearly a fake.

If he was truly drunk when he opens the fridge door (around the 25sec mark), he wouldn’t cling to it so strongly and would fall on the floor.

Stop worrying about his intoxication issues! Somewhere out there a group of comediants are having a good laugh on us and celebrating that their video went viral.
tsm_sf

Plenty of diabetics drink, and it’s not really a bad thing in moderation. That being said, someone in shock would be manhandling the candy bar isle, not the beer cooler.
thequickbrownfox

The speeded-up version with Yakety Sax is the best.
kingzilch

It looked to me like in old tv shows and comics, when someone would be suffering from a slow-acting potion. If we could have heard him speak, I bet he would have been saying something like “Can’t…feel…legs…must…drink…beer…to…counteract….poison!”
bruhinb

I’m weighing in in favor of the diabetic theory. I rented a room from a serious diabetic for a year, and saw all this behavior many times. He also had no memory of things that happened when his sugar was low, and did very out-of-character things. The condition came on like a switch being thrown. He had no warning and no way to prepare. As a house mate, I was left to deal with behavior equivalent to a stubborn drunk in denial: “Take the sugar, Bob.” “Don’ wan’ it! Leave m’lone!!”

Totally not his fault, though.
Anonymous

I’d say it’s an inner ear thing. Look at his gait, he’s reacting almost exactly as you would if the floor were being tilted. I had a few spells like this in the mid 90′s, gravity would just /shift/ on me, I’d get nauseous and very very dizzy. I remember once trying to walk down a hallway at work and I kept falling sideways into the wall as if the building were at a 50 degree angle. Very scary and weird, but aside from a few times that one year it’s never hit me again.
unklstuart

@El Mariachi – Interesting blog post. It never specifically mentions this video (maybe as to not encourage more viewings). But, it was posted the same day this version was uploaded.

The thing is, the author could be referring to countless others across the tubes. And maybe it is the author’s intent for this generic blog post to be linked from all such videos.
Patrick Arcee

Anonymous: a dizzy guy can communicate verbally

El Mariachi: I read the blog quickly, and when an unspecified blogger talks about his unspecified friend’s unspecified disease I get suspicious. One ‘user’ comment said that he too had a friend with this same terrible condition, despite the condition being unspecified.

Suspicious indeed…
Anonymous

Perhaps it’s pathetic that I know this, but as others have suggested that is not alcohol. He may have been drinking but that type of mobility problem isn’t alcohol. He’s not drunk which is why he’s trying so damned hard. Oh man, yeah, his mistake was trying to go anywhere. Surely a buddy could have picked up some beer.
Zadaz

I find it very strang of all the f-ed up s-t that gets posted to Boing Boing, that THIS is the one that everyone that everyone gets their sympathy up for.

“Aw, poor guy, hope he gets some help”

Come on. You’re only just saying that to assuage your guilt from laughing your ass off at this guy’s misfortune.

Are we really all so clenched that we can’t enjoy some good old schadenfreude?

(And to everyone crying “fake” you’ve clearly never been around someone filled to the gills with ketemine. Which is probably for the best.)
Anonymous

I would say K hole. Was a bit rough they didnt actually help the guy. Shoving him toward the door is hardly being a good citizen. Smaller doses is my suggestion.
Anonymous

As a drunkard of the Irish variety, I can say with certainty that this is bogus, a fake. That point midway through, where he is doing the Turtle dance on the floor, is the giveaway. Not only is he moving far too fast for a drunk, he is repeating the same moves several times. This is not bad alcohol management, this is bad acting.

– Boston Irish
erissian

I read the headline as “Silent Hill re-edit” and although I’m amused, I’m also a little disappointed.
benher

I vote for a frame rate speed-up, but other than that, comedy gold.

Laughing at drunks, kids high on laughing gas, and all-your-base variants are what the various and sundry memes of Internets are all about!
dwdyer

Regarding the possibility that the guy in the blog post was the guy in the video, and the video and the blog post are both authentic…

The timestamp on the security video is 10/06/2009. The blog post was done on 10/19.

If the guy died of some unspecified condition, it would have been within 13 days after this video was taken.

I do think the sentiment in the blog post is worthy, regardless of any suspicions people may have.

Also — pretty sure the video is from Florida — looks like a Florida lottery station at the beginning and end. L logo with a flamingo.
- octopod
  
  >pretty sure the video is from Florida — looks like a Florida lottery station at the beginning and end. L logo with a flamingo.
  
  meh, the interweb has dumbed us all down, in the oldentimes, you’d have been like, “clearly he collects antique bees, had a grandfather who voted republican, (but only on tuesdays), was once an attendant on the orient express, lost his luggage at a greyhound station three days previously, and plays the clarinet.” and I’d have been like, woah, professor, another puzzle solved!
Anonymous

It isn’t bad acting, it’s ‘tussin. Man, makes me miss high school.
hobomike

you shoulda seen him drive away…
El Mariachi

I’ve never been accused of having a Canadian mindset (certainly not by the Quebecois border guards who strip searched me and investigated the contents of my asshole before denying me entry) but from a purely pragmatic perspective, as a convenience store manager who knows everything’s being recorded for posterity, I wouldn’t want to expose myself or my employer to any liability arising from shoving an incapacitated person out of my store to potentially get run over by a truck or worse, try to drive home himself and run over a gaggle of schoolchildren. And that’s without even getting into the ethical issues (which, personally, far outweigh any pragmatic calculations.)

A $3K ambulance ride is cheaper than almost any of the alternatives.
El Mariachi

Also, I have done significant doses of ketamine, and the act of standing up was an unthinkable proposition. Standing up? Leaving the house? Driving to the local 7-11 to pick up a twelve pack of shitty beer? You lost me at the part where I wasn’t paying attention due to staring at the fucking ceiling and drooling on my shirt. Maybe this guy is just way more of a badass than me.