“Livin’ in Amerrrrrrrrricaaaaaaa.”
~James Brown
America and alcohol go together like America and alcohol- they’re such ideal companions there’s no feasible way to make a better analogy about it. But there are times when mixing alcohol with American inventions do not turn out so well. Bourbon and cars? Despite our brazen, occasionally maligned statements regarding drunk driving (“At least the drunk driving teens who died on the way to prom were cool enough to go to prom, probably because they were good at drinking” seems particularly damning in retrospect), we will admit that it’s usually not a good combination. Whiskey and airplanes? Okay, to be fair, we’ve just finished re-watching the plane crash scene of “Cast Away” so we don’t want to think about drunken airplane flying.
Despite how glamorous Die Hard 2 made it seem
But drunken broadcasting? Someone getting wasted, and then going live on television or radio? That is goddamn American. That’s literally the celebrity version of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. “You got drunk and high on my television show.” “You got your television show on my drunk and high.” “Holy shit best idea ever.”
“It truly was a chugging for the ages.”
That is why AFFotD is here to proudly present the most American moments of wasted broadcasting in American history. But first, we need to line up some shots.
Or we can just chug some Everclear.
Ahhhhh yeah. Yeah feel the burn.
Okay. *cough*. Okay. Let’s…uh, let’s get started.
Remember Ashlee Simpson? Not really? Us neither, yet we’re not surprised to hear her wasted on a Radio interview.
Ashlee Simpsons was pretty well known back in 2005 for…wait really, you’re not sure who we’re talking about? The chick who had the SNL lip synch controversy? She married that guy from Fallout Boy? No, Fallout Boy used to be that band that did shitty emo punk back in…okay, you know what, forget it. Ashlee Simpson is the singer who also is sisters with Jessica Simpsons…you know, Jessica Simpson, she was really hot for like three years and then people made a big deal when she gained like 10 pounds? Come on, you have to know who that is! She was in the Dukes of Hazards movie…oh don’t give us that “Wait they made a Dukes of Hazards movie?” shit, it had Johnny Knoxville in it… Oh come on! The guy from the Jackass movies! Yes? Now you know what we’re talking about? Sort of?
Anyway, for everyone who hated listening to Ashlee Simpsons’ “music” here’s a clip of her really wasted on a radio interview. Her publicist responded to it by saying that she wasn’t drunk (or…let’s be honest, she sounds more giggling-stoned than anything else here) but just tired. We would have to reply to that by saying, suuuuuure, and we’re “tired” too, and lack of sleep instead of a third shot of pure grain alcohol is mopre responsible for our occasionall lapses in speling. Wink. Hehehe.
Has Anna Nicole Smith been dead long enough for us to make jokes about her without people getting mad?
Anna Nicole Smith went from sex symbol to laughing stock to “Ohh…now we just feel bad for her” to, well, dead in record time (Charlie Sheen has recently been using her career path as a guideline, minus the sex symbol part). Smith’s eventual overdose on sleeping pills, while tragic, was hardly surprising, as Smith had an entire reality show that was started as a bet to see if she could be more incomprehensible than Ozzy Osbourne. She succeeded at times, as you can clearly see in this clip. When most people are told that they will be presenting an award, their normal response can range from “Time to find a strange hat” to “Dude, pranks are supposed to be realistic” depending on if your Johnny Depp or Bill from the mail room.
Not so for Anna Nicole Smith, who decided to get sloshed to the point where she straddled that incredibly fine line of “Every word she says is so slurred that the ACLU wasn’t sure if they were supposed to file litigation about it” and “still miraculously present enough to say ‘Freaking genius’ instead of the easy alternative.” She had reached the level of drunk that, if she was at a bar, whatever guy happened to be sitting at the barstool next to her would start high-fiving his friends as soon as she sat down. She was so drunk that her toxicology report would have come back, “You’re fucking joking, right?” She was so wasted her stomach was technically classified as a beer keg for the remainder of the night. She…uh, she was really wasted, is what we’re saying. Everclear!
WOOOOOO!
Paula Abdul something something pun combining “Wasted” with “American Idol”
When most Americans hear “Paula Abdul was drunk on a TV show” their response is usually, “I know, but I try not to get caught up in American Idol.” Paula Abdul is to partying what friction is to matches- when you combine the two, you just end up with something burned out. Nowhere was that more apparent than this interview with a morning show where Abdul goes from a “you figure that the producers of the show had ‘one flask of tequila’ accounted for in their rider” to a “Several publicists just got fired” level of out of it.
Honestly, the best part about seeing this borderline, “Will…urp, will you be my friend?” level of inebriation is the fact that it’s a morning show. When you’re a celebrity, in America it’s expected, nay, demanded that you get enough of a tolerance of alcohol that you can beat most people in a drinking contest. That’s just part of the rules you need to follow before this country lets you be famous. Which means…how early would Paula have had to get up to start pregaming for her interview like it’s some sort of goddamn tailgate? If the AFFotD tailgate parties are any clue, we’re conservatively guessing 4AM.
Who are we kidding, Tracy Morgan is awesome no matter what he does.
Tracy Morgan is hilarious. In this video, it feels like someone handed Morgan a bottle of Hennessey and said, “Wanna try to get this host fired?” The end result is glorious hilarity, and male partial nudity. After saying that “Lorne Michaels is like Obi-Wan” and “SNL is the Dagobah System” Morgan apparently sees himself on the monitor and feels the need to point out, “I am handsome. I can see why I got so many kids.” He then threatens, “Somebody gonna get pregnant while I’m in town” before he starts slapping his belly, claiming it’s a mating call.
Unlike the previous videos where you have youtube commentators and, we don’t know, churches or some shit crying out “They need help,” no one seems to have a problem with this video, because Tracy Morgan is fucking hilarious. Even the host thinks so, he sees his career collapsing in front of his eyes, and apart from meekly reminding his viewers to subtly make their children avert their gazes, he’s cackling almost as loud as the sound guy who you hear guffawing throughout the whole experience. This video is one of the reasons why we point out that the term “Drinking problem” is a misnomer- you can’t have a problem with something if that something is awesome.
Ben Affleck once put a baby inside of Sydney Bristow, we just wanted to mention that before you see him drunkenly try to motorboat a French Canadian reporter.
Ben Affleck’s career path looks like this. Occasional side-character/douchebag in Kevin Smith movies, secondary character in a great Matt Damon movie, …uh…Oscar winner?, Blockbuster star, Reindeer Games, shit still want to be a Blockbuster actor I just gotta stop taking so many shitty roles, Gigli, fuck it I’ll just direct. Some point after Ben Affleck became a joke, and before we took him serious again, he apparently spent a lot of his career auditioning for the role of “Sexual Predator” in Sexual Harassment videos. Though it is true, many Americans react to drinking alcohol by trying to grope women with French accents, so we can’t really fault Affleck for the accuracy of his portrayal.
But of course no discussion of drunken broadcasting shenanigans can be complete without…
Joe Nameth wants to kiss you, Yeahhhh!
Most Americans have seen this video, hell most citizenship tests require a screening of it. But goddamned if Joe Nameth didn’t do America proud with his slurred, cheerful advances on Suzy Kobler went about as successfully as most cheerfully drunken advances made by Americans in slightly inappropriate settings (in this case, with a sternly implied, “Maybe if you were fifteen years younger.”) And while Nameth never did get that kiss, he now has this video to tell America that he once got drunk and made an ass of himself on national Television. Essentially, what that means is, he has a video…of him being American.
America Fun Fact of the Day 