In what has to go down in the annals of bar brawling as the “Worst Bar Fight Ever”, a potential tragedy was avoided last week when a man who had been slapped for inappropriately touching another man's chest had his revenge seeking chainsaw stall before he could do anyone harm.
And to round out the story, this all happened at a California bar called “Stinky Mulligans”. Trust me; I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Apparently, the troubles allegedly began when 31 year old Weston Cecil Burton touched another man’s chest inappropriately. I am not convinced, especially when in a bar called Stinky anything, that there is an appropriate way to touch another man's chest. Pretty much any touching is inappropriate in my book. Now, we don’t know if the purported touching was a simple pat, a chest hair swirly, a man boob grab or a full on double fisted nipple twister, but whatever it was, it was perceived by the owner of said chest to be just plain inappropriate.
So that man slapped Burton. Then he pushed him down.
This apparently angered Burton, who went out to his truck to retrieve his chainsaw. He returned to the bar and fired that puppy up, only to get a very valuable lesson on the importance of regular chainsaw maintenance when it stalled unexpectedly.
Talk about spoiling the moment. It is apparently very difficult to maintain an aura of fear when you are trying to restart your stalled chainsaw. It seems the potential victims of this attack were not in the mood to wait for that to occur, so they simply took his chainsaw from him. He fled the premises, but was easily identified for arrest because he left his credit card at the bar.
Apparently one may not run a tab at Stinky’s without first establishing their credit worthiness.
The entire grisly affair was summed up by one of the establishment's intelligentsia when they said ““I thought it was funny when I read it in the newspaper, but when I thought about it, I don't like that bar anymore”.
Wow. Yet another child left woefully behind.
Burton was arrested on charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Seems to me it was more of an assault with a dead weapon. It is a good thing too, as innocent people, including Stinky employees, could have been hurt.
This story almost fell through the cracks, as California is abuzz this week with allegations of political bribery and intrigue related to workers’ comp. That story is being competently covered by Al-Jazeera America (that is something I thought I would never write), Roberto Ceniceros and David Depaolo. I chose to bypass that story for now, largely because I have nothing useful to add (like that ever stopped me), but mostly because we Floridians long ago legalized the bribing of our politicians through something called the “Political Action Committee”.
California has so much to learn from us. That apparently extends to how to conduct a good slap happy nipple twisting bar brawl as well.