To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, when the times get weird, the weird go pantless.
On May 23, a man approached a White House security checkpoint and told Secret Service agents he had “a 3 p.m. meeting with Mr. Obama.” The rejected visitor walked away and began stripping down, yelling that he had an appointment with the president “as he shook his naked body,” according to The Daily Caller.
Agents wrestled the man to the ground, and fire trucks and police cars arrived as a blockade was set up outside the White House and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
On May 27, a naked man went streaking past police headquarters in downtown Seattle. “Officers found the man running downhill toward Elliott Bay and ran off after him,” according KOMO news. The flatfoots chased the rogue flash of pink down to Seattle’s waterfront, losing him briefly in the Elliot Bay blue. The soaked streaker was then taken to a hospital for medical evaluation.
In a discomfiting May 24 item, an unidentified man carrying an urn and roses stripped naked at a park in the Bronx and jumped into the Harlem river, with a single flower in hand. Witnesses “dashed to the water’s edge, where they saw the victim begin to shake uncontrollably before sinking,” reports the New York Daily News.
On May 20, a naked man was caught on videocamera at a Dallas intersection, as he jumped onto a moving car and slid through the open sunroof, head first.
The offender clawed at the woman driver, who screamed and crashed her car. Police arrested 23-year-old Nicholas Dyll and charged him with assault and felony criminal mischief. According to ABC news affiliate WFAA, he was released on bond.
Other recent headlines from across the U.S. include: “Naked man punches officer, tries to steal patrol car,” “Naked man accused of attacking subway commuters faces felonies,” “Naked man referenced Sasquatch before attacking hunter.”
Are crimes and misdemeanours by “naked man” on the upswing south of the border? Stories involving the dude seem to be going from police blotters to news pages with peculiar frequency.
Remember Cops? In the first reality television series from the ’80s, it was de rigeur for self-medicating, male domestic offenders to appear on camera shirtless, waving a golf club or bottle of JD. But with the passage of time and the devaluation of the currency of “losing it,” it seems more layers have to come off, with gender neutrality observed.
I’m referring to Naked and Afraid, an American reality television series that first aired on the Discovery Channel last year. According to a Wikipedia entry, “each episode chronicles the lives of two survivalists — a man and a woman — who meet for the first time and are given the task of surviving a stay in the wilderness naked for 21 days. After they meet in the assigned locale, the partners must find and/or produce water, food, shelter, and clothing within the environment.”
This must be close to the bottom for the American schadenfreude-entertainment complex: supplying an opportunity for celebrity-starved participants to humiliate themselves before millions, in what sounds like a dry run for an unzipped zombie apocalypse.
I can’t wait for The Bachelor: Naked and Afraid.
The U.S. may have cornered the market on pre-collapse primitivism, but don’t count out other nations. “Naked Man Acting Like A Dog Run Over While Chasing Cars” is an item from Brno, Czechoslovakia, while “Naked man danced, sang, and hurled rocks at cars causing 13 to crash” hails from the aptly-named town of Darwin, Australia.
Even the harsh theocracy of Saudi Arabia is joining in on the crazed nude male meme.
“A man roaming the streets of Makkah half naked is said to be mentally ill and terrorizing residents,” the Saudi Gazette reported May 24.
“Mohammad Ali keeps the upper part of his body stark naked while wearing a transparent loincloth that barely covers his manhood. He talks while holding a cigarette between his teeth and always seems to be angry.
“My name is Mohammad Ali. I am coming from here and going there,” he answered when asked about his name and where he was heading.”
geoffolson.com