Distilling a year’s worth of idiotic — and largely inconsequential — criminality into one reflexive story has never been an easy task. It’s grown only harder since Nashville decided to cater to infrequent visitors committed only to coming to town for a few days to flaunt the standards of good taste, decorum and decency. But enough about the Tennessee General Assembly.
The Broadway blotter in 2024 was — as has been the case for the decade-plus since the city pivoted to an economic model based on overserving Cybertruck drivers, future failed tradwife Instagram influencers and school-board meeting busybodies — full of the usual cavalcade of self-urinators and incoherent Pink Whitney-vomit-flecked entitled alumni chapter presidents. For the most part, the bachelorettes with the ruined mascara and the lascivious gawkers slobbering at them receive a reprieve this year, however.
Our algorithmically driven news presentation pushed them off Google’s first 173 pages because a certain country music megastar (we don’t use names in the Petty Crime Roundup) — whose unceasing antisocial behavior has been so public, egregious and unpunished that the next logical career step is a Trump cabinet nomination — heaved some furniture from precipitous height.
Given that sort of competition, it’s going to take a lot more than screaming at a cop or yellowing the crotch of your pleated khakis to get attention.
From conspiratorial legislation to country stars hurling chairs, here’s our 35th annual list of bloopers and blunders
It helps draw eyeballs to your misdeed if you’re a relatively prominent person, or at least related to one. The son of a Mississippi Republican congressman was arrested for his small-potatoes foreshadowing of the aforementioned country singer when he tossed a cup from atop Jason Aldean’s bar this year, hitting the foot of a passing Metro police officer. The principal of a prominent Cincinnati Catholic high school lost his job after being kicked out of — and returning to — The Twelve Thirty Club six times one enchanted March evening.
On the rankings of societally important people, “TikTok influencer” falls behind “child of backbench congressman” and “administrator of Midwestern parochial school.” So it should be no surprise that, despite convincing more than 4 million people to watch your insipid 30-second videos about God-knows-what, you’re still getting a free trip to the lockup if you punch a server at a honky-tonk across the jaw. That’s what one TikTok influencer who is probably better-known than George Will learned in March. (George Will would never get arrested at Rippy’s, or get on TikTok for that matter.)
Kid Rock’s MAGA Griftarama, Neon Shot Emporium & “Steak” “House” is the axis mundi for booze-fueled dumbassery, with fights and nudity and general disorder the nightly agenda. A 26-year-old Illinoisan was arrested in February for assault of an officer, disorderly conduct, vandalism and resisting arrest. He was apparently so upset by the entertainment being offered that he was knocking things from the bar and stage. Having good taste is a crime now.
At least his logic was sound, unlike that of the 61-year-old man arrested in June at Broadway Brewhouse. He was discovered, wearing naught but a bar apron, trying to steal liquor. Far be it from us to yuck somebody’s yum, but if you find yourself nude at 6 a.m. and breaking into a Broadway Brewhouse, steal the hot wings.
Of course, drunken lunacy needn’t be confined to bars. You can also get hammered and do something stupid at less obvious places, like a middle school football game in Lebanon, as one Hartsville couple learned in September. So incensed was the missus at the pivotal events of Satterfield Middle versus Winfree Bryant Middle, she poked at an opposing fan. An SRO leapt to action, and he and the poker took a tumble. While the SRO was doing his best to restrain her enthusiasm, he got kicked by the missus’s mister. Both were arrested.
Sounds like a healthy marriage, unlike that of the 26-year-old man arrested at Commerce and John Lewis Way in April for firing shots into the air. He told the officers — after he threatened their life, catching a charge — that he was just happy he’d gotten divorced. Vegas would have been cheaper, pal.
It would have been safer to just do some light vandalism. Small thinkers will merely vandalize one trash can or lamppost, but that wasn’t good enough for a 37-year-old arrested in April. He hurled a perfect game: knocking down all 76 planters on the Broadway Bridge. Sturdy though they were, the planters themselves were not damaged, just tossed asunder. The plants within and the soil, however, had to be replaced to the tune of $3,800, unbudgeted no doubt by the beautification folks.
And this is why it’s important to have a plan. A 25-year-old was arrested in the computer lab at the Divinity Library at Vanderbilt University (read that again) for … uh, an act of self-devotion. Because in this age of smartphones and ubiquitous internet access, the only place to access the ’Hub is a divinity school library. Hands don’t have to be idle to be the devil’s playground. Anyway, the man was cuffed but managed to wriggle free because, well, he’d come prepared with lubricant, and his hands were still slick with assistance when he was Mirandized.
From conspiratorial legislation to country stars hurling chairs, here’s our 35th annual list of bloopers and blunders
