6 Parties That Careened Out Of Control
Throwing a great party is tough. There's a fine line between the best wedding/birthday/X-Files viewing party the world has ever seen, and an entertaining list of criminal offenses that ensures your friends and family will never speak to you again. To celebrate the release of Search Party on May 13, Cracked has put together this list of party-related disasters that will make you feel better about the time you got drunk at your friend's housewarming party and decided to renovate his bathroom with a claw hammer. For example ...
Dutch Teen Sends Facebook Birthday Invitation, Accidentally Starts Riot
It was 2012 in the small Dutch village of Haren, and young Merthe Weusthuis made a single, fateful error. While inviting a group friends to her 16th birthday party on Facebook, she set the invitation to "public," perhaps not realizing that Facebook allows people who've been invited to public events to turn around and invite their own friends. Before long, someone had "hilariously" invited another 500 people to Weusthuis' party, and that was all it took for this viral joke to start spreading like influenza at a sneeze-fetish convention.
More and more people started sending out invites, and soon Weusthuis' address and willingness to party was being broadcast to the entire world as effectively as if she was running Andrew W.K.'s Twitter account. Within a week, 30,000 invitations had been sent out for the once-teeny 16th birthday celebration, with pre-partiers setting up a party-related Twitter and website and even producing several unofficial party trailers. Look, it's the Netherlands, OK? There's not much else to do there.
This tulip's blog gets over 30,000 hits per day.
The hour of the party neared, and revelry-hungry hordes started to march on Weusthuis' home like Uruk-hai clutching red Solo cups instead of scimitars. Dutch police moved into action, trucking in extra police to deal with the crowd and evacuating the poor teenager and her family. Realizing that there was going to be no party after all, and that the phone signal in the village didn't provide a good enough connection for them to check up on the tulip blog, the wannabe-partiers began to riot.
Luckily, this marked the first and last time an angry internet mob ever disappointed
anybody with their behavior.
The rioters spilled into the town center, setting cars on fire, smashing store windows, and even building a makeshift anti-police barricade out of stolen supermarket carts. Since this happened in the Netherlands, I'm going to assume that the police were almost able to get at the rioters by making a hole in the barricade, but that one brave rioter stopped their progress by sticking his finger in it.
In the end, the riot resulted in 34 arrests, several serious injuries, a quarter of a million euros' worth of damages, and presumably a 17th birthday party for Ms. Weusthuis that consisted of a quiet Netflix marathon.
Fake Party Gun Attracts Non-Fake Police
For their 10th wedding anniversary, Roy and Val Worthington decided to celebrate their enduring love with a fun costume party. They selected a Wild West theme, probably because "Roy Worthington" is a goddamn badass name for a cowboy, and invited guests to show up in Western-themed costumes. The party was to take place in a small village in England, a country with extremely strict gun-control laws, so Val Worthington made sure to call ahead and warn local police to expect a few fake guns around.
"Expect the village prostitutes to look a bit gaudier than usual, too."
All went well as the cowboy-clad couple successfully renewed their vows inside a church, and then partygoers started out on foot toward a local pub to drink gross English beer and hope that their rented Stetson hats wouldn't give them a contagious head fungus. That is, until they ran into a bunch of armed police, who had shown up with squad cars, dogs, and a freaking helicopter.
It turned out that during the walk from the church, a villager had spotted a toy rifle slung over one guest's shoulder. The police decided to respond aggressively to this complaint despite Val's prior warning, because ... they assumed that this was another, coincidental gathering of genuine cowboys in the same town? Or maybe they figured that the "anniversary party" story was just a cover and that a real cowboy gang was planning to sweep in and steal all of England's cows?
It's almost too easy.
At this point, many Americans reading this are no doubt laughing at the thought of this massive police response caused by a single toy gun, but maybe those British cops have the right idea about keeping weapons and parties separated, because ...
People At American Weddings Keep Accidentally Shooting Each Other
Weddings are about two people getting together and solemnly declaring their eternal love in front of Yahweh, Allah, or Oopsor, the Sumerian god of accidental pregnancies. They're a joyful time full of happy tears, dancing, and delicious cake, and what better way is there to participate in all of that than by bringing along a gun? You can use it to wipe tears out of your eyes as the bride walks down the aisle or to shoot flowers out of your girlfriend's reach during the bouquet toss ... the opportunities are endless.
"After their custom vows, the bride and groom will throw the rings into the air
and shoot them onto each other's fingers."
It seems that plenty of people agree with this sentiment, because guests accidentally firing their guns at weddings is something that has happened way more times than never. In 2015, a man attending a wedding reception at New York's super-fancy Waldorf Astoria hotel discharged a concealed pistol while reaching into his pocket for a seating card, resulting in a ricochet that injured a guest and several hotel employees. The ricochet wasn't caught on tape, but I've seen a lot of movies, and so I assume that the bullet zipped around the room, shattering a glass vase full of flowers and startling a nearby cat before tearing a hole in the crotch of someone's pants and narrowly missing their genitals. Trust me, it's just how these things work.
The bride then ran off with a random dude who shouted,
"I OBJECT!" during the ceremony.
And that's just one example of firearm-related wedding hijinks: At a ceremony in Bardwell, Kentucky, in 2015, an off-duty sheriff's detective fired his gun while he was adjusting his jacket, shooting his own mother in the process. The mother survived, but the detective was put on administrative leave so he could sit in his room and think about what he'd done. And in Pennsylvania, a bride was convicted of manslaughter after accidentally shooting and killing her niece while moving a gun in a car after the ceremony. Which really illustrates the wisdom of that old wedding-day folk saying: "Something old, something new, something borrowed, keep your hands off the trigger we're in a goddamn church for God's sake."
Best Man Pulls Off Wedding Liquor Heist, Goes On Run From Law
Back in 2009, DJ Kendrick Shepherd was busy spinning tunes at a wedding reception in Houston. Because this was an American wedding, we can assume that Mr. Shepherd was also on the lookout for an accidental shooting. This vigilance failed to save him, though, because halfway through the reception, the best man pulled out a gun and very deliberately shot it in the air.
"SCREW YOU, CEILING!"
Having caused irreparable urine-staining to a whole lot of rented tuxedos, the best man then grabbed a bottle of expensive liquor that belonged to the DJ and ran. Despite sustained efforts by police to find the person that the press unfortunately never dubbed the Wedding Band-It, the best man was never seen again. Wait, they never found the guy? Couldn't the cops just, you know, ask the groom where he thought his closest friend in the world might have run off to?
Apparently not, because the groom claimed to know absolutely nothing about the best man at his own wedding, informing police that he had met the guy recently on a basketball court, and that the stranger had given his name as "Johnny Smith." Sure, the groom might simply have been lying to the cops to protect his friend, but I prefer to believe that the mysterious best man was in fact an extremely drunken, basketball-loving Time Lord.
But just in case you thought that any and all party-related shenanigans can be avoided by asking your guests to keep their guns at home ...
Bridal Party's Limo Hijacked Moments Before Wedding
The minutes before a bride walks down the aisle at her wedding are usually among the most terrifying in her life. There are so many things to worry about: Does she have lipstick on her teeth? Will she trip over her heels and fall down in front of her friends and family? Will she catch sight of her groom waiting for her at the altar, only to realize that he's not wearing any pants?
"Dad, listen to me. I need you to slowly turn around and walk me
back out the door. No questions."
A Massachusetts bride-to-be was probably wondering all these things as she sat with her bridesmaids in a rented limo outside the church, preparing to go inside. Fortunately, she soon stopped worrying about all of that stuff. Unfortunately, this was because a man had jumped into the limo and was beating up the driver.
The bridal party and the driver managed to escape, leaving the limo in the hands of the carjacker, who led police on an extremely formal-looking chase before crashing into a postal truck and escaping. Meanwhile, the bridal party recovered and continued with their wedding, because no way is a simple violent hijacking going to cause someone to forfeit their reception-hall deposit.
You can pry my $70-a-plate sea bass from my cold, dead hands, crime!"
Foam Party Causes Horrific Foam-Related Injuries
Foam parties, in which partygoers dance in a bubbly wonderland while being sprayed with overhead foam machines, seem like a relatively safe way to pass a celebratory evening. After all, barring some minor slipping injuries, what possible harm could come from a bunch of bubbles? Quite a lot, it turns out, especially at one star-crossed 2012 foam party in Naples, Florida, which sent 40 people to the emergency room.
"It was the most soap we'd seen in the ER since we last cleared out Fecal Impaction George."
Now, if you're like many of the people on my Facebook feed, you are probably now shaking your head in disbelief. "Millennials!" you cry. "With their helicopter parents and their safe spaces, crying about being injured by some bubbles! The only foam they should be complaining about is the corpse-foam that washed up on the beaches of Normandy!"
In reality, though, the foam-based injuries at the Florida party were both serious and absolutely horrifying: According to officials, the detergent used in the foam machines was probably incorrectly diluted, which resulted in an unusually high-alkaline foam that caused serious damage when it came into contact with partygoers' eyes. One victim was blinded for several days and described his injuries as the worst pain he'd ever experienced, and at least one person still had not regained full eyesight a month later.
On the plus side, he at least had an excuse to wear some bitchin' novelty sunglasses
at the next party he attended.
So next time you're hungover the day after a party, slinking around the house wearing dark glasses and cursing the existence of the sun, at least be grateful that last night you successfully managed to avoid any eye-based chemical burns.
You can find C. Coville on Twitter here.
Learn how to make champagne cocktails in 3 Recipes For A Great New Year's Eve Cocktail Party and you'll wish you could have partied with Andrew Jackson after you read The 7 Most Unexpectedly Awesome Parties in History.
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