What a month it’s been for drunk drivers. People from all over the globe have made headlines for their boozin’ & cruisin’ exploits. Some of them were already famous while others became infamous as a result of their much-publicized deeds.

That’s why, instead of just one detailed account about a single honorable mention candidate, we’re briefly covering the inebriated endeavors of several of them in this installment of the BACS. Let’s begin our tour of tipsiness in New Zealand.

It was there, last month, in the southern city of Queenstown, that business manager Deborah Karen Graham sought clemency for a drunken-driving charge. Her defense strategy? Swine flu.

Graham and her attorney contended that the three glasses of wine she had were more potent because she was recovering from the virus. “She had swine flu. She was just getting over it … and she thinks because she had the flu it may have hit her harder,” insisted Graham’s defense counsel Nicole Murphy.

Unfortunately for Graham (and thankfully for millions of free-roaming sheep), Judge Kevin Phillips didn’t buy it. He fined her $360 and disqualified her from driving for six months.

We now go from a story involving swine flu to one that has absolutely nothing to do with porcine creatures: A Virginia police chief resigned after being arrested and charged with drunken driving.

David Baker retired as the head of the Alexandria Police Department within a week after being involved in a car accident in Arlington late last month. The 58-year-old Baker had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19, well over twice the legal limit, after crashing his city-issued, unmarked Ford Explorer into another vehicle while trying to merge onto I-66.

If convicted, Baker would face a minimum five days in jail according to Virginia law, since his blood-alcohol level was over 0.15. If he does serve time, we’re sure the former top cop won’t have any trouble making new friends during his stay.

Traveling just a bit up the road from the D.C. area to Jersey, we go from someone who might hear oinking (from other inmates) to a fat pig. Comedian and Howard Stern Show regular Artie Lange was charged with driving under the influence of an intoxicant and careless operation following an accident in Toms River.

Our first reaction to this story was: What took him so long? The man looks like he was born drunk.

The 41-year-old author of Too Fat to Fish reportedly struck the rear of a Pontiac Grand Am while driving his Nissan Sentra.

A Sentra? What the hell is an overweight guy with a New York Times best-seller whose day job involves hanging out with porn stars on satellite radio doing driving a Sentra? What, he couldn’t swing the extra $50/month for the roomier Altima? Maybe he’s stashing away his cash to buy more Lexapro.

A few days later, Lange pleaded not guilty to DUI, and he is due back in court on August 26. Perhaps he could help his case by employing character witnesses. We’re sure sports announcer Joe Buck wouldn’t mind vouching for Lange after his appearance on the premiere of Buck’s HBO talk show, Joe Buck Live.

Then, over on the West Coast in El Segundo, California, Joyce Dewitt – best known for playing Janet Wood on Three’s Company – was cited with drunken driving after police reportedly observed the 60-year-old actress drive past a traffic barricade.

If anyone has cause to drink it’s Dewitt. Her claim to fame is a role as third fiddle on a 1970s sitcom, and no matter how much she tried to shine, she could never overcome the shadow cast by Suzanne Somers’ breasts.

The opening line of the Three’s Company theme is “Come and knock on our door.” Well, our final honorable mention did just that, right here in the Capital City, and was arrested after some unique, yet ill-advised, rapping.

Mitchell James Deslatte of Baton Rouge was apparently quite blitzed while motoring our city streets late last month. So blitzed, in fact, he stopped to presumably sleep it off at a hotel on Highland Road near I-10. Evidently a little confused by his surroundings after being buzzed into the building, Deslatte asked the person on duty behind the desk if he was in a hotel.

Now, most residents of Baton Rouge know there is no hotel anywhere on Highland near I-10, but the good folks working in the building where Deslatte stopped were more than willing to give him a place to stay for the night. That’s because the door he knocked on was the entrance to the Louisiana State Police Troop A building.

Police booked Deslatte with 1st-offense DWI and made accommodations for him at the Gray Bar Hotel. We hear they offer a nice continental breakfast. Unfortunately, you don’t get reward points for staying there.

We would be remiss if we didn’t give kudos to Casey Rayborn Hicks, Public Information Director for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office. She and a few techies at the EBRSO are responsible for helping ensure that every possible BACS candidate was considered for this month’s installment.

Normally, DWIs are published almost every day in the local paper. Many of the ones printed in this last cycle, however, were printed without a numerically specific charge (i.e., 3rd and 4th offenses were simply printed as DWI). It turns out, the Sheriff’s Office had a glitch in the new computer software, which was eventually fixed.

Hicks and the gang pulled up dozens of booking records from a three-week period just so we could bring you an accurate representation of the area’s most talented alleged drunk drivers. Who says civil servants are lazy?

Admittedly, though, when we first noticed the police briefs were being printed sans specifics, we initially thought a conspiracy might be afoot. We thought maybe, just maybe, someone from the local judiciary – someone with a vested interest in seeing the Judge Don Johnson Trophy lose its legitimacy as the premier drunk-driving award in the entire country – pulled some strings and got the EBRSO to report DWI bookings at parish prison in such a manner.

Fortunately, Hicks quelled our suspicions, and we feel rather silly for thinking such a conspiracy could possibly be pulled off. It’s almost as ridiculous as insisting that President Barack Obama is really a Kenyan-born Muslim.

With that, we’re revealing how our top ten BACS candidates are associated with various conspiracy theories. It might be a stretch, but so was faking the moon landing.

Our top ten contestants were arrested and booked for suspicion of driving while intoxicated according to The Advocate reports (and the EBRSO) from June 22 – July 26, 2009.

10. Deylin Ramos M., 33, 1st-offense DWI, operating a vehicle without a lawful presence in the United States, expired license plate, insurance required, and improper lane usage.

Deylin Ramos is part of a conspiracy to bring illegals into the United States – not to steal our jobs, but to tow our old vehicles back across the border, thus depleting the used-car market and forcing Americans to buy brand-new automobiles. Funded by the American automakers, it’s called “Pesos for Pintos.”

9. Jason M., 33, 3rd-offense DWI and hit and run.

Jason claims he wasn’t behind the wheel; the man on the grassy knoll was.

8. Randy S., 25, 3rd-offense DWI, driver’s license suspended or revoked, and disobeying a red light.

Randy never stops at red lights because of the cameras. Not only is Big Brother using them to watch our every move, he’s also controlling our minds.

7. David N., 39, 4th-offense DWI and failure to stop or yield.

Why does David drink so much? Simple: One Book. One Community. One World Order.

6. Mark James T., 36, 4th-offense DWI and reckless operation of a vehicle.

It’s not Mark James’ fault he got drunk. Members of the Illuminati kept buying rounds of shots.

5. Jack David C., 34, 4th-offense DWI, possession of Schedule IV drugs, and driver’s license suspended.

The drugs in Jack David’s possession reportedly were red and blue pills. He offers them to people to prove that the Matrix is real.

4. Tommy Lee G., 27, 3rd-offense DWI, driver’s license required, hit and run, failure to maintain control of a vehicle, resisting an officer, battery of a police officer, and reckless operation of a vehicle.
Tommy Lee is a victim of a plot by the pharmaceutical industry designed to have every person named Tommy Lee suffer from some sort of liver disease. Some Tommy Lees are covertly turned into alcoholics, while others contract hepatitis from former Baywatch cast members.

3. Cyrus Brockway B., 23, 4th-offense DWI, speeding, and driving left of center.

Cyrus was speeding to get away from CIA surveillance aircraft cleverly disguised as low-flying mosquito abatement planes (because everyone has wised up to the black helicopters).

2. Thomas Michael C., 19, 3rd-offense DWI, hit and run, open-container violation, no insurance, driving under suspension, and fugitive from East Baton Rouge Parish.

A precocious BACS contestant, Thomas Michael was on the run because he fears for his very life. He knows that the proposed Baton Rouge loop would secretly also serve as a means of communication between the government and their reptilian alien overlords orbiting the earth in cloaked spaceships.

1. Damian O., 37, 5th-offense DWI, reckless operation of a vehicle, and driver’s license suspended or revoked.

Let’s see, this guy’s name is Damian and he has five DWIs, the same number as the sides on a pentagram. That can only mean one thing: Barack Obama isn’t the antichrist after all.