We know this column is normally dedicated to drunk drivers, but this month, our honorable mention is a little different. He wasn’t behind the wheel, nor was he even in an automobile, but he was definitely drunk. And since this is the “Blood Alcohol Championship Series” and not the “Drunk-Driving Awards,” we see no problem with it and neither should you.

This month’s honorable mention was given a citation by police for riding an animal while under the influence. Honestly, we had no idea there was a law against riding animals while drunk. We can only imagine how many horny, intoxicated men break this law by riding pigs and dogs they bring home after last call.

If this month’s installment of the BACS were an episode of Sesame Street, it’d be sponsored by the number two. No, it’s not because the contestants were so drunk they saw two of everything (although that’s a possibility). It’s because we have several honorable mentions, all of whom have something to do with the number two.

First, there’s 29-year-old Elsa Veisor of South Windsor, Connecticut, who was charged with drunk driving twice in one night. Veisor was initially booked with operating under the influence by Farmington Police around 1 a.m. on April 18 after an officer reportedly found her, apparently drunk, behind the wheel of a parked car with the engine running. Police said Veisor’s blood-alcohol content was twice the legal limit.

It has been a while since the BACS honorable mention was a local civilian. We’ve had a couple of cops in the last year or so, but not regular, non-law-abiding citizens.

This month, we feature 26-year-old Timothy Tate of Denham Springs, who allegedly led police on a chase along LA Hwy. 16 through three parishes – Tangipahoa, St. Helena, and Livingston – on the night of March 1. Unconfirmed reports claim that, during the pursuit, the aerodynamic wake created by the speeding vehicles blew over four improperly anchored mobile homes.

We’re not sure if there’s a publication like Red Shtick Magazine in Hartford, Connecticut, nor do we know, if one does exist, whether it has a feature like the Blood Alcohol Championship Series. If there is one, and it does, and there’s a trophy involved, we have a pretty good candidate for whom it should be named.

Connecticut Superior Court Judge E. Curtissa Cofield, who was confirmed as the state’s first black female judge in 1991, was recently suspended without pay for eight months by a judicial review panel after being videotaped cursing and using racial slurs against police officers booking her on drunk-driving charges. Meanwhile, here in Baton Rouge, Judge Don Johnson never missed a single day on the bench.

The comedy gods must have been smiling on us for our 5^th anniversary issue. Either that or people are just getting more daring in their drunk-driving endeavors.

We don’t recall having such a plethora of quality honorable mentions to choose from for a single installment of the BACS as we do this month. We felt like Angelina Jolie at an orphanage. We didn’t know which one to pick.

We’re not sure what it was about 2008, but at least three police officers in the great state of Louisiana were charged with DWI. Additionally, in all three of these incidents, they were accused of driving under the influence while off-duty and behind the wheels of their respective police units.

This month, we had a lot of drunk drivers to choose from. Seriously, it pained us dearly to toss out an untold number of contestants with 3^rd- and 4^th-offense DWIs in order to pare down the list to ten candidates. Oh, the humanity!

It wasn’t just the civilians doin’ the boozin’ & cruisin’, either. A law enforcement officer and a former lawmaker got in on the action, too.

In these troubled financial times, it’s good to see people of means doing their part to stimulate the economy and spread the wealth without a mandate from the government. This month’s BACS honorable mention may be a big baseball star in New York, but he hasn’t forgotten about the people on the lower end of the economic totem poll in the heartland of America: strippers in Nebraska.

Typically, it’s the actions of drunk drivers behind the wheel that earn them a mention in the BACS. This month, however, West Virginia’s Jose Cruz gets our honorable mention, thanks in great part to the legally unprecedented charges levied against him by law enforcement officers after his booking became a fetid fiasco.

According to the criminal complaint filed in Kanawha County, police stopped Cruz’s Mazda 626 on Route 60 in South Charleston after they observed him driving with his headlights off. Upon approaching the car, a patrolman “observed a strong smell of alcohol coming from the window of the vehicle.” This would prove to be only the first of many strong smells they would encounter that night.

For the last several editions of Red Shtick Magazine, this honorable-mention portion of the BACS has featured various drunk drivers from around the country, including a few celebrities. This month, however, we’re focusing on everyday folks from the Baton Rouge area, thanks to some exceptional boozin’ & cruisin’ done right here in the capital region.