June 6, 2008

A Giant Among Men

Andre the Giant: Professional wrestler, talented athlete, legendary alcoholic (and apparently mad-hetero pimp from the pic below).

If I could get drunk with any man from the history books, it would be Andre (as long as I didn’t have to pick up the tab). Throughout the internets, numerous stories exist describing his insatiable appetite for the sauce.

Let’s start with the basics. He consumed approximately 7,000 calories a day, purely from alcohol. That’s 46 regular beers a day, assuming he drank only beer, which is far from the case. Holy.Fuck. I once drank 35 beers in a night, woke up on some steps, barfed in the street in front of a bus stop, then shit my pants. Yet The Giant still has 16 more beers on me on a night of “casual drinking.”

So now let’s get fucking serious. I dare ANYONE to find drinking stories (relating to amount) more epic that what I present below:

  • Due to his size, he traveled in a personal trailer that was lined with tarps and filled with beer and ice. On the road, he averaged a case of beer every 90 minutes (1 beer every 3.75 minutes)
  • Believe it or not, WWF rookie Hulk Hogan served as his beer bitch on the road. Whenever the bus ran low on beer, Andre bitched the Hulk into sprinting to the nearest store to return with more nectar. He further demeaned Hogan by throwing EVERY empty can at the back of his head.
  • Andre claimed to need 2 liters of vodka, “just to feel warm on the inside.” That’s 44 shots of hard liquor.
  • El Gigante was given a case of plum wine for performing in Japan. He drank it in four hours. That’s 16 bottles of wine, which comes to 64 glasses of wine, one every 3.75 minutes (again).
  • Saddened by public transportation’s inability to house his masculine frame (and drunk after 75 beers), Andre hijacked a horse and carriage and stormed the streets of New York to get home from bars.
  • While drinking with two other wrestlers, one jokingly hit ‘Dre in the face. Andre took offense, asked no questions, and dragged the two 250lb men out of the bar and into the ocean, holding their faces in the water while laughing in a drunken rage.
  • Andre’s month long bar-tab at a London hotel was $40,000.
  • At last call, Giant Andre told the bartender he “did not care to leave.” The fearful bartender said he could stay, as long as he kept drinking (believing he would eventually have to stop). Andre stayed until 5am, drinking 40 vodka tonics.

Throughout all these antics, he rarely passed out. The smallest feat listed so far (a case in 90 minutes) would make the average person wake up in a pool of vomit, and make some people just never wake up at all. Andre did get drunk enough to pass out (ending up in the hallway of his hotel), after consuming a world record 119 beers in 6 hours, a beer every 3.02 minutes.

Andre was truly a giant among men. He gives the rest of us something to shoot for, putting purpose in our otherwise meaningless lives. I’ll be downing one for the Giant tonight. Thanks for the inspiration, Andre.

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