Great Moments in Douchebaggotry is brought to you by Rocks Off's upcoming Washington Shore party, Thursday, February 11 at the Washington Avenue Drinkery. All types of douchebags are encouraged to attend.
Imagine for a moment your two least favorite bands. Got 'em? Now imagine they get into a fight, and you're witnessing it. Who do you root for? Do you jump in and attempt to destroy everyone involved? Or do you simply watch and pray for a spontaneous electrical fire to do the job for you?
Such is the quandary Rocks Off would have found ourselves in, had we been present in the bar area of Baltimore's Harbor Court Hotel on Thanksgiving evening, 2005. It all started when Creed lead singer and acclaimed Eddie Vedder impressionist Scott Stapp walked in, badly in need of attention.
He proceeded to throw a pouty
My Super Sweet 16-style tantrum, loudly stating that he loved to fight, downing shots and breaking glass after glass at the bar, and, we imagine, using up several cocktail napkins to pen juvenile, spiritually ambiguous lyrics that would allow him to claim that he is/is not a Christian, depending on who's asking.
When Stapp noticed 311 lead singer S.A. Martinez and his wife sitting at a table, and tossing a wadded-up napkin in their direction failed to make them stop ignoring him, he walked on over and sat down, which in and of itself is a giant douchebag maneuver. Not only was he obviously not welcome, but how low does your self-esteem need to be to seek out validation from the lead singer of fucking 311?
All intentions to explore the possible frat-douche masterpiece a Creed/311 collaboration might have resulted in had evaporated from Stapp's sloshed goldfish brain, so he began talking dirty to Martinez' wife. Martinez asked Stapp to please be respectful and stop, as did 311 drummer Chad Sexton, who saw the trouble brewing from another table and came over to intervene. Stapp appeared to be about to apologize, when suddenly he caught Sexton with a sucker-punch that grazed Martinez' wife.
Martinez grew up on the rough-and-tumble streets of Omaha, Neb., so despite not having been in a fight since the third grade, he nonetheless threw a punch at Stapp that fractured his own knuckle and floored the Creed frontman. If this whole incident is making you cringe in painful embarrassment already, you'll probably want to skip over the following italicized sentence:
Stapp's girlfriend then came over and sat on him in an attempt to make him calm down.
Holy shit. If we didn't know better, we'd have thought this fight was at a high school football post-game party. Stapp refused to be calmed, however, and got back to his feet, at which point the brawl continued, with 311's bassist, who is named - why not? - P-Nut, getting involved and ripping open some stitches from an earlier operation on his arm.
After a few minutes of continued scrapping, hotel security broke up the fight and booted Stapp from the premises. ("Hey, aren't you the guy from Creed? Yeah, get the fuck out.")
No charges were filed, undoubtedly due to 311's policy of positivity, which not only compounds their inherent lameness, but could even be the title of one of their lame-ass songs.
Scott Stapp, in uniting a bunch of individual douchebag moments into an overarching situation in which 311 is somehow the less obnoxious party, you made this one of the truly great moments in douchebaggotry.
