How Now, Howie?
So you say you’ve got a sweet gig. You’ve got the world convinced that you’re a sensitive, wonderful guy and all it took was a bit of strumming and crooning and some “Baby, I’m so hurt” lyrics. It doesn’t pay much, but hey – it gets you a snazzy tour bus, an opening slot for some big names, and a “get laid free” ticket.
And then you have to go and pull a Howie Day.
According to the complaint, Day and his band members invited four or five women on their tour bus while signing autographs after the show. The group sat around drinking and talking, and one of the women went to the back of the bus to use the bathroom. Day followed her in and tried to kiss her, but she refused his advance.Day became upset, left the bathroom, slammed the door and then blocked it when she tried to leave, the complaint said.
Another woman tried to get Day to let her friend out, then tried to call police on her cellphone. Day allegedly grabbed the phone and broke it in half, then yelled at her to get out.
“That was probably wrong of me,” Day reportedly told an officer, referring to breaking the woman’s cell phone. “But I felt violated.”
After the first woman got out of the bathroom, Day allegedly threw beer on them, the complaint said.
Day admitted grabbing the cellphone as the woman tried to call police and breaking it, but said he thought it may have already been broken, the complaint said.
He denied throwing beer on the women.
“The phone was probably broken before I broke it.” That’s a good one. Not particularly original, tho – the first line of Yeats is Dead! is, “I think he was dead before I shot him.” The phone was broken before you broke it doesn’t really hold much water because you broke the damn phone. As for “I felt violated,” how did the woman locked in the bathroom feel?
Of course, Howie has an iron-clad defense. To summarize his defense, it’s – “They were groupies. They followed me to my bus. If they didn’t want to have sex, they shouldn’t have followed me.”
Goddess forbid that any woman who likes the latest sensitive, caring folksinger might just want to spend a little bit of time hanging out and talking to him without having sex. Maybe Howie felt that he was just owed something for pretending like he cares.
Bleah.