Henry, Earl of Lancaster

I don't know who did this, but I owe them a beer. My favorite is the one where you can see a white police officer's arm holding his head up because he's too drunk to stand.

For those of you that don't know, this man's name is Henry Earl. He was arrested for the 1,333rd time on Thursday, making the Associated Press newswire, which made him a national story.

Henry Earl lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where he is mostly arrested for being drunk in public. I also used to live in Lexington. Literally, he calls the whole town home; I'm fairly sure he's homeless, making him one of about three homeless people in the city. There is the lady who stands at the stoplight on Upper Street and hurls expletives at you, the guy with the trash bag full of soup cans, and Henry. I have had many run-ins with Henry Earl, and most of them have been awesome. In fact, he is sort of a celebrity at the University of Kentucky.

When I was in college, I had a lot of keg parties, often attended by more than 200 people, meaning that they spanned my entire house and filled the backyard. Henry Earl used to show up at these parties, begging for a free beer. A large portion of the time, if you gave him one, he would turn around and disappear, leaving only the stench of a thousand unwashed evenings in jail behind him.

Because he is literally certifiably insane, oftentimes he would show up in character. Many times, he would pretend to be James Brown, which involved muttering incoherently and dancing all over my driveway until someone gave him alcohol, at which point he would leave. He would not answer you or leave until you referred to him as James Brown. Sometimes, you had to call him "Wild Wild West", and then he would perform, with choreography, the entire Will Smith song.

Sometimes he would show up and pretend to be a ninja. These were the times that I wished he would leave. One time when I was at a gas station inflating my tires, he kung-fu kicked and punched all the way around my car.

I'm also fairly sure he has Hepatitis.