Thursday Afternoon Diversion: Dissecting Henneman!

By Kevin Robinson in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 14, 2011 8:00PM

To honor Opening Day at Wrigley Field this year, Justin Kaufmann over at WBEZ interviewed a drunken Cubs fan in front of the stadium. If you've ever been to the Schadenfreude Rent Party at the Gallery Cabaret, you're familiar with Kate James's "Henneman." And like any good prank, Henneman, with her outrageous behavior and stereotypical level of intoxication, was just credible enough to be believed, but just absurd enough to make you wonder.

For those of us that don't live in Chicago (and therefore don't know what Wrigleyville can be like) maybe the now-infamous Henneman video seems real. Deadspin fell for it over the weekend. Alex Balcerski of Ride the Pine seems unsure - although he does acknowledge on his YouTube page that the original video "has been hinted at as being an April Fool's prank. If this is a prank, this girl deserves a freaking Oscar." While drunken transplants that don't know squat about baseball are a serious pain in the neck to those of us who actually follow the sport, Alex, maybe criticizing someone for being a drunken Cubs fan while wearing a Tiger's Blood t-shirt requires that you reconsider the definition of "hitting rock bottom."