THE CARS KEEP PILING UP ON THE MANZIEL TRAIN WRECK

Johnny Manziel trashes a Hollywood home and heads to Coachella

By Sean Pendergast

Houston Press
April 18, 2016

It's Monday morning, and at this point, it comes down to choosing which train wreck to write about — the Houston Rockets or Johnny Manziel. Honestly, there's very little compelling to say at this point about the Rockets. They're the Washington Generals to Steph Curry's Globetrotters, and they will only become interesting a) if they somehow manage to win a game in this series, b) if Patrick Beverley decides to haul off and break Steph Curry's jaw, or b) when free agency and the draft roll back around.

Until then, Johnny it is!

When we last left Johnny Manziel, he was getting fired by his second agent in the last three months and wrapping his Mercedes SUV around a light pole in Hollywood. Actually, according to the story, Manziel's good time buddy, OVO Ryan, was the one driving the vehicle before the two of them reportedly sprinted away from the accident scene like frightened squirrels.

So we pick up the story now somewhere in between a mangled light pole and a serene Hollywood neighborhood, a pleasant enclave where Manziel and his buddy OVO Ryan decided to rent a $4.5 million home for a couple days last week. And you know the old saying — if you have a $4.5 million home at your disposal, you gotta party your ass off in there! (That may not be a saying, but it should be!)

And it appears that's exactly what happened. As first reported by Page Six of the New York Post, Manziel had some crazy parties there in the two days he was using the property:

Rich-kid quarterback Johnny Manziel’s facing more questions about alcohol and drug use after he threw a wild party at a rented LA house, where he and his friends allegedly caused $32,000 in damage.

Manziel, who comes from a Texas oil family and whose NFL future is in peril, rented a house in West Hollywood for two days last week with a pal. The pair’s said to have thrown two all-night ragers that prompted neighbors, including comic Kathy Griffin, to call police.

The house was apparently rented to Manziel by real estate broker Nicholas Goodwin, whose company LA Exotic Life rents vacation properties in the Los Angeles area. A letter written by Goodwin's attorney, Niki Ghazian, to Manziel's attorney details the damages:

“Despite Mr. Manziel's assurances to my client that the rental was to be used strictly for his own personal and private use, surveillance footage shows that Mr. Manziel threw large parties on both nights, causing extensive damage to the subject property,” Ghazian wrote in the letter, according to USA Today.

Manziel rented the home from LA Exotic Life from April 4-6 and agreed to pay an extra $5,000 a night if more than 15 people stayed there. That fee is included in the amount demanded in the letter, as well as $8,500 for wine stains in the master bedroom, $8,000 for burn marks on the carpet, $2,400 for a broken glass table, $650 for a broken bathroom door and $30 for broken glasses.

Company owner Nicholas Goodwin told the New York Post he arrived two hours after checkout time to find the house in disarray.

“Manziel was passed out," Goodwin said. "There was cocaine all over the kitchen table, and mushrooms were still out on the table in front of him. There was booze everywhere ... broken glasses over the floor and a Champagne glass in a tree.”

You can see a slideshow on Page Six with pictures of the mushrooms and the not all that mysterious white powder. In the meantime, the most intriguing parts of this story:

1. Presumably, at some point in the midst of or just before these parties took place, Manziel lectured a TMZ audience in that video shot outside The Nice Guy that "there's a difference between partying and being out of control." I'm wondering where magic mushrooms and cocaine fit on that spectrum.

2. Go ahead and chalk up Kathy Griffin as the most random celebrity to get oddly entangled in the Johnny Manziel Web of Debauchery.

3. I guess we can now retroactively confirm why Johnny was rolling up a $20 bill in that bathroom in Vegas before his rookie season back in 2014.

4. I need to know how a champagne glass wound up in a tree. Was it just dangling like a Christmas ornament? Was it in a plant style tree, like a rubber tree, or was it like hanging in a legit outdoor oak or palm tree? Now I've got to ask my girlfriend if we can we get a miniature Christmas tree this year with all mini champagne glasses as ornaments and call it a Johnny Tree... so many questions....

So if you now have a $32,000 lawsuit hanging over your head to go along with a grand jury investigation into domestic assault back in Fort Worth, your agent has fired you, and your football career is essentially over, what do you do?

You go to Coachella, of course....