Food For Thought

If you’re like me, and it appears that there may be a few freaks out there who fit that description, you like food. In an earlier incarnation of Nude Hippo I was their TV chef. It was kind of like commando cooking since I never was sure what ingredients would actually be there when I showed up. One night the menu called for chicken and I was presented with 5 quarts of ice cream. It was kind of odd. Nevertheless, I muddled through. As time went on I began collecting recipes and eventually even created a cookbook that I gave away to anyone who wanted it. Go ahead and click the link and you can have a copy too. It’s got a lot of guest recipes from famous people so you can impress your friends.

But I’ve never had the burning need to break into a pizza parlor in the middle of the night and almost drown in a vat of burning oil. Yet, according to YAHOO! News, that’s exactly what happened last night in New York.

Police answering cries for help on Friday found a screaming burglar dangling from a ceiling air vent over a hot fat fryer at an upstate New York restaurant.

“He said he thought he was going to die,” said Lt. Michael Brown, spokesman for the police in Rotterdam, New York.

A grease-covered Timothy Cipriani, 46, of nearby Schenectady was pleading for help when he was discovered wedged into the ventilation duct at Paesan’s Pizza in the early hours of the morning.

He had climbed a tree to the roof, where he broke into an air duct to enter the restaurant after it closed, police said.

He was trapped where the vent opened over the fryer, and he became extremely distraught, Brown said.

“The fryer had been used all day, so it may have been generating some heat,” Brown said.

Cipriani was arraigned on charges of burglary, criminal mischief and possession of burglary tools and was held in lieu of $20,000 bail at the Schenectady County Jail, police said.

Speaking as someone who once ate pizza in Schenectady, I can assure you that I would be trying to break out of any alleged pie parlor rather than in. It was like eating a thin slab of grease.

With pseudo-cheese.

But this was not the only person devoid of taste to have a restaurant run in yesterday. MSNBC reports that a gentleman, upset that his Taco Bell burritos now cost more than ninety-nine cents, shot the place up and then took himself hostage in a motel.

Really, this is the fun part of my job because no one could ever make stuff like this up.

A Taco Bell customer enraged that the seven burritos he ordered had gone up in price fired a BB gun at an employee and later fired an assault rifle at officers before barricading himself in a motel room, police said.

As the restaurant’s employees and customers hit the floor Sunday, the manager called police and, when officers arrived, the angry patron fired several shots at the police cars, San Antonio Police Sgt. Chris Benavides said.

The man then barricaded himself inside a nearby motel room, sparking a three-hour standoff that ended when police lobbed tear gas inside and the man surrendered.

No one was hurt in the incident.

Store manager Brian Tillerson told the San Antonio Express News that the man “pointed a gun at me, and he fired it. I leaned to the side and there was a pop but nothing happened.”

Police later found a BB, he added, and the following five minutes “were pretty crazy.”

The man left and Tillerson saw him put an assault rifle and a handgun on the roof of his car. Fearing he’d return, customers and employees looked for cover as Tillerson locked the doors and called police.

The man then got in his car and left, Tillerson said.

Benavides said the Beefy Crunch burritos had been sold for 99 cents each as a promotion, but the man was apparently angry that the promotion had ended, and the price had gone up to $1.49.

The name of the suspect has not been released because he had not yet been formally charged early Monday.

Benavides said that the man will be charged with three counts of attempted capital murder, and that additional charges are possible.

The man never did get his burritos.

Really? That extra fifty cents pushed the guy over the edge?

Forget about that for a minute. This gourmand ordered seven burritos? Seven? The article doesn’t say but I’m guessing this guy isn’t exactly svelte. And, another thing, while I know that Texans are allowed to carry firearms, how is it that no one noticed some dude standing in line carrying a rifle? Even by Texas’ lax standards that should have sent up a red flag to someone. It isn’t like you have to hunt those tacos down. They have people who just bring them to you.

It’s very convenient that way.

Even so, I think I’ll just stick to the stuff I can make in my own kitchen.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!