Pie fight

“Row over shepherd’s pie ends in court.“

Yes, it’s a “row,” and it’s not just any pie. So we know this is a British melee. And, unsurprisingly, alcohol was involved, though not, apparently, in the recipe.

A row over the correct way to make shepherd’s pie ended up in court after a disagreement between two brothers turned violent.

The cook didn’t top the pie with tomatoes. According to the prosecutor, his sibling (and guest) thought “this was wrong.” Then, “His brother, a chef, claimed a layer of tomatoes was not the appropriate way to finish off a shepherd’s pie, and responded by hitting him over the head with a shovel.”

After that, according to the Telegraph, the argument “got out of control.”

In court, District Judge Peter Ward “told the defendant that, in his view, there was no need for a layer of tomatoes on a shepherd’s pie.”

The case continues.

Small-time thievery

“Teensy thief crawls in mail flap.”

I suspect a rogue gnome, of course.

“After a couple of hours, his wife noticed the handle sticking out of his back and called an ambulance.”

“Drunk Russian sleeps off knifing.”

The garden gnome crime wave continues

“Garden gnome holds up high speed train.”

Weird crime comes to the Stanford Shopping Center

Police say man in wheelchair robbed bank.

Police said a man in his 60s with gray hair and a beard held up the Wachovia Bank branch at the Stanford Shopping Center late this afternoon with a black handgun.

After the stickup, he left in his wheelchair and was last seen motoring down a nearby street toward El Camino Real, a major thoroughfare.

Two thoughts.

One: An armed bank robbery at the Stanford mall? Oh, my God. When my daughter goes for coffee — and at some point every day, her IM away message reads “Starbucks run” — that’s where she goes. My baby. My baby!

Two: In this situation, “motoring” is a relative term. A friend of mine had a top of the line power wheelchair, and even at max power she was no Evel Knievel. The robber’s getaway doesn’t remind me of Gone in 60 Seconds, but of Speed 3 – the episode of Father Ted where Dougal becomes trapped driving a milk float that will explode if it drops below four mph.

So here’s the question: how come all those cops who patrol the mall ON SEGWAYS couldn’t catch up to this guy?

Thieving elf: a bust

It’s finally happened: a convergence of gnomery and underwear theft.

Lingerie-stealing elf jailed.

A lab technician who dressed as a female elf to steal lingerie at knifepoint was jailed for two years today.

No word whether the robber’s demands were written in Elvish.

 (Via Dave Barry.)

Ballsy policing

“The offender…startled by the sight of a naked constable with just a torch coming towards him, took off.”

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A policeman in a small New Zealand town did not let the fact that he was naked hold him back from chasing a thief trying to steal his car.

The off-duty constable was asleep at his home in Balclutha, in the lower South Island, when his wife woke him in the early hours… When the policeman realized the sound his wife heard was someone attempting to start the couple’s car, he didn’t let the fact he was stark naked hold him back, bursting out the door with nothing more than a torch.

The offender “bolted with the officer in hot pursuit, NZPA reported, but was soon after picked up by a police patrol.”

No garden gnomes were harmed in the nude rampage

“Nude man runs amok, causing thousands of dollars in damage.“

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) - Police in Pennsylvania say they’ve arrested a naked man who ran amok on Friday, attacking businesses near a resort area.

A supermarket and the nearby Willow Valley Resort hotel are assessing the damage. Authorities say some office space at the hotel was trashed, a forklift was driven into an interior wall, and an overhead sewer pipe was damaged.

Police say the man then entered a nearby market, and threw a 300-pound pizza oven to the floor. Among other equipment damaged in the incident — which was captured on surveillance cameras — was a $90,000 meat-wrapping machine.

The 28-year-old suspect had reportedly been a guest at the resort.

He’s now charged with risking a catastrophe, criminal mischief, open lewdness and other counts. He’s been ordered held in Lancaster County Prison on $200,000 bail.

“Risking a catastrophe?” I’ve never heard of such a crime. But in terms of potential catastrophes, a rampage that involves the phrases “naked man,” “meat-wrapping machine,” and “ran amok” would certainly be it.

(Via Sarah Weinman.)

“Drop the book!”

 Paul Constant writes about taking on book thieves: Flying Off the Shelves.

In my eight years working at an independent bookstore, I lost count of how many shoplifters I chased through the streets of Seattle while shouting “Drop the book!” I chased them down crowded pedestrian plazas in the afternoon, I chased them through alleys at night, I even chased one into a train tunnel. I chased a book thief to the waterfront, where he shouted, “Here are your fucking books!” and threw a half-dozen paperbacks, including Bomb the Suburbs and A People’s History of the United States, into Puget Sound, preferring to watch them slowly sink into the muck rather than hand them back to the bookseller they were stolen from. He had that ferocious, orgasmic gleam in his eye of somebody who was living in the climax of his own movie: I suppose he felt like he was liberating them somehow.

Don’t point that thing at me

Look out - he’s got a riding mower.

VANCOUVER, Wash. - A man led police on a very slow-speed chase, refusing to stop while riding a lawn mower at about 3 mph across a busy street and steering it toward an officer before he was grabbed and arrested, a police report says.

It’s the northwest. All that rain, all those overgrown lawns… it’s enough to drive a man mad. Mad, I tell you.

The lawnmower man remains in Clark County (Not Kitsap!) jail “with bail set at $40,000.” Forty grand? For jayriding at 3 mph? If I’m ever in Vancouver, I’ll make sure not to step outside the crosswalk.

Call the Kitsap County Film Commission

 This headline had me all ready to go to the barricades to defend freedom of expression:  “Teens Arrested for Video Spoof.”

However, it turns out the teens weren’t arrested for their opinions but for malicious mischief.

Four Port Angeles teens were arrested Sunday night after they disrupted multiple businesses along Silverdale Way while filming a video.

At 5:15 p.m., the owner of Osaka Restaurant on Silverdale Way called police to report that four teens had come into the restaurant and videotaped a staged fight, knocking over tables, breaking chairs and spilling soy sauce on the carpet.

This occurred in Kitsap County, Washington, the Mecca of weird crime, so I’m not surprised to read that after the restaurant melee, a man “called police to report that four teens had thrown a clothed dummy in front of his car,” or that “Shortly before 7 p.m., the McDonald’s on Silverdale Way called 911 to report four unwanted teens blowing an air horn at customers inside the restaurant and those using the drive-thru.”

Stanley Kubrick these guys are not.

With friends like these…

Armed kidnappers seize bank manager as 40th birthday prank.

Mr Sharp was seized at gunpoint on his way to work by masked men in what he thought was a Securitas-style raid.

He was beginning to fear he was about to meet his maker when the gang revealed themselves – as a dozen of Mr Sharp’s bank colleagues and his friend Les Allen, who had planned the stunt in revenge for one played on him last year.

Did anyone see the Michael Douglas/Sean Penn movie The Game?

Mr Sharp said the prank had been “timed to perfection” but added: “I thought I was going to die.

“My thoughts turned to my family. I kept on talking about my three boys but I don’t think I mentioned my wife.

“Then they suddenly pulled off the pillowcase and said ‘Happy Birthday, Sharpy’.”

As my grandmother used to say: Ha ha, hell.

(Thanks to Dan for the link.)

Fashion crime

The horror, the horror:

PORTLAND, Maine - The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a man with a mustache who is pulling in front of female drivers and then jumping out of his vehicle while wearing women’s underwear, a garter belt and black high-heel boots.

A mustache? I shudder.

So good it’s illegal

The bacon-wrapped hotdog.

You can smell one from blocks away. The grilled bacon, twisted around a wiener, is topped with grilled onions and a mountaintop of diced tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Then one whole grilled green poblano chile is plopped impossibly on top. You take a bite and think, This is so good, no wonder it’s illegal!

California: this is how it’s done here.

Of course, the Los Angeles health department has its own opinion about way these outlaw dogs are cooked. Still, just reading the description has made me hungry.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)