The James Weird Awards

The James Weird Awards: A Koala-Eating Australian and a Vegetarian’s Temper Tantrum in the Sky

We’ve seen a number of blasts from the past this week. Ernest Hemingway came back from the dead to write Yelp reviews, formerly banished cans of Four Loko showed up on shelves again (this time with less caffeine), and Michael Jordan returned to Chicago to feed people steaks. But the James Weird Awards never went away in the first place: your weekly briefing of the weirdest restaurant news, straight ahead.

• A Taco Bell customer in Texas became so enraged when he was told the Beefy Crunch Burrito costs $1.49, he pulled three different guns on the store manager. He had expected the dubiously named item to cost $0.99, due to a promotion that had by then expired. Fortunately a SWAT team swooped in, and no one was hurt. [San Antonio Express-News]

• An angry Australian businessman is urging his countrymen to eat koala bears. Irked that local government officials are focusing more energy on koala bear conservation than on small businesses, he’s been handing out stickers reading “Save the Redlands … Eat a Koala.” [AOL News]

• Disgusted with her meat-laden in-flight meal, an airborne vegetarian threw her food and tray at a Continental Airlines flight attendant, breaking probably about 81 different laws at once. The flight attendant declined to press charges, so the woman will never find out how vegetarian-friendly prison is. [NYP]

• A woman in Dallas ordered a life-size replica of herself in the form of a wedding cake. She was renewing her wedding vows with her husband of ten years. “Growing up, I always wanted a doll made in my likeness,” said the bride, who settled for a five-foot-tall, 400-pound-heavy cake. [Metro UK]

• A marathon runner beat his personal best time at the Los Angeles Marathon, despite having eaten solely McDonald’s for the 30 days leading up to the event. Known as the McRunner, he finished in roughly two and a half hours, in 29th place. [NESN]

• A former public restroom in Boston will soon become a former restaurant in Boston. [Boston Globe]

• A New Yorker was arrested for selling upwards of a million dollars’ worth of prescription drugs out of his ice cream truck. So many “chill pill” jokes, so little time. [Yahoo! News]

• The British have gone crazy for Mad Hatter–style mismatched crockery, a trend inspired by Tim Burton’s successful Alice in Wonderland adaptation from last year. “It’s the dining equivalent of creating a painting from scratch rather than painting by numbers,” said one crockery merchant. “Young people want to eat meals where imagination hasn’t been confined to the food.” [Reuters]

The James Weird Awards: A Koala-Eating Australian and a Vegetarian’s