I have always been a lightning rod for lunacy and a sizzling bolt has just struck very close to home thanks to the Fox reality show Kitchen Nightmares starring the extremely excitable Gordon Ramsay.

The show sends Chef Ramsay on a bombing run into the dysfunctional kitchens of failing restaurants and NEVER has he walked away defeated. Until now. Previously unknown to me, a mere 31 blocks from my house and less than 10 minutes away, lurks a bistro called Amy’s Baking Company and it was here Ramsay met his Waterloo.

Meet the proprietors of Amy’s…Samy and Amy Bouzaglo…and feast your eyes on the most crazed hour of TV I have ever seen:

http://www.fox.com/kitchennightmares/full-episodes/29299267648/amy-s-baking-company

Did you watch? I know…OH MY GOD or, if you prefer, OMG! If you own a Chinese restaurant, MSG! Overnight following this broadcast Amy’s became the most notorious restaurant in America. Troubling information about Samy and Amy’s personal lives quickly surfaced. Amy served 14 months in prison for fraud and identity theft. Before emigrating from Israel 13 years ago, Samy did prison time for drug distribution, threats and extortion and is banned from France and Germany. Apparently Samy neglected to tell our government any of this when he came to the U.S. and is facing deportation. It also was revealed that Amy’s pastries, the only food item that Ramsay praised, aren’t made by Amy at all and bought from other vendors and resold.

Naturally, I had to meet them. When I arrived Samy was up front and Amy was presumably in the kitchen working her magic. The scene was anything but the battleground I was expecting. There was absolutely no terrorizing of customers, no psychotic outbursts of any kind. Just a half-full restaurant with people talking and eating dinner normally. My waitress brought my food in a reasonable amount of time and the meal was eminently forgettable, but not horrible. I’ve had worse. I’ve also had wurst, but that’s another story.

It was all ever so anticlimactic until I handed my waitress my credit card. An absolutely beaming Samy returned it to me and exclaimed,”Mr. Friedman! Hi, I’m a Jew!” which NOBODY has ever said to me before and frankly, it was about time.

He then beckoned Amy out of the kitchen to meet his new friend Barry and what followed can only be described as a love fiesta. They totally ignored all their other customers for the next 15 minutes. Samy and I bonded like Semitic cement as Amy looked on lovingly. I told Amy that my daughter Taylor was really hoping I could buy her an ABC T-shirt or baseball cap.

“That’s so funny!,” she chirped. “Samy and I were talking about selling T-shirts just this afternoon and we even thought of a slogan to put on them…“Here’s Your Pizza. Now Fuck Off!”

“What size T-shirt does your daughter wear?” inquired Samy in his most sincere voice.

“Small,” I replied.

Samy immediately wrote the word “small” on a piece of paper, folded it and put it in his pocket. Just the word “small”…not my name, not my daughter’s name, not a phone number. Now I don’t know about you, but nothing is more fun for me than finding a random word or two in my pants.

Me and my new best BFF’s.

And now, inevitably, comes the news that Amy and Samy are weighing offers from several production companies to star in their own reality show. In the words of my hero, Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country!”

While we’re on the subject of Judaism, J.C. Penney may have miscalculated the marketability of their latest teapot offering from the design studio of Michael Graves.  Did nobody notice it looked like Hitler?

After a public uproar the teapot was pulled off the shelves, but it was yet another body blow for the struggling retailer and may stall the unveiling of their much ballyhooed Idi Amin Home Collection.

I guess it’s time for the mandatory blanket.  Obviously, Blanket Of The Month is a complete hoax. Clearly it’s just a forum for my addled view of the world and then I throw in an Indian blanket. You’ll never hear Gordon Ramsay complain about this winning recipe.

So courtesy of Les Ochs comes this Racine Woolen Mills shawl c.1910 which sports remnants of different colored fringe on each side.

And speaking of fringe, here once again is the lunatic fringe.