~AREA MOVIE THEATRE TRIES DESPERATELY TO CATCH NEMESIS 'EL LARDO'

Movie theatre attendents at MoviePlex 9 in downtown Rutland are reportedly trying to catch a man they've dubbed "El Lardo" who has been sneaking in contraband food items for the past 8 months on a scale the world of cinema has simply never seen.

"He's laughing at us," said Melissa Graff, concession stand attendent. "But we can't hear him laughing because his face is stuffed with Hershey's miniatures candybars from the store next door."

"It began innocently enough," explained Chris Evans, assistant manager for MoviePlex 9, "You know...an empty Ben & Jerry's ice cream pint here, or a hollow can of Pringles thrown under a seat there...but lately he's just been getting out of hand. When I found that empty box of Honey nut Cheerios, crumpled-up quart of milk, paper bowl and plastic spoon I was truly, genuinely stunned - Shocked even - That's his calling card...always leaving the remains of whatever it was he snuck in."

"He's such a little bastard," Evans added.

The employees of the 9 theatre megaplex reported that they have begun to keep copious notes on the perpetrator and believe that they will catch him sooner or later. "He likes action films mostly," reports reel attendent Art Ellis. "He saw 'XXX State of the Nation' twice, and this last time he brought a pepperoni pizza instead of the sausage one he brought in the first time. I guess he thought that maybe a pepperoni topping would make the movie not suck that time around. But he was wrong. All that sucked was having to go and clean his mozzarella cheese and empty pizza box up off the theatre floor."

"He knows we're on to him" Evans said seethingly between his teeth as he absent-mindedly over-salted some popcorn. "He and his McDonald's extra value meal saw "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants" last week. We never saw that one coming. He's totally playing with us. But he'll screw up somewhere along the way and I'll be right there to....what? Yeah, of course he SuperSized it."

Evans and Concession manger Jim Price have begun to set their sights on the release of "Dukes of Hazzard" as the time and place to catch 'El Lardo', with plans to place plain-clothed movie attendents in strategic places in the audience in the hopes of hearing lips smacking and the chewing of KFC.

"He won't be able to resist a film like that, or be able to resist KFC's blend of 11 spices," Price said. " Duke's vapid plot and predictable writing are a siren's song to this guy. Plus I think he knows he has a reputation to live up to now and if he fails to infiltrate this flick, one of the summer's most anticipated blockbusters...well, then he'll think he's lost his touch. He's like a serial killer, who's lusting for more blood or death or something. Even if that 'blood' is an entire six-pack of Mountain Dew and half a watermelon from the corner market...He totally gets off on it."

Theories on how he accomplishes this feat range wildly, from his having the items lowered from the roof by an accomplice to his maybe being a rogue ninja disowned by his master. Either way, the movie theatre employees remained stumped.

"I think he must have a man on the inside," ticket agent Jess Moore theorized. "No one could sneak in a steaming platter of hot blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs without help."

"We showed Mission Impossible here," She added. "It wasn't shot here, dude."

"I wonder what he'll try and sneak in next time," Evans wondered aloud as he scrubbed up some of 'El Lardo's' A-1 sauce off the floor of theatre 3. "He'll probably try and smuggle in a Wok and do some stir fry or something, the little whore."