♫ “I love-a making my-a pasta and my pizza,” ♪ sang Marco as he chopped scallions in his kitchen. ♫ “Scallions and garlic, so delicious-a!” ♪ Now he walked over to his stove, where a small pot of tortellini was boiling. ♫ “Tortellini! Spaghetti! Fettuccine! Hey! Marco’s-a cooking some-a fantastico food-a!” ♪ Marco did a little jig as he observed the cooking process.
Tim Duncan, from his position hidden in the azalea bushes, zoomed in with his camera. “DownToBuck is going to pay me so much for this video,” he thought to himself. He could barely contain his laughter as Marco switched to a deep operatic voice.
♫ “Mama mia! Mama miaaaaaa! La pizza è quasi prontaaaaaa!” ♪ Marco sang. ♫ “Carciofi e prosciuttooooooooo, oh mio! Cucina di Marco è magicaaaaaaaaaaa,” ♪ he continued, unaware that his embarrassing culinary exploits were being recorded by his Spurs teammate. Marco opened the oven to retrieve the pizza, pausing momentarily to sniff the succulent smell wafting from within. “Mmmm…♫ mozzarella, pomodoro, basilico, la vita è bellaaaaaaaaa!” ♪ He put aside the pizza to cool and returned to his pasta sauce.
“Welcome back to Marco’s Italian Kitchen! Now, what we’re doing here is mincing the garlic, not too fine, you don’t want to pulverize the flavor,” Marco said, looking up at an invisible camera recording his fantasy cooking show. Meanwhile, the real camera manned by Tim continued to roll. “I like to use a chef’s knife for this task, you really need that precision. Okay, moving on to the cream sauce. I’m using this terrific Napa Valley Zinfandel…” Marco paused to hold up the bottle of wine to the “camera”. “…But you can use any white wine you have on hand, most of it will just simmer away.”
“Damn, this is gold,” Tim inadvertently said aloud. He then blurted an audible “God damn it!” Marco immediately snapped out of his fantasy and walked over to the window. Tim scrambled to get away, but found his large body very efficiently trapped by the bushes.
“Tim, what are you doing in my azaleas? And what’s up with the camera?”
Tim smiled and held up the recording device. “DownToBuck is gonna give me twenty-five thousand dollars for this tape. How much are you going to give me?”
Marco sighed. “Thirty grand. But this is blackmail, you know that?”
Tim laughed. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, just go grab the money and I’ll hand over the goods.”
Marco turned and walked up the stairs, presumably to where he kept a stash of hundreds for situations such as this. As soon as he was out of sight, Tim extricated himself from the shrub and ran back to the car where Manu Ginobili was waiting, cackling like a maniac. “Sucker.”