I'm Only Here To Steal Your Stuff

20th Century Fox

Everyone remembers the burglars from the Home Alone movies. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern scope out a tony Chicago suburb to see who's going to be gone at Christmas. Pesci even disguises himself as a cop stopping by to warn neighbors of a burglar in the area. This is a clever variation on the murderer who joins the search party for his victim. Of course, little did they realize one eight-year-old boy would get left behind and have to fend for himself. Macaulay Culkin is an early Millennial, raised the same as most Gen X'rs. As a Gen X'r myself, I must warn potential criminals how we were raised on a lifetime of Warner Brothers cartoons, specifically Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the Roadrunner. You, oh would-be felon, are not even Elmer Fudd in this equation. You are Wile E. Coyote. This is the part where you hold up a sign that says, "Yikes!"

Up until Joe and Daniel get their asses handed to them by a Warner Brothers-trained kid who's already had to fend for himself for a week, they're actually quite the professionals. Joe brazenly impersonates a police officer to get potential victims to reveal their holiday plans, and they methodically hit a list of homes on the list. But...

Burglars aren't always the brightest bulbs in the bunch, both in fiction and in real life. Daniel Stern decides to stop up the kitchen sink in each house and leave the water running. He says it's their calling card. "We're the wet bandits!" Uh huh. You're leaving a trail of evidence, my friend. Never mind the kid in one of your target houses who would grow up to have a fine career in Acme's R&D department. All they needed was the attempt to clog little Kevin's kitchen sink before the kid unleashes cartoon Armageddon on them, and police can go back to every house with flood damage in the neighborhood.

But it seems to be a regular occurrence. Full crews of burglars work with amazing precision. Recently, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was burglarized while he was playing. Here in Cincinnati, where he lives. I've been by his house before, long before he owned it. The houses in that particular neighborhood are not easy to get to nor easy to penetrate. But penetrate they did. And this crew worked methodically. They had already gone through homes in Indian Hill, where Cincinnati's wealthy live. Burrow was a ripe target because it's a big house. But...

Joe Burrow is a high-profile target. Rob the vice president of marketing for Proctor & Gamble, and while the Indian Hill Rangers will do their best to catch the culprits, it's not going to make the news. Rob a Bengals player who played in a Superbowl and is frequently featured nationally on ESPN and Fox Sports, and all four local news stations and probably national news outlets, and suddenly you find out why La Cosa Nostra has a strict code of silence. Attention brings the law. 

Worse, we are in an era hostile to foreigners. The burglars in question were from Chile. Make of that bit of nonsense what you will. But now, in a case that might have involved a state bureau of investigation or a sheriff's department to coordinate among difference forces, and probably the FBI, you have now attracted ICE. Good or ill, that's most definitely unwanted attention. 

And then they took selfies with all the swag they stole from Joe Burrow. Nice. Because posting to social media means you don't have to pay for all that flood damage. 

I'm currently working on a short story where a drywall crew is robbing homes in a tony lakeside village. They have access to their victims' homes, so they use the victims' own tools to raid the houses, then lock the doors behind them. But...

Most of the victims have Costco memberships, and a lot of recent hauls from the warehouse store disappear, along with all the beer in the fridge. It unravels when one crew member tries to disable an electrical substation on the night of a thunderstorm to cover their shutting off the power to the houses. Unfortunately, there's this thing called arc flashover that can reduce a person to a blackened cinder while another is pulled over with boxes of snacks in nice Costco-sized boxes and several cases of beer. Oops.

Burglary is proof clever and smart are not exactly the same thing.  

Burglars Beware! (more silly stuff from my standup days)

(With apologies to both Monty Python and George Carlin)

I write about the mob.  This might lead some people to believe I am an expert in crime.  As there may be law enforcement officers reading this post, I'm not going to write about that.  Instead, I'm going to talk about crime prevention. (*Waves* to relatives in Palermo.)

Somebody who didn't know about my alleged area of expertise tried to sell me a home security device the other day.  Apparently, this device is rigged so that it would alert me when someone was breaking into the house.  This amazed me, in that - if I am home - I usually know when someone is breaking into my house.  Rather than announce his presense ("A Burglar, Madam") it would seem to me a lot more useful if someone would invent something that would bog the intruder over the head.

But I don't need fancy home security systems because there is no possible way a burglar could get past my secret weapon.  It's cheap and it's foolproof.  It's so fiendish, I expect it will soon be outlawed at the next Geneva Convention.

Let me put it this way: if the Spanish Inquisition had known about it, everyone would have confessed to everything.

To wit:
LOCATION: Madrid, 15 something-or-other, in a damp dungeon (not even a three-star)

"Stubborn, eh?  Still won't confess?  Okay, Cardinal Wolsey - bring out the secret weapon!"
(horrified gasps all around)

"Not the (gulp) not the..."

"Yes! (fiendish giggle)  Get the little pieces of LEGO!"

"ARGH! No please!  No! I confess!"

It works like this:  You step on the itty bitty piece of Lego, whereupon it pierces your bare foot, sending searing needles of agony all the way up to your brain.  This in turn causes all of your bones to suddenly melt and turn you into a pain-filled gibbering mass of jelly on the floor.

I don't know if you have ever walked barefoot across a minefield of individual Lego bits, but believe me, our intelligence agencies have missed out on a good weapon.  Marbles have a similar effect, but those little plastic Lego corners kind put the icing on the proverbial meatcake (man, am I mixing comedy sketches here.)

Methinks the Lego people have missed a terrific marketing opportunity here.  In fact, right after this column is done, I'm going into business.  "Killer Lego" should be on the shelves by Christmas, ready to be scatter on floors everywhere.  Hopefully, before relatives arrive.

Actually, if you really want to keep burglars away, it's simple.  And yes, I actually heard this from the horse-er-relative's mouth.  Throw a few ride-um toys on the front lawn of your home - preferably boy ones.  Then everyone will know you have kids, so there couldn't possible be anything of value left inside your house...

Melodie Campbell writes funny books about the mob.  But she denies that THE BOOTLEGGER'S DAUGHTER is a roman a clef.  You can judge yourself.

 on AMAZON

No. 1197

It came in the mail.
Writers generally look forward to the mail arriving. Not the bills and junk mail, but the contracts and checks a writer gets for creating work good enough to be put up in print. And sure, we get a little ambivalent, with both hopes and fears, upon receiving those first envelopes from an agent, or editor since they could be a positive or a negative. They could be a glorious validation of our creative genius (also called an acceptance) or the dreaded rejection (what do they know?).

This particular piece of mail I got last month could be called an acceptance of sorts, but not one I was looking for at the time. Can't say I was too surprised to get it though because it's happened twice before in the ten years since we moved here. But why now? After all, we had a trip planned with non-refundable airline tickets, and as everyone knows, airlines recently raised their prices for a customer to change the dates on their tickets.

Guess I could have asked for a postponement, but the letter said it would only take a day or two of my time. Okay, there was a four-day window before flight time, so I took a chance. If circumstances looked bad after I got there, then I could always request a postponement at that time and ask for a later date when my schedule seemed to be more open. In any case, I know they really don't want me. None of them have in the past, even though it has been my desire to participate.

You see, once again my name has come up and I have been summoned for jury duty. My juror number is 1197 and I am supposed to appear in county court at 8:30 AM on a specified day. A lot of instructions are listed in the letter, plus there is a questionnaire form I am supposed to fill out and bring with me. The first part of the form is all background on me. I've known me for a long time, so that part's easy. Next, I check the box for Post Grad and then the NO box for Previous Jury Service.

Now I come to all the little check boxes concerning other background about me, the part which has always gotten me bounced from a jury panel in the past. I check YES for Have You Ever Been Involved In A Court Proceeding Other Than Jury Service. This is quickly followed by checks in the box for The Case Was Civil, also one in the Criminal box, again for I Was A Party To The Case and for I Was A Witness To A Case. Seems my 25 years in law enforcement tends to mean one lawyer or the other in a pending trial has concerns about me sitting on their jury panel. But, according to the rules, no occupation is automatically excused from jury duty. Thus, I am required to go through the motions.

So, the night before, as instructed in the summons, I call the designated telephone number after 5:30 PM. The taped message says numbers 601 through 1,000 must report on the following morning for jury service. Numbers 1,001 through 1,250 are on standby, must be prepared to respond at an hour's notice and are required to call the designated telephone number again at Noon on the following day to see if they are needed then. Okay, looks like No. 1197 has got a second chance with the standbys. I sleep well that night. Comes Noon, the taped message now says the standby group does not need to report, our service obligation as jurors has been fulfilled.

Ah yes, rejected again.

Now, we all know people called for jury duty often make jokes about trying to get out of jury service, some of them serious about their trying or their success. I have even laughed about some of the ploys people used or claimed to have used to get off jury duty. In fact, I found one set of circumstances so bizarre that I used it in a short story ("Independence Day") about one of my Holiday Burglars who ended up on a jury panel for a fellow burglar. In short, it seems a real-life potential female juror raised her hand when the judge asked if there was any reason why any of  the potential jurors in front of him should not serve on a jury.

"Yes ma'am," inquired the judge upon seeing her hand.
"I'm not feeling well," was her reply.
"Not feeling well? What is the problem?"
"I think it's the medicine my doctor is giving me for my cocaine addiction."
"Ma'am, you are excused."

Okay, becoming a juror can be an inconvenience. And, okay, people can joke about different ways to get off jury duty. But, I am pretty sure those same people would quickly be screaming about THEIR RIGHTS if the peer jury system was somehow abolished. So, if a little of my time being spent as a juror is one of the requirements for me to live in a free society, then I'm willing to to have the inconvenience of being called. I know that if I were innocent of an accused crime, I would want some jurors who were fair-minded and interested in true justice, not someone who is aggravated about being summoned and is trying to get out of their duty.

Now on the other hand…