scooting and hollering

Or, we interrupt this publication to ask "y'all heard about this heist??"

Hi friends!

I’m writing this on my lunch break at work while I eat the second half of a breakfast burrito from yesterday and prep for a 2pm meeting, so I’ll be brief. But I couldn’t let the day go by without shining my own little spotlight on what I have termed the best news headline I’ve ever woken up to.

I’m talking, of course, about the Parisian jewel heist.

HEIST HEIST BABY

Dirtbags Through the Ages is, famously, a pro-jewel-heist publication. We were yelling about jewel thieves just four short weeks ago, and I’ve been on this bandwagon since way back in October 2021, so I’m hardly new to the game.

All this to say, when the Loony Toons-ass heist hit the Louvre on Sunday, I was losing my ever-loving mind about it.

If you’re one of the 10 people alive who doesn’t already know, a team of jewel thieves broke into the Louvre on Sunday morning using a crane and stole eight priceless French jewels from the Napoleonic era before escaping back out the window in five calendar minutes and vanishing into the Parisian streets.

Allow me to tell you all of my favorite things about this story.

1. THEY HAD A CRANE. These people DROVE A CRANE UP TO THE WINDOW OF THE LOUVRE AND NOBODY STOPPED THEM. Was the crane labeled “ACME INC” and driven by Wile E. Coyote?? One must assume so!!

   

   BOOP BOOP BOOP DON’T MIND ME JUST A CASUAL CRANE NOTHING TO SEE HERE

2. The thieves drilled in through the window with a glass cutter as if their only experience with grand larceny was the Mission: Impossible franchise, again illustrating how much I have in common with these people.

3. They stole jewels that used to belong to the queens and empresses of France, especially fitting as these jewels were themselves almost certainly pillaged from some part of the empire so sorry if I don’t feel bad for THE GHOST OF THE WIFE OF LOUIS-PHILIPPE.

4. Regardless of the thieves’ intent, it feels like a fuck-you to Napoleon, which is always a perk.

5. These jewels are almost uniformly ugly, which is in the grandest French tradition of designing hideous jewelry that gets very publicly thieved at a time of social upheaval.

   

   you’re telling me we have ANOTHER JEWELRY HEIST IN WHICH AN ENTERPRISING GROUP OF CON PEOPLE STOLE AN UGLY DIAMOND MONSTROSITY WITH TASSLES?????? AGAIN?????

6. During their flight back out the window, the thieves accidentally dropped the tiara of Empress Eugenie and KEPT GOING because they HAD ENOUGH ROYAL JEWELS so they DIDN’T NEED THAT ONE and also FUCK YOU NAPOLEON III YOUR WIFE’S TIARA WAS SO INSIGNIFICANT THE THIEVES DIDN’T EVEN TURN AROUND.

7. After escaping back out the window, the thieves leapt onto SCOOTERS as if this is a scene from the Pink Panther. THEY SCOOTED AWAY.

From AP News:

According to French media, there were four perpetrators: two dressed as construction workers in yellow safety vests on the lift, and two each on a scooter. French authorities did not immediately comment on this.

If I were the French authorities, I also could not possibly comment on this, as I would be laughing so hard they’d have to ask me to leave the press briefing.

Apologies to anyone I am offending with my absolute glee at this cartoonish heist, but these thieves are my heroes and I hope they are never caught. The only way this story could get better is if a wacky Italian mountebank with a history of selling religious relics is somehow implicated.

OK, that’s all. As you were.

-Allison