By Coleman Patrick Ranahan
Sorry folks, it isn’t done with boppin’ tunes and an attractive lead, but with tomfoolery and a bunch of idiots. The great bank heist of 2017 wasn’t done with speeding cars and a bunch of pscyho’s in my back seat, it was half-assed with two blubbering fools with a futuristic laser rifle. It didn’t happen in the streets of Georgia or the real, gritty streets of Los Angeles in the dead of night, it happened of course, in my head.
But let’s hold up for just a second. What could have possibly have lead to such a dream? And how did it go so wrong? Meet me, a college-grad with a job as a YouTube Channel Manager in beautiful Los Angeles, California. I may not have a roving herd of PR flacks, agents, and a posse of idiots running around, but I got a good thing going. How did I develop such a psychosis to lead to a bumbling bank heist?
What my dream didn’t tell me were the spaces in between, the finer details. How did I just happen to come across a futuristic laser rifle that would allow me to break into bank ATM’s in the first place? Why was my one particular friend my partner in crime? Did I have a meet up akin to ‘The Wire’? I’d love to imagine being on the docks of Los Angeles, shrouded in a dark coat, waiting for my mysterious laser rifle to arrive, only to likely trip on a small rock and eat a puddle of rainwater (in this version of LA we get rain all the time). How did I develop these contacts? Was I on the *finger quotes* “Dark Web”?
But let’s fast forward to our finest hour, as my partner (a real life friend for some reason) and I decide to try it out for the first time and actually break into a local ATM. None of us know what we’re doing (naturally – and of course – as always). We try everything we can to figure out how to cut open the front of an ATM machine, but at this point, we’re just painting with a broad brush and making the ATM look like a burned Picasso. We get seriously frustrated and shoot the ATM’s camera right in its little damned, arrogant (?) eye, and we thankfully leave. (Sorry about the mess, Chase).
It didn’t work out the first time, we were complete fools. We couldn’t have possibly dropped the ball more than that, but did that deter us? Did we pack it in and decide, “to hell with it”? NO, OF COURSE NOT. For we are the great ATM Bandits of 2017, we have a god damn’d laser rifle, and we need to close out the year in style because ‘Fuck You’ Donald Trump (I’m not sure what he has to do with this but I had to sneak one in there).
Our second attempt at thievery was upon us. So back in we go, except this time, we use our bank ATM card to get into the building as one does when the building is closed. Hmm, seems like a terrible way to get caught, no? (The chorus shouts back: YES!). How did a chorus get in here? Now who is the one sneaking around??
As we were surely attempting a sound #2 (hold your jokes please) heist, a group of out of town tourists came flocking in, desperate for cash. My crime partner and I froze, as if we were just having some troubles, none the wiser. Everyone, in their Hawaiian shirts and touristy hats (so many hats) fought over who got to use the ATM first, and we decided to just sit there and sweat. We did afterall, have a futuristic laser rifle, capable of cutting into ATM’s, but we were gentlemen, and decided not to cause a scene while Bob and Margaret were retrieving their twenty-dollar bills. As the tourists left, my crime partner and I looked at each other, the dream ended, and I woke up laughing. I’ll never know if we got to pull off the greatest bank heist in recorded history, but it sure was dumb as hell trying to figure it out.
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