I love a good heist movie. Hell, I like a bad heist movie. The Sting, made in my birth year of 1973 has to be the quintessential con-man movie along with Paper Moon. Ocean’s Eleven, the original, may be one of the worst films ever made. The remake, just good fun. The same could be said, in reverse, of the two films titled The Italian Job. Michael Caine was genius in the original that offered a literal cliff-hanger; Mark Wahlberg and Edward Norton, both decent actors on occasion, made me wish I could jump through the screen to choke them in the ill-fated remake.
P.T. Barnum suggested that, “There is a sucker born every minute,” reports from Chris Matyszczyk at CNET suggest that Mr. Barnum may have that wrong by a considerable factor. This is especially true if you happen to live in Spartanburg, S.C where a woman once paid $180 for an iPad made of wood. This was only made more ridiculous based on the fact that two women in the same small city paid $250 for a laptop made of paper.
Well, Manchester, England, you now get to join Spartanburg’s ranks. For a man recently was stopped at Piccadilly rail station and offered a 16GB iPad for 250 British pounds (around $390), a steal given that an “unopened” iPad with the same specs would have cost him 399 British pounds (around $620).
Things began going south, in my opinion, when he followed two men into a parking garage. I mean that’s just stupid. The result expected. While you can already tell the man didn’t receive an iPad, would you expect the “unopened” box to be filled with potatoes?
This is just painful to write. Really, potatoes? They didn’t rattle abouts to use the British English? Did the box say, “Some Assembly Required?”
I can’t feel bad for this person, I just can’t. I almost applaud the success of these two “con-men.” I expect this to happen to the Scouser muppets that make up Liverpool’s population but Manchester?
A wise man once said, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” Manchester, apparently, has its share of combs and other fleecing equipment.
