Our Lazy Crooks

Kathleen Turner, movie star

The local police blotter is never full of the sort of things that make the local Chamber of Commerce blush with joy, but you have to admit there's a certain panache about some criminals, despicable though they are.  In town after town all across the nation, other people get to swell with pride as a young man is charged with multiple counts of whatever, and during his trial, has to be chained, shackled and cuffed to prevent him from bursting out with, "I did it all for you, Loretta!  They can't keep us apart!  They can't stop you from loving me!  Let me not to marriage of true minds admit impediments!"

The magnificent Towson High

Nothing but nothing is better for a town's morale than a Lifetime Movie Of The Week being filmed there, right in the courthouse.  We had our cine-moment almost twenty years ago, when John Waters made "Serial Mom" in Towson, and we got to see true movie magic at work.  It was the dead of summer when they filmed it, but some prop guy had to find autumn leaves to strew about, because they had to work in the gag about it being improper to wear white after Labor Day. 

But whereas Kathleen Turner, in that movie, killed someone with her car right there in the back parking lot of my alma mater Towson High, lately the crime scene in our village is down to just where the perpetrators can't even stay awake.  Here is something from the local Patch:

Ridge Avenue, 200 block. 10:55 a.m. Feb. 12. Someone used a key left in a home's front door and laid down in a bed. The person refused to leave until police arrived. Police arrested (a young man named Adam), 20, also of the 200 block of Ridge Ave. He was charged with fourth-degree burglary and trespassing and released Feb. 13 on $10,000 bail.

Knollwood Road, 7900 block. 1:49 a.m. Feb. 12. Someone kicked an apartment door open and laid down. Police arrested (another young man named Adam), 22, of the 200 block of Donnybrook Lane. He was charged with fourth-degree burglary and destruction of property. No further information is available.

And that's the way it is in 2011. Somehow, I can hear these young crooks, whom I don't know from Adam, being interrogated by the gendarmerie.  "Yeah, see, so you slept at the Petersons', see? And that wasn't enough, oh no.  Then you had to sleep at the Willises' and the Harpers' and the O'Hoolahans'!  And then you woke up one day, and sleeping in someone's house wasn't enough, so you started asking them to leave out some warm milk and cookies, and you slipped into their Snuggie® and used their white noise machine, and then you started recording Republican debates on their DVRs and you were up to five Santorum rants about how the left wing is trying to destroy the very fabric of America per day and still it wasn't enough, and then you started snorting Ovaltine - first the Classic Malt flavor and then the Dark Chocolate..."

Could someone just do something normal for once?  Like get arrested for jaywalking?