7 (maybe 8) thoughts about the bobblehead heist

["sinnerman" intensifies]

A timeline of the events as I understand them:

— The Pittsburgh Penguins decided to hold a special bobblehead giveaway for fans to honor their Hall of Fame forward Jaromir Jagr

— The team ordered 18,000 Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads

— At some point before the bobbleheads made it to Pittsburgh, they were loaded into a truck in California

— The bobbleheads were stolen 

— The Pittsburgh Penguins released a statement about the stolen bobbleheads on Thursday morning

— Something like 45 people reached out to me to tell me about the bobblehead heist

— I started giggling

— I continued giggling 

This brings us to the present. Yes, I have been giggling about this since Thursday morning. I’ve told everyone I know about it. It’s all been very thrilling. You should see my face when I tell the story. I start by saying “Hey, did you hear about the bobblehead heist?” and then I break into a huge stupid smile. It doesn’t matter if they say yes or no. If they say no, I get to explain it to them. If they say yes, we just start talking about it. No losers here. Maybe the people who didn’t get a free bobblehead at the game. But they got a voucher. They’ll be fine.

This is how the statement the Penguins released opens. 

The Pittsburgh Penguins announced today that the shipment carrying the Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads for tonight’s game against the San Jose Sharks has been stolen after its arrival in California. As a result, the bobbleheads are not in Pittsburgh and will not be distributed at tonight’s game, but will be distributed at a later date.

The Penguins learned that they were victims of cargo theft after failing to receive the shipment as scheduled. The team worked with the manufacturer and transportation companies to alert the appropriate state and federal authorities who are currently working to locate the cargo. This is an open investigation and no further comment will be made in order to not hamper with the recovery of the goods. 

This concludes our recitation of the facts. We move now into the seven (maybe eight, depending on how excited I get while I’m typing this) thoughts that have been rattling around in my head since this happened…

ONE: It is my suspicion that this was not an intentional theft of 18,000 Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads. My bet is that this is more of a “some lady stole a van filled with 10,000 donuts” situation, where they saw a truck loaded with boxes of cargo and stole it without really knowing what it contained. Kind of a cross between a crime of opportunity and buying a lottery ticket. Or maybe they got things switched up and stole the wrong cargo. Like, maybe they thought they were stealing small appliances or wrenches or something. This is where I need you to stop for a moment and picture the face of the person or persons involved as they opened up the first box and saw a bunch of bobbleheads. And then found more bobbleheads in the next box. And the one after that. And the one after that. Until they had opened them all and looked out at the floor of their garage and realized they had stolen 18,000 Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads. That’s a fun thing to think about. 

TWO: But not as much fun as it is to pretend this was an operation they’d been planning for months. Like, they saw the announcement and went straight to…

… and planned it out for a month, complete with practice runs in an empty warehouse and everything. 

THREE: It’s also fun to imagine it was done by one dude who just really freaking hates Jaromir Jagr. 

FOUR: How does one even go about moving 18,000 Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads? Especially now that the heat on them is white-hot? You can’t just put them on eBay and sell them off without raising suspicion. And even if you could, I can’t imagine there’s a big market for Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads in 2024. Maybe there is. Maybe a black market will develop among wealthy Penguins fans and they’ll start going for like $4,000 each. I don’t know. What I do know is that I just thought about some shady guy in a trenchcoat standing around outside the Penguins arena shuffling up to people like “You lookin’ for those Jagr bobbleheads? Got ‘em over here 2 for $20” and it made me smile even wider.

FIVE: Imagine going to jail for stealing 18,000 bobbleheads and explaining that to your cellmate on the first day. 

SIX: I choose to believe there was one buyer. An eccentric Russian oligarch, probably. And I choose to believe he has all 18,000 of them displayed in a hidden room in his castle that can only be accessed via tunnels and retina scanners. And I choose to believe he invites his fellow oligarch down there to show them off the way you would bottles of priceless Cabernet in a wine cellar. And I choose to believe this is just part of his bobblehead collection. I’m picturing hundreds of thousands of them all displayed behind glass and hooked up to a little vibration system he controls with a switch on the wall that makes all of their heads bobble at once in unison. You can never take this from me. 

SEVEN: This line from a little later in the Penguins press release has been sticking with me:

“We were shocked to be a victim of cargo theft, and we are working closely with local and federal authorities on the investigation,” said Penguins President of Business Operations Kevin Acklin.

I mean… yeah. I bet you were, dude. Think about how weird it would be to sit at your desk at your job one day and get a phone call where someone informs you that 18,000 bobbleheads you ordered had been stolen. Think about hanging up that phone and just staring at your wall for five minutes trying to wrap your head around any of that. Think about going to knock on your boss’s door to break the news to him. When we figure out everything that happened here and someone makes a docuseries about it — not if, when — this will be my favorite part. Just hearing the employees’ side of it. I bet it was the best day of their entire lives. 

EIGHT: This would have been an incredible episode of Columbo. 

STUFF I TYPED

— wrote about Ryan Gosling's performance of I’m Just Ken at the Oscars and how he should not be allowed to be that handsome and charming and talented 

— Shogun rules so hard and I did a power ranking of the show’s characters and haircuts and weaponry through its first four episodes

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— favorite thing I read this week: An Interview With The Bee Hero Who Humanely Vacuumed Thousands Of Bees Out Of A Tennis Stadium

— Rachel Handler took a comic sledgehammer to Netflix’s new LiLo movie and it made me laugh very much

— I, too, have become a little obsessed with the Kate Middleton saga thanks to this background and timeline at Nieman Lab

— Ayo Edebiri is the goddamn greatest

— coolest thing I learned in months: Rita Moreno got the E in her EGOT for this appearance on The Muppet Show where she performed the song Fever accompanied by Animal on the drums 

— a Jeopardy winner used his prize money to become the Charlotte area’s foremost pimento cheese mogul

— I’m ready, too, Walton Goggins 

— cannoli clutch 

— huge blueberry

— HE SAID HE WAS SORRY LEAVE HIM ALONE

— bagel conspiracy 

– “'The rats are ... all high,' NOPD chief says of vermin-infested HQ, evidence room”

— Bill Hader is playing the cat from The Cat in the Hat which is just very good on a number of levels

— wellllll it’s time once again to watch the Wu-Tang trampoline scene from The Leftovers

Okay, that’s all this week. Please share and subscribe and keep your ears open to see if anyone needs 18,000 bobbleheads.