Thing 337 Stakeout

That's where I used to live. Which in retrospect is a pretty crap place to have a stakeout. In my defence, there's a logic to this which is based around not wanting to be parked outside a stranger's house and be caught doing it. Top Cat suggested it as a Thing. We both love a good cop-movie, and "the stakeout" is regular feature of such fare. You know the drill. Cop pulls up outside house/business and watches for his badguy to make a move.

Example: Rosewood and Taggart waiting outside a hotel for Detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop.

First mistake I made was going on my own. Usually a stakeout is between two partners, and they have clever witty banter because one of them is tired and doesn't want to be there while the other is overly enthusiastic about sharing the workload. Sadly, the radio on my car is broken so I couldn't even pretend that there was witty banter to be had with the DJ.

Second mistake I made was smoking. Harry Callaghan in Sudden Impact, spotted a bad guy who was on a stakeout outside a bank. How did he do it? Well it's important to remember that he's Clint Eastwood for starters, but mostly it was the pile of cigarettes outside the drivers window. Clever clogs. I'd a similar pile mounting up as I sat outside Blond Boss's house for about forty minutes just watching the front door.

Third mistake, and this one is crucial, is that I was staking out a house I used to live in. Initially this doesn't seem so ridiculous. I don't want to look like a complete psycho, so if anyone asks I can always just hop out of the car, walk over and stroll in. No problems. I'll say I was on the phone or something. The stupidity becomes apparent when the neighbours that I used to live next to walk by the car, smile, wave and "hello Dan". So much for Guy Incognito.

Two bad things that happened: First of all, I parked in a designated spot, someone arrived back to take their spot, so I just pulled out, and drove off, thinking I'll drive back in a minute when they're gone. Arrived back to park up and they were still unloading their car. This makes me the guy who was parked doing nothing, left, returned two minutes later and sat there parked doing nothing. I'd have called the cops if I was them.

The other bad thing that happened was that nothing happened. Blond Boss didn't come out, I couldn't get a clear view of the living room and the estate was quiet enough. This means that for forty minutes I was just bored.

God I'd hate to be a cop in a movie... how boring would that be?