Hoping to hear from someone else who has no memory of this happening. Damn, I'm old.
Me! I believe I was sentient at the time but have no recollection of this at all, whatsoever.
It actually would be pretty great if the whole linked story was a lie.
Along with the NBC Nightly News videos and McDonald's commercials!
The trial of the lead guy started on the day before 9/11. That's my excuse.
I just checked the Wikipedia page, and HOLY FUCK are the Canadian Atlantic-City-equivalent street names for Canadian Monopoly awesome. Goodbye, Tennessee Avenue, hello "Tunnels of Moose Jaw."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly
Also, the UK Monopoly-equivalent titles were awesome
The promotion has used other names, such as Monopoly: Pick Your Prize! (2001), Monopoly Best Chance Game (2003-2005), Monopoly/Millionaire Game, Prize Vault (2013-2014), Money Monopoly (2016-), Coast To Coast (2015-) in Canada, Golden Chances in the UK (2015-), Prize Choice in the UK (2016-), Win Win in the UK (2017-) and Wiiiin!! in the UK (2018-).
Does McDonald's still have Monopoly? I know that a grocery chain around here sometimes does. They ask if I want the pieces, and I always say no. Now I know why.
How do you steal money rigging a game played with fake money?
Anyhow, this is obvious, but the scam worked as a scam and was easy to pull off because McDonalds obviously didn't particularly give a shit who it gave the prize money to, as long as it didn't pay out more prize money than it was expecting. Thus there were not much if any by way of after-the-fact controls and the scam probably could have gone on for a few more years if no one had fortuitously tipped off the feds.
The Olympics game in 1984 was when they gave out more prizes than expected. Because of Russian meddling.
I enjoyed the flashback to the 2001-era internet in the NBC News piece.
The details in this story were great. I was relieved to hear that Robin's son Frankie decided not to join the mob.
I HEAR YOU'RE WORKING FOR THE CIA
THEY WOULDN'T HAVE YOU IN THE MAF-I-A
I remember playing McDonalds monopoly and winning something like fries or a drink or a burger. I don't think I ever won or found five dollars.
I'm so pissed about this, I tried so hard when I was a kid to collect all those goddamn pieces. I'm going to sue those assholes for mental anguish.
I'm stuck on "Wiiiin!!" as the game name in current use. Wiiiin!! Unimprovable. The era of Wiiiin!!, future historians would have said, if there were going to be any.
McTheftb exclusive volume that you say is quite interesting and appealing to me, I appreciate your effort
run 3
Did you hear? My new album just dropped. Exclusive volume, hit me up on the spammer link and I'll hook you up.
I did love this passage:
(Speaking in a thick Sicilian accent, Colombo's mother denied the family were in the Mafia but confirmed they are related to the late Joseph Colombo, former boss of the Colombo crime family.)
Writing sentences like that is a journalistic pleasure entirely distinct from anything literary.
Wiiiin!! Unimprovable.
So much wiiiinning.
The game is essentially the same as a promotion run by a local grocery store during my youth. (IIRC the game pieces were partial pictures of a donkey... could that be right?)
At a sketchy (but very fun) day camp I attended the first order of business on the way to our destination of the day was to stop in the parking lot of one of the stores so we could kids could run around and collect as many discarded game pieces as possible for the counselors.
"And don't forget to grab any more or less dry cigarette with at least two inches of tobacco."
14: OPINIONATED WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN!
Probably not on topic: I just figured out that Manafort's ostrich jacket was just a leather jacket made from ostrich hide. That's like 600% less great than what I had been thinking all day.
It needs to be seen to be believed. Look at the cuffs and the waist. Are those elasticized? It looks like a cheap windbreaker.
Not one fucking feather. Why name it after a bird?
The only way to make it worse would be to add little shoulder flap-things and a "Member's Only" label.
Actually, I quite like epaulets.
But seriously, folx, I just spent two hours listening to old white guys argue about whether The Clash's Cut The Crap is a good album or not. The evening was salvaged by the post-lecture complaining, but holy fuck everybody is old. Old, old old. My friend's *younger* kid is now taller than them, and is composing EDM.
30.1 Or, I should hope, whether it really counts as a Clash album without Mick Jones.
30.1 And IME such arguments usually revolve around Sandinista!
I was twenty five when I flipped on Sandinista!.
30: One of the highlights of my doing election duty with The Olds a few months ago was the friend of the judge of elections, who said he thought that Rush was worthless until he learned that Geddy Lee's parents were Survivors. And even then, the other two guys were just there to support him. This may be the most idiosyncratic take I've ever heard.
Yeah, he woulda lost me at "until".
Funnily enough, the almost-all-anarchist-except-for-a-few-socialists-and-hipsters crowd were not big Mick Jones partisans. There was some impassioned defense of Topper Headon though. Which, after seeing him in Westway to the World, he's so sad and cute! You just want to give him a hug and a warmer sweater.
That is a perfectly acceptable non-idiosyncratic take.
I just spent two hours listening to old white guys argue about whether The Clash's Cut The Crap is a good album or not
Least surprising demographic information ever.
IME such arguments usually revolve around Sandinista!
Since it has an exclamation mark at the end, I am choosing to believe that this is either a musical (like Oliver!) or a Ken Russell film (like Lisztomania!) or, possibly, both.