There having been no clues submitted in nearly eight hours, I'll assume everyone is finished and wrap this up a bit early.
As usual, a collection of high quality clues. (Also, welcome to useby.)
Honorable mentions go to FJ@5, paul@8, paul@10, mattrom @16 (although with the end of communism I believe the correct term for the Russian leadership is now "murderous kleptocrats"), patrich@19, paul@23, and jono@28.
Triple bronze medals for mattrom@12, mathprof@13 and aristo@17, all of whom start with "COME ON" and go from there quite nicely:
12 Vulgar chant stops Aussie tennis player's exhortation
13 Let's go trade Ecstasy for money as usual
17 Start of
mouvement in sexual advance (eschewing English word that's vulgar)
Choosing between my top 2 clues was nearly impossible, which is par for the course:
paul@8: Mom gets confused and taken in by scam - it happens a lot
simplesimon@4: Two grand nicked by sly tea-leaf, how vulgar
paul has a great surface which highlights a serious and growing form of financial [whoops, sorry, I need to respond to this email from a Nigerian pen pal with whom I've been corresponding... things may be looking up!] elder abuse.
simplesimon very cleverly uses "vulgar"/slang terms in the clue as an additional hint to the answer - very meta.
As there is no way to choose between these two, I am going to flip a mental coin and say the silver goes to paul@8, and the gold goes to simplesimon@4:
Two grand nicked by sly tea-leaf, how vulgar
Congrats to simplesimon for losing their Clueless cherry, so to speak (sorry, how vulgar of me).
Prizes:
You can make a million dollars:
http://www.math.unt.edu/~mauldin/beal.html
Laughs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0HGEZXTy8Y
Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2zurZig4L8
Music bonus from mathprof's 11:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM