Scam I am

Andy Warhol. The man. The scam.

In 2006 the website Pyramid Scheme Alert gave Utah a special designation as "the scam state." Not exactly something to be proud of, but round these parts you've got to be wary of smooth talking con men using church connections. Many of the frauds start amongst the LDS faithful, although certainly not all con games are played with Mormons. There are plenty of other yokels waiting to be had.

Consider a story from the November 18, 2009 Salt Lake Tribune, which tells the tale of a 65-year-old con man and his 29-year-old female accomplice who were charged with attempting to sell six bogus Andy Warhol artworks to a man for $100,000. He paid $25,000 down for a print of Matthew Baldwin, one of the famous family of actors, and signed 1996. The man, hereinafter referred to as the mark, took it to an art appraiser in Los Angeles who told him that not only was there NOT a Baldwin brother named Matthew, but artist Andy Warhol died in 1987.

Well.

Real Warhol.

The man took the artworks back and wanted his $25,000. The couple wanted to exchange the artworks for a painting the con man claimed was worth $70 million. That should have set off a fraud alert right then. An art appraiser said the painting was worth $1000. Back went the mark to the couple who wanted to give him a Warhol lithograph of a pink cat to "pay him back." They claimed the litho was worth $30,000. When the man took it out of the frame he discovered it was cut from a newspaper.

Wow. You'd think the guy would've learned the first time, eh? It took three separate incidents for him to realize that these folks weren't on the level.

Not a real Warhol; this is a photo done in Warhol's style on PhotoShop.

Ironically, the subject of the scam, Andy Warhol, tried to pull a scam in Utah himself. As told in this excellent blog by reporter Peter Rosen, in 1967 Warhol sent a man posing as him to a lecture at the University of Utah. They were caught for that and Warhol offered to come to the University himself, but University officials decided that one Warhol was enough and they rejected the offer.

So what does all of this teach any of us? Don't believe anybody who wants to sell you something. Or if you're a con man and want to find easy pickins, come to Utah, where every day people are buying gold-painted bricks, prime real estate in Florida and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Leaf me alone!

Yesterday I was in my front yard with my lawn mower. The grass hasn't grown a millimeter in weeks, but the lawn is covered in leaves. I made a couple of circuits with the mower, picking up the leaves as I went, when a man who was walking on the sidewalk stopped.

I saw he wanted to talk to me so I stopped the mower.

"Are you cutting your lawn? What are you doing, getting an early start on next year?"

I looked at him. He was a man roughly my age. I didn't know him. "No," I said. "I'm picking up leaves with the mower." I went to turn it on when I saw he was making arm motions. He was pantomiming a raking motion. "This is what you should be doing," he said.

"I'll rake if I have to, but as a last resort."

"No," he said firmly. "You always rake as a first resort." He started to walk away. "I mean it."

Well, pardon the hell outta me! I'm sorry that using my lawnmower to pick up leaves offends you, or that it isn't in line with your way of thinking. What are you doing walking past my house in the middle of the day, anyway? Are you out catching people not using the proper methods of getting leaves off the ground?

Sheesh. I continued on with my mowing, and when I was done and had picked up all the leaves I could with the mower, I took out the rake and used that to get the stragglers. I looked up and down the street to see if he was in the vicinity. Damn Nosey Parker. I'll show him!

Happy birthday, Diana Krall

Diana Krall is 45 years old today. Did I say old? Does this woman look old? She doesn't look much different to me than when I first saw her 10 years ago.

Le jazz hot has produced one cool chick. Diana can sing, play jazz piano. By golly, I'll bet she's popular at parties, too!

Here are some songs by Diana I like. The first is an upbeat number she opened her Paris concert with, then from the same show a string arrangement on "Love Letters," the classic Nat King Cole song.

Diana, you've got the talent, and we've got the Look of Love from looking at you. I'd love to hear your arrangement of the classic "Happy Birthday" song. I'm sure no one could sing it to you as well as you.

How much time do I have left?

"Do you want to live forever?" is a cliché used in war movies when the sarge exhorts his troops to go over the top. He doesn't want any cowards.

Well, of course we're all cowards. Nobody wants to die; we all want to live forever. Or at least we want to live out our lifespan. It seems unfair if that lifespan gets cut short. For me the ideal would be to live long enough to outlive everyone who would come to my funeral and say, "Man, I'm glad I got a chance to see him dead."

Or we might think we still have unfinished business. I woke up this morning thinking of some things I'd like to do yet, time permitting, and it seems that no matter how late in the day it gets the major projects are unfinished. That's because I'm a procrastinator. I like to think--or fool myself--that I have a lot of time left in order to accomplish the things I want to accomplish.

To that end I took an Internet test to determine my "real age," and also to see how long I have to live. You can take the same test, and then come back and we'll talk about it a little bit:

Your Virtual Age

Does that make you feel better? It did me. What a relief it was when I found out that my virtual age is 49, not the 62.5 actual years since I clocked in on this planet. I'll live to be 91.6 years old, which gives me approximately 29 years left. Or maybe you noticed they even included the days. In my case it was 10,800. Since I took the test a couple of days ago I guess it's now 10,798.

I haven't gone back to see if I can add a few years to that total. Since I didn't use those two days I just mentioned to get anything important done I'd like to get them back. Maybe I shouldn't have clicked yes on the question of whether anyone in my family has died of a heart attack. Maybe I can squeeze out a few more days, months, or even a couple of years if I'd lie about my family's general health.

I got lucky because the test didn't ask if I'd ever had cancer. Yes, I've had cancer but it was removed and so far there's no sign it's come back. If there had been a question about cancer I would have answered yes and they might have chopped a decade or more off my longevity, giving me even less time to procrastinate.

So, I think I'll just be happy with my 10,798 days and go with those. I've already lived 22,812 and 1/2 days and not gotten done what I've wanted to get done, so maybe it's a wake-up call, time to shake a leg, as they say.

In the meantime, here's the procrastinators' theme song, "Mañana" by Peggy Lee. Peggy is gone now, and I hope she got done everything she wanted to get done before she left.