"The Waiter"

George Griffith does it again! This seventh episode of From the Head continues to build onto a tiny, yet fascinating, world. Also, an old friend makes a very welcome return.

Employment Tip, Final Edition

And now the eighth and final Employment Tip from our book excerpt in Penthouse:

Here are not only some real-world employment tips, but also ways that the modern con man lifestyle can come in handy after you've punched out.

House Painter:
"No matter how much I might be asking around for work, if I'm ever asked how I land clients, I always lie and claim it's from referrals and word of mouth. 'I honestly don't know how to get new clients. The work's been coming to me for the past few years. I'm kinda embarrassed to say it, but I hardly have to work to get work.' It gets them every time."

Tip to the Modern Con Man:
"The cliché is true, even socially. If you act like you don't need it or want it, people are quicker to give it to you."

The March issue of Penthouse is currently on newsstands.

Employment Tip, No. 7

For the rest of the month, we'll be sharing daily Employment Tips from our book excerpt in Penthouse:

Here are not only some real-world employment tips, but also ways that the modern con man lifestyle can come in handy after you've punched out.

Injury Attorney:
"If you're in a hospital with your spine being held together by duct tape and a brace, and I show up, you know it's not just to hand you a get-well-soon card. I like that there's an immediate understanding. I'm looking for gain from your pain. This won't cost you a cent, but if we win, I'm taking a big piece. Nice to meetcha."

Tip to the Modern Con Man:
"If you get caught doing what you're doing, be up front. If you're hitting on a girl and she calls you on it, say 'Yep, you got me. I wanted to talk to you from the moment you walked in.' The weirdest thing is, when you play things like you got nothing to hide, it actually makes you more mysterious. People, and I mean women, really dig that."

Tomorrow: For the final installment, a House Painted finishes the job.

Employment Tip, No. 6

For the rest of the month, we'll be sharing daily Employment Tips from our book excerpt in Penthouse:

Here are not only some real-world employment tips, but also ways that the modern con man lifestyle can come in handy after you've punched out.

Graphic Designer:
"When I design catalogs or brochures for events, the most important thing is whether or not there's a section of paid advertising in back. If so, I tell the client I'll do their job for free as long as I get a full page for myself in the back section. They say fine, as they were expecting to have to go out of pocket for getting the thing designed. Then all I do is break the page into eight sections and sell of the space myself to other businesses. Usually ends up about double what I would've made."

Tip to the Modern Con Man:
"Life's a flea market. No one knows for sure the value of anything. Same goes for you. Walk into a bar and it's up to you to let people know how valuable you are, otherwise they'll set your worth themselves. And since no one knows, by all means exaggerate."

Tomorrow: An Injury Attorney helps us feel better.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding..."

From Slate today:

"Like all good stories, this one begins with a bull humping a cow in the middle of the road. In 1957, Alan Abel, a lecturer and jazz drummer was on his way to a performance in Denton, Texas, when he found himself caught in a traffic jam caused by the aforementioned beasts… [He had an idea] to write a satire about a group called The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, or SINA, which would call for animals to be clothed for the sake of decency. Abel submitted his story to the Saturday Evening Post, but when the editors missed the joke and angrily rejected it, he got an even better idea and founded SINA for real in 1959. The agenda: to get Bermuda shorts on horses, dogs, and any animal taller than 4 inches or longer than 6. The battle cry: A nude horse is a rude horse! Thus was launched the career of America's greatest living hoaxer."

The article is about Abel Raises Cain, a documentary now out on DVD. Alan Abel’s hoaxes were all exaggerations of things he saw happening, designed to point out the absurdities. Just looking around today, is the outrage over mothers daring to breastfeed in public that far from wanting to hide animal genitalia? Not really. It makes us wish that some frustrating aspects of our real world would someday be revealed as practical jokes. The article continues...

"When a broke and crime-ridden New York City teetered on the verge of collapse in the 1970s, Abel launched Omar's School for Beggars, which supposedly taught unemployed professionals tactics for successful panhandling. When the uproar surrounding Dr. Kevorkian was reaching fever pitch in the '90s, Abel created a fake company that specialized in "euthanasia cruises." A ship with a greased deck would venture a few hundred miles offshore and then tip slightly, dumping its disconsolate human cargo into the ocean."

The hoaxes are funny, but as the piece points out, the very fact that they were believed (and, at times, fully embraced) is a little depressing.

"We can laugh at the suckers who thought dogs needed pants back in the '50s, but is 2008 really any less fertile ground for hoaxers, benign or otherwise? A squirrel-cooking creationist made a nearly credible bid for the White House. CNN employs an anchor who told viewers that illegal immigrants have caused a leprosy epidemic in the United States. And a couple of weeks ago, the Mississippi state legislators proposed a bill barring restaurants from serving meals to fat people—a push more than a little reminiscent of Abel's 2006 fat tax hoax, which he perpetrated with the help of Esquire."

Buy the movie here.

Employment Tip, No. 5

For the rest of the month, we'll be sharing daily Employment Tips from our book excerpt in Penthouse:

Here are not only some real-world employment tips, but also ways that the modern con man lifestyle can come in handy after you've punched out.

Hollywood Agent:
"I have five lunch appointments every day, made a month ahead of time. The tide turns fast in this town and I know that one of the five I'm set to meet with is going to have more mojo than the others. I want the hot person for lunch and sometimes you don't know who's got the most heat until breakfast. My assistant has a lot of last-second apologies to make, but I don't just pay her to get my car cleaned, you know."

Tip to the Modern Con Man:
"There's no such thing as a sure thing. Even once you find your target – say, a girl who looks game or a sucker to challenge to pool or whomever – check out the rest of the room and find alternatives in case something goes wrong. Don't wait to do this ... there's nothing gained by limiting your focus before you have to. Just be nice to everyone because you're not only looking for another chump at all times, you might actually need someone to have your back when the chips start flying."

Tomorrow: A Graphic Designer lays it out.

Learning from others people's mistakes

Reuters is reporting a still-in-development story (see below) that is already brilliant, although we'll do our best to share more if more becomes available. For now, it's a perfect illustration of how a disguise isn't something you just slap on, like – in this case – a wig and a school uniform. Whether or not the man was just trying to take a stroll, he clearly hadn't thought it through. Because what he put on was not a disguise... sounds more like a costume, and lame one at that. We've pointed out the difference before but we'll do it again for you now in case you missed it. A costume hides your true identity, but does not deny its existence. A disguise, on the other hand, fails if a hidden true identity is suspected at all.

TOKYO - A Japanese man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl's uniform and a long wig, local police said. Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the Internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the daily Asahi Shimbun said. When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said. They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process.

For the same results, he could've simply gone with this, or this.