Brief Encounters with Geniuses

(ring) hello. You buy baseball cards? Depends. What do you have? A Honus Wagner 1910 card No you don't. How do you know? There are like 10 of them in the world and they sell for about a million dollars. So, what do I look for on my card? Where did you get it? I bought a pack of cards and it was in it. You don't have one. What do I look for on mine so I can know? You didn't a million dollar card inserted randomly into your pack of baseball cards. How can I tell? (click)

The Miser

For a few years now, I have been running a free ad in a local online and print weekly called The Recycler. Back in the pre-Craigslist days, the Recycler had a huge role in buying, selling, getting jobs, forming bands (I think I read X was formed when John and Exene ran an ad), etc. Nowadays, it's a creaky anachronism not used by anyone under 50, and rarely by anyone without a major daytime drinking problem. For my purposes, this is PERFECT! It's a place where folks who have no idea how to check the market value of their cards on Ebay might stumble across my ad while hitting their 2nd or 3rd 40 oz of the morning.

My ad says: Buying Sports Card Collections Buying sports card collections. Nothing 80s or newer. Vintage only. I typicaly get 2-5 calls/month, and 98% of them go something like this:

Caller: "Hi. I seen your ad in the paper. You buy sportscards?" Me: (suppressing pre-emptive sigh) "Depends. What do you have?" Caller: "Okay. I have a lot of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, and- Me: (interrupting) "So, you didn't actually bother reading the ad?"

And then I hang up. At least 50% of the time, they try calling me back 3 or 4 times, but I don't answer, and they get the picture. There is a common alternate version that starts:

Caller: "Hola. You buy cartas de beisbol?"

So, why the hell do I continue to do this, you ask? Every onnnncccee in a while it pays off. This is a story like that. I get a call last week, and the guy tells me that he used to own a number of shops in the 1990s (during the heyday), was a lawyer, dealt in antiques, but now is in poor health and needs to sell off a book of 50s cards that he dug up from his storage. Sounded promising, so I drove to Culver City with the 5 year old (caller mentioned there was his favorite frozen yogurt place next door, so I had a bribe).

The Miser's apartment was on a busy 4-lane thoroughfare, in the front apartment of a very depressing joint where no one lives unless very down on his luck. Tiny efficiency with hot plate. 150 square feet, maybe. He was about 60, and from the moment we began talking, I realized that he wasn't full of shit. Well educated ex-lawyer who clearly had had means once. The cards were great. The stuff I always look for, but never find, and in very very good shape.

While looking them over and taking notes (while the 5 year old inhaled inhuman quantities of yogurt with candy toppings), he started telling me way too much of his personal history, which included that he had been diagnosed with M.S. late in life, can no longer drive, falls down sometimes, and has lost a good deal of short-term memory. Also, he had just undergone $275K of cancer surgery with no insurance, and was now recovering, broke, and scrambling to put together cash. Here's where it gets good - while looking the book over and trying to figure out what to offer, he explains to me that his really good stuff, not only cards, but also some original paintings, etc., were in his safety deposit box. Those were things that he didn't want to part with (and was evidently willing to live in semi-squalor to hang onto them). His prized possession was given to him as a Bar Mitzvah present in 1962: issue #1 of Superman (Action Comics). He had gotten it graded many years ago 8 out of 10.

"Wow! I have no idea about comics, but wouldn't that take care of some of your money problems."

"Yeah, it would. I have had cash offers of 8."

"Thousand?"

"No, 8 hundred thousand. But I really don't want to sell it. Heritage Auctions told me that based on previous sales, they would probably gross $1.4 million, so I'd clear about 1.1. So, I guess, I will have to wait it out until their next auction."

Now, what I wanted to do was leap from my chair and shake the living shit out of this guy, screaming "What the hell are you waiting for? You're dying and living in an efficiency craphole for fucksake!!!" But I managed to hold it to, "That seems like a pretty good plan." He agreed. Epilogue:

So, we made a deal the next day, and I returned with cash. I walked in and it smelled like someone had been eating Tommy's triple chili cheese burgers all day and then systematically shitting them into his pants. He was embarrassed and left me with the book to take a make sure look, telling me, "Excuse me. I have to take care of a colostomy thing."

So, I sat there reading, thinking about how a horrible person, would run out with his book of cards, and then thinking more about how this guy is living this brutal existence with a million dollar comic book in his safe deposit box. Wow.

The Return of the Card Shark

Well, it has been 2 years since I last wrote a tale of the Card Shark, but over the past couple months, the company at which I had been working hit the skids, and I am back to trying to make a buck any way I can...

You might think that after all those years of learning the ropes at this game, I would have become wiser or at least have a bit more sense, but you would be underestimating my bottomless well of stupidity.

After several days of email back and forth with a young guy in Hell (Palmdale), I became convinced that the huge accumulation of cards that he claimed to have inherited from his father who had owned a shop was worth the 120 round trip drive. He was asking for $5000 in his ad, but was willing to take 4K. I grilled him about what sort of stuff he had, and he answered to my satisfaction, so, early Saturday morning, with hopes of avoiding the 100+ heat that would be humping the Antelope Valley by mid day, I started the trek. 405 N to 5 N to 14 N. Blechh. To put it mildly, not the scenic route, unless you have a thing for vast expanses of brown, dead plants.

I got to the address he had texted me about 10AM. Here, I waited outside his Mom's house in beat down suburban craphole in the foreclosure capital of California for about 15 minutes while he "Got dressed real quick." To his credit, he was a nice young African American guy. Very polite, etc. We then drove about 10 miles (running calculation: 170 miles) across the most depressing landscape you will find outside of suburban Vegas to his "other house," where he had his cards stashed under the staircase. On this trip, I got the real story: his dirtbag father and he had been fixing up a '69 Mustang since he was a little kid. It was promised to him since then as his college graduation present. It was running like a top, dents banged out, primered, and ready to go, when aforementioned dirtbag, feeling some personal debts breathing down his neck, sold the car for cash + a huge number of cards. Evidently, buyer was the actual ex-shop owner. The kid had barely spoken to his father (4 years) since this escapade, and had stashed away the cards, thinking they were worth quite a bit, until now.

So, I sat on the porch as the heat began to beat down in earnest, while he and his flatbrimmed baseball hat type roomies pulled out box after box of valueless cardboard for my inspection. Approximately 40K cards, which I went through in about 10 minutes while his eyes widened in disbelief.

"So, where are all the good cards like we talked about on the phone?"

"Well, there was a box of good ones I pulled out, but I've been having trouble with my little cousin stealing shit..."

So, I had to tell him that he had about 15 bucks worth of recycling here and suggested we went out to his storage space, since he told me there were another 100K cards in boxes, and he hadn't gone through any of them (you see where this is going, right?).

15 miles into MF'ing LANCASTER later (running calculation 200 miles) we arrived at the storage space. Car says it was 102. He opens the rolling door to a space large enough to stash a car, and there is every kind of junk you can imagine stuffed in there. Old microwaves, broken toys, AND 2 6-foot stacks of 5000 card boxes. These took me a bit longer - maybe 15 minutes to determine that he probably 30 dollars of recycling.

Now, here's the thing: I have to drive this guy back, and he's a nice kid, so I can't just scream at him for wasting my time and money and leave him to walk home. I have to suck it up, get back in the car with him, and just figure 15 miles back to his "other house," back on the freeway, and forget this whole thing. BUT (!) on the way back, he gets a call from Mama, who is hysterical. He calms her down for 10 minutes while gesturing which way to turn, and then (while covering the phone) says, "My man, I'm sorry to do this to you, but could you take me back to my Mama's house?" So, that's ANOTHER 10 miles (210). On the ride over there, he explains to me that his little brother got thrown in jail for being in the backseat of a car of gangstas the night before. There was, ostensibly, no room in the car with his friends after a party, so he took a ride. Cops pulled them over, found an unregistered handgun in the car, and chucked them all in jail.

He asked me if I knew what to do, if he needed a lawyer, etc. What the hell do I know? So, I'm legal counsel, taxi driver, and unpaid appraiser of valueless card collection, all rolled into one.

Joy.

Sprinkles the Possum

So, it's been a while since I had anything interesting to report, but here's a good one from a couple weeks back...

Talked to a guy in Costa Mesa or some other horrible place in OC. He was in his 50s and wanted to sell off his 60s/70s cards that he had stashed since childhood. Usually in my wheelhouse, so braved afternoon freeway traffic.

It was Jenn's last week of work, but my daughter was already done with school, so I had BOTH kids with me for extra excitement. Long drive through brutal City of Industry, etc., traffic, during which they both passed out in the car seats. Arrived in not run down, but certainly not fancy, neighborhood of small tract houses.

Guy opens the front door, and it's one of those places where you can see straight through to the backyard, which was full of stacks of truck and auto tires. Joy. Guy is 50ish with 'stache and bleach-blonde hair and jacked out of his head on meth. Double joy. I was about to pull the plug on the whole adventure, when the wife shows up cradling something in a blanket in her arms and asks whether the kids would like to go to the back yard and see "Sprinkles" (full disclosure: I've forgotten the actual name, but it was something like that). I took a closer look, and she had a FUCKING BABY POSSUM that she was toting around like an infant, cooing and doting on it.

Uh... I don't know...

Sprinkles doesn't bite. She's very gentle.

Uh...

I turn to methman and he just shrugs with a pained smile.

Kids... do you want to see the opossum?

Uh... okay... The 7 year old looks at me like she understands completely how insane this is, but goes along with it. 3 year old thinks everything is cool. So, being the excellent parent that I am, I allow my offspring to follow a clearly demented woman with a baby marsupial into a backyard full of truck tires. God, now that I think this through, what an asshole I am.

Anyway, we look over the cards for a while. Lots of stuff that would be valuable, but in bad shape, so I know I can pick it up for nothing. There is an open window and the front porch on other side and the kids and crazylady have moved to there. She lets Sprinkles walk along the windowsill, where 15 seconds later, it takes a baby possum shit on the sill. I learn very quickly that possum shit smells like dogshit, except approximately 50 trillion times worse. Methman and I are quickly gagging and trying to not retch and I run outside in case I actually puke. The kids think this is all very funny.

So, bought em for nothing, sold them for a bit more, and still freaked out.

Wait! There's more!

More email from the mentally ill southern jackass. I wrote to him that his first email was "The number one most fucked up thing anyone has ever said to me in my life," and he responded:

glad message was received correctly, i like #1 ratings, u jews killed your own, CHRIST, and you need to be accountable for that. sorry for making you feel responsible..

jews killed their own messiah, CHRIST JESUS, that is the crime, i will stand on JESUS CHRIST as thec SON OF JEHOVAH, GOD, you stand on anyone else, and let's see who stands!


Anyone know how to send an email worm?
I'm messing with his head and telling him I'm Irish and he's inbred.

The Jew Fear, Part 2

So, this is an entirely different aspect of the Fear.

Guy today posted this in L.A. Craigslist:
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/clt/1661989835.html

Notice, he's from Mississippi. These are incredibly rare cards and I'd lay odds at 1000:1 that they're fakes. If they're not, the guy is selling them for nothing, which is what one might expect from some inbred white fucktard from Mississippi.

So, I wrote him an email asking what he would offer in terms of a guarantee of authenticity, given that there are so many fakes of these (quick historical note, in 1914/15 these were surprises in boxes of CJ. There were a zillion and none of them have survived. Mice nibble the sweet goodness right out of em).

Seems like a reasonable question, right? Anyway, here is the actual quote I got from this fucking pig:

"I don't sell to Jews."

I shit thee not. If you would like to harass him, that probably wouldn't be a bad use of your time.

The Last Time this Happened, Part 2

A few months passed. We crept toward the dread of the 2004 Presidential Election, my band slowly devolved into a joyless task of herding (mentally ill) cats, and I continued to not work. In September, the Ad Agency Guy called to offer a second week of sign sitting, this time at a slightly higher day rate in Minneapolis. Although I longed to finally see the home of all my boyhood heroes, I had booked what turned out to be the last tour I ever did (and a complete and utter nightmare on all accounts), and had to turn it down. The wife not happy with that, but held her tongue, probably sensing that my protracted rock and roll adolescence was FINALLY winding down to oblivion.

Very surprisingly, as I thought I had heard the last of this, I got ANOTHER call to have a go at a sign in Seattle in mid-October (the Red Sox were just completing they're playoff comeback against the Yanks), and jumped on the chance. Evidently, they could not find a local desperate idiot, so offered to put me up in a hotel, give me a substantial per diem, and this time it was only 2 3-hour shifts/day instead of a dawn to dusk marathon.

Seattle in late Fall is wet and freezing. Also, the sun doesn't come up in earnest until at least 6:30. This meant driving across town to a 5th story rooftop across from the baseball park downtown in complete darkness, taking a few steps down a ladder (no repelling this time, thank god) and waving in pitch blackness to cars so far below that NO ONE knew I was there (well, until the very last day, but we're not there yet). In Portland, I got a few honks and waves. This time, I might as well have not been there.

The whole week must have been nothing more than fulfilling the contract, because this time, they didn't even bother lying to me that this was a big event. No one from the agency came to see me even once. I was completely on my own. This meant shedding pieces of the uniform as the week went on, i.e., Shirt/tie/slacks/dress shoes/glasses turned to Shirt/tie/jeans/sneakers/no glasses by day 2. Also, I was up so high that no one would have been able to spot me wearing an iPod all day, so I spent a lot of time with PJ Harvey.

Did I mention wet and cold? By 7AM, I was soaked with that wet, misty crap that passes for rain in Seattle, shaking and chattering. Being cold, of course, is a powerful diuretic, which plays prominently later, so stay tuned. To pass the hours, I performed a HIGHLY scientific experiment of counting Kerry vs. Bush bumper stickers and found that King County was about 8:1 Kerry. I also began writing a mocumentary film script in my head for an entirely-optimistic, wholly-unsuccessful actor who spends an entire summer on billboards, slowly loses his mind, woman, and dignity, and ends up throwing things, including poop, at passing cars. I have notes somewhere should you be interested in buying this brilliant idea.

The in-between hours were pure bliss. I wandered the streets of Seattle, mainly Belltown and the Pike Market areas, went to the library, ate pretty well, and took naps. Lovely time, but then back up on the board for the evening shift, during which the predominantly red taillights turned to white headlights, and still no one saw me. My friend SKloos thinks that this was my subconscious creating a waking dream for me to see that my long and unsuccessful music "career" had now become a grotesque caricature - me jumping up and down in public, trying to be noticed, but being ignored by all. As always, he was probably right.

AHA! But then I was noticed on Friday afternoon! Safeco Field had been a giant, empty parking lot and unused grass park all week, but on Frday, around 2PM, cars started to amass. After about a half hour, I started to realize that something odd was going on: every car was filled with white men. Not one woman, not one person of color. At first, I was thinking Gay Pride Mariners appreciation night, but where was the Rainbow Coalition? Why only Whitey? AHA! This had to be one of those "Promise Keeper" type things where massive numbers of mentally ill men get together to watch feats of strength and speak in tongues!
Reflect upon the salient details:
a. I have curly hair and look like a Jew (or some would say, a half-black Jew)
b. These guys, not so much
c. These guys probably not the type to be cool with folks who don't remind them of them
d. This was still in shouting distance of 911.

It was only a matter of time. A group of them started to amass at the base of my billboard's building, pointing up at me and shouting words I couldn't make out over the din of the traffic (but, I was pretty sure had nothing to do with "Hey! That guy is pretending to be DEX, but he's wearing sneakers! What a fraud!). This crowd grew in size over the next 10 minutes or so, before I heard the unmistakable sounds of cops behind me. They suggested that I put my hands up over my head and turn around, and low and behold, TWO pistols were pointed at me.

What followed was one of the most farcical bad cop/worse cops routines I have ever seen, with the heavy played by a LINEBACKER of a lesbian cop. This woman had done so many roids that her Adam's Apple heaved lustily with the thought of pushing me off that rooftop.
HER: WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP HERE?
ME: Hi. This is my job. I've been up here all week. I'm DEX. Get it?
HIM: Sir, we received complaints that someone suspicious was watching the people going to the event from up here.
No. You probably shouldn't be listening to those freaks -
HER: YOU'RE THE FREAK! (swear to god. this is a quote).
ME: I'm going to very slowly reach into my pocket and get my cell phone and you can redial the last number to my employers.
And so I did. And so they did, and that was that, except the kicker:
HER: WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN THOSE BAGS?
ME: I don't really think you want to see.
HER: SLOWLY PICK UP THE BAG AND TAKE OUT WHATEVER IS IN THERE!
ME: Okeekoke (sounds of rustling papter bag and removal of 2 full-to-the-brim bottles of my urine).
HIM: I'd suggest you want to throw those away, Sir.

And they left, and I decided that was the end of this adventure, left an hour early, and drove home in the rain to Portland, where my wife got a pretty big kick out of my tale.