Don't Try This at Home

Sleight of Hand

In another Peter Bogdanovich movie, Paper Moon, small-time con man Ryan O'Neal gives a cashier a $5 bill to pay for 15 cents worth of hair ribbons for his daughter Tatum, then distracts the cashier with small talk to camouflage his convoluted con game. After she hands him the $4.85 (while resting the fiver on the top of the till), he tells her he'll give her the four ones plus another single for the five; then, distracted by his chatter, she is tricked into giving him a $10 bill for the five ones plus the fiver from the top of the till. All told, he comes out $4.85 ahead on the deal.

I was less successful. I went to three parts of New York City on three different days, and could never get this scam to work. Every time I gave a cashier a five, she immediately put it in the till. Whether I talked about the heat, the humidity, the economy, or life in these here United States, they just put the money in the till. No matter how I tried to cajole them, beguile them, distract them, they all just put the money into the cash register. This stuff probably only worked back in the Depression Era of Paper Moon because cashiers were a whole lot dumber then than they are today.

Grifting

I took in The Grifters hoping to cadge some angles to raise the scratch to put my brats through the College of Knowledge. Forget it, Freddy. Numero Uno, if you're going to bilk bookies out of big bucks, you should have the brains to put the moolah in CDs or variable rate money market funds, instead of stashing the swag in the trunk of your Cadillac the way Al bimbo Anjelica Huston does.

(For purposes of stylistic decorum, the rest of this section will be written in English.) As for John Cusack's folded $20 bill trick, well, just can that idea. I hit three bars and two diners in Manhattan, flashing a $20 bill when ordering a drink, then replacing it with a folded $10 bill, hoping I would get change for a $20 bill just like Cusack did the first time he tried it in the film. No Way, Jose.

For starters, bartenders and waitresses don't hop to attention just because you flash a $20 bill, and for another thing modern cash registers have separate compartments for ones, fives, tens, and twenties, so when the cashier puts the money away, he or she tends to put it in the right place. Nobody gave me change for a $20 bill. Nobody said, "Hey, what the fuck are you trying to pull here, asshole?" On the positive side, nobody did what they do to Cusack, either--no one rammed a billy club into my guts, causing near-fatal hemorrhaging. Which is good, because this magazine doesn't pay for gastrointestinal surgery resulting from freelance assignments.

Ordering Take-out

In Bananas, Woody Allen goes into a diner in the middle of a South American jungle and orders coffee. Then he says: "I also want something to go. Do you have any grilled cheese sandwiches?"

"Yes sir," the counter man replies.

"Well, let me have a thousand, and 300 tuna fish and 200 bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches."

Without blinking an eyelash, the man at the counter asks Allen if he wants the cheese on rye. "490 on rye," replies Allen, "and let me have 110 on whole wheat and 300 on white bread, and one on a roll." He also orders 700 regular coffees, 500 cokes and 1,000 7-Ups. Finally, his fellow soldier asks for 900 side orders of coleslaw.

The budget for the story you are reading was not large enough to pay for a trip to a South American jungle, so I went to the next-best place: the Lower East Side of New York. At a grungy diner on Avenue A, I ordered coffee, then nonchalantly said, "Do you have grilled cheese sandwiches?"

"We don't have grilled cheese sandwiches," the young man behind the counter replied. "We make them."

"Fine, I'd like a thousand," I said. "And 200 tuna fish, and..."

"We don't do catering," the waiter said. "We deliver lunch, but we don't do catering."

"Well, I need a thousand grilled cheese sandwiches and 500 Cokes and a bunch of other stuff..."

"Well, you need a caterer then. Caterers do that. You have to look in the Yellow Pages."

Getting a Prostitute to Accompany You to a Business Dinner at Which She Will Have to Pretend to Be Somebody Sophisticated Named Vivian Just Like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman

Of all the experiments I attempted for this article, this was the one that I felt had the best chance of succeeding. That's because prostitutes are famous for doing anything you ask. In fact, one of my fantasies has always been to go to Times Square on April 14, approach a hooker who says she "will do anything" and say, "Do my taxes."

I should start off by saying that none of the women I saw on Eighth Avenue bore even a remote physical resemblance to Julia Roberts. If anyone had made a movie about any of these tragic individuals, it would have been called Pretty Ugly Woman.

Moreover, it isn't always easy to establish whether the woman you are talking to is a woman. Anyway, I finally singled out a twentyish hooker with Julia Robertsish black boots and said, "I'm having dinner with a CEO whose company I'm taking over. How much to come with me to dinner?"

"Thirty dollars in your car," she replied.

"No, I want you to come with me to a business function and pretend to be a sophisticated woman named Vivian."

"Thirty dollars in your car. Fifty if you pay for the room. Come on, sugar, you want a date?"

Well, actually, no.

Eliciting Sexual Advice from Elderly Strangers

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen walks up to a total stranger--an elderly gent--and says: "I have to ask you a question; don't go any further; with your wife in bed, does she need any kind of artificial stimulation, like marijuana?"

"We use a large, vibrating egg," the man replies.

It took me a while to work up the nerve to ask anybody this extremely personal question, but I finally buttonholed a harmless-looking old geezer getting off a bus on Eighth Avenue. "I have to ask you a question; don't go any further; with your wife in bed, does she need any kind of artificial stimulation, like marijuana?"

"I'm not from New York," he said, making every effort to get away as quickly as possible. Then, over his shoulder he volunteered, "Ask the bus driver; he might know."

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