this weekend i went to a mini-film festival featuring some short films and was possibly targeted for an investment scam.

a local radio personality was invited to speak beforehand and got up to talk about the deplorable state of Blacks in TV, citing BET and UPN mostly, the objectification of our sistas, and he got a little preaching in too.

the films started and contained many of elements he had a problem with. I think he left shortly thereafter.

the first set was all the films done by the pstola dot com group,
the second film was called wet dreams and false images, a short doc about one man’s obession w/ perfect celebrity booties (and what not )and the truth about how digital manipulation manipulates
The third film was also by pstola about this fellow and his attempts to put together a menage a trois

after that i went to Hams and this brotha in a suit was on my side of the bar. the victim of a carjacking the night before. they took his money, wallet and payroll checks. he talked about his house he was selling (it was worth 1/2 a mil), big deals he had made, and a lot of other info and was asking me a lot of questions as well. his brothers were coming up from the QC to get him so he was just killing time.

to hear people brag about what they got is a put off for me. and he did a lot of it, perhaps thinking it would impress me then he got to talking about investments and asking me how much money i was making and “nigerian email scam” started flashing over his head. check please.

i started thinking about a couple of years ago here there was a cat ripping off church members of thousands of dollars in an investment scam. i wondered what he was up to these days.

in my head a mental coin turns over and over. one side “truth” the other “bs”. the thing that kept me sitting there was the sliver of my compassionate side wondering what if there was a shred of truth to the story, i couldn’t just bounce on brotherman. but the cynical side was ready to be out and was getting more impatient by the second.

he had several people feeling sorry for him, with it being so close to easter. then he asked if he could borrow $5 for a meal and would pay me $20 the next day once he got my number. i’m ready to flee at this point but what about the small chance that he’s telling the truth. we talked about a lot of things in the couple of hours i had been there. i cut out shortly afterwards giving him $5 for the entertainment.