My uncle Ned who among other things was a raging alcoholic and a small time thief, was a font of what we call out here 'idiot wisdom.' Most of it had to do with the genetic dispositions of certain immigrant groups, the sexual skills of the handicapped and the outsized role of Hollywood in the increased fluoridation of northeastern New York's water supply.
The fact that he was a jerk did not diminish his stature in the family as being something of an expert in the art of obfuscation. An occupational necessity in his full-time job as a drunk and part-time job as a crook, concealment to Ned was what chicken was to Colonel Sanders. "The best place to hide something is in full view," he used to say and sure enough my Aunt Jill-Mary never did figure out that she was cleaning her floors with Johnnie Walker Black.
I bring this up because of a recent scandal that has turned our little hamlet into Hamlet. There's a stretch of new development on Kingfisher Avenue where the old Masonic lodge and Ray's Puppets used to be. It's a winding block of two and three story condominiums that if you ask me would have looked more at home in some benign Socialist Paradise.
It turns out the developer, one Bogdan Ertsy - a former prizefighter from either Lebanon or Lisbon, I can't remember which - is an expert forger of valuable works of art. Who knew that larceny had taken such a rarefied turn?
Apparently for years he's has been pawning off fake Picassos, Dalis, Malaspinas, Modiglianis and a bunch of other so-called masters whom - excuse me - I've never heard of. Well where do you think this wiseguy was stashing his inventory? That's right, in plain view on the off-white walls of his vacant townhouses!
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| Counterfeit Malaspina painting seized by the FBI in Elmira NY 2014 |
Only a living, breathing genius could figure out how to sell this sort of crap!
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