But thirteen stories above his head, in the same business tower as Placement Strategies, entrepreneur Paul Humphries surveys the city skyline with a pair of binoculars. He refers to himself as a placement strategist of a different color, snorting at individuals like Brian, whom he labels a procrastinator. "Guys like that love complicating their lives trying to work for someone else. What if they stopped being pussies for a split second and started taking a few real risks? All you have to do is check your ego at the door, find something simple which makes money, and the rest of your problems are solved. Excuses are like elbows: everybody's got one or two and they're all knob-shaped." He motions this reporter over to the window. "Look at that guy down there selling Street Sheet. It's a generic homeless rag, full of miserable poetry and anti-gentrification whatnot. Even though he's wearing the regulation cornflower blue long-sleeved collared shirt and charcoal Gap slacks, he won't sell a single copy. I suspect he'll be out there all afternoon broiling under the sun. But at least he's trying. At least he's got a product to push." "Yo yo - who's up for the truth today? You sir? Ma'am, can I interest you? Folks how's it going today? Oh goddamnit." Paul's product is the Homeless Simulation Structure, something he came up with six months ago after noticing something remarkably simple: homeless people appear to do little more than just sit on the ground jingling a tin cup, but still they manage to earn enough to stay alive week after week. How is that even possible in a new millenium, where people need computer skills to stay afloat? One common thread immediately ascertained is that all these folks want help - and they're not afraid to ask for it by name. Paul began studying homeless patterns the way an oil painter might observe a landscape. "The most successful people are those who are quiet, unobtrusive, almost completely out of sight. If someone's all in your face, chasing you down the street, blubbering away about how their car broke down or their wallet got stolen, your brain clamps down and your purse strings draw shut. What a bunch of horse shit. Get away from me. But if you're just laying there sick-looking, totally harmless, the chances are much greater you'll earn my respect."



Charitable contributions are predicated around the notion that there really is a human being underneath every dirty blanket, inside every cardboard box, or wedged way over yonder behind that tumble-down shopping cart. The more Paul contemplated the different lumps lounging around town, the more he wondered: what if they didn't exist at all? What if that "homeless person" camped outside McDonald's was really just a pair of plastic mannequin legs partially hidden under a tarp? On a whim one morning, Paul assembled just such a prototype and laid it forth facing a bustling street corner. To his astonishment, it started making money within fifteen minutes. Businessmen, mothers and grandmothers, even tourists stopped dead in their tracks. Coins and dollars leapt from their pockets in earnest. Not once did anyone stop to consider they were being duped.



At the end of the day, Paul Humphries walked home with ten dollars in change, a Chuck E. Cheese token, and a Burger King coupon.

Early the next morning, filled with a newfound sense of experimentation, Paul substituted an oversized stuffed animal in place of the legs. This tactic generated some revenue, but not as much as he would have liked.



"Stick with a more realistic structure," he cautions. "The floppy dog thing lasted exactly one afternoon and the results were pretty much what you might expect. Nobody was particularly fooled and the donations I accumulated weren't worth my getting out of bed."



He believes the all-important money cup will never be stolen, as most everyone's unspoken assumption is that inside the structure lives a desperate, possibly violent person who sleeps with one eye open. Someone who's more or less hard to steal from, someone who'd get very pissed off if anyone tried to dip into his cash box. That message just isn't communicated with the presence of cutesy artistic flair. Paul reminds us that no real crime beyond littering city streets has taken place, and he insists that all his structures have been assembled from household materials. Just roll a pair of tube socks down the fat ends of a couple baseball bats, and attach flip-flop sandals or worn-out tennis shoes. Leave them sticking out a few inches from underneath a tarp to flesh out the illusion of a human being. Who stares at a homeless guy's legs for more than a couple of seconds?

Believe it or not, it was that initial Chuck E. Cheese token which inspired Paul to move forward with his next endeavor: animatronic homeless people capable of delivering prerecorded pleas for cash, voiced by Wilford Brimley.



Pictured [right] is the skeletal prototype of "Clyde," in one of his earliest incarnations. Clyde was beta-tested in Chicago and New York, where he sat in one place for eight hours. At the end of his shift, he'd earned sixty dollars! # HSS randomly rotating phrases

# broadcast when triggered by

# motion sensor (rev 3.4.3)



%ClydeStrings =

(

"p0" => "Can I have some change?",

"p1" => "Can I have some change?",

"p2" => "Can I have some change?",

"p3" => "Can I have some change?",

"p4" => "Can I have some change?",

"p5" => "Can I have some change?",

"p6" => "Can I have some change?",

"p7" => "Can I have some change?",

"p8" => "Can I have some change?",

"p9" => "Can I have some change?"

); But Paul's business really blossomed after striking a quiet deal with the Real Doll Corporation, a company known for life-size silicon-based sex partner substitutes. His structures since then have grown so elaborate, so detailed and realistic you'd swear he's commissioned a battery of Disney's Imagineers.



"I enjoyed Spielberg's A.I. and I love the Jamboree Bears," he says. "Certainly each has its own novelty, but neither is designed to put food on my table. They're examples of what I call technology going to waste."



Like any cinematic special effect worth its salt, subtlety is the goal. The latex surrounding each human figure is cured in the sun to provide a weather-beaten appearance. Costumes courtesy of the Salvation Army. He gestures toward "Stephen," a mopey, silicon-filled human form complete with scraggly blonde horsehair and thrift store clothes. A small motor allows him to wobble slowly back and forth, rotating a cardboard sign along the pivotal axis of his left wrist. Total cost: $8000.00. "You just don't want people to know one way or another what's going on," Paul whispers. "Maybe Stephen's a teenage runaway down on his luck, maybe he's an animatronic robot I licensed from Chuck E. Cheese. People feel a little empathy and they chip in. That's the name of the game. He's practically my son. And wouldn't you know it, he's got a great job and he supports his family. Stephen cleans up big time."

Granted, a handful of dollars here and there may not seem like much for all the trouble Paul's gone through. But in six short months, he's installed fifteen hundred fake homeless people in major cities across the United States. The daily net of Paul's invisible army averages close to $100,000. What it loses on weekends it more than makes up for during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Homeless Simulation Structures earn Paul well over three and a half million dollars a year, and every last coin is tax free.



"This October I'm buying my second house," he beams with pride. "Near the beach. No homeless types whatsoever. No one bugging me for stuff. I've already hired a few of my girlfriends to go running around collecting cash from all the cups, and things are going just great. I could never go back to a goddamn cubicle. Not in a million years. I'm more than happy squeaking by on my hourly wage. I've got a life to live, and I'll bet you do too."