the photo of the hooded person is not banksy. it's me, r nicholas kuszyk, a williamsburg brooklyn based artist informally affiliated w banksy and colossal media. i was consulting the paint crew on behalf of banksy who was too busy to oversee the entire process. this might sound like shameless self promoton (the name of the game) but at least i had the foresight, well banksy and i had the foresight, to plan on wearing something that covered my face yesterday in the case of people like david noseypants photog acting all paparazzi. otherwise this ordeal would have made my face public property. a dozen people took my photograph yesterday. david was the most intrusive. well played sir.

Here's his website, and here's a sample of his art, which is wild and crazy in a good way I believe:

• Is this really just because Australians are all drunks anyhow?
• Or is it because all ad people are cokeheads, no matter where they're from?
• Could these numbers possibly be any higher in Australia than they'd be in the American ad industry?
• Does this mean that the ad industry has even more drunk cokeheads has than the media?

Informed answers in the comments. (I say yes, yes, no, and who knows?) [via AgencySpy]

David Steele Overholt took these pics of a hooded figure who seemed to be supervising a new rat mural on Houston St. yesterday. The guy denied being Banksy, but then walked away suspiciously. Possibly him? Here's an actual older picture of Banksy. You decide:

It's not the Feds. And the "job background check" line was a fraud. Furthermore, these PI's were hardly stealthy. They've been randomly knocking on the doors of people like my parents' neighbors, asking what they knew about me. In a small, tight-knit place like my hometown, this was guaranteed to immediately be passed on to my family and to me.

Which means that this investigation is either amateurish, or that whoever hired these PI's wanted me to know about it. I think a bit of both. I was back in my hometown last week, and got hold of the business card of the female PI. The next day, she appeared on my mom's street, knocking on the neighbor's doors, in search of...what? Info about my old Halloween costumes? It's hard to tell. I became convinced this wasn't a top-notch operation when this happened: she knocked on the door of my mom's house. My stepfather answered, and she asked if he knew me, and how. "Yes, I'm married to his mother," he replied.

This caused the PI to thank him and rapidly shut her notebook and start hustling off. My mom ran out and confronted her, as she was moving away at top speed. The PI allowed that she had a "client in New York" who was interested in me, but said little else. I unfortunately missed this episode, because a video clip would have been priceless.

Now: my own personal redemption story is sadly unoriginal. It's a little like David Carr's, but shorter, with fewer drugs, and not nearly as entertaining. It's also not a secret to anyone who knows me, making it pretty poor blackmail material. The practice of turning up at the houses of random tangential acquaintances could really not accomplish anything in an "investigative" sense. So let's call the whole endeavor what it really is: an attempt at intimidation.

So who hired these people? I can't say for sure, although the lies they used as their opening lines, along with their weird tactics, have given me some very strong suspicions. The only logical candidate, as far as I can tell, would be someone pissed off at something I wrote for Gawker, and looking to strike back in the sleaziest way possible. (Or maybe I'm wrong and I'm soon to get an awesome job offer!)

I'm just a blogger. I don't cover national security or break news of secret business mergers. But the idea that it's okay to hire private eyes as retaliation for people covering you didn't work out too well for HP, for (a much more consequential) example, where it turned into a huge scandal. It's fine to ask questions. But it's a dirty move to go around telling lies in order to ask questions, and hiring a PI is a pretty standard attempt to impose a chilling effect on reporting.

Late last week I got the PI, Steven Brown, on the phone. He didn't seem particularly happy to hear from me, despite his innate curiosity in me. When I first asked him why he was using a lie to ask around about me, he said "I don't really know." That made me laugh. Then he said, "Well, it's not something malicious." That made me laugh too. Then he hemmed and hawed and politely declined to tell me who his client is, and eventually got off the phone.

But hey, maybe there really is a fantastic job offer out there that I know nothing about? They wouldn't tell me, but maybe they'll tell you. If you'd like to ask the PI's about their work, you surely can:

Names: Steven Brown (THE BOSSMAN) and Rachael Singleton (THE RANDOM DOOR-KNOCKER)
Website: StevenKBrown.com
Email them!: Steve@stevenkbrown.com
Rachael@stevenkbrown.com
You can call their office!: 904-819-9700
Or call toll free!: 888-299-7574
Or fax them!: 904-826-1071
You can even call Rachael Singleton's cell phone (From her business card): 904-814-4074

If you're in the area, stop by their office (or write them a letter!) at 10604 Quail Ridge Dr., Ponte Vedra, FL, 32081. Here's a map.

Rachael Singleton stopped by my town's Historical Society a few weeks ago to look me up, for the "job," of course. She listed her home address on the sign-in sheet as 1069 Ardmore St., St. Augustine, FL 32084. That matches up with this listing for Mary R(achael) Singleton, at the phone number 904-940-1492. She was last seen rapidly fleeing my mom.

Steven Brown's claim to fame? He's the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Private Investigating. I suppose I should be proud to have such a worthy follower. Here are some photos of him:

Hey, mystery PI-hiring sleazo: why not save yourself some money and some embarrassing slinking around and just email me directly? I'm a pretty friendly guy.

It started earlier this summer with her ruminations in Ad Age about Madonna's celebrity conspiracy, Obama's celebrity conspiracy, and Sarah Palin's celebrity conspiracy. What appeal did these columns hold for members of the ad industry? Idle entertainment, we imagine. But now Bonnie's writing for MediaPost, for Christ's sake. About celebrities!

Recently, I was lured into a discussion with a highly educated career woman and a business guy - and yes, he's heterosexual -

(WTF?)

about a public comment that reality star Kim Kardashian had made. Apparently, she needs to wax every day, and my discussion mates were deeply curious as to why anyone would require daily waxing. Where would she go to do it? What parts need attending to? Now, if that isn't proof enough that the celebrity obsession is alive and well and shows no signs of abating, then I can give you many more examples.

Then she does, in fact, give you many more examples. More than you would probably ever care to hear! I think you've made your point, Bonnie: you have lots of disconnected celebrity tidbits to spew, and you will travel as far down the trade magazine ladder as necessary in order to spew them. Now stop before you kill all the, you know, interest in your website.

[MediaPost]

The will states that if his wife—an anti-abortion activist and former president of the Frederick County (Maryland) Right to Life group—doesn't burn his remains and scatter them to the four winds, about one-third of his estate will be donated to Planned Parenthood. Diabolical! There are few things sweeter than zombie emotional blackmail from the beyond. Just remember, though—the guy may have had a habit of terrorizing people with fine particles of dust, but that doesn't necessarily mean the FBI was right.

[NYT]

Yes! The show gets abysmally low ratings—it was 150th in the listings for last year. The article trots out all the old horses: it's internetting, it's DVRing, it's being secretly downloaded into vaginae nationwide! Which, fine, might be true. But the real answer to this ratings mystery is that the show can't possibly live up to the mind-numbingly loud buzzzz. It's kind of a self-perpetuating animal, this Gossip Girl frenzy. People click and then you write more and then people click more and then you write more and so on and so on until you are nothing but Frankenstein chasing his monster to the ends of the Earth, hoping—mad and frothing—to one day destroy it. I talk about the show like it's my damn job or something (wait a tick!) and I don't even like it! You heard that? I don't like Gossip Girl. I like what it could be, but what it is currently is something like a soggy piece of celery. All bland flavor and diminished crisp.

And that's why it gets low ratings! Because it's not good. And no one really, sincerely, in the deepest recesses of their hearts, gives a shit. It's like the election. Errrrbody's all talkin' about Sarah Palin and doing side-splitting parody and all that, but come November 4th ain't but a half of those people who are gonna vote. That's just history! What the CW (the "network" that airs the dreck) needs to do is actually rein in the buzz a bit. It's gotten to the point where you seriously don't need to watch the show in order to have some sort of informed "30 is the new zygote!" with-it conversation. "Oh yeah I totes saw that photo of Blake and Chesterly kissing while Credenza and Toucan Sam looked on. Yeah. What a moment." It's not hard. Let's create a little more mystery, with just the occasional tease here and there. It will make my job a mite bit harder, but the show could maybe attain that level of "oohhh what isss it??" curiosity that other oddities like the original 90210 developed, to great success. (That was before the internet. Sigh. Simpler times.)

[UPDATE: Commenter Bell County points out the likely dick reference.]
[UPDATE 2: There is an unconfirmed rumor that this particular poster is not by the actual American Apparel spoofer.]

The producer of the film, Darren Goldberg (pictured above), and/or his associates would have left two distinct props from his movie on beaches near Montauk. Some honest people came across these props and were fooled into thinking they were corpses. The first to surface was, as has been reported, photographed by the sister of a friend of publicist Alanna Nevitski, who forwarded the picture to Jezebel, which forwarded the picture to Gawker, which published it to mass hysteria.

Another picture, appearing less decomposed, was taken earlier in the day by Ryan O'Shea and Christina Pampalone and appeared in Newsday, which also reported tips from readers who had see the monster all over Long Island. It was later noted that, given the timing reported by Newsday, the body seemed to decompose awfully quickly over the course of one day. The paper also reported a sighting of a live version of the monster, which would have, under the hoax scenario, been made as part of the prank.

A group of three women later appeared on Plum TV to talk about discovering the monster and taking the photo that appeared on Gawker. One of the women was Rachel Goldberg, not identified at the time as the sister of Darren Goldberg, who is making the carnie movie, Splinterheads. The women insisted the creature "exists" and was not a Photoshop creation, and claimed they were looking for a scientist to study what remained of it. This seemed to jibe with what Colin Davis and their other male friends said on CNN. Both groups of friends would have been working in conjunction with the movie producer at this point to keep the hoax going. They claimed the body had already decomponsed to a bones and "goo," which they were keeping in a bag. One of the group later said, quite suspiciously, that the remains had been stolen.

The original supplier of the photo, Nevitski, told New York that Goldberg and the other women on Plum TV were "full of shit" because Nevitski's friend, still anonymous, took the original picture. If the monster was a hoax, Goldberg would have seen the interview as a golden opportunity to inflate the hoax further by appearing on TV, but needed to lie about taking that specific picture in order to get in front of the camers. Nevitski's friend was refusing interviews. When she went on, Goldberg suddenly had a new, alternate picture of the monster, indicating she had her own, original photos.

Blogger Nicky Papers also thought the women were lying, and wrote on Montauk-Monster.com about their nervous ticks, like giggling and breaking eye contact. He also noticed that Goldberg talked first and her friends followed her lead.

The blogger was then contacted by a source who claimed Rachel Goldberg was related to Darren Goldberg. The source said Goldberg was making Splinterheads and that the monster will appear in the movie. This was the first time the movie was tied to the monster.

The website for the movie seemed to admit to the whole thing yesterday, posting, "We have the Montauk Monster." The blog for the movie also made an admission, linking to Papers' story and another hoax report and adding, "Thanks Darren's sister." The blog, especially, has enough content that it seems genuine, as opposed to the work of a prankster.

Arguments in favor of the hoax theory:

• The body is missing, supposedly "stolen," a fishy story. Who steals a bag of bones and goo?
• There has been no examination by scientists, as promised.
• It's the simplest explanation. Occam's razor.
• The movie people are claiming credit on their website and blog.
• Goldberg and the other women were acting kind of funny on Plum TV.

Arguments against Splinterhead creating the monster:

• Splinterhead is about a carnival. Why would there be monsters is such a movie? Further, it has been described repeatedly not as a horror or paranormal movie but as a comedy. Falsely claiming credit for creating the Montauk Monster would fit better with a comedy than actually having such an ugly creature in the movie, right?
• The moviemakers never come out and say on their website or blog that they actually made the monster. They only imply it. Perhaps they are having a bit of fun.
• There is no proof that Darren and Rachel Goldberg are related, only a statement on Darren Goldberg's blog, which could be a joke.
• Papers is trying to sell montauk-monster.com. Maybe this is all a big scam to drive traffic to the site, somehow!
• How has the story stayed under the radar all week? Montauk-monster.com had this days ago, why did it take so long for anyone to notice? And was Gotham News really the first news publication to cover the story, beating the TV people, blogs (save for Montauk-monster.com) and at least one newspaper on the case? How?
• How could so many people have been fooled by a movie prop? Wouldn't it have looked suspiciously plasticky or something?

Either way, a movie has managed to attach itself, cheaply, to a fairly large media phenomenon. One way or another, it's guerilla marketing. And we all kind of new that's how it would end up, didn't we?

[Montauk-Monster.com, Montauk-Monster.com, Gotham News]

(Darren Goldberg picture via Sersen Park)

Stills from the 2000 UK documentary Boom or Bust, by filmmaker Si Mitchell:

From Squall magazine:

Two prints from British artist Mister Aitch, both of which are allegedly profile pictures of Banksy. We're told that the title, "F5," is a reference to the button people hit on their keyboard over and over to refresh a page when a new Banksy print goes up for sale:

[Read our previous Banksy coverage here. If you do not feel this investigation is as exciting as I do (it is very exciting), please keep that to yourself.]

A tipster wrote in to point out that the new photo we found is probably not of Banksy, the artist; it's of Banxy, the break dancer. Well who the fuck can keep track, really? Banxy is a dancer and performer in the UK who once appeared in a dance TV show with Deborah Bull, the British ballet dancer who appears with "Banksy" in this photo:

Here's a photo of Banxy, the dancer:

So, it's likely that the photographer who took the 1999 photos we found from Rex photo service simply heard "Banxy," assumed that it was the famous artist, and labeled the photos as such. Well, screw it. OUR BAD. We'll keep looking.

[Banxy]

Investigations by the authorities and insurers have uncovered a string of worrying revelations including:

* SECRET MISTRESSES: Fossett cheated on his wife with TWO lovers in an amazing double life.

* BAFFLING CHOICE OF PLANE: Fossett chose a light stunt aircraft which could be easily dismantled and hidden, a type he did NOT like.

* NO EMERGENCY KIT: Despite a lifetime's experience he supposedly set off on the three-hour flight in just T-shirt and shorts with no parachute or his regular global positioning system watch.

* TAKE-OFF PUZZLE: The only witness who says he saw Fossett fly off has never been quizzed by the authorities.

* TRACKER RIDDLE: The plane was fitted with a satellite rescue beacon to pinpoint its position for rescuers but no signal was ever received.

"Risk assesssor Robert Davis, who conducted an eight-month investigation for insurers Lloyds of London, said to face a £25million payout on Fossett's death, told us: 'Steve Fossett may have been declared dead but this is one mystery that is still alive. All you have in this case is a missing man and a missing plane, no more and no less than that.'

"Lt Col Ryan—closely involved from the outset—said: 'I've been doing this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett SHOULD have been found. It's not like we didn't have our eyes open. We found SIX other planes while we were looking for him. We're pretty good at what we do.'

"Lt Col Ryan confirmed claims that Fossett was cheating on devoted wife Peggy and suggested he might have faked his death to avoid a multi-million divorce settlement if she had ever found out." [NewsoftheWorld]

Edward Glaeser, an Econ professor at Harvard, has a long study in the New York Sun today about why Houston's population grew more than seven times faster than NYC over the last seven years. My guess would have been "nothing to do down there but make babies," but no! Turns out the answer is Houston's "ability to provide affordable living for middle-income Americans, something that is increasingly hard to achieve in the Big Apple."

• Housing costs are way cheaper in Houston. Middle class people can buy houses.
• There's no state or city income tax in Houston.
• Property taxes are lower in Houston.
• You earn less money in Houston, but not that much less. You pay more in transportation costs, but not that much more. And you get to ride around in an air conditioned SUV, rather than a subway car.
• It's cheaper to build sprawling, hellacious strip developments in Houston because there's less government regulation of construction.

Houston: the model for our collective dystopian future. Go there now, so I can have your apartment!

[NYS]

[via Flickr]

• According to the Daily Mail, Banksy is a 34-year-old Bristol native named Robin Gunningham. The paper started with the one known photo of Banksy, taken in Jamaica several years ago (pictured above), and worked its way back through his hometown and beyond in a year-long investigation.
• A neighbor in the Bristol neighborhood where Gunningham grew up ID'd the Banksy photo as him.
• Friends at Gunningham's private school in Bristol described him as a talented artist. The neighbor said he lived a "nomadic" existence that upset his parents.
• Gunningham's roommate in Bristol in 1998 was a man named Luke Egan, who went on to exhibit art with Banksy. When questioned, Egan mumbled a lot and denied knowing anything.
• The landlady of the house that Gunningham and Egan shared says Gunningham was Banksy—because when he moved out he left a bunch of graffiti work in the house, which she threw out. Earlier published accounts of Banksy's life confirm he shared a house in the neighborhood at the time.
• "Banksy moved to London around the turn of the millennium, once again at the same time as a certain Robin Gunningham. Robin lived in a flat in Kingsland Road, Hackney, East London, with Jamie Eastman, who worked for Bristol's Hombre record label. Banksy drew a number of the record company's album covers."
• Banksy's first major London show in 2003 was in a warehouse "just yards" away from where Gunningham lived.
• When the Daily Mail went to see Gunningham's parents, both denied everything, including recognizing the picture, having a son, and being themselves.

We hazarded a guess in May that Banksy could be the alter ego of Nick Walker, another already-famous street artist. In the months since, various bits of information have led me to believe that that's not true—although the possibility certainly still exists that Banksy is actually a collective of artists, or has other artists helping him with his pieces.

The evidence here is pretty strong. Strangely, the paper couldn't track down Gunningham himself. But it's only a matter of time now. The Daily Mail tries to make an issue of the fact that Banksy grew up as a suburban schoolboy, but I don't think that's surprising at all; his art is pretty obviously a reaction against middle class mores.

Banksy, you'll always be cool to me. Even if your name is "Robin."

[Daily Mail]

Update: here's Alice__K's theory from the comments: "My guess is that the original un-Photoshopped photo went to separate retouchers, one for print and one for web, probably because of a timing issue. The person who retouched the left photo kept the mole, changed the jawline, and made the colors warmer and more saturated. The person who retouched the photo on the right erased the mole, left the jaw alone, and used daylight colors."

Wake up at Gansevoort breakfast includes water, cereal and fresh fruit. Simply perfect. Everyone that served had something that I call sunshine...a nice smile. Lunch at Four Seasons was a small filet and I asked for a small salad but add a ton of shrimp on it. No problem. Perfect lunch and perfect service. For dinner I took my $2500 " date" from Zurich to Papaya King. We brought the food back to the hotel and I watched Marta stick it up her Swiss twat.The only thing Bruni would review would be the hot dog not how Marta prepared it and served it to herself. No this isn't a Playboy or Forum story its my life. ANYWAYS. Enough with dancing mushrooms and asparagus parfaits. I like fine food and great presentation but if you travel all the time meat loaf,potato salad or a good BLT hits the spot. Momofuku can blow me. If I can get an appointment for my daughter to see possibly one of the top brain cancer doctors in the world but I can't get into this noodle joint they should change their name to Momofuku kaka.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

To whom it may concern:

If you used Facebook's search bar feature yesterday and were able to see your "top 5" friends, then there will be a PHP file containing the "o" ranking of every single one of your Facebook friends stored somewhere on your computer.

Please note: this tip applies to anyone whose computer saves temporary internet files.

(1) Open your "Temporary Internet Files" folder. (For example, from Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options > Settings > View Files.)

(2) Within the folder, look for files last accessed on May 13 around the time you first tested out the Facebook search bar function.

(3) You should be able to find a PHP file called "typeahead_search."

(4) Save this file to another folder and open it with a text editor like Notepad (or the Mac equivalent). You will see that the file contains script for every single one of your friends. (See the script here for an example.). If you search within the file for the name of any of your Facebook friends, you will find their ranking after the letter "o." The five people with the lowest "o" rankings will be the same as your "Facebook 5."

For customers' first experience with +Energy on Tuesday, Starbucks is promoting adding it to the Doubleshot on Ice drink, Baker said. The flavors complement each other, she said.

But the energy boost can be added to any hot or cold drink. Starbucks' research and development team, a group of culinary experts, food scientists and product designers, developed the boost.

"It's a well-thought out and complementary flavor," Baker said, when asked how the boost would taste mixed in with coffee.

NO CLUES HERE. Crystal meth?

[Seattle PI]

It was part of the autocomplete for the search box. The file the server sent when you clicked on the search box was a big list of Friends and groups (that it used to autocomplete when you type) like this:

{"t":"[Dude's Name]","i":2401357,"u":"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php

?id=2401357","o":216,"it":"","n":"Northwestern"}

for me the "o:" value here is 216 for the vast majority of the names,
216 being my total number of friends, but some are lower - lo and
behold people with 0-4 are the five people that show up in the search
box

o's just a ranking thing, like so when you type "a" it uses the o
value to figure out which names should come first, then everything
that's 216 is just in alphabetical order

The only thing that remains is how they computed the o values, I
assume the method was something nefarious. Anyway it's gone now, but I
hope this helps. I'm not affiliated with facebook or anything.

• The "It's People YOU Search For" Theory
  A passionate reader writes: "jesus.... PLEASE correct that facebook post. it's the five people whom YOU SEARCH FOR most often... not the other way around. it's driving me crazy reading through all the comments seeing people getting mad at facebook for absolutely no reason."
• The "It's A Coding Error" Theory
  From a Facebook discussion thread: "I suspect it's meant to be the people whose profiles you look at the most, but that they're referring to the wrong statistics (human coding error) and it's actually the 5 who look at yours most. I think it's a mistake because Facebook wouldn't do something like that deliberately, it goes against their ethos of anonymous browsing, but it definitely refers to a statistic that they're keeping, and between the [limited] information that the coding context gives and the nature of the names (after cross-referencing with 7 of my friends), I'd say they're accidentally calling up the 5 people who browse you the most."
• The "Search Frequency" Theory
  A reader attempts to parse the Facebook algorithm: "I have a theory. I think it's matching the frequency of times that you search for someone with the frequency of times that people search for you and it's an attempt at interpreting who your best friends are."
• The "It's NOT The People You Search For" Theory
  A commenter tries the process of elimination: "eek — okay so i went on my secret stalking-only facebook page, where i have no friends, and tried it. nothing came up, which makes sense, cause it's a whack name. however, the people i use it to stalk didn't show up either, which means it cannot be tracking the people we stalk."
• The "Facebook Says You Like These People" Theory
  A commenter claims to go directly to the source: "OK, my friend emailed her friend that works for the Good Book and here was the response (emphasis mine): This is the canned response we've been using:
  The five friends that you see below the search box are populated based on people whom we think you'd be most interested in. Taking into account various factors, we attempt to make an educated guess as to who it is you're looking for when you start typing a name in the search box. Please note that this information is only visible to you and will not be shared with your friends. We hope that this feature is helpful and we appreciate your feedback. Let me know if you have further questions."

[UPDATE: Although the "down arrow" feature seems to have been disabled, you can still pull up the list of five by typing a period (".") in the search box.]

This morning, we got a tip about a sighting of Banksy painting on the side of Thunder Jacksons in NYC. Bucky Turco went and took pictures of the work. Shortly afterwards, Gothamist and others proclaimed that the piece was in fact by Nick Walker(pictured)—another well known stencil artist from Bristol, England.

Well.

The piece at Thunder Jacksons is by Nick Walker. You can see the theme in his own photos on Flickr. Our own original tipster wrote in to say, "I stand corrected. It wasn't Banksy - it was Nick Walker...the pics of the artwork show a signature that happens to be Nick Walker's. Youtube has some videos of Nick Walker working and he is the guy who was at TJ's last night."

But, asked for more information, the same tipster added this: "While he was outside doing his stencil sombody asked if he was banksy and he said he was."

Nick Walker said he was Banksy. [This is also corroborated by Gawker commenter chickenjungle, a.k.a. Abbe Diaz, here. She says she was at Thunder Jacksons last night and heard Walker say the same thing]. With that in mind, allow us to quote liberally from Bucky Turco's just-posted item at Animal NY:

According to a waitress at the newly stenciled Thunder Jackson restaurant, who witnessed Banksy painting the wall last night, "the whole thing took him about 15 minutes." When asked if she was positive it was Banksy, she emphatically stated "yes," and then awkwardly added, "Banksy is Nick Walker, they are the same person. Oops, I don't think I was supposed to say that." When pressed on why Banksy would use different names, she spilled, "He uses that identity because of visa and passport issues." The waitress added that Banksy is going to make a big announcement about his identity but not while he's in town, "He has a whole master PR plan, but he's waiting till he leaves the country."

Wow. If true.

Walker is often described as a predecessor, friend, and/ or rival of Banksy, and has certainly benefited from Banksy's publicity himself. He told Bloomberg last month:

Walker said that he had got know Banksy in Bristol, western England, in the late 1990s when he was invited to be part of the ``Walls on Fire'' group of graffiti artists.

``We don't talk too much now,'' he said.

Now let's run through the case against this theory. It started with an unsolicited tip. It has only a handful of sources. Theoretically, any of them could be lying, exaggerating, or misinformed. But it's worth noting that none of them have any readily apparent reason for making any of this up. We'd be happy to hear some art experts weigh in on Nick Walker vs. Banksy from a technical angle; but the similarities in their styles are obvious and unmistakable.

So, smart people: is Nick Walker Banksy?

"In the meantime, I hoped on the computer and googled Preston. Oh you best believe I checked him out. I mean what person wouldn't? Normally I would not have done it, but I wanted to know more about this talented basketball player. I had to find out his stats - height (Preston is a tall dude. I am tall, standing at 6'2, but I felt short next to his long lean muscular body). I checked his weight, rebounds, average points per game, how long he's been playing, and other vital information.

I was impressed. Preston was on top of his game. The press liked him and he was hometown favorite. In high school and college he was an all-around favorite, traveling across the country showcasing his talented ball-handling skills. The more I discovered, the more I liked. So, I was looking forward to spending more time with this amazing basketball player."

Later, they hook up again. Then "Preston" gets an urgent phone call. What happens next?

Check back tomorrow when Preston introduces Terrance to some important people.

Okay!

[1224 Confessions]