Friday night the Crest is hosting the premiere of Keith Lowell Jensen’s documentary about his experience at pretend(?) panhandling, “Why Lie I Need A Drink.” Keith’s invitation reads in part…
For the last three years Jonathan Morken, John Astobiza and myself have
been working on a funny and accidentally poignant documentary about panhandling. Now we present the world premier of our film Why Lie I Need A Drink. I hope you all can make it. My birthday is March 5th, and I’m celebrating my birthday at the Premier. The greatest present anyone can give me is to help me fill up these 1,000 seats and get our documentary off to a good start.
In case you were wondering if it is funny, just ask KLJ! 
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7 Comments | Leave a comment
I saw a panhandler for the first time years ago outside the front door of a supermarket. He was about twenty years old and had missing front teeth. I gave him advice. (I don’t remember what I said). All of his responses were gloomy. There isn’t anything funny about panhandling.
posted 3/06/08 at 9:11 am #
What is odd about panhandling to me is the cultural implications of it. Someone pointed out to me that you rarely see Latino or Asian panhandlers. It is almost always the white and black guys doing it. The more I looked out for a contradiction to this, the more I found the observation to seem fairly accurate. Usually when I see poor Latinos they are at least trying to provide a service,(selling fruit or something). Bit off topic, but interesting. BTW, not trying to start a racial flame war just in case someone tries to take it in that direction.
posted 3/06/08 at 9:58 am #
Lynn,
Just to be clear, the butt of the joke here is not the panhandlers but rather the people who would believe that any significant number of panhandlers might be making good money at it.
That said, how can you say there’s nothing funny about panhandling? I must respectfully disagree. Many panhandlers are themselves clever, funny people. Not that they’re not in a bad situation, not that they don’t deserve some empathy, but they’re people and some are cool, some are funny, some are disabled, some are kind of assholes.
posted 3/06/08 at 10:57 am #
SacPadre,
Yeah, dangerous subject. But I did notice that Asians do not seem to participate in panhandling. Cultural thing I guess.
I have run into Latino panhandlers in Sac. The vast majority around here though seem to be white or black.
posted 3/06/08 at 11:01 am #
I rarely see panhandlers anymore. I guess most of the people that used to panhandle, now look through trash cans for aluminum cans. I’ve seen Asians looking through trash cans for aluminum cans.
posted 3/06/08 at 3:55 pm #
Hmmm? I see panhandlers all the time downtown?
I’ve noticed a-lot of the can collectors in my neighborhood have regular jobs and collect cans before or after work. An inability to accept wasted time or wasted resources. Commendable.
posted 3/06/08 at 9:18 pm #
Will make film for food. Where are the “2 can minimum donation” remarks? And why do “pan”handlers never even have a pan anymore? But sacpadre is right– you never see asian or hispanic water polo teams either. Maybe playing water polo leads to panhandling?
posted 3/11/08 at 12:33 pm #
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