Warhol...pollock...BasQUIat...Milt Newman?

Thank You Anthony and Dorothy for Putting Up With This Practical Joke:
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Many years ago I was in my office looking at eBay and I happened to look at what the account of my friends Anthony and Dorothy were offering. They always have interesting items.

One lot made me do a double-take:
A painting with the auction listing titled “REBIRTH by Milt Newman - 1965 - REINCARNATION”.

Sounds pretty important. But what made this stand out to me was this was possibly the worst painting in the world and by a totally unknown artist. I just thought it had no value. My thinking was NOBODY that would want this painting for FREE, let alone pay for it and hang it on the wall. It was framed with an engraved identification plaque, probably by Milt Newman or his family. 

It just struck me as funny to think that Anthony and Dorothy had somehow wound up with this painting (that  of course may have once had great personal or sentimental value to someone), probably at a garage or estate sale, but that it had no monetary value. And now they were trying to sell it on eBay. 

Fortunately, I saved a screenshot of a printout. The printout is in black-and -white but gives the general idea and is so much better than having nothing. Here it is:

​So of course I opened a brand new eBay account just to communicate with them anonymously regarding the painting. 

The following is the back and forth (mostly me writing to them, in some cases twice in a row quickly as I thought of something to add) and they obviously have NO idea what is going on. The messages below (which I printed out at the time just so I could remember and laugh about later and share with others) I hope speak for themselves:

Obviously the last message let the cat out of the bag as I signed my name. I can only imagine what went through their minds the millisecond they saw this. The "PS" confirmed in clear language that all these messages were jokes. No more than sixty seconds passed after hitting the send button on this last message and the phone rang. I picked it up and heard Anthony say "You bastard!" and laugh and tell me that they had no idea what was going on, that this was driving them crazy! 

Anyway, I hope others find this as amusing as I do. I'm not sure if this is as funny as I think it is, or the fact that I think this is so funny is what's amusing, but I practically had tears of laughter while sending these. I hope by posting them here I made someone else laugh...and Anthony and Dorothy: Thanks for being such good sports!