Hipster Gypster

Have you been following the Hipster Grifter story? It's kind of crazy and sad, and maybe we're going to be seeing a lot more of these in the future, what with the blogs and the American Talentless and the coming Armageddon and such.


Twenty-two-year-old Kari Farrell was once just a poor Korean girl from Utah (what?). Now Dateline is doing a segment on her! And Gawker runs daily updates on her life. And she's even got a web site devoted to freeing her from jail. Um, yes, jail.

Apparently, Kari is a major con artist, and she's wanted by the Utah police for serious theft, forgery, and writing bad checks (what, they couldn't read her handwriting?) for up to $60,000. Her modus operandi? Saying she had cancer (for the girls), was pregnant (by you?), wanted to give you "a hand job with her mouth" (for the boys), or wanted to "throw your hotdog down my hallway" (yikes!).

All the details are hilarious. Or depressing. I can't decide which. Some guy's selling a supposed matchbook of hers, signed by "Ping Pong" (a degrading nickname given to her by the fine folks at Vice Magazine, where she of course worked for a very short period). People started making T-shirts and posters with her face and sayings on them. She called herself "Korean Abdul-Jabbar" (come on, that one's kind of clever) and she had a tattoo on her back that pointed out her love of beards. Her adoptive dad disowned her. Even the way she was caught -- some guy lured her to Philly with the promise of escaping across country in his band's van -- was crazy sad. And her "apology"? Not so sincere.

This New York Observer article has tons more details about her journey to the slammer. Or the top. As for her victims, I guess the Free Kari web site guy put it best: "They are the gullible idiots who think they’re amazingly lucky to have this wet Asiatic beaver just land on their lap."

Now, in honor of the Celtics game tonight...