CHAPTER NINE

The Life And Times Of B. Bizarre

by Dale A. Hildebrandt

copyright 2004-2005


CHAPTER NINE: RICH MAN'S TIE

I was attending a small party along with B. Bizarre. The hostess came up to B. Bizarre as we entered the room.

“I love your work. Could you please show us something? Just one little thing.”

“I don’t know about that. Are you sure?” asked B. Bizarre.

“Oh, please. Just one thing would be enough to satisfy our appetites for the evening,” replied the hostess.

“I’m not so sure...” continued B.

“I would consider it a great favor,” mentioned the hostess.

“Well, okay. One thing,” replied B., as he took out a hundred dollar bill from his upper left breast pocket.

“B. is going to show us a little something!” the hostess practically screamed with delight, getting the attention of the small circle of people. They gathered around in a small semi-circle, ready to hear what story B. had to tell.
B. started to fold the hundred dollar bill in his hands as he began to talk.

“After a private party, where I was being paid to perform, a very wealthy, but eccentric, client invited me to have dinner with him. I’ll call him Howard. Now, we both were wearing suits, but Howard had no tie on, this is important for later in the story. We arrived at the restaurant, a place that Howard could easily buy with the snap of his fingers. The maitre’d looked us up and down and then, with a sneer, said ‘I can’t let you in. We have a policy. You must wear a jacket AND a tie!’ I told you the tie would be important later on in the story. Howard brought out a hundred dollar bill, much like the one I’m holding now. The maitre’d said, with snobbery in his voice, ‘Oh THAT won’t get you in.’ Howard simply replied, ‘Oh yes it will. Go get your manager.’ Howard folded the hundred dollar bill and when he was done folding he had....” by this time B. Bizarre was done folding the hundred dollar bill and it looked like a bowtie, “made it into an impromptu bowtie. He stuck a paperclip on it and attached it to his collar. The manager and the maitre’d arrived back on the scene. Howard gently explained that the matire’d wouldn’t let us in, but Howard did have a tie on now. The manager, laughing, let us both in to dine.” B. Bizarre attached the bowtie to his collar with a paperclip. “And that’s how I learned this fold.”

The audience applauded. They had enjoyed the story. B. Bizarre spent some time folding a few dollar bills, belonging to the audience, into bowties for them to keep as souvenirs. The hostess thanked B. and told him that she owed him one.

After the party, I drove B. Bizarre to where he was staying. We discussed his entertainments for that evening.

“You always want to make sure people really want you to entertain them. You don’t want to force entertainment on people. That’s why I made sure the hostess really wanted to see something. As for the dollar bill bow tie, with George Washington’s face in the knot, I had a lot of trouble tracking down who to credit. It turns out that nobody really knows who to credit, but the published history is very interesting. I got most of the information for it from David Lister off the Origami-L Archive in two December 3, 2000 posts titled “Paper Money Folding Part Two” and “Paper Money Folding Part Three” It turns out that apart from magicians, money folding was most popular with servicemen and bartenders, and it looks as if it didn’t catch on right away with most origami enthusiasts. In 1958, Victor Frenkill told Lillian Oppenheimer that he got the fold from an unnamed former GI. Gershon Legman’s “Bibliography of Paper Folding” (privately printed in 1952) has four references to money folds. Legman attributes the fold to Mitchell Dyszel, but whether or not this is correct is anybody’s guess. In a “Jinx” magazine dating from about 1942 are the instructions to the bow tie fold. Legman mentions there is a note from someone asking for this item in the February 1949 issue of “Hugard’s Magic Monthly”. Legmans most impressive reference, however, is “Bill Folds” which originated with a magician called Al O’Hagan and was issued by George Snyder’s Magic Shop of Cleveland, Ohio in 1945. In 1956, “Paper Magic” by Robert Harbin was released and it contains the bow tie fold. It’s rather difficult to say, for sure, who originated this particular item. The story I invented to go along with the fold is of my own invention, as I thought it would be interesting to add some sort of context and story while doing the fold, in order to better arrest the attention of the audience. I believe the story is a good one, because it has a problem and a resolution, and the guy who is getting dogged at the beginning comes out on top at the end. People love to root for the guy because the waiter’s such a jerk. And most people have experienced rude service before, so this allows, in a way, for them to imagine somebody disliked getting one-upped. And yet, it’s not a real person getting one-upped, it’s an imaginary character, so we don’t feel as bad when they get what’s coming to them.”

We ended up at the place where B. was staying just as he finished his dissertation on why he thought this was a good story. I bid him farewell, and told him next time he was in town to call me. He told me, “Next time, I’ve got something I’ve been working on that will blow your socks off.”