Is That A Wand In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

Today, Calico looks at Harry Potter and Twilight star Robert Pattinson’s past efforts at being an adult entertainment entrepreneur — albeit one who stole his porn inventory from a local newsstand. Like so many criminals, Pattison got too comfortable with the success of scheme, ultimately leading to the humiliation of being caught and punished for his deeds. Where are those invisibility cloaks when you need one?

Read all about it in the new post “Is That A Wand In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?” Read on…

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com

OK, it’s Calico-confession time; despite my position as an avowed lover of the sci-fi and fantasy literary genres, I’ve never read a single Harry Potter book or watched any of the movies. I’ve never so much as cracked the cover or watched the credits.

Substantially less shameful, or hopefully at least more understandable, I’ve also never read or watched anything from the Twilight series, but this is mostly because werewolves have freaked me right the fuck out, ever since watching An American Werewolf in London in the theaters when I was probably too young to be watching a movie like An American Werewolf in London.

Still, even never having seen either of these movies, I’m quite familiar with the name Robert Pattinson, if only because one of my nieces has a brutal crush on him.

Of course, there’s more that I don’t know about Pattinson than what I do know about him. One of the things I didn’t know about him, until just the other morning, is he was once something of a porn entrepreneur – after a fashion, at least.

Now That’s What I Call A Profit Margin

As the story goes, Pattinson was once kicked out of school for selling porn magazines to his classmates. He wasn’t an official porn distributor, naturally, nor was he appropriating magazines from his father’s sock drawer to stock his backpack. No, Pattinson was committing actual crimes to procure his porn wares.

“I was stealing porn magazines and selling them at school,” Pattinson told Howard Stern. “No one knew at all what to do with them, though. I’d sell them for a lot of money. I used to go in and take like, one or two, and then put them in my bag. I was in school uniform when I was doing it, and it was kind of risky.”

As is so often the case with budding young criminals, Pattinson’s misdeeds escalated as his confidence (and profits) grew.

“In the end, I got so cocky that I would take the entire rack,” Pattinson added.

In this context, I’d say “cocky” is the right word, for sure.

While I disapprove, if you distance yourself from the ethical and moral issues involved with the theft of the magazines, you can understand why Pattinson kept his little scam going. After all, any retail markup which starts at $0 is a pure profit situation.

Harry Palmer and the Newsstand Hamartia

Unfortunately for young Pattinson, another thing he had in common with a lot of other criminals was complacency. When he became too successful at thieving for his own good, he got sloppy – and then got caught.

“I remember the guy who worked in the store shouting, like, ‘Hey!’,” Pattinson said. “And then my two friends ran off, and I turned around, like, ‘What?’ I walked back up to him. I hadn’t zipped up my bag.”

Whoopsie! I guess Rob really could have used one of those handy invisibility cloaks right around then, eh?

“This guy is pulling out all these porno magazines – and it was when porn used to have, like, VHS tapes in the plastic sheet with it – and he’s pulling all these things out, and I was sitting there humiliated with all the old people looking at me disgusted,” Pattinson continued. “I was like, ‘Don’t call the cops, call my parents,’ and I was trying to make up a lie of where I lived. I was terrible.”

Worst of all, when it came time to back up their friend (and illicit erotica supplier), Pattinson’s cohorts didn’t stand tall; they crumbled in the face of pressure from law enforcement and immediately squealed on him.

“Basically, a couple of days later, everything fell down,” Pattinson said. “Basically, every single one of my friends snitched on me.”

Oh well, at least Pattinson learned the valuable lesson that crime doesn’t pay – or doesn’t pay as well as Hollywood, at any rate.