Blog Posts
39 years after JoJo, the King of the New York Gypsies and leader of Gypsies Against Stereotypical Propaganda (G.A.S.P), launched a media campaign calling for the renaming of the Gypsy Moth, The New York Times reports that the Entomological Society of America is removing gypsy moth as its recognized common name (pdf of NY Times article).
Former NRA President David Keene, and gun rights activist John Lott neglected to do their own background checks when they were invited to speak at the graduation ceremony of a non-existent high school in Las Vegas.
A Parkland Victim’s Dad Tricked A Former NRA President Into Speaking At A Fake Graduation, by Amber Jamieson, Buzzfeed News, June 23, 2021
Instead, the 3,044 empty seats represented the students who did not graduate this year because they were killed by gun violence.
In a speech to the James Madison Academy 2021 graduating class, David Keene, a former NRA president and current board member of the gun rights group, called on the teens to fight those looking to implement tighter gun restrictions.
“I’d be willing to bet that many of you will be among those who stand up and prevent those from proceeding,” he said, to a Las Vegas stadium of thousands of socially distanced chairs on June 4.
“An overwhelming majority of you will go on to college, while others may decide their dream dictates a different route to success,” said Keene. “My advice to you is simple enough: follow your dream and make it a reality.”
In a speech to the James Madison Academy 2021 graduating class, David Keene, a former NRA president and current board member of the gun rights group, called on the teens to fight those looking to implement tighter gun restrictions.
“I’d be willing to bet that many of you will be among those who stand up and prevent those from proceeding,” he said, to a Las Vegas stadium of thousands of socially distanced chairs on June 4.
“An overwhelming majority of you will go on to college, while others may decide their dream dictates a different route to success,” said Keene. “My advice to you is simple enough: follow your dream and make it a reality.”
The full article and more videos are here, complete with former NRA President David Keene’s, author and gun rights activist John Lott’s self-righteous perspective on the prank.
“Are there more naked women than women artists in museums?”
The Male Graze
ACTIVISM: Does art imitate life or life imitate art?, by Anne Douglas, Morning Star Online, June 25, 2021
That’s the question posed by no-holds-barred activists The Guerrilla Girls in their latest assault on male behaviour in the arts
Pic credit: Rob Melen, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
GUERRILLA GIRLS, the anonymous group of US feminist female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world, are bringing their unique form of “culture jamming” to billboard displays across Britain.
They formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of highlighting gender and racial inequality in the visual arts community and, to remain anonymous, members don gorilla masks and use pseudonyms referencing deceased female artists.
Their latest project involves large-scale billboards across Britain in iconic locations from Glasgow Barrowlands to London Bridge, countryside locations and seaside towns until July 18.
They are part of The Male Graze which explores bad male behaviour through the lens of art history.
“What art historians call the male gaze, the masculine, heterosexual perspective in European and American art, mostly by white men, that depicts women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer, we call The Male Graze,” The Guerrilla Girls said.
“Lots of women are naked in post-colonial Western art. Some are idle: sleeping, splayed out on beds and couches, lounging around with their friends, bathing and maybe even dancing.
“When active, there is usually a sexual element present — voyeurism, seduction, harassment, assault, rape and sometimes murder.
Russian official admits staging bogus yeti sightings to attract tourists to Siberia, by Yaron Steinbuch, New York Post, April 9, 2021
Aman Tuleev with Vladimir Makuta (right) and a man dressed in yeti costume.
It was an abominable Russian snow job.
Aman Tuleyev — one of President Vladimir Putin’s longest-serving regional leaders — has copped to arranging bogus sightings of the yeti to attract tourists in Siberia, East2West News reported.
Tuleyev, 76, who was governor of Kemerovo Oblast from 1997 to 2018, ordered a tall bureaucrat to wear an Abominable Snowman outfit so he could be spotted in the bushes by visitors to the cash-strapped Siberian region.
The New York April Fools’ Committee Is Proud to Announce:
NEW YORK CITY’S 36th ANNUAL APRIL FOOLS’ DAY PARADE
“DENY, DENY, LIE, LIE!”
The only New York City parade dedicated to conspiracy theorists!
New York’s irreverent April Fools’ Day Parade, poking fun at the past year’s displays of hype, hypocrisy, deceit, bigotry, and downright stupidity, is back for the 36th year!
The public is invited to create outrageous floats and dress up as look-alikes in colorful costumes to reflect the folly of the nuttiest politicians, crooked corporate leaders, silly celebrities, and whoever else has proved to be a total fool in the past year.
Floats should be no wider than 10’ and no longer than 30’. They can be self-propelled, towed, pushed or pulled. Customized bicycles, tricycles, baby carriages and helium balloons are welcome. The Parade Committee assumes no liability for damage caused by satire.
The theme of the parade this year is “DENY, DENY, LIE, LIE!” The parade’s Grand Marshall is Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a sombrero dragging a rolling suitcase. He’ll be followed by the QAnon Marching Band singing the Village People’s “Macho Man.” Color commentary will be provided by former Fox News commentator Lou Dobbs. Security will be provided by the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who will be standing back and standing by.
The parade will lead off with Donald Trump Jr. driving a Trump 2024 Campaign Bus. Anyone voicing opposition to his dad’s claims of voter fraud will be promptly thrown under the bus. Next up is the Georgia Republican Election Officials Float waving 11,780 Biden votes they’ve miraculously found for Trump. This will be followed by a float with a Scale Model of Mount Rushmore with Trump’s Face Added, an Exhibition of Displaced Confederate Statues, and a Shipping Container brimming with Stolen Podiums, Flags, Computers, Important Papers, and Cell Phones from the January 6 Capitol Insurrection. All of these and some Spin Art attached to a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) on the Mobile Ethereum Mining Float will be auctioned by Christie’s to help fund next year’s event (Cryptocurrency only).
Visit http://aprilfoolsdayparade.com for more details.
A new bold and evocative public work of art from Banksy
Banksy Scaled the Prison That Once Jailed Oscar Wilde to Paint His Latest Mural, by Sarah Rose Sharp, Hyperalleric.com, March 5, 2021
Banksy confirmed the artwork in a clever video stitched together with a Bob Ross tutorial.
Blockbuster street artist Banksy has laid claim to his latest work of public art — an olde tyme prison escape stenciled on the wall of the defunct HM Reading Prison in Reading, Berkshire, England. The prison, also known as Reading Gaol, was built in 1844 and operated until early 2014. Until this week, it was perhaps most famous for housing writer Oscar Wilde during a two-year imprisonment (1895-1897) after a conviction for “gross indecency.” Following his release, Wilde published The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a poem that narrates the 1896 hanging of Charles Thomas Woodridge, convicted of murdering his wife.
The Banksy mural features a figure in prison stripes and a cap. He appears to be climbing down the exterior brick wall on a rope ladder instead of a ream of paper, anchored by a typewriter. The image is likely an allusion to Wilde as Reading’s famous inmate and his subsequent poetic work that both documents Woodridge’s hanging while also identifying with him as a fellow prisoner.
The artist left his work open to speculation for a few days before taking to Instagram with a video documenting the mural’s clandestine application, with narration supplemented by overlay from Bob Ross’s famous public access painting program, The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. The audio selections first seem to merely narrate the creation of the mural, details of which are captured in the tight halo of the artist’s headlamp, but once we cut to shots of the mural in full view the following day, the audio clips telegraph the artist’s statement on the work. Read the whole article here.
From Mikel Fair, “We had an opportunity to catch up with director of the independent film documentary film Joey Skaggs: Bad Guys Talent Management Agency, which screened at Oregon Documentary Film Festival Winter 2021. The screening on February 28, 2021 was a live drive-in theater screening on the Film Festival Circuit.
Judy Drosd Interview, Film Festival Circuit, March 1, 2021
He’s the life of the party now..
Sen. Ted Cruz Piñatas Created at Dallas Party Store, by Holley Ford, nbcdfw.com, February 22, 2021
First. it was former President Donald Trump, then U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Now, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has his own piñata courtesy of a Dallas party store.
Last week, Cruz sparked widespread outrage for flying from Houston to Cancun, Mexico for a family vacation as millions of his fellow Texans endured historically low temperatures, widespread power outages and water losses. Read the whole article here.
In 1969 on Valentine’s Day, artist Joey Skaggs satirized male chauvinist Wall Street workers by stretching a fifty foot brassiere across the U.S. Treasury building on Wall Street in New York City. He called it his Big Bust.
The back story on Francine Gottfried (from Wikipedia)
Francine Gottfried (born 1947) is a clerical worker in New York City’s Financial District who acquired sudden brief celebrity when, in the space of two weeks in September 1968, increasing numbers of men began watching her as she walked to work. Newspapers dubbed her “Wall Street’s Sweater Girl” as her curvaceous figure seemed to be the sole reason that crowds formed spontaneously around her whenever she appeared in the financial district.
Gottfried started working at Chemical Bank in the financial district on May 27, 1968. By late August, a small band of creeps had noticed her, and that she always followed the same route. They timed her daily arrival and started spreading the word to their colleagues and co-workers. For three weeks, the band of gawkers grew exponentially larger until on September 18 there were 2,000 people waiting for her. (more…)
Joe Enright takes a walk down memory lane and reviews Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond, the new oral history series debuting at the New Jersey Film Festival on Friday, February 12, 2021
Joey Skaggs: 60 Years of Satire, Psychic Attorneys & Mobile Confessionals, by Joe Enright, Argyle Heights, February 10, 2021
In the mid-1960s, a Lower East Side artist organized crucifixion performances in the East Village on Easter Sunday, protesting social injustice and the Vietnam War. They created…wait for it…wait for it…controversy! The cops swarmed and he was busted. This inspired some Hollywood filmmakers to option his life story for a movie. To which the young man responded: “What life story? I’m only 20!” Indeed, there would be so much more to his story.
Joey Skaggs went on to become a satirist and prankster with an extraordinary history of accomplishments, only some of which were crammed into the hilarious 2015 documentary, Art of the Prank. But many scholars also consider him a progenitor of “culture jamming” and “reality hacking,” decades before such high-falutin’ terms were invented to describe his sly takeover of the language and visual trappings of American culture in order to subversively critique it. His pranks are never vicious, never illegal, but they do require a deadpan sense of humor, good acting skills, well-crafted press releases, financing for props, costumes, videos and above all, a wonderful imagination with the planning necessary to carry it all forward.
Skaggs is foremost a very versatile artist, but when pressed for a definitive occupational title I could pin on him for this profile, Joey chose “Pataphysician,” defined by the 19th century French writer Alfred Jarry as a practitioner of “the science of imaginary solutions.” Among Skaggs’ long list of solutions that have brought joy to many fellow citizens, and embarrassment to bamboozled reporters and societal gate-keepers, some stand out for their sheer audacity. Read the whole article here.
Who is Joey Skaggs?
Find out more as the New Jersey Film Festival screens the first four oral histories in the new series, Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond this Friday, February 12, 2021.
The screening is virtual and is available for streaming anywhere (not just in New Jersey) for 24 hours as of 12:01 am. From the moment you begin watching, you have 24 hours to finish it.
Richard Milner is the author of Darwin’s Universe: Evolution from A to Z.
Margo St. James, the media prankster, former hooker and champion of sexual freedom, died on January 11 in her hometown of Bellingham, Washington. She was 83. During her decades as a counterculture activist in San Francisco (1960s through 1980s), she led the crusade to upgrade legal rights for “ladies of the evening,” whom she described with respect as ‘sex workers.” To that end, she founded COYOTE — “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics” — which she characterized as “a loose union of women,” or perhaps “a union of loose women.” She was a serious unionist. When a reporter referred to her as a “former madam,” she demanded a retraction and proudly proclaimed, “I was never management.”
But I always thought Margo’s best claim to fame was as “the Realist Nun,” which is how I first heard of her. What, you may ask, was the Realist Nun?
In 1958, a satirist, social critic, and prankster named Paul Krassner founded an outrageous underground magazine called “The Realist”. It was inevitable that in the San Francisco of the 1960s Margo and Paul would meet and become longtime pals and co-conspirators. Margo got hold of an authentic nun’s habit and began wearing it when stepping out with Paul. Once they visited an airport and lingered at the departure gate, where they embraced and began kissing passionately, with Margo attired in the nun’s outfit. Finally, when they were through, she said in a loud voice, “Goodbye, have a great flight, Father Berrigan!” And thus began the annals of The Realist Nun. (more…)
ANNOUNCING:
Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond
A new series of short oral history films,
produced and directed by Judy Drosd with Joey Skaggs
UPCOMING SCREENINGS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE HERE
This “sticky” post will be here for a while. Scroll down for other posts.
The Covid vaccination program needs all the help it can get. Kudos to Danielle Baskin.
Cheeky prank or sign of the end times? Internet gets confused by bizarre fake website offering CORPORATE SPONSORED Covid jabs, From RT, 19 Jan, 2021
A website that claims to sell ad space for Covid-19 vaccinations has triggered both laughter and existential dread, with many expressing despair over the possibility that the absurd gimmick could actually be real.
The facetious marketing service appears to be the creation of Danielle Baskin, a designer, artist and self-described instigator of “internet pranks.”
“Rolling out the vaccine is expensive. That’s why some countries are opting into the BRAND-AID® program. Corporations subsidize government costs by paying for a tiny ad that goes on people’s arms after the injection, so their brand can reach audiences at vaccination sites,” Baskin tweeted from her personal account. The message included photoshopped images of band aids featuring logos of various corporate brands, including Chili’s restaurant chain, Comcast, and John Deere tractors. Read the whole story here.
Imagine her surprise when she got maced!
H/t Meral
From Brandon Ethridge: “This is the unaltered voice of Elizabeth from Knoxville. I hope you enjoy my piano accompaniment.”
“I GOT MACED!” The Mini Musical, starring Onion Elizabeth of Knoxville
Welcome to the Art of the Prank, produced and edited by Joey Skaggs. Here you will find insights, information, news and discussions about art, pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking around the world - past, present and future - mainstream and counter culture. You are invited to contribute to its development. May your journey be filled with more than your expectations.
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