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.

Read the whole story here.

50′ Bra Video (no audio)

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.

Teaser trailer

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

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Now you can customize a framable Donald J. Trump Presidential Pardon for anyone you’d like. Get them before it’s too late!

As seen on Boing Boing, January 5, 2021

Russian technology has come a long way…

RUSSIAN CYBERPUNK FARM

“They say that Russia is a technically backward country, there are no roads, robotics do not develop, rockets do not fly, and mail goes too long. It’s a bullshit.”

Sacha Baron Cohen congratulates Donald Trump on the occasion of his massive, very great victory over Joe Biden in the first presidential debate of 2020.

Sacha Baron Cohen capitalizes on debate with fake ‘Borat’ Trump endorsement, by Ian Mohr, Page Six, September 29, 2020

Sacha Baron Cohen used the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Tuesday night to seemingly drum up buzz for his expected “Borat” sequel by releasing a fake Trump endorsement from Kazakhstan.

It was reported earlier in the day that Amazon had bought the new “Borat” film.

Baron Cohen has in the past stolen the spotlight at events from the Cannes Film Festival to the MTV Movie Awards to promote his films in character. This time, he released a video on a Twitter feed purporting to be the Republic of Kazakhstan. The clip also included a logo for the fictional group, Kazakhs Against Foreign Meddling.

The trailer posted to Twitter proclaims, “Vote for Trump or you will be crushed.” It also calls Trump the “strongest premier in history,” and makes fun of the president’s stands on the coronavirus pandemic, Black Live Matter, #MeToo and other hot-button topics.

But the clip says as a disclaimer, “This ad may contain false information.” Baron Cohen has been a vocal Trump opponent in Hollywood.

Read the whole story here.

Wife’s prank on sleeping husband goes viral. Read the whole story on CNN here.

Vote and evict him! h/t DJD

“There shall be no golden idols…”

Golden ‘Statues’ Memorializing Donald Trump’s Most Divisive Moments Have Popped Up Around Washington, DC, Courtesy of an Ad Guru, Sarah Cascone, ArtNet News, July 21, 2020

Bryan Buckley hopes to remind voters of just how poorly Trump has handled the challenges of 2020.

Bryan Buckley, Now Go Back to School. Photo courtesy of the Trump Statue Initiative.

Big, shiny, gold statues of Donald Trump sound like they would be right up the president’s alley—but a new art project, titled the “Trump Statue Initiative,” uses the figures to instead memorialize his worst moments of 2020.

Street performers painted head-to-toe in metallic gold paint posed as still as stone atop massive plinths that hailed Trump as the “destroyer of civil rights and liberties.” The trio of “statues” appeared over the weekend in sites across Washington, DC.

Filmmaker Bryan Buckley decided to stage the project in part because of the way public statues have made headlines all summer, with activists outraging Trump with their efforts to remove memorials to Confederate leaders and other problematic historical figures. In response, the president has not only beefed up the law against vandalizing statues, but also issued an executive order to create a “National Garden of American Heroes.”

Bryan Buckley, The Bunker. Photo courtesy of the Trump Statue Initiative.

“I noticed that Trump was obsessed with statues,” Buckley told AdAge. “I felt like the best thing we could do was to create these very honest statues of the legacy he’s living right now, that let the world see exactly who he is.” Read the whole article here.

Would there be life without TikTok?

The Men of Fish Tinder Are Still the Internet’s Favorite Punching Bag, by Logan Mahan, InsideHook, July 22, 2020

If there’s a photo of you proudly hoisting up a dead fish on the internet, beware

The TikToks utilize the video-sharing app’s green-screen effect that allows users to upload screenshots and photos as a background, along with a distorted voice filter (a popular format used for “rating” anything on TikTok).

While the fish Tinder TikToks are becoming more popular now, the trend initially started back in May, when 29-year-old Cala Murry posted the first fish ranking video to the app. She has since spawned an entire subgenre of imitators. Watch Cala Murry’s Tinder Fish Rating here.

Read the whole article here.

Founders Sing says, “The worst among us have come together to record a charity single to benefit… themselves!”

Watch the video:

TikTok’s @fishie.fish tells the hilarious story of what happened after she signed up to attend Trump’s fatefully under-attended rally in Tulsa…

Watch the video retweated by The Lincoln Project

Jimmy Kimmel presents “Mr Baby Trump” who never ever ever does anything wrong…
h/t Andrea & Linda

A British Public Information Film on the threat of Coronavirus, released in the 1970s by CheeksProductions. h/t Eli Gesner