Tired of mentally torturing yourself? Flush the toilet.

Watch the video:

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…)

Adding to the annals of nautical history is the second crossing of the Pacific Ocean on a paddleboard. The first was in 1983, when J.J. Skaggs (aka Joey Skaggs) crossed in the opposite direction against prevailing winds and currents on a windsurfer without any shelter. Read the full story here: Windsurfing from Hawaii to California Thanks Wayne Zebzda.

Man rides stand-up paddleboard from California to Hawaii
Fox5 San Diego from CNN Wire
August 27, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO — A three-month paddleboat float across the Pacific Ocean might seem crazy to the rest of us, but for Antonio de la Rosa it was just another challenge.

The Spanish endurance athlete completed a 2,951-mile journey from San Francisco, California, to Oahu, Hawaii, on Saturday, using just a specially-designed stand-up paddleboard.

The journey took him 76 days…

Read the whole article here.

The “Penny in a Bottle” prank, Nina Minaj edition:

Watch the video

Prankster gives travelers desperate for a charge serious sticker shock.

This Man’s Hilarious Airport Prank Is So Perfect and So Evil
by Reegan Von Wildenradt
Men’s Health
June 15, 2017

He hit airport travelers right where it hurts

Is there anything as beautiful as spotting an unused outlet in a crowded airport just as your phone battery reaches 1 percent? Of course not. So when one guy decided to violate that sacred moment for countless airport travelers by dotting a crowded airport terminal with fake electrical outlet stickers, we both cringed with the victims and applauded the sheer genius of one of the most hilarious pranks we’ve seen in a while.

The mastermind, @JustBasicDave, was traveling from Miami International Airport to London when he apparently decided that instead of just grabbing a book and finding a nice comfortable piece of hard plastic chair while waiting for his flight, he would turn the nightmare that already is traveling into an even sadder time for a number of airport travelers. (If you’re looking for an airport terminal you wouldn’t mind spending some extra time in, though, here are the 10 best.) Dave, as we are assuming his name is, pulled out some fake electrical outlet stickers and stuck them to spots throughout the terminal. Then, he sat and waited for his prey to fall into his devious trap. Read the rest of this article here.

An unnamed 65-year-old Athens, Georgia woman who is probably not an accessory to homicide reported receiving an unusual text message.

“Athens woman possibly target of phone prank”
by Police Blotter staff
OnlineAthens.com
September 3, 2014

A 65-year Athens woman reported to Athens-Clarke County police that on Monday she received a text message from an anonymous person who said, “Hey baby I disposed the body. What do I do?”

Police said they traced the text message to a phone number belonging to a 61-year-old Colbert woman who claimed she knew nothing about it. Read the full story here.

Sal Cataldi, founder and president of Cataldi PR, reminisces for MediaBistro about early influences on his impressionable brain…

What Shall I Be When I Grow Up? Joey Skaggs!
by Sal Cataldi
Media Bistro
August 25, 2014

What makes you want to be what you want to be when you grow up?

Like many a person with eclectic interests (writing, music, art, travel and, yes, cash) and the fuzzy liberal arts degree to prove it, I ventured off into the world of periadulthood with nary a clue as to what I would do to house and feed myself, much less the wonderful children I would be fortunate enough to have.

My professional calling didn”™t arrive until my late mid-20s, after a few years spent bumming around the animation and video businesses, playing in rock bands and writing record reviews for freebie vinyl. That”™s when I stumbled into the broad world that goes by the narrow moniker of “public relations.” Read the rest of this article here.

KSLA 12 News reports a Kansas City cop was somewhat surprised to find his cruiser covered in colorful Post-It notes.

via KSLA.com

The lengthy suspect list does not include anarchists, demonstrators or dissidents. It appears he pulled one too many stunts on his colleagues and they got him back… off the clock, KC’s police chief emphasizes.

A trip to Home Depot can be disorienting, with confusing organization, high ceilings, and aggressive ventilation systems.

With an old-fashioned bubble wand, Youtuber Ernijs 12 attempts to add to the confusion. For maximum effect, he has to be slick. The dramatic musical stings emphasize the gravity of the situation.

Watch the video

Reddit provides an essential newsfeed and discussion forum for those with all sorts of interests, particularly tech. Over the years, it has spawned its own internal logic and culture, including a perplexing array of inside jokes involving bacon, narwhals, and especially cats. And it’s also a controversial “content farm” for marketers, new-media types, and, now, at least one cheeky app developer.

As Sarah Perez details in “Epic Reddit Prank ‘Cat Facts’ Is Now An App That Lets You Text Troll Your Friends”, Kyle Venn, a web developer used this “Cat Facts” prank perpetrated by some guy on his cousin:

He only did it to hone his dev skills, but now he’s released an Android app that you can use to befuddle your friends.
(more…)

An ambitious prankster sometimes needs an assist from co-conspirators with some leverage. But those people may have more to lose.

British pop singer Lily Allen has a long history of orchestrated controversy and publicity stunts, but her latest online jape may have put jobs at risk.

According to The New Zealand Herald, Allen landed at Gold Coast airport in Australia and apparently convinced security personnel to cuff her and pretend to arrest her. She posted this picture to her Instagram account with the tag “#uhoh.”

This photo of Lily Allen in handcuffs has been removed from Instagram.

It got thousands of “likes,” but it’s gone now. And airport authorities say the incident is being “investigated internally.” Allen, for her part, is in the clear and free to continue spreading her unpredictable brand of sass.

You get a text message obviously not meant for you. Do you politely correct the sender, sympathizing with the inconvenience? Or do you spring into action?

Redditor /u/beccascott1 brings us a tale of a boat deal that’s all wet.

The prospective buyer seems oddly intent on going through with the purchase, even after the product is revealed to be less than seaworthy.

According to the screen capture, the wiseacre’s phone is at a nearly full charge, sidestepping a standard rebuke from the Redditorati.

Fellow posters /u/bpaq3 and /u/MustardIcecream weigh in, forecasting a dark aftermath for the ruse, making the whole thing just sad enough to be funny.

[via Reddit’s /r/pranks]

Who raised white flags on Brooklyn Bridge — and why?
by Michael Winter
USA TODAY
July 22, 2014

The New York Police Department had a big whodunit on its hands Tuesday, in addition to egg on its face.

Who swapped out two big American flags flying over the Brooklyn Bridge towers with Old Glories that had been bleached white? And, more important, why?

But a more pressing concern was how did the overnight caper happen right under the noses of the NYPD on one of the city’s most heavily guarded and constantly watched landmarks?

“We’re lucky they just put a flag up there “” and not a bomb,” a law enforcement source told the New York Post. “It’s an embarrassment.”

Read more here.

From Johnny Murdock and friends:

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Editor’s Note: Ask The Fiddler is a lifestyle advice column that aims to remedy more chaos and confusion than it creates. Questions may be submitted to us here at Art of the Prank, and good luck.



The Fiddle File #10

Here we go with another madcap roundup of hoaxes, scams and damn fool idiocy making the rounds these days. Take heed. Some of these fiddles may soon be showing up on your computer, phone or even up close and personal. Check it out:

Kentucky & Etc: Take it off? You got a gig serving burgers and fries. Now the restaurant manager is ordering you to submit to a strip-search. Here”™s the history of a very bizarre hoax, pulled time and again.

FaceBook: What makes you click? Here are some hoax headlines that have steered the curious into a marketing scam: Huge plane crashes into bridge? – Terrible roller coaster accident! – 99% Can’t Watch More Than 15 Seconds – Half Girl Half Snake! – Terrible accident with pencil! – HUGE pimple explodes – Shark eats living man! – Spider lives under skin!

FaceBook, email: Here”™s another example of the “What makes you click?” hoax. (more…)