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January 22, 2010December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #48: Newspaper Nostalgia: Biped Beavers, Libidinous Man-Bats on the Moon

Here’s the forty-eighth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #48: Newspaper Nostalgia: Biped Beavers, Libidinous Man-Bats on the Moon
By W.J. Elvin III
January 22, 2010

beavers-200 The New York Times, you may have noticed, plans to start charging for portions of its web content. One assumes the portions will be the those readers find most interesting.

So then patronage will fall off, and with fewer readers there will be fewer advertisers, and so on until we hear the death rattle of yet another newspaper. Well, in the case of the Times it probably won’t be quite that bad, but the Internet era has certainly seen the downsizing or demise of quite a few news publications.

How bad is it? MSN Money lists newspaper subscriptions among its top ten things not to buy in 2010, citing the popular alternatives.

Which is too bad, because newspapers and news magazines have been a great vehicle for the perpetuation of hoaxes. No doubt our host, Joey Skaggs, is indebted to more than a few for taking the bait. In my own forty years or so in the news business I noticed a fairly cavalier attitude toward great stories that seemed at least a little fishy: “Print first, ask questions later.”

In the good old days, before newspapers got all goody-goody ethical, editors and reporters were among the top pranksters.

The sport got up its steam back in the 1830s. That was when Richard Adams Locke, an English journalist serving as editor of The New York Sun, sprang what is regarded as the greatest newspaper hoax of all time. Continue reading “LiteratEye #48: Newspaper Nostalgia: Biped Beavers, Libidinous Man-Bats on the Moon”

July 11, 2009December 15, 2023

“Bruno” Reviewed

‘Bruno’ brutally funny
by Zachary Woodruff
SignOnSanDiego.com (The Union Tribune)
July 10, 2009

Baron Cohen’s latest prank scores without the cruelty of ‘Borat’

curr-bruno_t350-200 If you look up the word “prank,” among the older definitions is this one: “A trick to make people stare.” Thanks to movies like “Bruno,” comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to “Borat,” a newer definition would have to add “or look away.” Prepare to squirm, or worse: As one of the subjects/victims in the film’s myriad setups says after falling prey to Cohen’s antics, “I wanted to poke my eyes out with hot needles.”

My own reaction also involved pain, not to the eyes so much as the stomach: “Bruno” is laugh-out-loud, sucker-punch-in-the-gut funny. With a comedic barrage of shock, irony, slapstick and ongoing discomfort, you probably won’t know what’s hit you, and you’ll likely lose your balance. Especially during a full-screen full-frontal of what in this case could appropriately be called a tallywhacker. (You’ve been warned.)

Obscenitywise, “Bruno” charts new territory. How much were members of the ratings board paid off to give this movie an “R”? (For a lesson in how far standards can sink in 20 years, look up 1990’s tame “Henry & June,” the first major NC-17 film.) But there’s intelligence and discipline behind the madness. Cohen and his collaborators, including director Larry Charles (the whiz behind “Seinfeld”), have refined their guerrilla game and learned a lesson their previous social experiment, “Borat,” lacked: That it’s enough to make fools out of people without being cruel. No need to call a man’s wife ugly at the dinner table. Let people humiliate themselves on their own. Continue reading ““Bruno” Reviewed”

July 5, 2009December 15, 2023

Baba Wa Simba Hits the Internet

In 1995, Baba Wa Simba (aka Joey Skaggs), a new-age therapist, whose mission was to work with disenfranchised and troubled youth and heal the wounded animal within, visited his lion pride in London. The Word, a television show on the UK’s Channel 4, documented the visit and aired it March 3, 1995. The video of this visit has just been released online:

Creative Prankster Charged with Larceny

Update, June 17, 2009: Police fail to see art in monstrous prank, AP [but construction company loves it].

Spotted on Fark by W.J. Elvin III:

N.C. State student accused of creating a ‘monster’
WRAL.com
June 12, 2009

monsterrobot Raleigh, N.C. – Raleigh police arrested a North Carolina State University student last week who was accused of creating a “monster” out of construction barrels and placing it on the side of the road. Authorities charged Joseph Carnevale with larceny for taking materials from a construction site at a roundabout project to create the monster.

April 26, 2009December 15, 2023

Beyonce Hoaxed by Accident

Beyonce Hoaxer Apologises
Daily Star Sunday
25th April 2009

The internet prankster who made Beyonce Knowles sound out-of-tune has apologised for the hoax that “got out of hand”.

beyonce Matthew Zeghibe tampered with a recording of the superstar performing on live TV last November (08) to make it sound like she is tone deaf.

The audio was leaked online and quickly grabbed the attention of fans, internet bloggers and shock jock Howard Stern, who aired the recording on his U.S. radio show.

The controversy prompted Knowles’ father Mathew to dismiss the tape as a fake, and finally Zeghibe came forward to confess his scam.

The art student is stunned his creation attracted so much attention, telling Rolling Stone magazine, “It was just for a good laugh. It was a goof, just for fun. I do a lot of parodies on my YouTube channel, and it just so happens this one got a little out of hand.”

But Zeghibe insists there’s a serious side to his musical tampering – he claims it shows how easy it is to manipulate singers’ voices to make them sound better and worse.

He adds, “I was just trying to make a point. I wanted to show people how easy it is to manipulate someone’s voice. If I can do it with a clip I pulled off of TV, imagine what they are doing on records and during live performances. The entire industry has been so manipulated, because there’s such an emphasis on perfection, so when something like this happens, it causes such a stir.”