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April 21, 2009December 15, 2023

Video Star: Remi PacMan

Submitted by John Lundberg from circlemakers.org (England’s crop circle makers):

Pac Man, starring Remi Gaillard of nimportequi.com
posted on dailymotion.com by nqtv

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9003r

From blog.wired.com: Pac-Man Meets Reality, Chaos Ensues, by Earnest Cavalli, April 16, 2009:

French prankster Remi Gaillard strikes again, this time bringing the dot-chomping, ghost-fleeing action of arcade classic Pac-Man to the real world, much to the confusion and shock of bystanders.

You may recall Gaillard from his previous effort to bring Mario Kart to the streets of France. Like that prank, his newest is a deceptively high-concept gag that elegantly portrays the utterly ridiculous plots and settings of the gaming industry’s most beloved titles.

While the concept is nothing new — how many of you didn’t re-enact Super Mario Bros. as children? — the effort Gaillard puts into his pitch perfect costumes and surprisingly adept recreations of Pac-Man staples is very impressive. He certainly puts Hollywood’s myriad efforts to recreate gaming classics to shame.

April 17, 2009December 15, 2023

Joan Fontcuberta and the Sputnik [English & Spanish]

Joan Fontcuberta and the Sputnik
by Jorge Luis Marzo

For this Project (1997), Fontcuberta fabricated a story about an evidence for a “Soyuz 2” mission involving cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov. Soyuz 1, an actual Soviet space mission in 1967, had ended with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov when the spacecraft crashed on landing. In 1968, according to the fabricated story, “Istochnikov and his canine companion Kloka mysteriously vanished after leaving the [Soyuz 2] capsule for a routine space walk. When the Soyuz 3 arrived for a docking maneuver, it found only a vodka bottle containing a note, floating in orbit outside the empty, meteorite damaged ship.” To avoid embarrassment, Soviet officials deleted Istochnikov from official Soviet history; however, the “Sputnik Foundation” discovered Istochnikov’s “voice transcriptions, videos, original annotations, some of his personal effects, and photographs taken throughout his lifetime.” The exhibition of artifacts (e.g., photographs) related to “Soyuz 2” was shown in many countries, including Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and the United States. Among other reactions to the exhibition, a Russian ambassador “got extremely angry because [Fontcuberta] was insulting the glorious Russian past and threatened to present a diplomatic complaint.”

Several lines of evidence available since the first exhibition of “Sputnik” in 1997 in Madrid suggest that the story and artifacts form an elaborate hoax. Read more at Wikipedia.

Espaà±ol
Cuando algo parece natural, como el suelo, se tiende a no interpretarlo, a no prestarle atencià³n. Pero, un detalle extraà±o, una mirada mà¡s atenta de lo normal, una leve dislocacià³n pueden hacer que el suelo devenga una realidad central, no una simple sombra por debajo de las cosas. Continue reading “Joan Fontcuberta and the Sputnik [English & Spanish]”

February 20, 2009January 15, 2019

LiteratEye #2: Author Keven McQueen Recalls A Master Prankster of Yesteryear

Here’s the second installment of LiteratEye, a new series, 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 #2: Author Keven McQueen Recalls A Master Prankster of Yesteryear
By W.J. Elvin III
February 20, 2009

It is quite possible that the name “Joseph Mulhattan” does not set bells ringing and lights flashing in the minds of modern readers, even if those readers seriously appreciate pranks and hoaxes. Keven McQueen may correct that regrettable state of affairs one day, when he finalizes his book on one of the master pranksters in journalism history.

Mulhattan’s bizarre news articles – perhaps hundreds – were often swallowed whole by the press and public of his era. “Mulhattan convinced our ancestors that a lost race of Aztecs had lived in Kentucky, that a meteor had demolished a sizable portion of Texas, that trained monkeys were a threat to American labor and that two moons orbited the earth. The last two hoaxes even fooled some scientists,” McQueen told me, adding: “Some of his tall tales survive today in the form of what we now call urban legends.”

Mulhattan was a very successful traveling salesman by trade but it was his sensational “news” that secured a position in the national spotlight. According to McQueen, Mulhattan was as well known in his day as Mark Twain or Jules Verne. He convinced many readers that the bodies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were to be exhumed and put on display, viewable for a fee, in celebration of the Centennial in 1876. A story attributed to him about David Lang, a Kentuckian who disappeared in thin air before witnesses, still appears today as a “strange but true” report. His tale of trained monkeys replacing farm laborers provoked angry editorials and brought hate mail to the innocent farmer whom Mulhattan mischievously credited with the innovation. Continue reading “LiteratEye #2: Author Keven McQueen Recalls A Master Prankster of Yesteryear”