Pranksters - The Art of the Prank

July 26, 2017December 15, 2023

Unsanctioned Street Signs Caution Minneapolis Citizens

Fake street signs warn of ‘easily startled’ police in Twin Cities
by Erin Adler
Star Tribune
July 24, 2017

At least two orange street signs reading “Warning: Twin Cities police easily startled” were seen in the Twin Cities Sunday.

A fake street sign mounted on the same pole as two legitimate ones at the intersection of Cedar and Riverside Aves. Sunday evening in Minneapolis. Erin Adler, Star Tribune

Joe Morino brought an incredulous friend to see the orange street sign he just spotted in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis.

The official-looking metal sign read: “WARNING: TWIN CITIES POLICE EASILY STARTLED.” It featured a graphic silhouette of a police officer, a gun in each raised hand, shooting in both directions.

“There”s a side of truth to the sign,” Morino said after snapping a picture of it. “That tells you there is something wrong with the system.” Continue reading “Unsanctioned Street Signs Caution Minneapolis Citizens”

April 28, 2017December 15, 2023

Muscleman Prank Turns Ugly

Sometimes, laughs come with a penalty: legal charges. Such is the case for two comedians whose brawn didn’t match their claims. Thanks Naomi.

“TV Station Suing Comedians For Pranking Morning Show As Fake Strongman Duo”
by Laura Hurley
Cinemablend
April 27, 2017

There is a time and a place to pull epic pranks on unsuspecting targets, and the pranks are often pretty hilarious. Recently, however, one prank was received very poorly by the target, and the pranksters are facing a lawsuit because of it. Two men tricked the Wisconsin TV station WEAU-TV into bringing them on as a strongman duo with stunts to show off. When the comedians turned up without any real skills to demonstrate, the WEAU owners weren’t too happy, and they’ve deciding to sue.

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher posed as a strongman duo going by “Chop & Steele.” The prank began when a person calling himself Jerry Chubb emailed two WEAU anchors about the strongmen appearing on the Hello Wisconsin morning show to promote themselves. New York Daily News reports that this “Jerry Chubb” sent WEAU a press release claiming that Chop and Steele were popular contestants on the third season of America’s Got Talent. The Hello Wisconsin anchors didn’t realize until they were already on the air that Chop and Steele had no idea what they were doing and were definitely not strongmen, and parent company Gray Television is suing Pickett and Prueher for allegedly using false materials and identities to convince WEAU to book them.

The suit from Gray Television claims that Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher infringed on the company’s copyright of the Hello Wisconsin episode they appeared on. Additionally, Gray Television wants the court to order Pickett and Prueher’s Found Footage Festival to “render a full and complete accounting… of its profits, gains, advantages, and the value of the business opportunities received from the foregoing infringement.” Ouch. Read more.

March 3, 2017December 15, 2023

R.I.P. Gustav Metzger

Gustav Metzger, a fiercely political artist, challenged and mocked consumerism and inspired several generations of creative “auto-destructivists”. He was 90 years old.

“Gustav Metzger, Pioneer of Auto-Destructive Art, Dies at 90”
by Mark Brown
The Guardian
March 1, 2017

Gustav Metzger, the inventor of auto-destructive art who spent a lifetime baffling, infuriating and thrilling audiences, as well as influencing generations of younger artists, has died aged 90.

A spokeswoman for the artist said he died at his home in London.

Metzger was born in Nuremberg to Polish-Jewish parents in 1926 and arrived with his brother in Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. Much of his immediate family, including his parents, were murdered in the Holocaust.

He studied art in Cambridge, London, Antwerp and Oxford, and by the late 1950s was heavily involved in anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist movements, as well as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

This political activism was the motivation for his auto-destructive art manifesto of 1959 – which he described “as a desperate last-minute subversive political weapon … an attack on the capitalist system … an attack also on art dealers and collectors who manipulate modern art for profit”. Read more.

February 8, 2017December 15, 2023

Trump’s Security Detail Unimpressed With Ballsy Golf Course Stunt

Noted British prankster Simon Brodkin hits Donald Trump where it hurts, and columnist Pat Kane reflects. (Feel free to share your own testicular puns through social media.)

“Why Serious Stuff Still Demands a Sense of Humour”
by Pat Kane
The National
February 4, 2017

So if you”re going to prank Donald Trump by chucking swastika-covered golfballs at him, as he opens one of his tremendous courses, you should do it at Trump Turnberry.

According to the comedian Simon Brodkin, whose stage name is Lee Nelson and who perpetrated said stunt last June, he was slumped in custody when a Scottish sergeant noted: “You”re that guy”.

“In that moment I realised I had an ally,” recalled Brodkin this week. “They loosened the cuffs so the blood went back to my fingers and asked if I wanted some Lucozade. Big love for the Scottish police.”

In next week”s Channel Four documentary Britain”s Greatest Hoaxer, Brodkin also relates that the Scottish police refused to let Trump”s secret service people interview him. Instead they sped him to the nearest airport and told him to “get the hell out of the country”.

As the furore rises around Trump”s potential state visit, the question of how modern dissent and protest is most effectively expressed comes to the fore. On this occasion, should it be a dignified boycott by political leaders (as all the Scottish political leaders did last June), and a protest action mutually agreed between activists and police? Or is Brodkin”s kind of hoax the best way to get an oppositional message under the plates of the Great Narcissist?

Watching the enthusiastic Brodkin”s preparations for his hoax – involving disguise, costume (a Trump Turnberry sweatshirt), bags hidden under hotel beds and the ludicrously easy detection of the Sunbed God”s itinerary – you imagine this kind of prank will never be achievable again.

The scene where his goons are scrabbling around the grass, filling red Trump caps with Nazi-balls, is inordinately pleasing. But no doubt the full apparatus – human and technological – of American and British national security will be sweeping and detecting every clump of cells that gets anywhere near the man-baby. Read more.

October 13, 2016December 15, 2023

R.I.P. Dario Fo (1926-2016)

Revered playwright, comedian, Nobel laureate, and prankster patron saint Dario Fo has passed away at the age of 90.

Nobel laureate Dario Fo, who mocked politics, religion, dies
by Frances D’Emilio and Nicole Winfield
AP
October 13, 2016

Italian playwright Dario Fo, whose energetic mocking of Italian political life, social mores and religion won him praise, scorn and the Nobel Prize for Literature, died Thursday. He was 90.

Fo died Thursday morning in Milan’s Luigi Sacco hospital after suffering respiratory complications from a progressive pulmonary disease, said the chief of pulmonology, Dr. Delfino Luigi Legnani. Fo had been working on a new stage production with collaborators in his hospital room up until his final days, Legnani said.

The author of “Accidental Death of an Anarchist” and more than 70 other plays saw himself as playing the role of the jester, combining raunchy humor and scathing satire that continued into his final years. He was admired and reviled in equal measure.

His political activities saw him banned from the United States and censored on Italian television, and his flamboyant artistic antics resulted in repeated arrests. Read more.