Oh man. Things sure did happen this week. From hilarious bomb scares to wacky mob tactics, it was a great week for people being bizarrely threatened by entirely non-threatening things. I can only hope this trend continues. It would be fantastically newsworthy if next week the entire city of, say, Saskatoon was shut down because of a Speak N’ Spell or one of those old spinning toys that would make animal sounds when you pulled the cord. “Mysterious talking object was uttering terrorist threats,” the headline would read.

But speculating for future events is not the purpose of the Weekend Wrap-up. No, the purpose is, instead, to look to the past.

Below are some of my favourite things from this week.

Mooninites, haircuts and complete chaos everywhere

You’ve probably heard this one before, but I think it bears further examination: On January 31, the entire city of Boston was essentially paralyzed by the perceived threat of the Mooninites. There are numerous reasons why this is funny:

• The Mooninites are characters from the Adult Swim cartoon series Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They are, in sum, a couple of pixelated space alien invaders who are very bad at invading the earth. Shutting down the entire city of Boston is far more than they’ve ever managed to do on the show.
• The city was shut down because the city’s police force perceived that neon-sign versions of the character, set up at various locations in the city as part of a viewer-aided ad campaign, were actually explosive devices. The massive leaps of logic necessary to make this conclusion are so huge as to require some sort of superhuman ability. First, why the hell would terrorists, even incredibly inept terrorists, install bombs with neon lights on them? Second, why would they shape them like cartoon space aliens Third, why would they place them all over the city and then not, you know, blow them up immediately? This whole thing being perceived as a potential terrorist threat is actually an insult to all terrorists who, say what you will about their policies, sure do tend to put a lot of thought into their actions.
• This is, bizarrely, one of the most successful ad campaigns in recent memory. It’s exposed a whole new audience to the characters. Sure, most of those people are either members of the media or old people who spend their days terrified of being blown to hell by every Muslim they see, but that’s hardly relevant — the point is that, in a matter of days, this went from being a small guerilla ad campaign to being featured on the front page of cnn. That’s effective marketing.
• And, most hilarious of all, when the two people, Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, responsible for placing the characters around the city were arrested and charged with — and I can’t believe this is something you can be charged with — “placing a hoax device” they are clearly baffled by the whole undertaking. After their lawyer advices them not to answer any questions relating to the charges, they inform the media questioning them outside the courtside that they will only take questions about “haircuts from the 1970s.” Then the following happens:
  
  “I think my hair right now is pretty perfect” is a fabulously deadpan response.

I guess the official media line is that these two kids should be taking this whole thing more seriously, but I’m not sure how they could. What’s happened to them over the past week is so fucking baffling that the only plausible response is humour. This is on the same hypothetical level as the band Antrhax getting arrested in connection with the Anthrax scare of 2001 or Franz Ferdinand the band being blamed for the assassination that rocketed the world into the first World War.

Perdovsky is apparently a performance artist. This whole thing is a great piece of pop art. (More good info on this blog.)

ATM ATM ATM ATM!

Flash Mobs have always fascinated me, because they’re such a novel use of the internet. And while they’ve gotten more ambitious in recent years, what with the zombies and the pillow fights, I think my favourite kind is still the out-of-nowhere variety, where strange behaviour just happens, en masse, for about a minute, before the world continues as normal.

The wikipedia link above has a good excerpt about this. I couldn’t find a video of it, but it sounds utterly fantastic:

On 19 January 2007 in Santa Barbara, California, students at UCSB arrived at the school’s clock tower reading newspapers at 11:55 a.m. When the bell began ringing, students sang along with the tower, and then proceeded to slap each other with their rolled-up newspapers. After 12 chimes finished ringing, the crowd all played dead for fifteen seconds, then stood up and walked away, reading their newspapers. The event was organized by Andrew Padgett through Facebook.

UC Davis apparently was host to the biggest flash mob ever this past week, with over 1,000 people stopping in front of a wall of ATM machines to applaud, cheer, chant “ATM! ATM!” and hug the people who had successfully made withdrawals.

The video’s below. It’s pretty spectacular:

Conan O’Brien plays Serena Williams in Wii Tennis

I love my Nintendo Wii more than I love anything else in this world. I’ve been meaning to write an article about it but finding the right words is difficult. Perhaps one day someone will invent some new ones.

But until then, here’s a video of Conan O’Brien beating Serena Williams at Wii Tennis. The best part is that she is such a girl about it. I mean, god dammit, take your beating. Don’t whine and tell him that you don’t want to play anymore.