As Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens walked out of the Charlestown District Court yesterday, they completely disarmed the media in the most artful way I have ever seen! They would talk about 70’s style haircuts, and only 70’s style haircuts. These are the guys who were arrested for putting up trowies around Boston that depicted an advertisement for “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” on Adult Swim.
The police, in their infinite draconian wisdom, thought the light-bright type images were bombs, and promptly overreacted, freaked out, and shut down entire sections of the city. What fools! This same publicity stunt was carried out in 10 other cities, but Boston officials were the only ones to panic.
Tracy O’Connor, 34, a retail manager, called Boston’s response “silly and insane,” contrasting it with the response in the other cities where no one reported any concerns about the devices - an advertising gimmick for the TV show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”
“We’re the laughing stock,” she said.
I could not agree more. It’s this kind of paranoid mentality that truly takes away our freedom and is ruining our country. We have become afraid of our own shadows!
UPDATE: Make has some nice detail images of the actual devices that these guys installed, as well as some interesting discussion.
[...] anyway, while the press is busy sensationalizing the whole incident, the two men are taking time to learn a bit about hair styles of the ’70s! Really! Click through and watch the video. Bravo to these guys for not feeding the media [...]
[...] to Zach for telling me about this awesome, heavily televised event. My friend Cliff posted a similar story with much greater detail into the events that transpired around these two [...]
A brilliant defense strategy. These guys are performance artists. What they did was art, not a hoax.
Start laying down the defense right now and maybe the courts will believe it. OF course typically courts hate artists.
I talked to my friend who works and lives in the Boston area. Back in the day, him and I would have found this inspiring as we were heavily involved in art classes in college. Now with a working perspective he was ticked that it screwed his day up so much.
Talking to him it seems a lot of the installations were poorly chosen locations as well.
[...] Recent events in Boston point to a growing trend of police abusing their powers and overreacting to harmless situations. We, as taxpayers and business owners, are paying the price - disruptions to business and the economy, coupled with the cost of police manpower and equipment to respond to silly events are extremely harmful. [...]
ok so