Back in 2006, Improv Everywhere sent comedian and black person Colton Dunn to the overwhelmingly white ski resort town of Aspen, Colorado so the inhabitants could meet a black person. Improv Everywhere is remastering and rereleasing some choice videos from its archives to commemorate its 10th anniversary.

The NYC Idiotarod 2012, a costume-mandatory shopping cart race, takes place on January 28. The Idiotarod is based on the Urban Iditarod organized by The Cacophony Society, which first struck San Francisco in 1994.

The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. The IDIOTAROD is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it’s people, instead of sleds, it’s shopping carts, and instead of Alaska it’s New York City. Teams of five will race for cash prizes and glory.

via Winkel & Balktick

On January 12, Rainforest Action Network activists converted all 85 San Francisco Bank of America ATMs into “Automated Truth Machines.” The activists converted each machine by obscuring the display with a sticker designed to mimic the ATM interface. Instead of the usual list of menu options, ATM users were greeted with a list of the Rainforest Action Network’s criticisms of Bank of America. The Rainforest Action Network has also created a Bank of America protest site: Bankrupting America.

via SFist

The 11th Annual No Pants Subway Ride by Improv Everywhere was a rousing success with 59 rides taking place on January 8th in 27 countries. The New York City ride alone had 4,000 participants (video).

Photo 1 by Dan Arango, photo 2 by Andrew Bossi, photo 3 by eych-you-bee-ee-ahr-tee, photo 4 by Karen Blumberg

Artist and culture jammer Ron English will be at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City tonight for a screening of the Pedro Carvajal documentary POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English (trailer). Afterwards, English will show some of his recent video works and will be interviewed by Carlo McCormick of Paper magazine.

Last month, late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel sent a challenge out to parents to gift their children terrible presents, film it and submit the results on YouTube. The first compilation of confused and often, humiliated, kids was a big hit and the submissions to Kimmel’s staff didn’t stop. Parents kept gifting their children horrible items (like a jar of pickles, deodorant and a used sponge) and sending them in, resulting in a second “I gave my kids a terrible present” short of crying and disappointed kids.

The 11th annual No Pants Subway Ride is set for January 8. Improv Everywhere started the event on the New York City Subway back in 2002—it has grown to be an international event (see the list of participating cities).

Last night a group of prankster-activists installed miniature Occupy protest encampments around San Francisco. The encampments were made up of soft camping tent stress toys imprinted with the words “Support Your 99%,” and tiny cartoon protesters carrying miniature placards.

Thanks to Burstein! for the tip.

Photos 1, 2, 4 by Burstein!, photos 3, 5, and 6 by Colinaut

The notorious street prank collective Improv Everywhere is the subject of an upcoming documentary directed by the group’s longtime documentarian, Matt Adams (film teaser). The feature length film will cover the history of the group and will include interviews with over 50 Improv Everywhere performers. Adams is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter. The film is planned for release in early 2013.

As I continued to work with Improv Everywhere, I realized that there was a whole other story about the group that hadn’t been told. I began interviewing people that had been involved with Improv Everywhere from the start about their personal experiences. The stories were so fascinating that I immediately knew that I had to make a feature-length documentary film that told the behind-the-scenes story of the group.

Earlier this year, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel asked parents to tell their children they ate all their Halloween candy, film the results and upload it to Youtube. Now, he’s issued another challenge to gift children something early, film them opening it and again, upload the results. The catch: the gift has to be terrible. Parents got to work and wrapped all kinds of horrible things for their excited kids including a battery, an onion, a half-eaten PBJ sandwich, a Waffle House hat and more. The children’s confused (and sometimes angry) reactions are hilarious.

via Best Week Ever

A group of pranksters in Prague converted a massive rotating billboard into a three person merry-go-round (video). The prank was filmed by Vladimir Turner, and bravely undertaken by Vojtech Fröhlich, Ondrej Mlady, and Jan Simanek (making-of video).

via rebel:art & Colossal

photo via Ondrej Mlady

“Politicians Under Video Surveillance” by Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus is an art installation in which 75 fake security cameras were clustered around political candidate ads in Madrid. The installation occurred on November 19, one day before a Spanish election. We recently wrote about another work by Luzinterruptus: Radioactive Control, Installation of 100 Glowing Figures in Hazmat Suits.

For our installation Politicians under video surveillance, we carried 75 fake security cameras with us, of the type which detect movement and possess an intermittent red light and we trained them on the advertising used by the parties in their electoral campaigns, observing from close up the faces that were touched up for the photos, of the politicians elect.

photos by Gustavo Sanabria

via Super Punch

The newly released Improv Everywhere, Volume 4 DVD includes every prank, flash mob, and work of street theater by Improv Everywhere from 2009 to 2011.

Improv Everywhere Volume 4 features all of the missions from the last three years. See all of our new videos in DVD quality, along with commentary tracks, and special features. Hours of footage!

Greg Benson and Ryan Smith of Mediocre Films wrote nonsense shopping lists for each other and then tried asking store employees for the items at Target. They repeated the prank, with the addition of Miles Grose, at a Walmart.

via Viral Viral Videos

Improv Everywhere has just announced that Sunday, January 8th will be the date for this year’s No Pants Subway Ride in New York City. You can RSVP on Facebook.

The No Pants Subway Ride is annual event staged by Improv Everywhere every January in New York City. The mission started as a small prank with seven guys and has grown into an international celebration of silliness, with dozens of cities around the world participating each year. The idea behind No Pants is simple: Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants do not behave as if they know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.

In addition to NYC, No Pants Subway Ride events are being planning around the world. Here’s how to register your city.

Mall Santa Musical, the latest mission by Improv Everywhere, features a musical that breaks out in a New Jersey shopping mall when “a man is suddenly compelled to express his desire to sit on Santa’s lap via song”. This is IE’s fifth installment in their series of Spontaneous Musical projects

Santacon 2010 in Okinawa, Japan

Santacon 2010 in Paris, France

It’s time to suit up for Santacon 2011 and fortunately there are plenty of Santarchy events to choose from this year around the world. The fun kicked off on November 13, 2011 in Annapolis, Maryland and continues through December in a plethora of cities all over the globe.

photos by Robert Mallon and Nicolas Vankieken

Improve Everywhere founder Charlie Todd gave a TEDxBloomington talk about The Shared Experience of Absurdity.

Charlie Todd causes bizarre, hilarious, and unexpected public scenes: Seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows, “ghostbusters” running through the New York Public Library, and the annual no-pants subway ride. At TEDxBloomington he shows how his group, Improv Everywhere, uses these scenes to bring people together.

The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions is a book of pranking devices by New Yorker cartoonist and freelance illustrator Julia Suits. Twenty years ago Julia came across a fascinating printed piece of Americana at an Ohio farm auction, a unique prank supply catalog from the DeMoulin Brothers Company. From 1896 to 1930, the DeMoulin Brothers Company manufactured prank devices that were used in various initiation ceremonies at fraternal lodges. This book shows “hundreds of the most inventive DeMoulin prank machines, complete with their original, quirky descriptions and eccentric line art” along with a history of hazing in America.

Ms. Suits has posted a sneak preview slideshow of the book’s art on Salon.

It was as if Buster Keaton and Harry Houdini took over Montgomery Ward and branched out into “weird.” Each page was wonderfully illustrated and each was stranger than the one before. The contraptions listed were designed to perform some kind of devilish prank: a life-sized stuffed goat on wheels wired to shock the rider, a mechanical spitting skeleton, an exploding spanking machine.

Turns out, various editions of this prank supply catalog were printed from 1896 to 1930, mailed from their source in Illinois to fraternal lodges around the country. Their creators were America’s original hi-tech geeks of the new electric age. Too wonderful to remain buried by history, I’ve labored to get these Extraordinary Catalogs of Peculiar Inventions back in print (thanks to Perigee/Penguin) as an important piece of Americana.

Footage of early 20th century fraternal lodge electric shock initiation device: “Human Centipede or Nightmare,” probably constructed of canvas, filled with excelsior.

Thanks to Ump Qua for the tip!

Hunter Fine and Aaron Glazer have been installing miniature “bed bug hotels” at New York City lodging locations known to be infested with bed bugs to warn potential tenants. Their website, Bed Bug Hotels, shows photos and locations of each of these tiny art installations.

Bed Bugs. They’re everywhere these days. If only there was a way to tell if a building has them. Hello. Bed Bug Hotels. An underground way to warn people that a building has had ‘the bugs’.

Bowery Boogie talked with Hunter Fine about his inspiration for this project:

Well a friend of mine got bed bugs this summer and I was like, damn if only there was a warning or something. Have you seen Mad Men? There was a scene where they cut to him as a kid and hobos had etched in wood symbols outside his childhood house that gave graphic codes that his dad was a dick and mom was a slut or something. Anyway, those were warnings to fellow hobos to avoid that place. So that’s where I got the idea, plus adding a little comic deterrent, to tell people who were passing by or future tenants that the place you are seeing has had an outbreak of the bugs.

We previously wrote about Hunter who was also involved with the ‘Hipster Traps’ that were popping up in New York City.

Improv in Toronto staged an improv prank in which a lone ninja with a “fight me” sign baited passersby to fight him with a foam sword. Pedestrians who took up the challenge found themselves fighting not just the lone ninja but his concealed army of ninja comrades.

via Torontoist

Life Cycle is an upcoming gallery show by anonymous prankster artists TrustoCorp. The focus of the show will be the life cycle of a person in contemporary America. Life Cycle opens at the Opera Gallery in New York City on October 21 and runs through November 11.

After a long summer of highly publicized, illegal street projects ranging from fake bus stop ads for ‘The Real Housewives of Baghdad’ to illegal billboards for ‘Drive Thru Lipo Suction’, the anonymous art collective brings their work in doors for a more in depth look at their p…erspective on the state of American culture. The exhibition examines the experience of growing up and dying American with four installations representing childhood, puberty, adulthood and death. With the American Life Cycle as a jump off point, TrustoCorp brandishes satire and criticism through a range of over 50 works including stained glass windows, giant board games, kiddie rides, fortune tellers and vintage arcade games.

While the work comments on the experience of growing up American, it also seeks to explore the life cycle of our nation as whole. In a time of economic disparity and record breaking wars, TrustoCorp subtly references the birth, rise and inevitable fall of the American Empire.

With larger than life art ranging from video to painting and kinetic, interactive sculpture, this is definitely TrustoCorp’s most ambitious project to date.

TrustoCorp formed 3 years ago, shortly after the 2008 Presidential election. Inspired and disgusted by the national political and cultural discourse, TrustoCorp gained notoriety by making political and satirical street signs which popped up in 13 cities around America. TrustoCorp quickly gained a large group of volunteers who actively install and spread TrustoCorp art throughout the country, making them more like ‘Fight Club’ than an art collective. Since then, TrustoCorp has graduated into other mediums including fake products that get ‘shop dropped’ illegally into stores, fake tabloid magazines and illegal billboards. These antics got them noticed by media quite quickly, resulting in Television features on ABC World News, BBC and FOX News.’

We’ve written previously about TrustoCorp’s many urban art pranks:

- TrustoCorp Parody Signs In Brooklyn
- TrustoCorp Special Edition Tabloids Released in Bicoastal Prank
- TrustoCorp Pranks Los Angeles with Parody Signs
- Phone Booth Ads Replaced by TrustoCorp
- TrustoCorp Changes NYC Subway Station Signs To Cheer People Up
- TrustoCorp American Education Signs
- Street Sign Improvements by TrustoCorp

Last weekend Improv Everywhere founder Charlie Todd married his longtime girlfriend and fellow IE member Cody Lindquist. Of course the wedding of two pranksters couldn’t happen without a prank of its own. During the ceremonly a professional wrestler showed up and started a fight with Charlie.

Congrats to Charlie and Cody!

photo via Improv Everywhere

Ron English created a series of parody cereal boxes that were covertly placed on shelves at a Ralph’s in Venice, CA.

via Ron English

photo via Ron English

TrustoCorp has posted a new round of parody signs in Brooklyn.

photos via TrustoCorp