Submitted by Mike Ibanez:

Space cadets taken in by TV hoax
BBC
December 17, 2005

Three contestants have spoken of their disbelief after being fooled into thinking they went into space for the UK reality show Space Cadets. The three believed they had blasted off from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia, but were in fact in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk.

They cheered up when told they had each won £25,000 ($44,300).

But one contestant, teaching assistant Keri Hasset from Birmingham, said she was “heartbroken” by the prank.

Fake ceremony

“When I thought we were coming back to Earth I was planning my speech. I was going to say it had been my childhood dream. Now I’m a little bit heartbroken,” she said.

Ms Hasset, plasterer Paul French, 26 from Bristol, and footballer/recruitment consultant Billy Jackson, 25, from Kent, had suspicions they were being tricked when they had to hold a ceremony for a celebrity Russian dog called Mr Bimby on the spaceship. (more…)

Submitted by Mike Ibanez:

Viewers fooled by ‘Belgium split’
BBC News
December 14, 2006

Belgians reacted with widespread alarm to news that their country had been split in two - before finding out they had been spoofed. The Belgian public television station RTBF ran a bogus report saying the Dutch-speaking half of the nation had declared independence.

Later it said Wednesday night’s programme was meant to stir up debate.

It appears to have succeeded. Thousands of people made panicked calls to the station and politicians complained.

“It’s very bad Orson Welles, in very poor taste,” said a spokesman for Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, referring to the famous director’s 1938 radio adaptation of War of the Worlds. That spoof fooled many Americans into believing Martians had invaded.

“In the current context, it’s irresponsible for a public television channel to announce the end of Belgium as a reality presented by genuine journalists,” he added. (more…)

Poe Fan Takes Credit for Grave Legend
by Wiley Hall

Baltimore (AP) — The legend was almost too good to be true. For decades, a mysterious figure dressed in black, his features cloaked by a wide-brimmed hat and scarf, crept into a churchyard to lay three roses and a bottle of cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. Now, a 92-year-old man who led the fight to preserve the historic site says the visitor was his creation.

“We did it, myself and my tour guides,” said Sam Porpora. “It was a promotional idea. We made it up, never dreaming it would go worldwide.”

Porpora is an energetic, dapper fellow in a newsboy cap and a checked suit with a bolo tie. He’s got a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile, and he tells his tale in the rhythms of a natural-born storyteller.

No one has ever claimed ownership of the legend. So why is Porpora coming forward now? (more…)

From David Pescovitz of BoingBoing:

Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp is a wonderful interactive trip through the life and work of the artist whose ideas redefined the meaning of art forever. The site, created by Andrew Stafford, is several years old but the content is as young as tomorrow. From Making Sense of Duchamp, this description of the piece Bicycle Wheel (1913):

Bicycle Wheel was the first of a class of objects that Duchamp called his “readymades.” He created twenty-one of them, all between 1915 and 1923. The readymades are a varied collection of items, but there are several ideas that unite them.

The readymades are experiments in provocation, the products of a conscious effort to break every rule of the artistic tradition. in order to create a new kind of art — one that engages the mind instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to participate and think.

Here are Episodes 13, 14 & 15 of the historic Coyle & Sharpe podcast series presented by Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America.

In Episode 13, Coyle & Sharpe talk seriously with a man about apples growing human feet, and how, if need be, he might herd them across the country.

In Episode 14, they discuss the prospects of a 7 ft., 300 lb., antennaed leech man in San Francisco.

And, in Episode 15, they render a man mute with the utterance of one word: Grevenz.

You can listen to the earlier episodes: Episodes 1, 2 & 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episodes 7, 8 & 9, and Episodes 10, 11, & 12.

These recordings are from the Sharpe family archive, tended by Mal’s daughter, Jennifer Sharpe. More about Coyle & Sharpe is available on their Website or on MySpace.

You can also listen to this podcast at The Sound of Young America or you can subscribe to the series in iTunes.

 Episode 13 - Foot Apple [4:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Episode 14 - Human Leech [5:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Episode 15 - Grevenz [4:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

All James Harvey wanted was to make fine art. Thanks to Andy Warhol, he did—anonymously. [Ed: Check out a video interview with Andy Warhol about pop art, surrounded by Brillo boxes at the end of this post]

Shadow Boxer
by James Gaddy
Print Magazine

On April 21, 1964, James Harvey, with his friend Joan Washburn, walked into New York’s Stable Gallery to see an opening for a rising artist named Andy Warhol. The show—which attracted a line around the block, despite mostly negative reviews—consisted of 400 large replicas of supermarket product boxes for brands such as Heinz, Del Monte, Mott’s, and Kellogg’s, stacked around the gallery as if in a stockroom. The ones that attracted the most attention were the 120 containers for Brillo cleaning pads. “Oh my god,” Harvey said to Washburn when he saw the Brillo boxes. “I designed those.”

At the time, Harvey was known, if at all, as a second-generation abstract expressionist painter who applied his oils so thickly that a 1961 New York Times review described him as “obviously having a love affair with his paint.” (Washburn worked at the Graham Gallery, which had hosted several of Harvey’s exhibitions.) But his day job was as a commercial artist for the industrial and package designers Stuart and Gunn, creating redesigns for companies like Philip Morris and Bristol-Myers. Three years before, Brillo implemented his drawings for a redesign of the company’s packaging. (more…)

From Kembrew McLeod, out of the annals of television history:

Ethan Persoff announces the second update to the Realist Archive Project, an ongoing Internet archive for Paul Krassner’s counterculture magazine The Realist (1958-1974; 1985-2001). Four issues a month will be mounted until the archive is complete.

The main archive can be found here

More detail from Ethan:

For July / Four New Issues / Details:

1) Realist Issue #26 - May 1961

Featuring: Television as a Cause of Disease, An Impolite Interview with Hugh Hefner, For the Separation of Church and Sex, and Rumor of the Month.

Rare early snapshot of Hefner at his cockiest; predicts he will still be single and swinging into elder age. Quote: “I hope to still be very much a young man–psychologically, at least–when I’m sixty. Maybe physically, too. Charlie Chaplin fathered a child when he was 70. And I’ll have all those ‘Playmates of the Month’ around to keep my interest up.”

Also includes a searing and very funny Adolf Eichmann joke on page two. And note the article Television as
a Cause of Disease. A great early 1961 issue.

2) Realist Issue #58 - April, 1965

Featuring: Dick Gregory in Mississippi, An Impolite Interview with Woody Allen, and Three Authors in Search of Obscene Literature.

If you enjoyed the filthy cartoon character sex from the Disneyland Orgy then you’ll get a genuine overloading kick out of the Tijuana Bible flavored Exhibit A. The Woody Allen interview is everything you want it to be - and then there’s the Dick Gregory article, with cameos from Sammy Davis Jr, Muhammad Ali, and Sonny Liston. Of particular note, this might be one of the last articles to ever refer to Malcolm X in the present tense; as he was assassinated as the issue went to press, see Editor’s note on Page 24. (more…)

Here are Episodes 10, 11 & 12 of the historic Coyle & Sharpe podcast series presented by Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America.

In Episode 10, Coyle & Sharpe attempt to record the inside of a man’s stomach. In Episode 11, we meet San Francisco’s newest, freshest talent: James P. Coyle, a Droner. And, in Episode 12, they try to convince a mailman to let them deliver his mail, promising not to do any “rifling”.

You can listen to the earlier episodes: Episodes 1, 2 & 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, and Episodes 7, 8 & 9.

These recordings are from the Sharpe family archive, tended by Mal’s daughter, Jennifer Sharpe. More about Coyle & Sharpe is available on their Website or on MySpace.

You can also listen to this podcast at The Sound of Young America or you can subscribe to the series in iTunes.

 Episode 10 - Record Your Stomach [5:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Episode 11 - The Droner [4:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Episode 12 - Mailman, Give Us Your Mail [3:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here are Episodes 7, 8 & 9 of the historic Coyle & Sharpe podcast series presented by Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America.

In Episode 7, Coyle & Sharpe invade a football practice field, where they ask a coach for his help training their wolverines. In Episode 8, they discuss the merits and difficulties of having an extremely elongated head. And, in Episode 9, they affect piss-poor French accents and ask an antique dealer if they can smash his goods.

You can listen to the earlier episodes: Episodes 1, 2 & 3, Episode 4, Episode 5 and Episode 6.

These recordings are from the Sharpe family archive, tended by Mal’s daughter, Jennifer Sharpe. More about Coyle & Sharpe is available on their Website or on MySpace.

You can also listen to this podcast at The Sound of Young America or you can subscribe to the series in iTunes.

 Episode 7 - Wolverine Football [4:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Episode 8 - Elongated Head [3:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 Episode 9 - Smash the State [3:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m very happy that archivist Ethan Persoff has created The Realist Archive Project, and will be republishing all 146 issues of Paul Krassner’s “classic and uncompromising” magazine The Realist. It’s great that his work will be back in circulation and available to the public.

I’ve known Paul since the 1960’s. He’s been a good friend and supporter of my work. He’s even been a participant. He came on my Hippie Bus Tour to Queens, was at my Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning in Central Park, and was kind enough to pose with my Grotesque Statues of Liberty in the East Village for the back cover of the jacket sleave of his book, How a Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years. Paul has always been thoughtful, courageous and funny. Happily, he’s also a contributor to this site.

Four issues of The Realist will be posted every month until the archive is complete.

Thanks Mark Frauenfelder for the heads up and for the wonderful post about The Realist’s influence on Boing Boing.

An exhibition at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, May 12, 2007 - September 9, 2007:

Bruce Museum Web site:

“For its major spring/summer exhibition, the Bruce Museum explores a subject that is exceptionally topical in today’s art world. Fakes and Forgeries: The Art of Deception presents 60 examples of Western paintings, works on paper, sculpture and decorative arts that have been recognized as imposters, including examples of the rarest and most famous deceptive works. Themes of connoisseurship, authentication, and conservation, as well as the evolving scholarship of stylistic development will be examined in an exhibition organized by and exclusively on view at the Bruce Museum.

…Fakes and Forgeries: The Art of Deception reveals the strategies and techniques of the world’s most successful forgers and exposes the extraordinary lengths to which they went to produce authentic-looking artworks. It also addresses techniques used to expose these deceptions, including X-ray fluorescence, pigment analysis, spectrography, dendrochronology, and carbon dating…”

Here’s a New York Times review by Grace Glueck, They Are Inauthentic, Yes, but Beautiful

Here’s a New York Sun review by Maureen Mullarkey, At the Bruce, the Art of Deception

Thanks The Art of Law Blog

While we’re on the subject of weird things on roof-tops…

The Headington Shark

Thanks Wooster Collective

Here’s Prison Camp, episode 6 of the historic Coyle & Sharpe podcast series presented by Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America. In this episode, Coyle & Sharpe ask a man from Montana to help them to control the laborers in their agricultural facility using guns and electrical shock.

Listen to episodes 1, 2 & 3 here, episode 4 here and episode 5 here.

These recordings are from the Sharpe family archive, tended by Mal’s daughter, Jennifer Sharpe. More about Coyle & Sharpe is available on their Website or on MySpace.

You can also listen to this podcast at The Sound of Young America or you can subscribe to the series in iTunes.

 Coyle & Sharpe, Prison Camp [5:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From monochrom: An article by Klaus Schoenberger — who is doing pop-culture research at the University of Hamburg, Germany — featuring the Yes Men and their Union Carbide/Bhopal hoax in 2004.

Activists use fakes and hoaxes to communicate information by speaking in the name of someone else – persons or institutions invested with power. With the spreading of Internet communication, this pattern of action and communicating has acquired additional power as a means of political and social protest. Within the framework of Guerrilla Communication, with its specific understanding of politics, faking develops into an efficient form of political articulation.

Read the entire article here.

Editor’s note: See also April Media Fools, March 30, 2005, by Rory O’Connor for MediaChannel.org