Guerilla Marketing and Boston goes Ape

Yesterday the entire city of Boston (plus Cambridge, Charlestown and Somerville) went into security lockdown all because they found, all over the city, electronic devices that had wires and batteries attached which could have been bombs. They weren't bombs.....they were an advertising gimmick for Turner's Cartoon Network show called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" .....and each one when lit by little bulbs gave the finder the finger. Isn't that adorable?
It was all a publicity stunt from a firm called INTERFERENCE Inc, a firm that specializes in "Guerilla Marketing". Unfortunately the "finders" were hundreds of Boston police, Coast Guard and bomb squads......and they didn't exactly, well, laugh, since none of them ever heard of "The Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and really, didn't like getting the finger so many times during the day.

Interference Inc. lived up to their name because businesses closed, major highways were shut down, The Charles River was closed, the subway lines were stopped... as the various anti-terror squads combed the city for these devices. It had full coverage on CNN ( a part of Turner Broadcasting as well) and on all the local Boston networks which pre-empted everything to cover the story.

Boston is historically not known for having a sense of humor, especially since the first two planes on 9/11 took off from here. Ask Sacco and Vanzetti if you don't believe me. After all, it was the seat of Puritanism .....and The Salem Witch Trials happened just a few miles up the road. The Puritan's sense of humor is so bad that the only joke they ever laughed at had this punch line, "No soap! Radio!!"

Neither Turner or Interference Inc. told the city or asked the city for permission to put these things up. At 4:30 pm , they publicly apologized for their "guerilla marketing".
I asked an expert in the field, Mojambo (shown above), the head of the GADL (The Gorilla Anti -Defamation League), what he thought of the whole thing. He wasn't impressed and is thinking of filing a law suit for slander, "It gives us gorillas a bad name. People hear the word and most can't spell anyway. It reminds me of the old Henny Youngman line.....or maybe it was Dangerfield, "My Dad was an old guerilla fighter. My Mom was an old gorilla".

As punishment Boston plans to ask the perpetrator, a 27 year old artist named Peter Berdovsky to put the very last Lite-Brite inside Mojambo' s cage,while dressed as a cardboard box. It's like the Roach Motel.....they go in, but they don't come out!

Interference Inc said their next project was to plant someone in every grocery store express line nationwide with 13 items, just to screw things up. After that, they hope to follow up with employees going on airplanes reciting the Koran Death Prayer.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is being made into a movie because, as H. L. Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

I hope it FUCKING bombs!