Skepticblog

In Your Face

On the afternoon of May 21st, a bunch of us troublemakers from the IIG got together with some poster-boards and moved into the faces of several hundred passersby near the corner of Highland and Hollywood Blvd. It was Harold Camping’s Big Day and we took advantage of the moment to capture all the attention we could. And you know what? People loved it.

Even the folks who looked askance at us eventually understood what we were doing and cheerfully thanked us for being there. We chanted, we cajoled, and we ranted just like the televangelista that make millions off of the unwary. And it was glorious. Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame” never looked better.

If you had passed by us, you would have heard repeated mantras like:

“Can I have your car?”

“Free the raptors!” (this one confused a few, but eventually the light came on.)

“I’ll take your car, your cash or negotiable produce!”

“Give me your credit cards!”

“Don’t euthanize your pets!”

“Don’t drive your kids into the lake!”

“What is reality?”

“Question authority,  especially religious authority!”

“Think about it!”

“Take a look at your spiritual beliefs!”

Viva Skepticism!

I took the opportunity to go off the wall as much as I could and I was reminded of those halcyon days of the 60’s when people really did get pissed off enough to get out on the street and DO SOMETHING. My street magic and busking background was on full tilt and I found myself swept up in the ballyhoo carnival atmosphere of the crowd in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. After about an hour of gaining positive momentum, I could barely control myself. I was on fire.

On the Street

And you know what? Nobody thought I was being a dick or resented my stance. People were happy, smiling and giving us all the thumbs up. In fact, there were a few people who initially came up to us skeptically themselves, but within a few minutes, had grabbed card-board and felt-tip pens, scribbled their own signs and joined in our countdown to The Rapture. It was an awesome afternoon of solidarity.

Storekeepers came out and joined us and one girl even risked losing her job by coming out from behind her cart full of tourist junk and stirring up the crowd even more. It doesn’t get much better that that.

Clothes Left Behind by The Raptured

IMHO this is what we should be doing EVERY WEEKEND. We shouldn’t be waiting around for another nutjob like Camping or Heaven’s Gate or a Bernie Madoff to invade our lives, instead we need to get ourselves noticed in the Big Time Media as being fed up, angry and skeptical of the absurd, non-rational world we find ourselves immersed in. The corporate media whose products we buy are responsible for paying attention and raising Camping to the status of a fifteen-minute cultural icon in the days preceding this event and those sponsors should now be held responsible for aggrandizing this farce and giving him and his ilk ANY time at all in the future.

Some Lassies Never Came Home

How many loving pets were killed? How many people gave up everything; turning over their lives, their life savings and their free will to this wacko? And now he’s saying it’s really next October? Haven’t you had enough? Are we living in The New Dark Ages? From what I see in the media, I truly think we are.

And not one news camera covered this event. Still there is no comprehensive skeptical programming devoted to revealing these kinds of lunatic scams, outright frauds and fanatical freak shows.

Yes, we may have been seen by a few willfully badly informed people as heathen rabble-rousers or Hollywood nut cases ourselves, but the overwhelming masses who stopped and took even one second to read our signs and think about what we were doing got our point and they knew we were right.

The E-Meter Gets Punked

Amazingly, right beside us sat a table of $cientologist$ “testing” people with their e-meters. It was hilarious to note that when I stealthily managed to palm a few of our new IIG Stealth cards* onto their table, they were so out of it, they didn’t know it was there in front of them for several hours. They must have found it and decided to use it for their own bait, as we noticed that later in the day, it was turned over. At one point a denizen of the rambunctious Hood that Is Hollywood loudly called L. Ron Hubbard out and it looked for a moment like there was going to be a rumble, but I guess that physical confrontations are not in the $cientology handbook – yet. You can see the card sitting next to their “meter” on the red tablecloth in the photo.

*NOTE: If you don’t know what a Stealth Card is, perhaps I should explain. In order to pump up the volume on the IIG $50,00 Challenge, my idea was to have an “all purpose” advertisement for the IIG that wouldn’t be immediately recognized as a skeptical prompt and discarded by believers. We printed a two-sided card that would draw attention to itself whether it would be found one side up or the other. On one side is s cosmic starfield with the words “Do you have special powers?” On the reverse is a white background with bold black words: “Can you show us?” with a special URL address underneath. This URL is set-up to allow us to track the efficacy of the cards each month. Once somebody picks the card up and goes to the URL, it opens to a “gateway” page to our IIG $50,000 Challenge.

The idea is to generate more hits to our IIG website, while at the same time increase the interests of the woo world with something mysterious. These special “bait” cards are not made to be handed out willy-nilly or just thrown about like new age litter. No, …rather they are to be specifically placed in strategic positions (…like the $cientology table) to get people to THINK.

So far, so good. People are clicking on to our IIG site daily and these cards are grabbing hold of an audience we might never have hoped to reach through word of mouth or simply with skeptical means. We have to fight fire with fire. The masses want mystery, so we will give it to them flavored with science. We are putting the world on notice that the IIG is ready, waiting and anxious to meet you more than half way. Look forward to many more tests, challenges and street pieces from this skeptic. It’s about time. And it’s fun too.

Hollywood, CNN, PBS, where are you? While we wait for you to catch up. here’s the video courtesy of the fabulous Susan “Bunky” Gerbic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRcmTsKVDc

Can you see the writing on the wall?

Two Hours & Forty Minutes to The Raptor (across the street)