B.J. Novak's Amazing Museum Prank
Might be old news by now, but this one's worth sharing: Back in high school, B.J. Novak from The Office organized an elaborate prank involving a local Chinese Art Exhibit, a few friends, and some personal recording equipment. From B.J.'s myspace:
Basically, we took [a] tour of this exhibit of Chinese art. They had one of those audio tours where you put on headphones and get a guided tour of the art ("turn to your left… you will see…." etc.).
We decided it would be funny to replace the tapes of the tour with our own recording. We stole a cassette tape from the tour, took it back home, and transcribed where everything was in the exhibit. Then we wrote our own tour and recorded that. My brother Jesse Novak matched it up with appropriate ancient-Chinese-sounding music in the background.
We made fifteen copies of the tapes and got fifteen friends to take the tour with a new tape in their pocket. On the tour, everyone quietly replaced the original tape with the new tape at some point before returning the headset at the end of the tour. This left the next batch of museumgoers with the new tour we recorded.
And you can hear the track for yourself right here, via iTunes. (It's over ten minutes long, but well worth it.)
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