Pac Man Havoc
April 16, 2009 12:57 PM   Subscribe

The Go Team might have done it first. But nobody wreaks havoc in a Pac-Man suit like the French!
posted by manosthf (33 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wokka wokka.
posted by rokusan at 1:02 PM on April 16, 2009


Is that the same guy who did all those soccer ball videos?

I no not of what you speak?
posted by manosthf at 1:08 PM on April 16, 2009


Let me just get it out there and confess that I really, really like The Go! Team.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:08 PM on April 16, 2009 [4 favorites]


or how to spell "know"
posted by manosthf at 1:09 PM on April 16, 2009


If there was ever a television show with a theme song by The Go! Team that should have existed, that first video was it.
posted by Nomiconic at 1:10 PM on April 16, 2009


I'd really, really like the Go! Team if only they'd just hire a decent producer. And sort out their live sound mix as well.
posted by i_cola at 1:10 PM on April 16, 2009


It's always funny until someone trips up over a smashed display stand (and then it's absolutely hilarious).
posted by panboi at 1:13 PM on April 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


That made me unreasonably happy.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2009


I like it when the disruptive schmuck gets hit hard with the golf club.


lots.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:15 PM on April 16, 2009 [4 favorites]


I'd really, really like the Go! Team if only they'd just hire a decent producer.

Actually, what I like about them is their low-fi dense sound, although you might say it's a bit too compressed.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:17 PM on April 16, 2009


I was always kind of partial to this one.
posted by Songdog at 1:29 PM on April 16, 2009


Maybe I'm getting old, but that Rémi fellow seems like a dick.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:38 PM on April 16, 2009



Yes, it's really quite amusing and satisfying when someone is physically attacked with a blunt instrument that has the capacity for catastrophic trauma when they interrupted a golf game with a surrealist guerrilla film. Instead of having that kind of violent reaction and being so completely wrapped up in a game that could have easily been resumed at the precise point at which it was disrupted, the golfer could've just laughed at the complete non sequitur he was a part of.

I agree. I've been waiting for someone to smack that guy all through his videos. Not to seriously injure him, just, you know, to interact a little with the guerilla happening thing. The golf club has a capacity for catastrophic damage, just as running down an aisle in a supermarket has the potential for knocking over little old ladies and damaging them in a catastrophic way. But it wasn't used that way, just gave him a smack in the ass, which he deserves once in awhile, just to let him know that the great vapid scene of the world which he takes for being a complacent canvas crying out for his enlightened touch might notice and react.


Give me Improv Anywhere anytime. At least they don't create messes for other people to pick up.
posted by oneironaut at 1:55 PM on April 16, 2009 [4 favorites]


Instead of having that kind of violent reaction and being so completely wrapped up in a game that could have easily been resumed at the precise point at which it was disrupted, the golfer could've just laughed at the complete non sequitur he was a part of.

I'm sorry, but I'm with leotrotsky and oneironaut. He deserved the smack. I wouldn't want to be the minimum wage earning guy at the grocery store that had to clean up after this douche.

FORE!!!
posted by Shfishp at 1:59 PM on April 16, 2009 [2 favorites]


I was always kind of partial to this one .

You know, songdog, this one gets me thinking. Maybe PacMan has always been screaming. That's what his mouth is doing, screaming. Trapped in endless mazes, chased by ghosts, eating food that never satisfies--only gaining brief respites to turn the tables on his tormentors, and realizing in those moments he is no better than they are, and the taste of revenge is only bitter ashes in his mouth. Victory only returns his enemies to hunt him, and an extra life only condemns him to further repetitions of his agony, which grows more terrifying as his pursuers chase him faster and faster each round, while he moves at the same speed. His only reward for completing this trial perfectly is watching the cage around him melt into gibberish and code, and he plunges into limbo.

PacMan. Shudder for him and weep.
posted by oneironaut at 2:09 PM on April 16, 2009 [23 favorites]


AUGH! Le con!
posted by piratebowling at 2:12 PM on April 16, 2009


one year for halloween i dressed my ex up as pac-man and i dressed like a ghost...not a pac-man ghost, mind you, but y'know, like a normal, white, charlie-brown-special ghost. i thought it was hilarious... anyway, the real kicker was that we wore rollerblades so we seemed to float. let me tell you, ghost costume+rollerblades+demonic moaning=pretty darn scary, especially to small children. also much tripping and falling over.
posted by sexyrobot at 2:40 PM on April 16, 2009 [2 favorites]


The french ghosts look like they're wearing festive burkhas.
posted by ooga_booga at 3:40 PM on April 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


The golf club was completely unnecessary.
posted by chiraena at 4:46 PM on April 16, 2009


nom nom nom.
posted by clearly at 4:49 PM on April 16, 2009


Was anybody else creeped out by Le Pacque-Man's all-too-visible Le Pacque-age? Also, I'm disappointed that car-chase horns haven't hit the mainstream of pop music like I hoped they would after the first Go! Team album.
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:34 PM on April 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


Riotously joyous.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:37 PM on April 16, 2009


A triumph of the Pac-human spirit.
posted by JHarris at 6:11 PM on April 16, 2009


You know, songdog, this one gets me thinking. Maybe PacMan has always been screaming. That's what his mouth is doing, screaming. Trapped in endless mazes, chased by ghosts, eating food that never satisfies--only gaining brief respites to turn the tables on his tormentors, and realizing in those moments he is no better than they are, and the taste of revenge is only bitter ashes in his mouth. Victory only returns his enemies to hunt him, and an extra life only condemns him to further repetitions of his agony, which grows more terrifying as his pursuers chase him faster and faster each round, while he moves at the same speed. His only reward for completing this trial perfectly is watching the cage around him melt into gibberish and code, and he plunges into limbo.

PacMan. Shudder for him and weep.


Wow! It makes me wonder whether PacMan has any connection to the Buddhist concept of hungry ghosts.
posted by jonp72 at 8:02 PM on April 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


Wow! It makes me wonder whether PacMan has any connection to the Buddhist concept of hungry ghosts.

MetaFilter: Overthinking a plate of dots
posted by mazola at 8:52 PM on April 16, 2009


"Catastrophic trauma"? He gave the guy a welt.

He didn't know he was part of a "guerilla film." (Heck, I don't even know what that means, and I watched it.) From his perspective, a couple of random psychos wearing costumes ran up to his wife (?) and started grabbing her stuff. You describe his reaction as "violent"; and okay, sure, it is, but it's violence in defending against (reasonably perceived) violence.

Like a lot of YouTube videos: It's easy to watch a 20-second clip online and say, "What a bunch of morons, reacting that way. Didn't they recognize the context?"
posted by cribcage at 9:23 PM on April 16, 2009


I don't know about "most golfers." (I've never played.) But looking at the tape, I see this guy watch as two lunatics run up to him, then past him. He just stands there and watches. It's not until Pac-Man gets up in the woman's personal space and starts fighting with her that the guy goes all Samurai Jack Nicklaus.

Now, you say Pac-Man was only going for the golf ball. And that's my point about these videos: You know that because you're watching the clip, and it makes sense in context. But if you were the golfer, I suspect you'd have stopped giving the lunatics the benefit of the doubt when you expected them to keep running past, but instead they accosted your [wife/friend/etc.].

His aim looks to me like he's trying to hurt, not harm...but okay, sure, some odd injury could have resulted. Which would have been unfortunate, but not unforeseeable. Don't want to get whacked? Don't charge random strangers who are carrying metal clubs.
posted by cribcage at 10:02 PM on April 16, 2009



...because like most golfers he was irate that some non dues paying freak was trespassing on his beloved golf course.

Obviously, you're not a golfer.

It would probably have been safer to stop your sentence at the word "irate." You have no idea if the course in question was public or private, and you know nothing about the people involved. Golf is just about the most frustrating game one could ever play, and yet many non-rich, non-snobbish people play it for fun. It is a constant exercise in mild masochism, where if you are an average player you can go home feeling pretty good if during 4 hours of play you make -- maybe -- 4 or 5 good shots. A single day where you have a really good game can make up for the majority where you completely sucked, and the days when you suck can make you angry at the world.

Inasmuch as hitting someone with a golf club because they touched your wife's ball, while dressed as Pacman, probably seems excessive to someone who wasn't there, it also seems extremely foolhardy to torment people who are carrying weapons and who are most likely angry at the world. Rémi's motto, by the way, which appears at the end of the video and on his web site, is "c'est en faisant n'importe quoi qu'on devient n'importe qui," which means roughly "if you want to be somebody, do something." I appreciate that attitude, but audacious people should expect audacious responses from time to time, or they should shut up.

I was always kind of partial to this one.


Some of the guys who made the video that Songdog mentioned sit about 15 feet from me where I work. I believe the first part of their Pacman video is at the University of Michigan's Shapiro Undergraduate Library (or UGLi), while the second is in the Angell Hall Computing Lab (also known as the Fishbowl), which is easily identifiable by the Campus Computing Sites logos on the wall. The guys who made the video refer to themselves as the "UM Patriots." There was an article about them in the Michigan Daily.
posted by tempestuoso at 10:58 PM on April 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


Remi Gaillard in Mario Kart.
posted by iviken at 11:50 PM on April 16, 2009


The world is not your fucking canvas because the rest of us live here, too, and we're just trying to play a game of golf and buy our groceries in peace. Asshole.
posted by chasing at 12:43 AM on April 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


And get off my lawn.
posted by msittig at 1:11 AM on April 17, 2009


Wow! It makes me wonder whether PacMan has any connection to the Buddhist concept of hungry ghosts.

This one from the Wikipedia article certainly fits:

In Japanese Buddhism, two such creatures exist: the gaki and the jikininki. Gaki (餓鬼) are the spirits of jealous or greedy people who, as punishment for their mortal vices, have been cursed with an insatiable hunger for a particular substance or object.
posted by oneironaut at 8:23 AM on April 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


God, some of you people need to lighten the fuck up.

Thanks for the video. It filled me with joy--I think I laughed from start to finish. I tried to watch his other videos but they weren't as powerful to me as this one. I think it has to do with the earnest way he runs, and how ridiculous his tiny legs look underneath the Pacman orb.
posted by nonmerci at 11:57 AM on April 17, 2009


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