The destruction of Untitled #133 by Aeneas Wilder took place on Labor Day. He knocked down his latest piece at the San Francisco Exploratorium to cheers from the audience and applause. The giant wooden sphere took 10 days to make out of painstakingly stacked (never fastened) wooden planks. Is it an artistic expression of the impermanence of man? Another chapter in the ongoing discussion about the nature of art? Or just every little kid's ultimate building-blocks-meet-Godzilla fantasy?
posted by Brockstar on Sep 24, 2007 - 16 comments

In 1999, MTV aired 25 Lame, a show where retired 25 of their worst and most overplayed videos. Rob Van Winkle (aka Vanilla Ice) showed up to help them retire the video for "Ice Ice Baby." The result - violence, hilarity, and broken mannequins (video, 30-second ad shows before video). Apparently unplanned, nobody knows for sure if this outburst was the product of genuine anger, or if he was just playing around. An unedited version (YouTube, lower quality) leads me to think that it was the former.
posted by Afroblanco on Feb 1, 2007 - 33 comments

Can your lawnmower do this? MowZilla, born a garden-variety (so to speak) Craftsman mower, is now a nitrous-oxide injected, vastly overpowered engine of destruction! (Google Video link) [previous tales of lawnmower abuse: Lawnmower Racing, German style or American style]
posted by arto on Jun 8, 2006 - 25 comments

It Only Takes A Second is the name of this 1996 industrial film from Federated Mutual Insurance. Essentially 3 straight minutes of chaotic on the job accidents geared towards terrifying the customers into being more careful (and thus more profitable), it may be my favorite industrial film ever. link goes to embedded QT video
posted by jonson on Feb 21, 2006 - 64 comments