The Vomit Was The Key

April 4, 2006 1:24 PM

Michael Jackson's Credit Card. In which a band of pranksters manage to successfully imitate the King of Pop for one night.
posted by Joey Michaels (22 comments total)

They want $1.99 for video footage of this lame stunt? THAT is the real joke here.
posted by agregoli at 1:35 PM on April 4, 2006

Video footage of this lame stunt? $1.99.
Making fun of them on MetaFilter? Priceless!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:40 PM on April 4, 2006

That was an excellent story, though. To use the parlance of our times: I lol'd.
posted by CRM114 at 1:42 PM on April 4, 2006

I wonder if the real Michael Jackson has started his lawsuit against them yet?

This seems like an awful lot of work for really not much funny.
posted by fenriq at 1:42 PM on April 4, 2006

Be the funny you wish to see in the world, fenriq!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:43 PM on April 4, 2006

IRFH, I'm wearing my clown shoes right now.
posted by fenriq at 1:46 PM on April 4, 2006

I lol'd

I meh'd
posted by matteo at 1:53 PM on April 4, 2006

So how big was this donation they put on their credit cards for the sake of a prank? Did they expect the event organizers to believe Jackson would only donate $50, or did they drop four (or five) figures to make it more believable?
posted by Crash at 1:56 PM on April 4, 2006

I dunno about funny. But I can see that if it was me or my friends that pulled this off, I'd be pretty pleased.

All he needed to pull it off was some planning, a business card, and major balls. That's how easy it is to scam people.
posted by raedyn at 1:56 PM on April 4, 2006

so... youtube link, big spenders?
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:57 PM on April 4, 2006

Not really funny, but fun to read. I admire their chutzpah.
posted by ktoad at 1:59 PM on April 4, 2006

Apparently they donated $1000, according to the Boston Globe (bugmenot). For your convenience, here's the relevant bit:

Is that Michael Jackson?

By Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, Globe Staff | March 24, 2006

It was intended as a silly stunt: Walk into the Copley Place Mall with a King of Pop impersonator and see what happens. [snip] Before leaving with his kid, played by Hugo Reyes, the ersatz entertainer made a $1,000 donation to RoxComp, using a Visa card issued to Michael Jackson.

posted by ooga_booga at 2:09 PM on April 4, 2006

Pepsi Blew.
posted by dhartung at 2:16 PM on April 4, 2006

Okay, so they got in the news by doing something weird. That's not very intresting.
posted by delmoi at 2:16 PM on April 4, 2006

I did not find this funny or interesting at all. I've read a bunch of other pranks on that site, and nearly all were funnier or more interesting.
posted by cell divide at 2:24 PM on April 4, 2006

Hugo Reyes promptly won $156M in a lottery and crashed on a spooooooooky island. He is no longer a 4'6"-tall midget.
posted by John Shaft at 3:04 PM on April 4, 2006

Gourmet nuts?


It wasn't very funny, but it could have been. They didn't have the balls to make it funny, probably too busy gasping at how far they had got. Don't blame 'em.
posted by fire&wings at 3:14 PM on April 4, 2006

It's quite an interesting idea for a prank, but not only is it not terribly funny; the style in which the guy writes it is SO smug and SO... *urgh*.

He's pleased with himself an acceptable level at first - let's face it, this is a pretty bold stunt to pull - but it's when he describes the Victoria's Secret display that he lost me as a friend:

"The mannequins were dressed in thongs and garters, their erect nipples barely covered by lacy bras. It was, quite frankly, the sluttiest shop window I've ever seen. Victoria's Secret is starting to look like a fucking Amsterdam whorehouse.

While Moe made the appropriate noises (it sounded like a small dog choking on a ball of yarn), I squeezed the bag of upchuck, firing an insanely disgusting vomit explosion onto the window. It was Hollywood-level puke pyrotechnics. The Victoria's Secret mannequin whores stared passively at the partially-digested pizza as it dripped down the glass in long, filthy streaks. What a bunch of dummies."

*shudders with disgust*.
It's true - the mannequins are the ones who come out of this exchangle looking bad...
posted by jrengreen at 3:23 PM on April 4, 2006

And you know, they got away with it completely. Nobody would ever have known it was them. Other than a few thousand CSRs, database geeks and other riff-raff at Visa that would have approximately no trouble at all figuring out who the primary account holder was on that card, of course.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:01 PM on April 4, 2006

Being extremely clever is not the same as being able to write said cleverness in a way that people respond to. Still beats any practical joke I ever pulled.
posted by mrmojoflying at 4:02 PM on April 4, 2006

I didn't find it especially funny either, though I don't think funny is necessarily the point of every prank. Indeed, I think the point of this prank was to see how far they could take it before they were caught and get as much media coverage for it as possible as they did. Perhaps there is some sort of ham fisted point about our celebrity obsessed culture in this prank, also.

Furthermore, I didn't find the account of the prank especially well communicated.

That being said, what I find interesting about this particular prank (and the reason I posted it) is its scope. The perpetrators clearly put a good deal of thought, effort and money into making this prank work. I suppose some people collect stamps and others manipulate the press.

Thus, while I did not find the results especially funny, I was impressed with the end results. On the other hand, I wasn't willing to pay to watch the video.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:00 PM on April 4, 2006

delmoi: Okay, so they got in the news by doing something weird. That's not very intresting.

Your world must be very boring, delmoi.
posted by CRM114 at 10:05 AM on April 5, 2006