Over the past couple of years one of the most common ideas emailed to Improv Everywhere has been, “Get a bunch of people to stand behind someone and pretend they are the Verizon ‘network,’ like in those commercials.” We’ve literally had 300 emails over the years suggesting that idea. We got so tired of hearing it that we even put it up on the list of common suggestions on our FAQ.

The main reason we were never interested in the idea is that it would essentially just be recreating a commercial. The funny idea of “a bunch of people standing behind someone” was already in the commercial itself, and the only added comedy would be that it was being done in real life.

Well, as you can see in the video above, Verizon ended up making the idea happen on their own. Too bad they didn’t splurge for the helicopter. You’ll notice they include “Improv Everywhere” in the tags for the video. I’m not sure why, as we didn’t have anything to do with it. I guess it’s not the first time someone’s put a misleading tag on an online video.

Related posts:

Carousel Horse Race Prank by Improv Everywhere
]]> http://urbanprankster.com/2008/07/verizon-wireless-network-prank/feed/ 14 http://urbanprankster.com/2008/07/clemson-rave/ http://urbanprankster.com/2008/07/clemson-rave/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:24:52 +0000 Charlie Todd http://urbanprankster.com/?p=74

This video is a couple of years old, but it was recently brought to our attention recently by one of the participants, Jad Taylor. He writes:

I just graduated from Clemson University in South Carolina and two Decembers ago we organized a synchronized dance on the library bridge (focal point of campus) in order to cheer people up during the pre-Exam week suckiness. We had so much fun we did it again this year.

Our friends at Scene Diego have posted their latest mission video.

They write:

41 Agents bring Rocky to San Diego. We dress up in gray sweats, run thru the mall, and across downtown showing true Rocky spirit. Mall security called for “backup”, we stopped a tour trolley in its tracks, and had a couple bystanders join in. While nobody was really sure who these loud, energetic people were, they cheered us on until the finish line.

Last week we posted a notice about a water balloon fight in San Francisco. Geek Entertainment TV has a video shot on location, above. Looks like it was lots of fun, despite a relatively small turnout.

The “freeze” craze started by Improv Everywhere’s Frozen Grand Central mission has now reached 70 cities in 34 countries and 6 continents (come on Antarctica, get with the program!) Agent Piskvor from Prague made a very cool map showing the locations of all the freeze missions. It’s a Google Map, so you can interact with it and click through to see the video for each city.

A couple of recent freezes of note include the first freeze in the Middle East:

Beirut, Lebanon

…and a freeze in Hong Kong where legislators and councilors from the local government participated.

Frozen Hong Kong, Councilors Version