 "Photo: Peyton McGee/The Daily Texan")
“Oh please excuse my dog; he’s bananas,” said a young woman wearing a red and white shirt.
In the backyard of an East Austin home, a small crowd surrounded a red table with a red parasol on a whitewashed patio. The color arrangements seemed almost prophetic.
As if Austin was not already weird, some are trying to make it weirder. Every month, a small troupe of Austinites gathers to plan and carry out a spontaneous gag, aiming to both entertain and confuse unsuspecting audiences.
On April 25, agents from Flash Mob Austin, an improv troupe, plan to host the world’s largest “Where’s Waldo” search party. Agents met Saturday to plan and prepare the stunt by creating Waldo’s trademark striped shirt by taping red tape to white T-shirts.
“We’ve had this idea on the back burner for a while,” said Indiana Adams, leader of the Waldo mission. “We always want to have our missions be free or really cheap.”
The mission, if everything goes as planned, would play out like this: Five agents will solicit the help of unsuspecting persons to find “Waldo” in Pease Park. The catch, however, is that participants will have to find the right “Waldo” in a sea of about 50 “Waldo” look-alikes.
Peter Rogers, a 33-year-old computer programer who will play the missing “Waldo,” said he is too old to have read the Waldo books himself but that he could not turn down Adams’ e-mail asking for his involvement.
“I’ll have to work on blending into crowds,” Rogers said.
The “Where’s Waldo” franchise was originally conceived by artist Martin Handford in 1986 when he inserted and hid the character in elaborate full-page drawings depicting hundreds of people participating in various activities. The books became an international success with many adaptations throughout the world.
April’s stunt will try to mimic Handford’s comic book, and agents said they are optimistic about the event’s success because of its proximity to Eeyore’s Birthday Party, an eclectic Austin festival during which participants celebrate the life of Winnie the Pooh’s depressed donkey.
“It’s just a matter of context,” Rogers said. “If you have several Waldos wandering around Eeyore’s birthday, that’s just going to be one more weird thing.”
Flash Mob group is an offshoot of a much larger Improv Everywhere troupe based in New York City. The troupe is best known for conducting a freeze in Grand Central Station during which hundreds of agents stood still for several minutes, to the confusion of passing travelers. Since then, the number of imitating flash mobs has grown worldwide.
“Right now it’s really popular to be in a flash mob. I don’t know why,” said Melissa Filkins, who helped revive Austin’s flash mob movement. “We just do it so that people say ‘What?’”
Filkins revived the group after participants failed to pull off a freeze at a farmers’ market in Austin.
In August there were 75 members. Since then, the group has grown to 306 members, Filkins said.
Austin’s flash mob has been responsible for spontaneous four-minute pillow fights under the bat bridge, a 250-person freeze in Whole Foods, a live-in at Ikea, the world’s largest Thriller dance-along at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, which featured 881 people, and numerous impromptu birthday celebrations for oblivious bar patrons.
Group members said they would like to build the troupe’s popularity by staging a pirates versus ninjas battle in July. They also plan to host a silent rave party in which participants listen to a pre-recorded song individually from their music players.
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