Archive for August 21st, 2006

By Guest Reviewer: Billy Gordon

As always, Improv Everywhere agents received a somewhat cryptic e-mail a week before the mission, which simply stated the meet up point and time, and what items were required for participation. For this mission we would meet up at the monument in Madison Square Park and needed to bring watches. A little after 3:30 the mysterious figure known only as “Charlie” announced that we would be infiltrating the nearby Home Depot on 23rd St. between 5th and 6th.

He then divided up the group according to our birthdays, planning to station half the people on the ground floor and half the people in the basement. He then further divided us to which street we would approach Home Depot from, and told us to scatter our entrances, so we would not be a giant mass of people approaching all at once. Our mission was to enter Home Depot and pretend to be normal shoppers until 4:15, when we would all shop in slow motion for 5 minutes, then at 4:20 return to normal. Then at 4:25 we would all completely freeze for 5 minutes. We synchronized our watches, and were sent on our way.

I entered the building, and made my way to the basement scouting out an ideal location to do some fake shopping. After settling on the welding section, I patiently waited around for a few minutes, trying not to catch the attention of the Home Depot employees. At 4:15 every agent began moving in slow motion, I was in a somewhat abandoned isle so my view of the big picture was limited, however I did notice the other agents slowly reaching out for tools and other items. At 4:20 everything returned to normal except for the somewhat weirded out employees.

At 4:25 the real fun began. My watch was a few seconds behind, but as soon as I noticed a frozen agent to my left I also froze in position. A few minutes went by, with almost no activity in my isle, then at around 4:28 a Home Depot employee began calling out to me. Our instructions were very specific, don’t break character and stay as motionless as possible, so I tried to think of the best way to react to him calling me. I stayed motionless for about another 7 seconds while he was calling “Excuse me sir, sir, do you need help with anything, sir are you alright, sir, sir, is everything OK?”. I then turned to him, moving only my head, and stared at him for a second, before giving a slow nod (while never taking my eyes off him), and then slowly turned my head back to its original position, freezing again. In the second before I turned my head back, I noticed the somewhat creeped out look on his face. I suppose it would have been strange for him to not be creeped out, working in a somewhat busy store, when all of a sudden the majority of customers became mannequins.

At 4:30 everyone unfroze, and began filtering out of the store over the next ten minutes. We then met up back at Madison square park for interviews and sharing our stories.