WEEKLY WHINE

Free the Rally Monkey!

by Deb Harratsch, editor, portHOLE[tm] by GoobNet

TUE 05 AUG 2003

17:00 UTC: Reg Goober arrived in the office and immediately sat down in front of me, saying "Deb."

"That's me," I answered.

"Okay, good. Just wanted to make sure you weren't one of those pod people."

Once the silly jokes were out of the way, it was time for him to tell me what he wanted. And what he wanted was this:

He wanted a flash mob.

I'd heard about this sort of phenomenon. Apparently it got started in New York about two months ago, when somebody E-mailed a bunch of people and told them all to show up in Macy's and ogle a particular rug. Similar things have since happened in other cities, with Europe the most recently afflicted.

The term "flash mob" apparently originates from a Niven short story about the teleportation equivalent of rubbernecking. In our world, a flash mob can be quite a perplexing experience. Usually the crowd is supposed to do something silly once they convene, like start clapping or stare at something.

"I want you to organise one," Reg told me. "Somewhere in Los Angeles."

"Where in Los Angeles?"

"That's up to you. Not downtown, that's too easy. Someplace unexpected. Not the middle of a freeway, that's too dumb. Preferably someplace accessible on public transportation."

"So when do you want it to happen?"

"Before the weekend. Thursday or Friday. Go get to it."

He got up and left.

20:30 UTC: By this time I had settled on a location, as well as something for the mob to do once they got there. It was not in the middle of the freeway, but neither was it particularly accessible on public transportation. Even so, the opportunity was just too ripe to pass up.

So it was time to get the word out. One of my friends has done this sort of thing once already, so he knew which websites to post on. I called up Javier and told him what I had in mind. "How soon could we do it?"

"How's Friday?"

"Perfect."

"Okay, so I'll post a notice about a SoCal event and see who signs up for the E-mail. That'll go out on Thursday evening."

"So that tells them where to go?"

"That will tell them about the meet points," he said. "Those will be bars or coffee shops or something nearby. Then when they show up, we'll give them the final instructions."

"Cool. Can you make sure to tell everyone to bring cardboard and markers?"

"Cardboard and markers. Got it. Is that for the picket signs?"

"That's the idea."

THU 07 AUG 2003

23:10 UTC: Javier called me with a status report. He said that things were proceeding nominally, and the E-mail list was filling up.

"How many are on the list?" I asked.

"A couple hundred. It's looking pretty good."

"So how many of those can we expect?"

"Last time, we had about half. It'll probably be something like that."

"Around a hundred, you think?"

"Thereabouts. Of course, it's impossible to tell."

"Of course," I agreed.

"I'll send you the message. Read it over, make sure it's okay before I send it out."

"All right."

It was almost time.

FRI 08 AUG 2003

17:00 UTC: Javier and I were on our way to Anaheim. He and I were going to a coffee shop on State College Boulevard to hand out instructions. There were two other meet points that Javier's friends were staffing.

"So there was one yesterday in London," he suddenly said.

"Is that right?"

"Yep. A furniture store."

"So what did they do?"

"Not a lot. Just looked at the furniture. Though apparently they were all supposed to telephone a friend and tell them about it - without saying the letter O."

That sounded odd. "You mean they couldn't say anything with an O in it?"

"Right. I mean, I doubt anybody actually did have an entire conversation without any Os, but, you know. Whatever."

"What kind of furniture store was it?"

"Sofas."

"No, I mean, was it classy? Utilitarian? Upscale?"

He said, "I don't know. But they got there after the place closed, and the owner actually came back and reopened the store when he saw the crowd."

"What, did the guy live nearby?"

"No idea. Maybe he hadn't got to his car yet."

So we were going to follow up a London mob. By almost exactly 24 hours, it seemed. I asked him if that was a problem, but he didn't think so.

"For now these things happen rarely enough that you can still get media attention, certainly on a local basis. If we get to the point where there's one every day, the media will lose interest. But I don't think that will be any time soon."

17:30 UTC: We had been at the shop for several minutes, and we'd given out around ten flyers. They were told that we'd spot them. You tend to notice people with big pieces of cardboard that don't yet have anything written on them.

So we gave out the instructions, and so people began writing messages on their cardboard.

Over the next few minutes more people trickled in. The group was about sixty percent men, and I'm sure that if we'd asked, we'd have found out that most of them were students or unemployed. This was a late Friday morning, after all.

17:40 UTC: It was time to head over to the venue. By that time we had corralled about forty people, which added up to a fairly long procession once we got onto the roads. It was, fortunately, a short drive.

We pulled into the nearly empty parking lot at Edison Field. The Angels were in the middle of a road trip, so it was just us and the box office.

17:55 UTC: The other groups arrived a bit later than we did, but once everyone was there, it was showtime. We went through a quick rehearsal to make sure everyone understood their roles.

18:00 UTC: At precisely 11:00 PDT, we began walking in a long line in the plaza in front of the main gate. Javier, on a bullhorn, bellowed, "Anaheim Angels! Your wrongful imprisonment of your so-called 'Rally Monkey' and your shameful forced labour camp are cruel and heartless practises that must be stopped immediately! Free the Rally Monkey!"

We all joined him for the last sentence, making "Free the Rally Monkey" an enthusiastic, if bizarre, chant. We continued on for exactly two minutes. During this time, I had a chance to observe everyone's signs, which bore one of several slogans we gave as choices, from your basic Free the Rally Monkey to the more ambitious You Believe in the Power of the Rally Monkey - But Do You Believe in the Power of ANIMAL RIGHTS?! to the brutally direct Anaheim Angels are the World Champions of Cruelty to the borderline obscene Let My Monkey Go!.

I counted 178 of us, but one of Javier's buds posted the official count of 177.

After the two minutes expired, we all shouted, in unison, "Awww, never mind!", dropped our signs, got in our cars, and went home.