Ice Bath
This video took me back to the malicious things that kids sometimes do to each other under the guise of pranks. The nature of the relationship of John, the ice-water splasher, to Nikki, his victim, is unclear, but this is the kind of thing that ten year-old boys will sometimes do to their older teenaged sisters. What does Iceman John mean by “Merry Christmas”? Why do I find this amusing? Sometimes the cruelest jokes are the funniest.
I’ve never pranked anyone like this; if anything I tended to be the victim when I was a kid. During a group sleepover at a friend’s beach house I was given an old-fashioned hot foot (i.e., two kitchen matches put between my toes and then lit while I was sleeping). To this day I can still recall the sensation of my toes getting hotter and hotter, and then the sudden muscle spasm that led to my levitating six inches off the floor.
Later that night the same pranksters put 30 or 40 ice cubes into a guy’s sleeping bag as he slept; an hour later he awoke in a state of uncontrollable shivering.
The only cruel prank I pulled was on a high-school acquaintance named Rick Callahan. He was in a bathing suit and lying sideways on a beach towel on an elevated sundeck next to a large community pool. He was leaning on his left arm, talking to a girl. In the area of the towel where Callahan would sooner or later lie down, three or four inches from his back, a friend and I stealthily placed a burning Marlboro cigarette on top of a matchbook. Then we scampered away and down some nearby stairs to ground level and waited. We were maybe 25 feet away. A minute or so later we heard Callahan’s howl.
Call me new fangled, but I’m afraid a prank involving flames or fire of any sort really is more of a crime.
Giving someone a hotfoot is a crime? Between teenagers? Okay, be a stuffed shirt — it’s a “crime.” But if you’re going to be a truant officer, why aren’t ice cubes a crime also?
They destroy her MP3 player and she still cares enough to warn “John” to come down and not get hurt. I like the prank victim more than the prankster.
What a cock.
three or four inches from his back, a friend and I stealthily placed a burning Marlboro cigarette on top of a matchbook. Then we scampered away and down some nearby stairs to ground level and waited. We were maybe 25 feet away. A minute or so later we heard Callahan’s howl.
wells is a classic bully
total eloi creep
Wells to party animals: I thought I made it clear that I never did this kind of thing to anyone except this one time. That for the most part I tended to be the victim, not the perpetrator, of such pranks in my youth. And that this one time I was accompanied (i.e., goaded on by) a friend. Did you not believe me? Or…what’s the other explanation? Reading-comprehension-skill fail? Are you naturally given to hostility? Are you a putz?
The implied point of the humor, which you’re clearly too thick to get, is that some cruel pranks are mildly chuckle-worthy if you don’t see them happening and it’s left to the imagination. If we had watched Callahan roll over on that lit cigarette…well, I can’t imagine anything about it that would seem the least bit amusing, even to a teenaged sadist. But being down below and hearing him howl…well, it’s a difficult principle of comedy to explain but for some reason this is mildly funny in retrospect.
I once saw a cartoon in which a character managed to put a lion’s tail between two pieces of bread and then hand it to the lion. The lion, who was extremely hungry but not very bright, looked at the “sandwich” with great interest. The character who prepared the tail sandwich then scampered off. Four or five seconds later we heard the lion roar, just like Callahan. It’s a mildly funny bit precisely because we don’t see the lion biting into the sandwich, because we’re forced to imagine it.
And here I am on Tuesday morning, tossing pearls before swine.
Wells, the ice cubes are lame, and potentially painful as well falling off a roof like that.
Savagebrit is right, too.
Fake. Set-up. Don’t but it for a second.
Hahahahahaha Owned! Though would’ve gone down easier had the kid not destroyed her mp3 player, which is a TOTAL fucking dick move.
I don’t what’s funnier though, the video itself (which is pretty standard punked/pwned Internet dipshittery) or the disarming image of Wells, of all people, cracking up over it.
There was that time you and your buddies pissed into the food at a cannery.
Or does that fall more under the “crime” descriptor?
Wells to Quantrell Belligerent: No, that fell under “resentment of prison-camp working conditions.” In the story I passed along that we (my friends and I) were part of a social resentment manifestation that happens in restaurants and other such places in which the product is eaten by consumers. It’s basically anger/resentment directed at the employer, or anger/resentment by the worker at him or herself for agreeing to work in a grubby place for a measly salary. Either way the anger/resentment is passed along to the consumer in the form of urine in a can of peas or saliva in a prepared hamburger or whatever. It’s gross but this is what disgruntled immature employees sometimes do.
A day or two ago you yourself, Quantrell, suggested that restaurant workers, after reading my piece about not tipping that waiter at Sur, might want to urinate in my coffee. An army of waiters might do this en masse, you suggested.
This is the kind of asshole that you are. One, you don’t remember and/or want to consider the full context of a story or anecdote that I earlier went to some trouble to provide. It suits your cheap game to cherry-pick. And then you use this or that isolated story to put me down or judge my character. Up and down and all around you really are a scumbag, which is why I’m banning your ass again for the second time in two days. I don’t like you, I don’t respect you, and I don’t want your kind in my home.
From my 4.6.09 piece called “Beans and Peas”:
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/04/beans_and_peas.php
“We were anarchic, fuck-all middle-class kids, but we’d been raised by good people in well-to-do homes and weren’t psychopaths. If guys with our backgrounds had the rage to piss into cans of vegetables every night you can bet others have done this since. A lot. Pissing into prepared food containers is what powerless people do to give them the feeling that they’ve somehow evened up the score. Think of this the next time you buy Del Monte.”
It’s quite well directed, actually. The exploding wind sound is very disconcerting.
And how’s it faked? She still got splashed with icy water. It’s much easier to actually do this stuff than to fake it.
It’s probably his sister, seeing as how she’s worried about his being on the roof.
look at her feet!
Watched it again to look at the feet some more, cracking up at the on-the-nose low-rent literalism of the title “Hot Girl Bikini Prank,” displayed in font that looks like a a Cal Worthington commercial from 1986.
The prankster is frat boy toolbag and totally deserves a savage beating. “That’s what you get for messin’ with the best, right?” I’d seriously like to watch him get beaten like Joe Pesci in a cornfield.
Such is the magic of the Internet:
This video has 700,000-some views on YouTube. Shit, when I made my Glenn Kenny/David Poland/Joe Leydon animations or posted by Entourage Recaps, they topped out around *60.*
i like a joke as much as the next guy, if he had ran out and thrown a cup of ice water on her..cool. but loading up a bucket like that, going on the roof that shows menace. if i was her boyfriend i’d kick his ass…an have her film it..lol
I went to a beach one time where some pre-teens were doing this, but with a twist. They would go up to guys and offer to do this to a girl nearby for $5. The twist was that the girl was tanning with her bikini top untied so as not to get a tan line. The water hits her back and, well, you get the idea.
We never gave the kids any money, but saw some guys who did. The best part was watching the girl’s boyfriends reaction. Most of the time, they were too muscle-bound and slow to catch the little bastards. The one time they did, though, hoo boy.
Wells commentary: Rich S. is one of the very few commenters to get what I’m talking about — to understand cruel predatory humor as practiced by teenagers, and what a strange phenomenon it is. Those of you who’ve used my burning-cigarette/Callahan story as a way to bash or psychoanalyze me don’t understand the perverted psychology of these times, or you weren’t intelligent enough to notice it when you were young (especially if you grew up in suburban New Jersey), or you can’t be bothered to admit to it now. You’re thick and lazy and/or in denial, to put it bluntly.
What’s odd about that clip – and it is odd – is the way he keeps pointing out her “MP3 player,” and then later she complains he ruined her (again, generic) “MP3 player.” But then at some point in the middle he calls it her “iPod,” but then quickly corrects himself with “I mean, her MP3 player.” Very odd.
Pissing in green beans doesn’t count?
Gogo – I thought the same thing. It immediately rang false to me when she screamed, “My MP3 player!” Who calls it that?
My favorite part: “That’s what you get when you mess with the best.”
Kid has a lot to live up to.
Bah, almost any prank has its dangers and moral pitfalls, guys. It’s part of the fun – you stop thinking about what’s “right” and have a few (relatively) harmless laughs.
Oh, Jeff. Only you could lament tending to be the “victim” before recounting a heinous prank you pulled. I typically love reading about your martyr complex, but today it’s a little too creepy.
It’s not a prank when you pour ice cold water on a sleeping girl in a bikini, it’s just being a douchebag. Look at me, i’m pouring liquid on a girl who doesn’t expect to have liquid poured on her, isn’t that HI-Larry-us? He he he. And i broke her Phone/MP3 player too! That makes me the smartest prankster around, says the douchebag.
Fuck him.
Seems staged to me.
The girl gets blindsided by a bucketful of iced water and she doesn’t swear ONCE?
Totally fake/staged. Who says “My MP3 player?!!!!’
No one says that. They use the phrase like 3 times.
Everyone wants to be a YouTube star. Sad.
people get dumber when they watch this
Wells to party animals: “People get dumber when they watch this”? Now, that’s a fascinating follow-up observation! You really are the thoughtful type. Plus you haven’t responded to the three-paragraph reply I posted this morning to your earlier inane insult post. What are you, a forklift operator on your coffee break? One more dim-witted posting like this and you’re gone. Doltish jottings do nothing but water down the intellectual climate ’round these parts. Put a little thought into what you’re thinking and/or feeling, or take a hike. I mean it.
The only cruel prank I pulled was on a high-school acquaintance named Rick Callahan. He was in a bathing suit and lying sideways on a beach towel on an elevated sundeck next to a large community pool…
Why does this strike me as an intro to a lost John Irving novel?
RE: youthful pranking, during a grade school sleepover someone stuffed my ears (!) with toothpaste. I didn’t even notice it until later the next night after I got home, wondering why I was digging out crusty paste out of my ears.
As for the water trick, I’ll admit to having surprised more than a few dorm mates (and girlfriends) with the old cup of cold water tossed over the shower curtain in the morning. Always a crowd pleaser.
this video is for morons. it’s likely staged so it makes you even dumber for watching. your three paragraph reply was your nonsense. you deleted my other comment. everybody knows teen folks is cruel. but then, so are you. and you’re an adult.
Yes, because this post itself isn’t watering down the intellectual climate. What a fucking joke.
Wells to party animals: My “three paragraph reply was [my] nonsense” My nonsense?? But it wasn’t nonsense. It was well written and reasonably reasonable, and it explained a curious notion of what constitutes funny and what doesn’t. That’s it — you’re outta here. Sloppy thinkers infuriate me. Go sully some other chat board.
In college some friends and I once spent an entire afternoon throwing waterballoons out of the 2nd floor bathroom window of our dorm at passersby. It took about 90 minutes for campus security to show up and give us a warning.
Sloppy thinkers infuriate me.
no wonder you’re so angry
This is the sort of thing that appeals to your so-called “Eloi”, Wells. You really shouldn’t be looking down your nose at them. You are them.
anglo animals
There are two pranksters: douchebag bullies and scamps. A scamp is the type who does not run away because everyone including the victim usually has a good laugh about it.
Douchbags, like the fakers who created this bid for fleeting fame, like to lace their pranks with cruelty so there’s a measure of humiliation heaped on the victim.
I was REALLY hoping/expecting to see the d-bag take a tumble off the roof from slipping in his own creation.
I was also hoping that the first two of Wells’ replies within the original comments (to party animals and Quantrell) were their own expert takes on what they expected Wells’ replies to be. Then I realized they were actually Jeff and the clever veneer of parody was stripped away to reveal the old familiar Wells brow-beatings.
SO disappointed.
Yeah. Probably fake, and if not it’d be funnier if it really were just some kid fucking around and not this guy so clearly trying to become a youtube star with his douchey catchphrases.
That is disappointing. I also thought it was parody on their parts. Can we talk about Oliver Stone loving Hitler already?
The entire concept of an interesting/cool/funny user-generated viral video has totally jumped the shark, because too many wannabe amateur stars and starlets fake it. In the beginning, it was about seeing something rare and real; now it’s about how much verisimilitude you can manufacture.
A strange convergence has thus taken place in Hollywood and online: Whether you spend $200 million on CGI or $20 on a pre-planned “spontaneous” video, the net result is the same: Those of us watching can’t trust anything we see anymore, to the diminishment of all.
ha ha funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FreLFK8WXBg
pwned plus look at that fat guy why’s he with those chicks?
Great prank, and I know many who say “MP3 player” because they don’t overpay for Jobs’ underperforming IPODS/PADS.