"Quiet, Err. I'm transmitting rage."

I wasn't planning on seeing the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, but then came the guerrilla marketing campaign that shut down Boston and I want to be a part of the alarmist chaos! I guess the marketers didn't do such a good job lightboarding New York, cause I didn't find see Mooninites anywhere. I would've so taken one of those boards for myself, stuck it on my refrigerator or car or something, because this is the first time I can think of when I was in on the joke. Usually there's a billboard that says March 16: it arrives!!! or Are You Next?, and my thinking is, "Goddamn it, advertisement! I sleep poorly enough without your vague apocalyptic pronouncements." Then it turns out that they're selling Nikes or something and... well, I've usually forgotten about them coming on the 16th anyway.

The view from the inside, though, is hilarious, like when you hear Orson Welles' broadcast of The War of the Worlds and wonder how something so cheesy could spark that mass crazy. I'm sure I'd be infuriated if I lived in Boston, but not at the culture geeks who stuck the ads on random stuff. The media and the information presented to us is so thoroughly focus-grouped and sanitized that I'd just die if we didn't have the occasional indie sticker-sticker covering up stop signs or traffic lights.

I wonder to what extent the citywide freakout was a product of the Aqua Teens counterculture, and if they were blinking ads for mainstream sitcommery rather than Williams Street's typical dark absurdism, maybe they'd just go unnoticed. Like, would the same people be calling the cops if they were lit-up ads for How I Met Your Mother?