Enormous Superbowl prank (hoax?): 2350 lights smuggled in

John Hargrave, author of Prank the Monkey, supposedly planned and executed an incredible stunt to promote his book: he smuggled 2,350 lights into the Superbowl, distributed them through the audience, then had them all turned on at the same time, spelling out a secret message.

Incredibly, he supposedly did this days after the Boston lite-brite scare, despite the Superbowl's "Level 1" security.

Engadget says that this might be a hoax, and I'm skeptical myself. The thing is, the Zug people say that the reason you didn't hear about this at the time is that the media was scared of reporting on it because it would create fear about terrorists breaking future event security. That doesn't sound very plausible to me.

If it's a hoax, it's an entertaining work of fiction. If it's a prank, it was the most incredible stunt I've ever heard of. Either way, it's worth a click.

I hustled to the bathroom to towel off. As I walked in, two armed members of the National Guard stood at the sink, chatting casually. I gave them a smile and a nod, and went to the urinal. After they left, I readjusted my tie, and dried my hair with a paper towel. As I was finishing up, a sheriff from the Miami-Dade Police Force came into the bathroom to do a sweep.

"Hey, do you know where I can find a forklift?" I asked the sheriff.

"I think they stopped all forklifts at 10:30 this morning," he said, eyeing my badge closely.

"My team hasn't showed up yet," I explained, "and I need to get two pallets of boxes up to the 100 level of the stadium." I was taking a huge risk, but there was no way we were going to get two pallets of boxes through this army without some heavy equipment. "Do you guys have something I can use to get these boxes out?" I continued, talking quickly. "A motorized cart? Hand truck? Anything?"

"I think the bomb squad has a small flatbed," he said. "Maybe they'll let you use it. They're over near the E gate."

Link (via Kottke)