Rob C0ckerham Built a Solar Death-Ray in His Back Yard A comedy article
by John Hargrave 119,938 37 03/03/2010 06:18 AM 4740 views
Occasionally, we all have a passing curiosity about the world around us. How much is really inside a can of EZ cheese? Can you fill bubbles with helium to make them float? Could you build a solar death ray by gluing 800 mirrors into the inside of a satellite dish?
Okay, maybe these are not the thoughts that most of us find ourselves thinking. But thankfully, Sacramento-based humorist Rob C0ckerham does. And he actually finds out the answer, posting the results on his brilliantly funny site C0ckeyed.com.
"I try to find something that people accept as a little bit funny about the way the world works, and then I take it to the logical extreme," Rob explains. "The trick is to find something that everyone experiences, but finding a way to do something different about it."
For instance, Rob tore up a credit card application he received in the mail, then taped it back together, filled it out, and sent it in, posing as an identity thief. The bank issued the credit card anyway, a stunt that got him featured on ABC's 20/20:
Many of Rob's pranks involve finding something ridiculous, then creating something even ridiculouser. After noticing a silly sign at a local coffee shop, for instance, Rob made his own parody sign that looked like a breast examination card. And wondering who fills out the pads of job applications left on the walls of fast food restaurants, Rob made his own.
Launched in 1998, C0ckeyed.com started with a single experiment, How Much is Inside Shaving Cream? The site now spans over 8,000 pages, all patiently written and hand-coded by Rob between the hours of midnight at 2:00 a.m. ("I'm usually late to work," he explains.) In addition to a huge library of How Much is Inside? experiments, the site features sections like Incredible Things I Made and of course Rob's famous Pranks.
Rob has a long history of clever, creative pranks, dating back to high school. "My brother and I got in a prank war with our friend Mark. We made this ridiculous flyer that advertised an upcoming glockenspiel performance by Mark. This was before Photoshop, so we went to Kinko's, cut his face out and glued it to Beethoven's body, then put up a hundred of these flyers all over school."
Rob points out that his pranks differ from most of the "hidden camera prank" genre. "I don't get reaction shots," he confesses. "On Punk'd, they made sure to get the reactions, but I just film the setup, and let the reader imagine the humor afterward."
Sometimes his fans help write the punchline, as in Starbucks Chairs, where Rob painted two folding chairs with the Starbucks logo and left them chained to a pole in San Francisco, receiving photos from fans sitting in the chairs for months afterward. Or Paparazzi Contest, where Rob challenged readers to photograph him paparazzi-style in a mall.
It's this kind of do-it-yourself citizen pranking that has amassed Rob's Web site a huge, loyal following. "What I love about the Internet is that now we have a chance to get together and decide things as a society. You can talk to thousands of people each day, and get them to opt in to your crazy scheme on how to reduce traffic bottlenecks, or smuggling in a new menu for T.G.I. Friday's."
Rob is one of my heroes. Just about everything on his site makes me wish I had thought of it. He gets my vote, but only because lore Sjoberg isn't on the list.
I want to apologize for the broken links and images. I did not realize Rob had a swear in his name until we published this article and our Swearbot censored it.
Everything should be fixed now, although Rob's last name does not actually contain a zero.
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