These two apparently quite sophisticated thieves are nearly complete in their epic heist. They’re about to finally reach, and steal, the big giant diamond. And out in the parking lot, their car is drawing attention to, well, eventually, the guys dressed all in black hanging from the ceiling next to the empty big giant diamond display case.
Oops.
I think it’s just car alarms going off at the worst possible times. Also car alarms go off when museum alarms don’t.
I clip my vehicle keys to a font belt loop on my pants. Never a problem with my car. However, with the truck, oftentimes it will start beeping, apparently some how it has gotten bumped to trigger the alarm. YMMV.
When I get home I take the clip off my pants and clip it to my purse. Haven’t misplaced them yet. Again, YMMV.
These guys are getting seriously dissected by lasers. Given that and the loudness of the wonking, I figured thief 1 was carrying an alarm that goes off when the car alarm goes off. Is that a thing? Seems useful.
Brian De Palma and Tom Cruise are stealing a scene from Topkapi.
I’ll be a dissenting voice here. I thought that the museum alarm was going off, and the one thief naively assumed it was a different alarm entirely. (The joke, in this case, being that it should be extremely obvious what the alarm is.)
Pounding a square peg into a round hole does not make something funny. No matter how hard you pound.
I agree with Christine. I think it is the museum alarm, and the thief is desperately hoping it’s a car alarm. The follow-on thought is that the other thief says, “Um, no, it’s not yours?”
I agree with Christine and ~~Silk, it is probably the museum alarm, and the dialog about a car alarm is just wishful thinking.
And I also think of Topkapi as the source for all the subsequent aerobatic thievery scenes!
A museum alarm would most likely be silent inside the museum.
Making a lot of noise is counterproductive. It alerts the bad guys that they need to leave the scene posthaste, which means they’re less likely to get caught. If it goes off (on purpose or by mistake) while the museum is full of patrons, you could start a panic, which gets people hurt and makes it harder for the museum’s security staff to reach the scene of the alarm.
Yes, I’ll concede that applying logic to a joke rarely serves either logic or joke.
James Pollock – that’s assuming that museums have useful alarms. A lot of them are loud, noisy alarms to scare people away. There may or may not be anything else.
“that’s assuming that museums have useful alarms.”
Yes. A museum with POOR security practices, on the other hand, doesn’t require hanging from the ceiling to steal from it.
Those were both cool — the car alarms I would submit can count as Concrete Music, and “Where’s Rob?” was entirely charming!
I do harbor mixed feelings about some of the practices in the general world of flash mob and candid-camering. Sometimes the result is sublime: https://youtu.be/kbJcQYVtZMo . (From a technical details appreciation viewpoint, it’s a special moment when they roll out the tympani — you know it’s more than texting people to show up,)
But sometimes I think it edges toward the dark side of pranking-TV.
Was it this same “Improv Everywhere” group that did the one where they showed up at a bar show for a just-getting-by band, packed the house, and cheered and stomped to make it seem they were finally hitting it big. Some participants made song requests, from tgheir albums, making it look like they had hidden fans.
I’ve seen discussions of this caper that argue the proprieties. The band was really hurt when they found out the game. And it had been allowed to run long enough that they had been able to act like swelled heads and felt very foolish.
As far as I recall the write-up I read, the band eventually reconciled with Improv Everywhere and said it had been a good experience in the end. I was left feeling they had been backed into a corner and had to prove they could “take a joke”.
Yes, that’s the same group. Indeed there was some controversy about that one. Similar “missions” for Little League baseball were better received, as the kids didn’t have as many delusions.
Some missions are more upsetting to the targets than others. I thought the Best Buy one was hilarious (bunch of people dress in blue polo and khakis, then go stand around in a store) but the management didn’t find it so funny.
I once saw a comic book artist try to get away with “AROOOGALA” as a warning siren sound effect. I think it means “Warning: the salad bar is closing.”
Comics I Don't Understand 
These two apparently quite sophisticated thieves are nearly complete in their epic heist. They’re about to finally reach, and steal, the big giant diamond. And out in the parking lot, their car is drawing attention to, well, eventually, the guys dressed all in black hanging from the ceiling next to the empty big giant diamond display case.
Oops.
I think it’s just car alarms going off at the worst possible times. Also car alarms go off when museum alarms don’t.
I clip my vehicle keys to a font belt loop on my pants. Never a problem with my car. However, with the truck, oftentimes it will start beeping, apparently some how it has gotten bumped to trigger the alarm. YMMV.
When I get home I take the clip off my pants and clip it to my purse. Haven’t misplaced them yet. Again, YMMV.
These guys are getting seriously dissected by lasers. Given that and the loudness of the wonking, I figured thief 1 was carrying an alarm that goes off when the car alarm goes off. Is that a thing? Seems useful.
Brian De Palma and Tom Cruise are stealing a scene from Topkapi.
I’ll be a dissenting voice here. I thought that the museum alarm was going off, and the one thief naively assumed it was a different alarm entirely. (The joke, in this case, being that it should be extremely obvious what the alarm is.)
Pounding a square peg into a round hole does not make something funny. No matter how hard you pound.
I agree with Christine. I think it is the museum alarm, and the thief is desperately hoping it’s a car alarm. The follow-on thought is that the other thief says, “Um, no, it’s not yours?”
I agree with Christine and ~~Silk, it is probably the museum alarm, and the dialog about a car alarm is just wishful thinking.
And I also think of Topkapi as the source for all the subsequent aerobatic thievery scenes!
A museum alarm would most likely be silent inside the museum.
Making a lot of noise is counterproductive. It alerts the bad guys that they need to leave the scene posthaste, which means they’re less likely to get caught. If it goes off (on purpose or by mistake) while the museum is full of patrons, you could start a panic, which gets people hurt and makes it harder for the museum’s security staff to reach the scene of the alarm.
Yes, I’ll concede that applying logic to a joke rarely serves either logic or joke.
James Pollock – that’s assuming that museums have useful alarms. A lot of them are loud, noisy alarms to scare people away. There may or may not be anything else.
“that’s assuming that museums have useful alarms.”
Yes. A museum with POOR security practices, on the other hand, doesn’t require hanging from the ceiling to steal from it.
Imaginative use of car alarms:
https://improveverywhere.com/2012/06/04/car-alarm-symphony
And nothing to do with this thread, but one of my favorites:
https://improveverywhere.com/2009/11/30/wheres-rob
Those were both cool — the car alarms I would submit can count as Concrete Music, and “Where’s Rob?” was entirely charming!
I do harbor mixed feelings about some of the practices in the general world of flash mob and candid-camering. Sometimes the result is sublime: https://youtu.be/kbJcQYVtZMo . (From a technical details appreciation viewpoint, it’s a special moment when they roll out the tympani — you know it’s more than texting people to show up,)
But sometimes I think it edges toward the dark side of pranking-TV.
Was it this same “Improv Everywhere” group that did the one where they showed up at a bar show for a just-getting-by band, packed the house, and cheered and stomped to make it seem they were finally hitting it big. Some participants made song requests, from tgheir albums, making it look like they had hidden fans.
I’ve seen discussions of this caper that argue the proprieties. The band was really hurt when they found out the game. And it had been allowed to run long enough that they had been able to act like swelled heads and felt very foolish.
As far as I recall the write-up I read, the band eventually reconciled with Improv Everywhere and said it had been a good experience in the end. I was left feeling they had been backed into a corner and had to prove they could “take a joke”.
Yes, that’s the same group. Indeed there was some controversy about that one. Similar “missions” for Little League baseball were better received, as the kids didn’t have as many delusions.
Some missions are more upsetting to the targets than others. I thought the Best Buy one was hilarious (bunch of people dress in blue polo and khakis, then go stand around in a store) but the management didn’t find it so funny.
I once saw a comic book artist try to get away with “AROOOGALA” as a warning siren sound effect. I think it means “Warning: the salad bar is closing.”