Disappeared News: Shoes in the air everywhere

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Shoes in the air everywhere

by Larry Geller

stooges

Its gone viral. Try your hand at the Sock and Awe game (found, along with Stooges gif and more at this Wired.com article).

Not only is the YouTube video (there are multiple postings) attracting large numbers of viewers around the world, but the incident has resonated in talk shows, newscasts, Internet comments and posts… it’s everywhere.

Two small collections of animated gifs are here and here.

I noticed this effect this morning when checking my usual on-line reading list. Shoes are everywhere.

Attached to a blog post by Peter Boylan on the subject of Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou firing his entire staff were these two bits of doggerel:

Commenter Mongo:

I too would would hurl a shoe or two in the general direction of Chuckles Djou

and from commenter Chuckie Cheese:

There once was a heel named Djou.
Who at Christmas time canned his whole crew.
He was looking with glee.
Toward a ride to DC.
But instead he got clocked with a shoe.

Those are both from one short article on the Advertiser website. Look around and there’s lots more.

What’s next—at least at airports you get to put your shoes back on after passing through inspection. Will we be asked to go barefoot to political events from now on? Can the Secret Service properly protect the president now that shoe throwing has been introduced to the world as a form of protest? There’s even another game with that theme: Bush's Boot Camp, in which you play a secret agent who must defend the president by shooting down flying shoes.

This is another simple game to give you the experience of throwing a shoe yourself. There’s a game at readyaimvote.com and one at a Norwegian newspaper site. For this last one, you have to move the slider for angle and the other for strength, then push the button to launch the shoe.

There are probably more out there.

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