The Daily Herald from Arlington Heights, Illinois • Page 19

PAGE 4 SECTION 4 DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2003 CLF12M Mob: Already, there are beginning signs of a backlash Continued fmii Page 1 like to join in a vvaky movement. Live is to have fun." (Hey, we quote 'em as we see 'em folks. Don't blame us for the spelling). Though flash mobs have only been around a few months, signs of a backlash already are apparent. "Enough with the flash mobs!" screamed Bill Maher last week on his HBO show, before launching into a rant about how stupid they are and how we should all have better things to do.

Some Web postings convey similar thoughts. "Your a bunch of dumb (naughty word)s who have no life or another grammatically challenged posting says. "Put your energy into helping children with aids or homeless kids. Oh and wheres your self- Thats right you dont have your mothers would be ashamed." Beyond the bitter tirades, some suggest flash mobs could eventually turn dangerous. "We don't know if it's really harmless," said Robert Butterworth, a psychologist in Los Angeles.

Sunglasses at night Nothing, however, went awry during Chicago's flash mob. It all started with an e-mail telling mob wannabes to go to a couple different bars and a bookstore by 7:15 p.m. to await further details. Look for someone wearing a Cubs hat backward, the message said. The mobbers were easy to spot.

In Mondelli's, a dim place with the Sox on the TV and classic rock on the stereo, they were the ones wearing bookish glasses and an almost tangible sense of anticipation. In a bar filled with cigarette smokers leisurely drinking whiskey on the rocks, the flash mobbers had piercings, tattoos and hips shoes. At 7:21 p.m., a man wearing a black hal with "Cubs Hat" hastily taped to the front walked in. Looking around, he tried to make eye contact with whoever might be part of the game. Participants gave him a quick nod, as he handed out small slips of paper telling them to head to the Water Tower Plaza, a five-minute walk away No one spoke.

Then he was gone. By 7:40, the group converged on Water Tower. Suddenly, the black-haired organizer, Charles Shaw, yelled, "Hey look, Ma, a street musician!" At that, about 60 people rushed to the stairs of the Chicago monument, hastily threw on sunglasses and started thrashing and flailing about, unleashing their inner Eddie Van Halens. About one minute later, Shaw yelled "One, two, three, four!" and the group disappeared almost instantaneously. People on nearby chairs stared wide-eyed, jaws agape, at the momentary spectacle they just witnessed.

"I have no idea what that was, I have no idea what that was, but I loved it," said Mark Stampley, a street performer who was playing guitar. "That was great!" Shaw, a 33-year-old Barrington Hills native, said the flash mob had no deep meaning or guiding philosophy. "It's totally nonconformist, populist street theater that breaks all social convention," he said. "Right now it's just art. Right now it's just fun.

It's just people blowing off steam in a tremendously depressing world." Scott Zimmerman, who heard about the mob on friendster. com, said his adventurous nature prompted him to want to take part. He and a friend showed up without any clue of what was to come next. "There's technically no point or no statement, but I am interested in doing stuff like this," said the 25-year-old bicycle mechanic from Chicago. "It's just fun to go out and stir things up a little bit." Word spreads fast Chicago is just the latest city to join the worldwide phenomenon.

"BUI" (he declines to give his last name saying he doesn't want to take attention away from the mobs themselves) says he came up with the idea while thinking about doing a performance project. "1 started to think about what sort of e-mail gets people to come to an event," he said. "I stopped and thought, what if there were no performance? What if people were just being invited to nothing, and came to 1 Rl I SI IIF.KAI.n A Chicago flash mobber moves to his inner Eddie Van Halen, above, while a crowd in San Francisco, below, spins in circles across a street. i COURTESV OK SEAN SAVAGK. a place only because they knew that other people were going to be there?" So he sent out a bunch of e-mails for a mobbing in New York.

After that, word started spreading as quickly as technology would allow instantaneously and other Dash mobs started breaking out all over the country. In New York, about 300 people mobbed a Toys Us, gazing heavenward at a giant dinosaur. Suddenly, they fell to the floor screaming and waving their hands for a moment before quickly leaving. Another New York mob innocently descended on Central Park, then started insanely tweeting like birds and crowing like roosters. In London, more man 200 people inexplicably crowded into a furniture store.

Then they whipped out their cell phones and started chattering about how wonderful the merchandise was. In Cambridge, people piled into a store at Harvard University and incessantly started asking for a card for a friend named Bill. In Sao Paolo, Brazil, partici- pants removed their shoes and for no apparent reason, banged them on the street. In Minneapolis, a group stood in front of Orchestra Hall, and then at the appointed moment, held their cell phones aloft. Simultaneously, they played various ring tones while others conducted the band.

In Denver, a mob converged on two levels of a mall, counted backward from 60 and then started hitting imaginary balls back and forth between floors. One group shouted "ping" while the other responded with "pong." In San Francisco, about 150 people met up in the middle of a street, then oddly began twirling around in circles for a minute with their arms raised. While mosi people consider the trend harmless, wacky fun, at least one expert worries ihcre could be a dark side to flash mobs. "You have to be careful that anarchists, terrorists or angry people don't it use for vindictiveness or disruption," said Butterworth. While nothing sinister has yet been reported, Butterworth's fears might not be that farfetched.

One person who posted a message on cheesebikini.com. called for flash mobbing gas stations. "Maybe this will stop people from consuming gas so much and drop the price of it," the message Mean mobbers? Sentiments like that are how something light-hearted can potentially turn ugly, said Butterworth, who has studied a range of social phenomena. "You can see where somebody could get mad at somebody and use it as a way of vindictiveness," he said. In addition to flash mobbers coalescing for mean-spirited purposes, they themselves could be hurt either by an anonymous organizer luring them to a spot and then setting off an explosive, for example, or by the simple logistics of crowding a large contingent of people into a confined space, he said.

Even flash mob organizers agree the potential for malevolence exists. "The ability to bring together 100 people quickly, that definitely can be used by terrorists if they wanted to put a bomb there or something," said Tom Grow, who started mobproject.com to chronicle various mobbings around die globe. However, he believes flash mobs likely will evolve into something less dangerous, but disturbing nonetheless to the flash mob ethos: selling. "Eventually it will be used for political purposes and maybe even commercial to promote a product or candidate," Grow said. "People who are into the flash mob are going to be against that." So far, though, flash mobbers have been peaceful, non-commercial bunches with nothing more on their minds than unleashing some weird scene.

And if you haven't seen one near you yet, just wait. "This is going to get bigger," BuUerworth predicts. "Everybody's going to want to join in the action." Leaders and shakers: Two new shows take different approaches to Sept. 11 I'll say one ihing for terrorism: 11 lakes history out of (he capitals and ihe palaces and the smokc- niled rooms and places il in the midst ol'lhe people. Maybe that's why, when ihe second annual sluwol'Scpl.

11 'IV memorials gets rolling tonight, the 1 eyewitness accounts of "7 Days in September" come off so much more: compelling than a conventional docudramu like Showtime's "DC Time of Crisis." That's in part because we all experienced Sept. ii together and individually. We all have our Sepl. I I sloiies. and as in earlier calamities that defined genera- lions, like Pearl Harbor and John Kennedy's assassination we all remember where we were and whal we were doing when we first heard, as well as whom we were wilh while we watched on So Steven Rosenbaum's "7 Days" seems comforling and familiar, even as il relives the destruction of Ihe World Trade Center.

Debuting at 8 p.m. today on it draws on film footage in the air Remotely interesting: "Monday Night Football" kicks off the NHL season with a special Thursday edition at 8 p.m. today on ABC's WLS Channel 7. A star-studded concert gels things going at 7 p.m. Jerry Lewis' annual Labor Day telethon raised more than $60 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association this year.

F.arvin "Magic" Johnson visits "Chicago Tonight" to discuss a development project he has going in the south Loop at 7 on WTIW Channel 11. Ted Cox shot by 2H persons some professional filmmakers, others not lo creale a reminder of whal we lived through. We might have thought we had blissfully forgollen whal il was like, hul it lurns oui all ihe familiar feelings fear, dread, anger, sadness, depression are still (here jusl under ihe surface, something I noticed when my teenage daughter literally flinched at ihe footage of ihe second jet hitting the lower. "Nobody knew how 10 feel," says one New Yorker. "It's like two people inside of me," says another, "nne horrified and nne fascinated." Rosenbaum's documentary doesn't jusl relive ihe horror, although one person describing Ihe sound of ihe towers collapsing is indeed chilling.

What it adds End of the dial: WCN 720- AM maintained its lead over WGCI I07.5-FM in monthly Arbitrends ratings released last month. WBBM 780-AM, WVA7 102.7-FM and WNUA 95.5-FM followed, pushing WLS 890-AM out of the top five. Chicago Media Action plans to protest Federal Communications Commission ownership "reforms" that take effect at 5 p.m. today at Tribune Plaza, 435 N. Michigan Chicago.

The Tribune figures to profit from an end to the ban on newspapers owning TV and radio stations. Cox Timothy Bottoms goes from playing George W. Bush as comic figure to George W. Bush as hero in "DC and what makes it worth seeing is ihe personal details thai stuck in people's minds quite apart from the actual incident. In ihe week following Sept.

11, people gathered in New York City's Washington Square Park lo sing, dance and debate. "I got the feeling that this was not the end of the world after all," says one New Yorker. An unusually lame sparrow flitters about the feet of people talking. "It's as if even the birds had joined our little group of disoriented New Yorkers," says one person. Elsewhere, at Union Square, a bit of graffiti chalked on the sidc- walk "The American flag propagates violence" causes first a vicious debate, then hugs of reconciliation.

Rosenbaum's documentary opens up a scarrcd-over wound lo treat il as if with a soothing balm. So I'll drop into crilic's shorthand to say if you sec only one Sept. 11 memorial over the next week, this is the one it should be. By contrast, Showtime's "DC takes the calamity and reduces it 10 the sluff of a typical madc-for-TV movie. Again, il relurns to Sept.

11 and ihe week after, but this time it looks al il from (he perspective of (he Bush While Mouse. Timothy Bottoms who previously played Dubya for cheap yuks on Comedy Central's "That's My Bush!" relurns to ihe same role and plays it straight for "DC 9M1," which debuts at 7 p.m. Sunday. In fact, "DC doesn't just play il straight; it turns Bush and (he members of his cabinet into heroes. I think even Bush's most loyal supporter would have trouble believing he would ever use Ihe word "pluralism" in an informal conversation, without benefit of a TelePrompTcr.

And did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld really make a reference to ihe 1993 allack on Ihe WTC on the very morning of Sept. 11, before the attack? This is such a glowing, rah-rah depiction of the White House, it almost comes off as a production of ihe Fox News Premium Cable Channel, even putting in a plug for FNC anchor Bril Hume. The strange thing is, where "7 Days" makes Sept. 1 1 seem immediate and alive, the endless policy debates of "DC make the cvenl somehow 'seem boring. It's filled with artificial Bush bluster such as him pronouncing, "They're mosqui- toes.

You golta gel Ihe swamps they live in." People don'l read to (he calamity so much as they posture. On her way lo Capitol Mill and a meeting wilh Sen. F.dward Kennedy when Ihe news breaks, Laura Bush decides to go ahead and meet with him anyway. "It'll be good lo see him on a clay like this," she says. "Me knows so much about national loss." "DC implicitly argues that history was made on Sept.

11 in the corridors of power, where the mighty decided how to react. "7 Days" calmly insists that, no, history was made in New York Cily, and in (he thoughts and minds of everyone who witnessed ihe allack and its aftermath, in person and on television. Ted Cox's column runs Tuesday find Tliursday in Suburban Living, Friday in sports and Friday in Time out! One Call Gels the Things Handyman CONNECTION, CALL What do you need to get done today? CARPENTRY ELECTRICAL KITCHEN BATH REMODELS DRYWALL PArKTTNfi CERAMIC TILE GENERAL HOME REPAIRS on any work 100 I- SAVE on any work XJCOfSED, (847) 202-3232 handymanconnection.com Independently Owned and Locally Operated on any work i Offtn fubjtct to cntn'ge without Not valid with ether Reader Report Card coming Sept. 25 in Suburban Living.