Improv Everywhere: improveverywhere.com

Carrie Widder / The USD Vista

Musicals have always bothered me just a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite past times is hitting up the theater, and I have been known to stop at the merchandise stand and buy the soundtrack on many such occasions, let’s get real, The Lion King on Broadway put out a phenomenal album.

But seriously, who do these people think they are trying to kid? Like I’m really going to believe that Danny Zuko can sing up and down the bleachers with his greaser buddies on backup, and not get beat up the next day at school? Yeah, I just went there. I know I’m not the only one who scoffs and thinks, “yeah, right,” when I see a musical.

So of course, when I stumbled across a little video called “Food Court Musical” by the people at Improv Everywhere, I was curious. To give a little background, Improv Everywhere is a group of undercover agents who create missions in public to cause a little chaos. Long story short, a group of about 15 people staged a full-on impromptu musical in a food court in Los Angeles, much to the surprise of the innocent Hot Dog on a Stick diners in the crowd. Filmed using hidden cameras, it looked the way I had always imagined dumb musical numbers happening in real life would look, awkward and hilarious.

The other missions that Improv Everywhere has created are pretty extensive. One of my other favorites is where 200 plus people went to New York Grand Central and, at 2:30 p.m., froze in place for five minutes, shocking the people just trying in the train station.

ImprovEverywhere.com has full documentation of all of their “pranks,” with pictures, videos and details on their upcoming missions. With over 80 missions completed, there are endless amounts of fun to be had by checking this site out. I’m also somewhat inspired to pull off a mission myself. Perhaps a few of my readers would be interested in staging a freeze in the UC?