A few days ago I was watching some videos on CNN.com, and came across some clips of people riding the subway in Boston without pants. (Watch it). Apparently this was the first year it had happened in Boston, but it started in New York City seven years ago. From the video I learned that it was an annual event meant to cause chaos and joy. When asked, participants were to claim that they forgot their pants, they were hot, or pretend like they didn’t notice that they weren’t wearing any. They were also instructed to pretend that they didn’t know any of the other pant-less riders. There were over 200 participants in Boston, the video said.

I didn’t think much of it until a friend of mine asked if I’d heard that it was happening on Trax in Salt Lake City. I hadn’t. I was somewhat surprised, but not entirely shocked. Then, he sent me this link: http://www.improveverywhere.com – its the website of the comedy group that started the whole thing.

They had videos from mission “No Pants 2k8,” as they call it. As well as a bunch of images, video, and information about other missions they have done.

I got sucked in.

I watched way too many videos. Spent way too much time on their site. And started to realize how the college pranks I participated in paled in comparison to these. Some of my favorites were the Romantic Comedy Cab, the Hypnotist, and the Slo-mo Home Depot. Several others were great too: The Moebius, Look Up More, the birthday party for a stranger, and the fake U2 concert.

They’ve done several that required choreographed dancing by participants (Megastore for example). It got me thinking about something I’ve always wanted to try and pull off (since High School theater, and my time working in Macey’s grocery store). If you are familiar with Musicals, you’ll know that its pretty common place for entire groups of people to suddenly stop what they are doing and break into song/dance mode. Everyone just happens to know that steps. And when its over everyone just goes about their business like nothing happened. Well, that is something I’ve always wanted to see happen in a grocery store. When the designated plays (over the store’s speaker system) everyone stops shopping and begins dancing with canned food, shopping carts, etc. When its over they all just resume shopping. I think it would be great to have a couple of people in each isle at the store. And obviously it would be handy to have an inside man with access to the sound system (or at least a list of songs that will be playing). Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to pull anything off on that scale, but maybe I’ll see the grocery store musical on their site sooner or later.

If you have 72 hours free to peruse their site, check it out. I’m not sure that I’d jump on the No Pants bandwagon, but all in all they’ve done some pretty funny stuff.