This clearly falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of "Holy shit...!"
So Universal Hub (Hi, guys & gals!) picked up my "Who Screwed Boston?" post, and I see they've linked to an AP story on Yahoo! News that there's been an arrest in connection with today's events & the placement of the by-now-infamous Cartoon Network LED boards. Universal Hub even gets the guy's name right and links to his site. Peter Berdovsky has a section on his website where he chronicled the placement of these things. And if you look at that page, the first thing you might notice is this: There's not a single shot of Sullivan Square on it. The second thing you might notice is this: when lit up at night, it's clear that these things are about as threatening as any other advertisement that lights up at night, which is to say, not deadly. It's only in daylight when you can't make out the design all that well that they might look suspicious, and maybe moreso if you saw the back of the thing with wires sticking out rather than the LEDs on the front.
In context in most of the images on his site, those signs look like they belong. They're flush, no wires sticking out, they're lighted, they do the job they're intended to do. No wonder they've been up for two weeks without anybody noticing. Still, I stand by the idea that the job of law enforcement is to err on the side of caution, because something like this puts them squarely in between a rock and a hard place. Maybe after the first two they should have caught on, but it's easy to say that now that we all know what the hell they are.
Now to the Holy Shit Dept.
I don't know Peter Berdovsky. To the best of my knowledge, I've never met him. Clearly, in today's events he's just a guy who took what I hope was a well-paying gig, and shit spiraled out of control. Somebody at Interference or Turner Broadcasting better be picking up his entire legal tab because they got him into this mess. (Yeah, I know, he was getting paid, probably as a freelancer/subcontractor, whatever. I don't care. It's their promotion, not his.) I'm already thinking I'm going to toss a few bucks to the inevitable defense fund.
Suprisingly enough, it looks like I'm all of a degree of separation away from Peter Berdovsky. He's part of a video collective called Glitch... along with a guy named Toshi. Who I know. (Nice guy.) Because Toshi-- as he mentions in his Glitch bio-- co-founded the video performance collective Noise Laboratories with a guy named Steve. Steve also is among the folks who run Circle, which Berdovsky's site says he has performed at.
And Steve? Oh, Steve is not just a nice guy, he's a fucking fantastic guy. And when I say fucking fantastic, I mean that I've known Steve for over 20 years. My wife has known him for the same. They were co-editors of their high school yearbook. He was a groomsman in our wedding. We consider ourselves blessed that he is our friend and that he's in our lives. Steve has been there for some of my highest highs and my lowest lows in life. If you ever wanted a guy in your corner, Steve would be the guy. He's just that fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that when my wife and I were expecting our first child, we asked Steve to be our daughter's godfather.
So there you are. After all the blogging today, it turns out I'm not far removed from the guy just arrested for placing these devices.
Boston is a small, small town.
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