Lame Attempt At A Flash Mob Crashes L.A. Times Festival Of Books

Flash mobs are supposed to be intriguing, surprising and meaningless.  Saturday's at the L.A. Times Festival of Books was only able to achieve the meaningless part.  Somehow word had gotten out that a flash mob was planned for sometime during the festival, so that killed the surprise factor. Then, as the festival's end was nearing a large group carrying umbrellas appeared on the outdoor steps while everyone else looked on to see what was going to happen.  Unfortunately not much did.  The umbrella'd mob swayed to and fro until the leader yelled, "Group Seven" which prompted the mob to make its way down the stairs as Tetris music (yes, as in the Nintendo GameBoy) played.  The whole display was so weak and uninteresting that the crowd of initial onlookers had lost all interest and just seemed kind of annoyed by the bizarre group taking up most of the stairway and disrupting the event with their video game music. All in all, it was a total flop.

Hey, Group Seven: is that really the best you can do? You could have at least picked something better to play than that stupid Tetris song. Don't pull another stunt like this and interrupt everyone's lovely Saturday until you come up with a more intense, offensive, or inappropriate routine.

For something intended to have no meaning, this was a really poorly executed attempt and highly disappointing.  We expect much more from our flash mobs. Case in point: When a little girl asked her mother what the whole scene was about, she replied, "That was a flash mob sweetie.  When you get older, you can flash mob too, but yours can be much cooler."

[Photo by Callie Miller via LAist]