Mission Icefly

A few weeks back I heard about a viral marketing event that occurred at Bonnaroo this year. During Primus' set the sky was filled with hundreds (thousands?) of blinking blue lights that slowly came to earth. You can see a video here. They ended up being paper helicopters with blue LEDs and a QR code that sent people to Mission Icefly.

I was intrigued, because I like pretty, sparkly and blue, so I immediately signed up to be a "Test Subject" and promptly forgot until I received this in today's mail:

It took me a minute to recall having signed up, but once I did I became less leery of the random black envelope and ripped it open to discover:

My own personal blinking LED helicopter thingy. Interesting...

I did a bit more investigating this afternoon and the Mission Icefly website has been updated with some cities and the following information:

ATTENTION TEST SUBJECTS: Starting at 00:00:00:00:000 we will need one volunteer in each of the listed locations to follow a signal.

Details:
• Bring a mobile phone with you (standard text messaging rates apply)
• You will need to use your online user name from TestSubjectsNeeded.com during the mission (register here in advance)
• Only one package available per location (first come, first served) 

Unfortunately I am not in any of the listed cities, and the countdown ends today, so I will have to sit near my computer and hope that I haven't signed myself up for some bizarre alien experiments. I will be following this thread at unfiction to learn of my possible fate.

Most people tend to believe this is for Wrigley's 5ive brand of gum, so I am guessing I will be fine and in no more harm than a stick of gum could cause.

Update 4pm:

At 3pm the countdown ended and the page became this:

with creepy looping video of a blurry screen and mixed up audio with garbled dialogue and music.

That is, if you could get it to load, apparently the traffic to the site was more than anticipated. Eventually the video/audio version got taken down and a black screen with Orlando and New York City as links to PDFs appeared.

Orlando

NYC

The NYC location was found first and yielded a black envelope containing a key and further directions.

No word yet on when the other cities PDFs will become viewable.

Update 4:30pm

The website was updated just now, Orlando is crossed off and NYC is credited as being found. Chicago, Boston, and Nashville now have PDFs.

The fellow who found the NYC package has added unwrapping photos on yfrog here. It's a black wooden box with "Human Preservation Project" stenciled in white on the lid. Inside is a metal and glass Icefly in a bell jar. Very interesting. I am thinking that the glass Icefly lights up.

Just as I was finishing this update the page was changed again, it now lists all locations, though not all PDFs are available.

Update 5:30pm

Video has been added back to the site and parts of the audio are now comprehendible. I was able to hear "We experience every second...through our selves....who and what we are is..." 

Information on the drops has slowed to a crawl. The Mission Icefly Flickr stream has photos of most of the finders and their Iceflys.

Some people are speculating that as more Iceflys are found, more of the video message becomes unscrambled. For now I am done with the minute to minute checking in, it's getting close to dinner time! I can't wait to come back and see what it all ends up being about! 

Update 10:30pm

Once all the Iceflys were found the official Twitter account for Mission Icefly tweeted:

Within the completely unlocked video single frames revealed that the full, ungarbled video was now posted at survivalcode.com/thegenesis. I first found this website on Twitter and have to admit that I had no clue how it applied to the rescue site when I first visited it, just that is was being tweeted with  #missionicefly.

Love that it features Terry O'Quinn. But now there is a new 14 day countdown....maybe I wont forget between now and then.

Also, check out survivalcode.com. You may still be able to sign up.

So, a little disappointed that the mystery hasn't been solved, but over the course of the day I went from semi interested because they sent me a pretty, flashy, blue thing to seriously now I need to know what this means, and oh yeah will it include more swag please k thanks. 

Bad Teacher

I was lucky enough to score a free pass to go see Bad Teacher this evening. I will go into more detail regarding getting promotional screening passes in a post later on. I love free screenings since they help feed my film addiction for, that's right, FREE! Who doesn't like that?

So, Bad Teacher, not neccesarily a movie I would have shelled out $9 plus to see but, there are very few movies I wouldn't go to if I don't have to pay. By now I am sure you have seen the previews, Cameron Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey a teacher who hates teaching but wants a sugar daddy and some new boobs to catch him with. Enter Justin Timberlake as Scott Delacorte a substitute teacher who happens to also be the heir to a luxury watch fortune. The cast includes Jason Segel, John Micheal Higgins, Phyllis Smith, Eric Stonestreet, Thomas Lennon and a surprise (to me at least) appearance by Molly Shannon.

If you enjoyed Diaz in 2002's The Sweetest Thing, then you will appreciate her in Bad Teacher. She plays a similarly raunchy character, although Elizabeth Halsey is much less likeable than Christina Walters. That was my biggest issue with Bad Teacher.  I could not muster any sympathy for Eizabeth Halsey and spent most of the movie trying to figure out how the filmmakers would redeem her character. This is such a rare occurrence in a film with a female lead that I had to step back and think of how I would have felt if given the exact same scenarios with the lead being played by a male. I didn't second guess the lack of character depth while watching The Hangover 2, so why should I let it bother me in Bad Teacher? Even Bridesmaids, which was billed as The Hangover with female leads, spent some time developing the characters.

This is a movie that earned it's R rating. There are boobies and there is swearing and neither tries to not be in your face about it. I personally enjoy gutter mouth Cameron Diaz but some of the dialogue was obviously raunchy for the sake of being raunchy. As far as the situational comedy aspects, this is not a movie that places it's lead in uncomfortable situations for your enjoyment so those of you out there who can't bring yourselves to watch movies in that vein- have no fear!

If you are going to this movie for Justin Timberlake alone, I would advise you to just wait for it to come out on Netflix. This is not a role that allows him to test his acting ability and his screen time is much less than you would expect. You do however get to see his "O" face, and in retrospect that could actually be worth the price of the ticket- but it may not be quite what you are expecting ::wink, wink::. Phyllis Smith plays a role not that much different than Phyllis on The Office, but it's a niche she fills very well. Eric Stonestreet has a small-ish role playing the exact opposite of his character Cameron on The Middle and does well with the limited material. Jason Segel as gym teacher Russell brings a much needed "everyman" character to the otherwise unrelatable cast.

There are no surprises in this story, Elizabeth Halsey's situation predictably progresses and the end wraps everything up in a neat little bow. Overall, I would say wait and watch this one on Netflix.