IN 2004 I had just seen the movie the Yes Men.  The movie was about 2 guys, coincidentally enough, The Yes Men.  They pose as spokesmen for large corporations and either go on TV and apologize for those companies, or satirically exaggerate the positions of the company often with hilarious results.  So I get a call from my friend Miguel.  He asked me if I had ever heard of these guys because they were staying at his place.  Evidently his roommate was good friends with Mike from the Yes Men.  So my friend Teddy and I joined the Yes Men and Miguel and several other people for dinner.  After dinner we went on a prank run with them.  They had  huge bus painted with George Bush’s face on it.  The idea was that they would go around the country pretending to be Bush supporters and make people agree wholeheartedly to the most evil parts of his political agenda.  Teddy and I dressed up as a cowboy and an oil sheik and got on top of the bus and danced while they gathered a crowed and made them pledge to go to any war no matter what, never have an abortion no matter what, and give up the 4th amendment in order to prevent terrorism.  After it was over I decided to give the Yes Men this giant inflatable cowboy costume I had.  I thought they could use it on their US tour.

Unfortunately a week later their bus broke down and I never heard from them again… Until Sundance…

I saw that the Yes Men were premiering their new film.   I didn’t have time to see it, but I did have time to go down to their press wall and bug them about it.  I walked up to Andy and said “Hi, I am Igor, I met  you in Richmond, Va. You stole my cowboy costume.”  He remembered who I was and was sort of laughingly apologetic.  He gave me a bunch of copies of their fake New York Times in trade.  Evidently they are going for a lot on ebay.  When I saw Mike from the Yes Men, he felt even worse about it.  Evidently he lost the battery pack and didn’t want to send it back to me broken.  The good thing to come out of this was that they turned the idea of the inflatable suit in to a big part of their new movie, The Yes Men Fix The World.  They pretended to be representatives for Haliburton and they announced to the world that they had created a large inflatable ball that protects you from danger in the event of catastrophic global climate change.  It looks like a giant tick or something, as you can see below.

So after the press meet and greet I had to leave, but they invited me to the after party.  I brought a bottle of Le Tourment Vert Absinthe with me and everyone proceeded to get super wasted.  Anyway, it was fun times.  Check out the photos.  And note the photo below of the dog who tried to attack the SurvivaBall.  It really works!

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