Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
THE BASICS
PRANK MOVES
DO-IT-YOURSELF GAGS
EXPERTS ONLY
TROUBLE
ABOUT M3
BONUS PRANKS
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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Text copyright © 2009, 2011 by John Hargrave. Art copyright © 2009, 2011 Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.
Illustrated by Dusty Deyo and Ted Hammond. Typeset in ITC New Baskerville and Avenir.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the 2009 edition under the following Control Number: 2008034518
eISBN : 978-1-101-48602-3
Publisher’s Note: All kidding aside, don’t even think about trying anything in this book before reading the Prankster’s Code and Trouble. If you have one iota of concern that a prank could harm someone’s physical well-being, career, business, reputation, or the like, don’t do it. Stop, and consult a trusted adult.
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WELCOME, YOUNG PRANKSTER.
The book you’re holding in your hands is awesome.
How else would you describe a book that teaches you how to fake an alien landing (page 224), or print a three-story photo of someone’s butt (page 182)?
For over one hundred years, this incredible manual has taught millions of kids the secret art of making mischief.
As they’ve read M3, these kids have grown in mighty mischief-making power. Many of them also grew into adults, and they are now some of our best scientists, inventors, artists, and writers—just by using the creativity, problem-solving, and independent thinking skills they learned in this book.
Each year, more kids complete this amazing manual and join the ranks of Master Mischief Makers around the world.
So close your eyes, and see if you can feel the pure, concentrated awesome swirling around this book. It’s flowing through your hands, into your brain, and some of it is going into your butt. That raw power is just waiting to turn you into a mighty magician of mischief making.
And it will begin, as soon as you turn the page.
Happy pranking,
Sir John Hargrave
Chief Mischief Maker
M3 Institute
YOUR TRAINING BEGINS NOW.
Just by reading on, you have taken the first step in your training. Congratulations!
This is a big day in your life. You’re about to learn everything from proper etiquette for Prank Phone Calls (page 53) to usage of the classic Smoke Bomb (page 229). By studying the pages of M3, and memorizing its concepts, you’ll be transformed from a novice prankster into a mighty overlord of mayhem. By the end of your training, you will be able to conjure forth a mighty mountain of suds (page 232), make frogs rain from the sky (page 154), and make people fart on command (page 137).
M3 is the ultimate handbook for pranks, practical jokes, stunts, tricks, and large-scale hoaxes. While you can read the pranks in any order, the best way to work through Mischief Maker’s Manual is from beginning to end. Check off each chapter as you’ve read it, and complete the activities for extra points.
By registering at www.mischiefmakersmanual.com, you can keep track of your progress, earning points and awards each time you reach a new level of mischief making.
After reading this introduction, you must destroy it.
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THE PRANK RANKS
PRANK RANK ACHIEVED!
Congratulations, young prankster. Just for beginning your training, you have already earned the rank of Second-Class Mischief Maker. As you complete the sections of this book, you will earn more powerful ranks, until at last you become a Master Mischief Maker. This, young prankster, is your destiny.
Visit www.mischiefmakersmanual.com to track progress and download badge.
WWW.MISCHIFMAKERSMANUAL.COM
In the first section, you will learn how to pull off prank moves, or simple stunts using low-cost items you probably have lying around the house. These are the building blocks of more complicated pranks, so learn them well, grasshopper.
THE BASICS
THE PERFECT PRANK
On a sleepy spring morning in 1994, the city of Boston awoke to the greatest prank the world had ever seen.
Across the Charles River from Boston there sits an enormous domed building. This famous structure belongs to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the greatest engineering school in the world. The building is fifteen stories high. Students call it “the Great Dome,” both for its size and its importance. It looks like something off a dollar bill.
And on May 9, 1994, it had a police car parked on top of it.
People couldn’t believe their eyes. There was no way to drive a car to the top of the huge curved building—it would be like driving a car on top of the White House. The only way to get it there would be to drop it in by helicopter, and yet no one could remember hearing a helicopter during the night. The roof of the monument was extremely difficult to access—there was an eight-foot concrete barrier encircling the dome, not to mention the hazards of wind and ice. The only way you could get up there was through a narrow trapdoor on the top.
But there it was, a police car with its lights silently flashing in the early hours of dawn. Shortly after sunrise, a crowd of onlookers began to form. The school janitors climbed to the top of the Great Dome, where they found not a police car, but a cleverly designed illusion: the outer parts of a Chevy Cavalier, attached to a wooden frame and painted to look like a campus patrol car. The pranksters’ fake car looked real from the ground, but could be disassembled into smaller pieces. They pulled the pieces up the side of the dome, then reassembled them at the top. Their attention to detail was remarkable: Inside the car was a dummy dressed as a campus police officer, with a box of doughnuts at his side. Fuzzy dice hung from the rearview mirror, and the car even had a parking ticket!
Around 8:00 A.M., the local news media began to arrive, smiling and laughing at the brillian
ce of the prank. Because the mischief makers had left instructions for taking apart the car and getting it down from the dome safely, the maintenance crew was able to have it easily removed within a few hours. By then, Boston news stations were buzzing about the story. It made national news thanks to a reporter from the New York Times who wrote a funny article about it. From there, it got reported by the Associated Press, a worldwide news service that transmitted the story to countries as far away as India.
This, young prankster, is the pinnacle of human achievement. Forget art, history, math—those things are nice, but this is lasting. A police car on top of the Great Dome is forever.
This is what you must aspire to.
FIVE MIT DOME PRANKS
The police car wasn’t the first strange object to be put on top of the Great Dome, and it won’t be the last. Here are some other prank items left by MIT mischief makers:• Working phone booth
• Fire truck
• Fake cow
• Piano
• Enormous propeller beanie
MISCHIEF, MAGNIFICENT MISCHIEF
There’s ordinary mischief, and there’s magnificent mischief. Any fool can create ordinary mischief. But only those trained in the art and science of pranking, patiently working their way through the exercises in this manual, can create magnificent mischief. Mischief that makes the news. Mischief that turns you into a local legend—if, indeed, you choose to reveal your identity (many of the MIT pranksters remain anonymous to this day). Mischief that leaves your parents, your friends, and your clergyman wide-eyed with wonder.
GREATEST SCHOOLS FOR PRANKING
Believe it or not, some schools “forgive and forget” when it comes to mischief, as long as students follow some variation of the Prankster’s Code (see page 21). Ironically, the schools that are most “enlightened” about mischief are the ones your parents secretly want you to attend anyway. Make it your ambition to attend one of these exclusive, expensive colleges.
The MIT pranksters spent two years and hundreds of dollars planning the stunt. Twice they tried to get the car on top of the dome, and failed. It wasn’t until the third try that they finally got the car on the roof by developing a system of wooden rollers to make it easier to pull the pieces onto the dome.
Study this example well, young prankster, for it is a classic prank that stands as the pinnacle (so to speak) of the strange objects in strange places prank. These pranksters did everything right. They pulled this prank on the Last Day of School (page 66), when they would be less likely to get in trouble. And they followed a set of six guidelines known as the Prankster’s Code, which we’ll discuss in the next section.
Rather than getting in trouble for their mischief, today these pranksters are remembered as heroes, as demigods. News anchors from Boston to Bombay praised their mischief, and the school eventually put the police car on display in the MIT Museum.
Museum-quality mischief. This, young prankster, is your goal.
Your training begins now.
Check here after learning the story of the Perfect Prank. Be able to tell the story to a friend, which will come in handy when you need inspiration.
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THE PRANKSTER’S CODE
There are six fundamentals of mischief making, a set of rules that will guide and protect you throughout your pranking career. Just as a Boy Scout can stay alive in the wilderness by cooking and eating a bear, your chances of staying out of trouble will be greatly improved if you follow these six basic concepts.
A: Always be careful.
B: Don’t be a Bully.
C: Be Creative.
D: No lasting Damage.
E: Excellence in pranking.
F: Be Funny.
A: ALWAYS BE CAREFUL
A good prank is one in which no one gets hurt—including yourself. Be smart. Use caution. Think things through. Adults will usually ignore “harmless” mischief—but the moment someone gets hurt, your pranking career is over.
Did the pranksters from the Perfect Prank run out in the middle of an ice storm, trying to lift the car to the top of the Great Dome with a stolen crane? No. They brought along extra safety ropes, emergency backup plans, and heavy-duty cabling to secure the car to the roof. When it didn’t work the first two times, they stopped, went back home, and tried again later.
If you find yourself asking questions like, “What if the monkey gets loose?” or “Is smallpox really that dangerous?” then you’ve already gone too far. If you have to ask a question about someone getting hurt, then you shouldn’t be doing it. End of story.
Always be careful.
B: DON’T BE A BULLY
Don’t go after easy prey: younger siblings, the unpopular, the mentally handicapped. Nobody ever made the news for pranking their little brother. Prank the mayor of your town, on the other hand, and you might get on CNN.
Be ambitious with your mischief. In the world of pranking, “The bigger the butt cheeks, the funnier the fall.”
It is important, however, to pick your targets carefully. Choose those who can take a joke, and who are not likely to retaliate by expelling you. You already know who these people are. They’re the cool teachers, the laid-back parents. Everybody knows a few of these people, and they are the ripest, juiciest targets.
In the Perfect Prank, they could have put anyone’s car on top of the Great Dome. They could have chosen an unpopular student (MIT has plenty of those). Instead, they used a police car.
Fight the power, not the powerless.
Don’t be a bully.
C: BE CREATIVE
This manual will teach you the classic recipes for mischief, but true greatness comes from adding your own ingredients. Experiment. You should become a master chef of troublemaking, able to whip up a magnificent dish of mischief at any time.
Anything can ignite the creative spark. The MIT pranksters came up with the idea for the Perfect Prank after they found a working set of police lights at a garage sale. Someone thought, There’s got to be a use for these. They literally built the prank around those lights.
That flash of inspiration can come from anything, even a set of flashing lights. Watch for it.
Be creative.
D: NO LASTING DAMAGE
A good prank is easily cleaned up, taken down, or thrown away. This makes it harder for anyone to press charges.
When adults get mad about mischief, they generally look for the three Ds:• Was something Damaged?
• Was something Defaced?
• Was something Destroyed?
Your answer to all three of these questions should always be NO.
If no one was hurt (key) and nothing was damaged (also key), you’ve taken away their greatest weapons. To illustrate this point, the Perfect Pranksters left step-by-step instructions on how to safely remove the car from the Great Dome.
When possible, erase any evidence that you were even there. Just as a secret agent is able to get in and get out of a classified government laboratory without ever being seen, try to leave things exactly as you found them. If you encounter a locked door, for instance, you should never chop down the door with an ax, or force it open with a crowbar. Instead, you should find a creative way of getting inside the door—get a janitor to lend you a key, or see if it is unlocked at other times of day.
The prankster’s rule of thumb is: No Harm, No Foul. This means if no serious harm occurred, no “foul” or punishment should be brought against it. This is key to staying out of trouble. If you replace someone’s shampoo with raw egg (Egghead, page 92), they will be temporarily dripping with egg goo, but they can wash it off with shampoo, which you have thoughtfully left behind. You did not Damage, Deface, or Destroy. No harm, no foul.
E: EXCELLENCE IN PRANKING
The difference between lame mischief and excellent mischief is the attention to detail, the level of effort, and the pride in pulling it off. Break new ground. Don’t just look for a laugh; look to become a legend. Lame pract
ical jokes are for amateurs. You’re a professional prankster now.
Strive for excellence.
NO HARM, NO FOWL
It’s dangerous to use live animals in pranks. In 2006, a group of high school students in Maine ordered ten baby geese and forty-five chicks from a company in Indiana and set them loose inside the school. The animals covered the school with highly unsanitary bird poo, forcing the school to close for two days over fears of salmonella bacteria. The students were charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief due to the damage. Their classmates hated them as well, since the two missed days were added to the end of the school year.
F: BE FUNNY
Mischief making is fun. It should also be funny.
The best pranks are the ones where everyone is laughing at the end—including the person who was pranked. Great pranks have the power to alter reality (for instance, a police car on a building). When they finally figure out how you did it, when reality “snaps back into place,” they should laugh at your skill, planning, and mastery of the pranking craft.
Laughter is good, because it is the sign that your prank is working. The initial idea should make you laugh. While you and your partner(s) are planning, you should be laughing. You should be nervously laughing as you’re pulling it off. And you should laugh for days, if not years, afterward. The longer you laugh, the better the prank was.
Sir John Hargrave's Mischief Maker's Manual Page 1