YouTube star Yousef Erakat was about to give a free concert last night at the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. That's a great outdoor venue in which to enjoy a show but not when someone phones in a bomb threat and the concert has to be canceled and the place evacuated. I saw the above item on Twitter and had four immediate thoughts…
- Five thousand dollars? If I was the guy in charge, I would have figured it was a hoax just based on that. Why not ask for ten? Or twenty? The penalty if you get caught is pretty much the same so why settle for such a low amount? That is, if you were serious about the bombs and the money.
- Then again, if I were the guy in charge I probably would have said, "I'm pretty confident there are no bombs but I also can't take the chance," and I would have done the same thing.
- But what would I do if this happened a lot? If the same idiot called in before every concert, when would I have stopped canceling the shows and evacuating the theater? Would it matter if it seemed to be a different idiot calling? I'm glad I don't have that job.
- And what the heck are "pope bombs?" Are they bombs that are infallible? Bombs with little red shoes on them? Bombs that wash the feet of peasants while sending mixed signals on contraception? That couldn't possibly be a typo for "pipe bombs," could it?