: Essay
DON’T TELL MY DAD The satisfaction of falsifying Wikipedia entries
words by phillip intile illustration by gurjap sidhu Don’t tell my parents, but I like to falsify Wikipedia entries. Please, please, please, let’s just keep this between friends. I just couldn’t stand hearing it again—“Wise up, smarten up, GROW UP!”—and don’t you get tired of saying it, pops? “Daddy didn’t raise no Dadaist!” But daddy’s wrong again. Crack a few ciders and convince some pedestrians that Pizza Hut was busted for using slave labour in its vast Ukrainian kielbasa manufacturing operations the Kieling Fields. “Beckett can sit on it and spin.” Suck back half dozen menthols and trick middleschool students into believing that FDR suffered from IBS and diarrhea—that’s why he was always sitting down. “Guy Debord was an asshole.” Below is my most notorious piece of internet vandalism. It gained the attention of John Cusack himself, who responded on his Twitter feed.
Most of my vandalism goes unnoticed, although I’m told that Wikipedia has blocked the IP addresses of a few of my friends. That’s what you get for inviting me to your house party. You deserve it. We all deserve it. Information is fetishized. Alienation is inescapable. I am not an artist. I falsify Wikipedia entries.
john cusack—wikipedia—sizzler incident: In April 2007
Chicago police were called to a Sizzler restaurant when an unruly Cusack refused to leave the premises. Cusack along with two female friends were reportedly abusing
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the restaurants “all you can eat” buffet format by going back several dozen times and cleaning out several of the buffet sections. The group eventually drew attention to themselves when Cusack reportedly removed the entire hot plate of ribs from the buffet and returned it to his table. After being politely asked to leave by management Cusack reportedly lit a cigarette, leaned back in his chair and exclaimed “they call it all you can eat for a reason and I ain’t done yet”. When police arrived Cusack and his companions left on their own volition but not before Cusack went back to the desert table for one last bowl of rice pudding. Franchise owner Bowline Ortiz expressed frustration to a TMZ reporter who had arrived at the restaurant after Cusack had left “These big shot Hollywood superstars come in here and think the rules don’t apply to them? Phooey to them! Phooey!”
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