Joey Skaggs' Works in Lifestyle | Culture
Trump’s Kool-Aid, New York
On Monday, April 1, 2019, Joey Skaggs’ 34th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade and 3rd Annual Trumpathon went off without a hitch! Marching from 5th Avenue and 59th Street to Trump Tower at 57th Street in Manhattan, paraders wearing Donald Trump masks carried protest signs and toasted the President with his own Kool-Aid. A police squadron cheerfully escorted the parade.
Trump’s Golden Throne
April Fools' Day is Joey Skaggs' favorite holiday. Every year since 1986, to commemorate and celebrate the folly of mankind, he has organized New York City's Annual April Fools' Day Parade. Over the years, the parade has grown in stature and has now joined the ranks of beloved New York parades. In 2017, unlike other years when the parades have attracted major media coverage but have basically been a figment of Joey's imagination, there actually was a parade. It was a Trumpathon!
Art Attack
In February 2001, Joey Skaggs was invited to participate in an exhibition at the Espai D'Art Contemporani (EACC) in Castellon, Spain. The show, entitled "En el Lado de la Television" [In the Side of Television] was intended to explore the relationships, contradictions and paradoxes between art and the mass media. Skaggs proposed a concept dealing with terrorism, violence and the media...
Bush!
President George W. Bush, flanked by his loyal Cabinet and special friends, made a rare public spectacle of himself taking care of business in New York City's Washington Square Park on July 4, 2004.
Mobile Homeless Homes
Joey Skaggs, fed up with the financial industry's wanton disregard for the plight of millions of Americans suffering under the economic strain caused by the Great Recession of 2008, came up with a new approach to housing for people who'd lost their homes. He built a prototype for his Mobile Homeless Home and took it, with a band of homeless Muppets, to demonstrate in front of Goldman Sachs in New York.
Maqdananda, Psychic Attorney
For April Fool's Day in 1994, Joey Skaggs wrote a script and produced a 30 second TV commercial in which he portrayed a psychic attorney called Maqdananda to satirize the proliferation of both New Age psychics and ambulance chasing attorneys. The commercial aired 40 times throughout the last week of March on CNN Headline News in Hawaii.
Dog Meat Soup
In May of 1994, Kim Yung Soo (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs), president of Kea So Joo, Inc., sent 1,500 letters to dog shelters around the U.S. soliciting their unwanted dogs for $.10 a pound. The outrage was instant.
Doody Rudy
On December 4, 1999, Joey Skaggs and a team of co-conspirators marched into Washington Square Park toting a 10’ x 14’ painting of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the Madonna and a large vat of elephant dung. The painting was a satirical replica of the Chris Ofili painting "Holy Virgin Mary" which was part of the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation" show. The Mayor had recently attempted to defund the museum because, to him, the artist’s use of elephant dung instead of paint was offensive. Skaggs' plan was to offer the public an opportunity to doody Rudy with Dumbo's dung.
Final Curtain
The Final Curtain was an over-the-top parody of the death care industry, designed to provoke people to think about their feelings about life, death and burial in a new light--before it's personally too late.
Nat’l Enquirer & Boing Boing
After The New York Times Magazine published John Tierney's article, Falling For It, about Joey Skaggs' Dog Meat Soup hoax, the National Enquirer called Skaggs and told him they were doing a profile about him. They wanted an exclusive photo shoot. They had covered Skaggs numerous times before and should have known what he looked like. He decided to send an impostor.
It Ain’t Me Babe
British TV host, author, and wannabe hoaxer Danny Wallace, hoped to pull a fast one on New York artist, sociopolitical satirist, and renowned hoaxer Joey Skaggs. It just didn't work out the way he planned.
Bullshit Detector Watch
In 2006, Joey Skaggs launched the Universal Bullshit Detector Watch, a satirical wristwatch to help people make humorous social commentary any time, anywhere. With the push of a button, the watch flashes, moos and poops. It also tells time. The watch is available for sale at https://joeyskaggs.com/shop/universal-bullshit-detector-watch/.
Japanese Playhouse
In 1996, Joey Skaggs designed a playhouse created to look like a Japanese Tea House for the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalog.
Bigfoot-Tiny Top Circus
Peppe Scaggolini (aka Joey Skaggs), Ringmaster of the Tiny Top Circus, the world's only pataphysical circus, featuring "the greatest and the smallest traveling show on earth," announced the capture and imminent exhibition of Bigfoot in New York City.
Pandora’s Hope Movie
In 2012, while film director Andrea Marini was shooting his documentary Art of the Prank about Joey Skaggs, Joey was producing, directing and appearing in Pandora's Hope, a fake short documentary about the ethics and perils of genetic modification in plant and human organisms.