The Globe reports:

Organizer Adam Sablich said that [No Pants 2K8, an event in which some people plan to ride the trains in their underwear] is a "large-scale improv event," and that 400 to 500 people have said via Internet networking sites that they are interested in participating.

It's too bad all this energy can't be put to use fighting for a viable debt plan for the T, or keeping fares affordable for low-income folks.  I know, even the words "viable debt plan" and "low-income" are total downers, whereas riding the T in your underwear surrounded by a security detail as part of a planned "improvisational event" sounds so zany and madcap and fun! 

They do have a purpose and a point, though: according to organizers, if they can "make someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them" by mobbing us in their underwear, it will all have been worthwhile.  So, it's for us!  Us ordinary schmoes!  To lighten the crushing burden of our desolate workaday lives and show us that there is still hope, even for us, the mundane, the boring, the be-trousered of the world.

If you happen to be naff enough to be wearing pants on the red line between three and six tomorrow (I plan to be riding back and forth for the duration with my camera, myself, in nothing but my beloved zebra-print thong), be careful where you look, is all I can say.  Because while the organizers say "we're out to prove that a prank doesn't have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them," don't expect pranksters to greet all non-pranksters' attention with such innocent goodwill.

It's the LOOK AT ME! WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? DON'T LOOK AT ME! HELP, HE'S LOOKING AT ME! mentality at work here. 

All in good fun. But, come on. Let's be honest.  It's not really and truly about tweaking other people's perceptions, about helping appropriately-attired commuters "stop and notice the world around them," is it?  Am I the only one who's getting a little tired of people telling me that the stupid things they do are for my benefit?  That the idiocy they impose en masse on the rest of us is to show us something we just don't understand and can't grasp on our own?

And what is it we need to grasp here?  That we can ride public transit in our underwear, so long as we contact the MBTA first, issue a press release to the local papers, and have a security detail to protect us from potential counter-pranks?

Y'know, it's simple.  If you really want to "make someone laugh, smile, or notice the world around them," all you have to do is occasionally laugh, smile, and notice the world around you.  Be polite, give up your seat to someone who needs it more than you do.   All of which can be done without making an ass of yourself.

If you want to run around in public in your underwear, go for it. But can the pretense of educating the rest of us about the wonder of life by doing so.  This is more about a bunch of twenty-somethings being silly, and hoping they'll meet some other twenty-somethings and it'll lead to an easy lay than it is about edifying the gray and lifeless masses.  At least I hope so.  Otherwise, how awful.

The most fun I can imagine here is if a bunch of skeezy hairy-assed, beer-bellied forty-somethings in their stained and holey BVDs with the worn-out elastic bands showed up with their cameras to participate in the "event,"  complimenting the young ladies on their taste in panties, and maybe even asking if they could taste their panties.  Licking their lips and asking in a Southie accent: "Those them edible underweah?"

The Great T Pantless Riot of 2008.  Now, that would be a "large-scale improv event" worth seeing.