Gadget Bash Is a Smashing Success on Eve of Foolishness

Let the record show that on April Fool’s Eve, four-dozen adults at a South Pasadena party cheered as they witnessed the willful and gleeful destruction, by sledge-hammer and otherwise, of the following malfunctioning products of the technological age:

A color television that reportedly conked out during the NCAA Final Four basketball playoffs, a clock radio whose alarm worked only half the time, an answering machine that hasn’t worked in 25 years and a cassette player whose cord was replaced nine times but still failed to function.

“In our modern society, we are forced to trust machines. They often betray that trust,” said Alan Barnum-Scrivener of Bellflower as he surveyed the aftermath of smashed picture tubes, torn-apart circuitry and shards of plastic.

He added, “We don’t have a formal mechanism to address that.”

Enter “Electro-Bash.”

The event, organizers said, was first held last year to battle a condition they described as Consumer Electronics Stress Syndrome. Victims are unable to throw away dysfunctional electronic gadgets.

“Electro-Bash provides relief from this terrible psychic burden,” said the official statement for this year’s gathering.

“Too many people hold onto their stuff even when they know it won’t be fixed or can’t be fixed. It’s a problem on a national scale,” Ben C. Thompson said.

Thompson, who wore a pointed jester’s cap and an impish grin, co-hosted the party with Steve E. Tice at their two-story duplex. Thompson lives downstairs; Tice upstairs. They are colleagues in Southern California’s computer and aerospace industries.

Thompson insisted that the celebration of destructiveness was not necessarily inspired by David Letterman’s late-night television show. But it certainly evoked comparisons to some of the antics on the Letterman program.

With balconies on each floor overlooking a driveway, the rear of Thompson and Tice’s duplex provided an ideal spot for bashing and watching. Hanging sheets of plastic surrounded a plywood-covered driveway where an industrial vise served as the target for items dropped from the second story during the party’s “Slam-Dunk” segment.

As 26-year-old Ivor Kulikov of Hollywood tossed his television, a black-and-white image flickered even as it went over the balcony. With a video camera recording its flight, Kulikov’s television had been hooked up to televise its own destruction.

“This gives a new meaning to ‘viewer discretion advised,’ ” Scott Jacobs, a San Fernando Valley resident, said as he inspected another shattered television set after its stomach-wrenching, noisy destruction. “Funny thing,” he said, “after the set exploded it switched to the Morton Downey show.”

Sledge-hammer wielding participants wore protective glasses in the “Sledge-O-Matic” that followed.

“Bash it!” the crowd implored Thompson as he took aim at a calculator atop the vise. He readily complied.

Nancy Rivera of North Hollywood, accompanied by the rap song “Fight the Power,” danced around her clock radio, cracked two eggs on it and sprayed it first with shaving cream, then with green and orange Day-Glo paint. It later got smashed into oblivion.

From the second-floor balcony, Pasadena’s Denny Dillion, an engineer, dropped a commode onto a computer terminal and keyboard. Then, when he went to finish it off with a sledge-hammer, the crowd shouted computer language: “Hit return key! Shift! Escape! Control-Alt-Delete!” Using the hammer, he obliged.

Although some neighbors had been notified, not everyone got the word. Well into the party, about 10:40 p.m., three Jacuzzi-clad people sauntered up with stunned looks to witness the Sledge-O-Matic. One said: “We thought someone was tearing up a house.”

Moments later, a contingent of South Pasadena policemen arrived to say they were responding to a complaint of possible gunshots.

“No, just safe smashing,” Thompson told the officers, assuring them that the bashing was completed as they witnessed Tice sledge-hammer a toaster oven amid vain shouts of “Don’t bash it. It’s still under warranty.”