Hey, remember the flash mob ? These days, the term is as moldy as last month's cheese. Heartening to know the good folks in SF are carrying on:

Roughly 1,000 people drawn by internet postings and word-of-mouth converged near San Francisco's Ferry Building on Tuesday night for a half-hour pillow fight.

I've still never seen one of these events, although apparently at least one was scheduled here in August 2003. Did anything happen? Who knows? At the time, I appreciated the mobs' Dadaist quality, particularly when they interrupted snooty retail establishments. But back when the buzz was new, they were so well publicized that their goal of startling innocent bystanders seemed to recede forever in front of them. But despite the "pillow pandemonium" it's hard to put the violent overtones of more recent mobs, as seen in Paris last year and in the Mideast and Europe currently, out of mind. Perhaps a new name is needed? I'll get right to work on that.