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Today's News Let's pie! Let's pie! Nincompoop guys! by Hugues Henry   February 9, 1998

     Until last week, Noel Godin was relatively unknown in the United States. A 52-year-old Belgian author, film historian, actor ("The Sexual Life of the Belgians"), writer ("Cream and Punishment") and "entarteur" (a Godin coinage that roughly translates as "encaker" or "pie-er"), Godin led the gang that gave to Bill Gates what so many of us only dream of: a big wet pie in the face. The attack took place at the entrance of Le Concert Noble on Arlon Street in Brussels and was widely reported in the press.

     Godin doesn't own a computer and didn't even know what a URL is. His girlfriend, however, uses a PC. (This interview was conducted and translated by Hugues Henry.)

The Netly News: Who are you, Noel Godin?

Noel Godin: I'm part of a gang of bad hellions that have declared the pie war on all the unpleasant celebrities in every kind of domain (slogan: "Let's pie! Let's pie! Nincompoop guys!"). We began to act against "empty" celebrities from the artistic world who were thinking they were the cat's whiskers. Then we attacked the TV news business in France, for instance, Patrick Poivre D'Arvor [a famous French TV presenter]. Then it became political with Philippe Douste-Blazy in Cannes, the French minister of culture, or the other French minister Nicolas Sarkozy last year in Brussels.

NN When did you first pie someone?

Godin: In November 1969, with French writer Marguerite Duras, who represented for us the "empty" novel.

NN Why did you choose Bill Gates?

Godin: Because in a way he is the master of the world, and then because he's offering his intelligence, his sharpened imagination and his power to the governments and to the world as it is today -- that is to say gloomy, unjust and nauseating. He could have been a utopist, but he prefers being the lackey of the establishment. His power is effective and bigger than that of the leaders of the governments, who are only many-colored servants. So Bill Gates was at the top of our lists of victims. The attack against him is symbolic, it's against hierarchical power itself. Our war cry was explicit: "Let's pie! Let's pie the polluting lolly!"

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