I changed the TV station to Fox News to the live news conference already underway.

Before the media were two suspects charged with "placing hoax devices in a way that causes panic and disorderly conduct," and accused of costing the city of Boston more than $500,000.

Muffled under the booming anchor's voice, one completed a sentence with, "... umm, and how they're going to live their lives in the future and how they're going to look at the past."

On the left, his dreadlock-sporting counterpart objected strenuously, countering that, "For example, afro, I think, comes kind of from the '70s, but then again there's other styles."

Wait, what?

This wasn't your average press conference. But then again, it stemmed from a panicked day that wasn't average either.

At about 8 a.m. Wednesday, a city worker reported a suspicious device attached to an interstate on-ramp. Police quickly swarmed the area, closing the portion of the interstate and pulverizing the device with a water cannon.

Then more reports came in, cuing police in on a dozen or so more devices in the metropolitan area.

Eventually, someone happened to shift one device to a darker area and the lights switched on, literally.

After consulting with a "Boston police analyst" - the Boston Herald's words, not mine - authorities realized that the device was the outline of a Mooninite from the animated comedy "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," and it was giving them the finger.

The investigation shifted from organized panic to anger, and police quickly found a target. Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, the two artists who installed the advertisements, were arrested overnight and held pending a hearing that next morning.

Five-hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to be spent on a false alarm - enough to make a good case for failure somewhere along the line. Between the charged artists and law enforcement, something messed up.

We shouldn't blame the artists, as they aren't guilty of the charges against them. Those charges require an intent to cause panic, and even the arraigning judge recognized that they meant no harm.

There are still more facts in their favor. The devices had been in the Boston area for more than two weeks, as well as several other major metropolitan areas, such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

In no other city did their presence raise an alarm or cause a ruckus. Boston wasn't only on the slow side in noticing them but also uniquely dull in mistaking them for an improvised explosive device.

These kinds of false alarms are inevitable when the government commits itself to stopping threats when they're still a possibility, but it shouldn't be this expensive and this much of a media circus. The authorities only have added to the mess by charging these two men and accusing them of wrongdoing.

Berdovsky and Stevens wanted to make exactly that point, which is why they turned the press conference into a mockery of the usual course of events.

The lawyer advised them to not discuss the charges against them with the media. Instead, the two dove into a discussion of 1970s haircuts.

They clearly laid down the ground rules: they would only answer hair-related questions, and the intent behind their press conference was to answer some pressing questions about particular varieties of hair.

For example, they wanted to know if the Beatles' hairstyles ended abruptly at the end of the 1960s or somehow infiltrated the beginning of the next decade.

Most reporters' brains shut down, with many shouting tough (and leading) questions in the hope that one of the two suspects would somehow forget the topic and respond.

But every single one was shot down with the refrain, "That's also not a hair-related question."

Finally, one reporter adapted. "Are you afraid that if you go to prison you'll get your hair cut?"

As Berdovsky was sporting dreadlocks, he was the one to answer.

After mulling over the question for a few seconds (and congratulating the reporter on a "good question"), he finally answered, "Whatever happens, I feel like my hair is safe at the moment. Any other hair questions?"

Greg Brown is a junior in philosophy. Please send your comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.