"B.J. will be the public face of the fund." Lewis says, and Novak's public profile will hopefully draw in advertisers weary of always trying new tricks in traditional advertising formats.

For Novak, the Taco Bell stunt is just the beginning. Rather than paste brand names on random spectacles, his plan is to script the spectacles themselves.

There's talk of crashing blimps, but both he and his investors are mum on further details, beyond hints that the ill-fated blimp is only one part of a much larger stunt.

Novak believes that people sit down to watch the news not to find out what's going on in the world, but simply because they enjoy the show.

"People don't know that they're watching the news for entertainment," he says, "but they are."

Entertainment in the `80s, Novak says, was over-produced and rigidly non-spontaneous-"only valuable as kitsch, kitsch I love." The `90s began a backlash against inauthentic entertainment, where people turned their dials to real tragedy and spectacle: the O.J. trial, Princess Diana, the Clinton scandal.

Novak's stunts ride the last wave of this backlash: combinations of real drama and staged venue like The Real World, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and Survivor.

But Novak doesn't want to create another show, package comedy and offer it to the public. He plans to make the absurd happen in real life, and let the nightly news retell the story for a public that will, hopefully, appreciate the joke.