The Yes Men are sort of like “Jackass” for the MoveOn set, except they set the artistic bar a bit higher. “‘Theater’ is basically the closest word we could use to describe what we do,” Bonanno says, adding emphatically: “It’s protest, it’s theater, it’s performance art. It’s identity correction.”

Their pranks are reaching a broader audience this week with the release of their book and documentary film (opening Friday in New York and Los Angeles), both called “The Yes Men.” Impersonating Republicans and members of the World Trade Organization, they have attended conferences and spoken on television, expressing what they believe to be the unfiltered and uncensored agendas of their nemeses. And — to further aggravate their NEA-bashing foes — they’ve received grants to pursue their passion: a Guggenheim new-media grant, a California Institute of the Arts Alpert grant for film and video, and an experimental/new genres grant from Creative Capital Foundation in New York.

“When it comes down to it, we like to think that we’re telling the truth,” Bonanno says. “If anyone took us to court they would be doing their own identity a disservice.”

“The Yes Men” chronicles Bichlbaum and Bonnano’s prankish “Identity Correction” projects as they impersonate their initial target, the World Trade Organization, online, on television and at business conferences around the world. In the film’s climax they make it all the way to Tempere, Finland, for a business conference on textiles where Bichlbaum transforms himself into “Hank Hardy Unruh, WTO representative.”

Amid a roomful of a dozen or so unassuming attendees, he gives a lecture explaining that the problem with slavery in the United States was not an ethical one, but its lack of cost-efficiency. The stunned audience is speechless until Unruh’s assistant (Bonanno) helps him further the presentation by yanking off his breakaway business attire to reveal a skintight gold lamé jumpsuit. The conference-goers gasp.

“This is the management leisure suit,” Unruh proudly proclaims. With another tug at his groin, a large phallus with a mock television screen at its tip inflates from his waist. This schoolboy’s accidental nightmare is the intentional climax to the Yes Men’s political theater of the absurd. Unruh paces around, gold protrusion bouncing with each step as an instructional video shows how the businesses of the future will monitor workers through the strange TV penis he’s demonstrating. The baffled audience applauds, and as seems to usually be the case, “nobody gets it,” Bichlbaum says, resigned.

New York natives Bichlbaum, 40, and Bonanno, 36, met eight years ago and immediately hit it off. The two had both taught university courses in new media, and “we were both politically active in our different ways,” Bichlbaum says. “People we knew introduced us to each other because we had done similar projects.”

Their first Yes Men foray was conceived serendipitously in 1999 while they were working at the anti-corporate Web site ®™ark. They received an e-mail from someone who had registered the domain name www.gwbush.com asking them to create a site spoofing Bush’s election platform. Bichlbaum and Bonanno got to work. They graphically fashioned it after the real Bush campaign site (www.georgewbush.com), sans flowery political rhetoric. Instead, they unabashedly offered the platform: “To help the rich at the expense of the poor and the environment.”

At a press conference shortly after the mock site went live, a reporter asked the then-presidential hopeful to comment on it. An outraged Bush exclaimed, “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

After that, Bichlbaum and Bonanno obtained the domain www.gatt.org (“GATT” being the abbreviation for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). They set it up to look like a World Trade Organization site, complete with a contact e-mail. When they started receiving invitations to appear at global business conferences and on television by people who wished to reach the WTO, they decided to launch their breed of live-action political theater.

“We kept upping the ante,” says Bichlbaum. And so WTO characters like Hank Hardy Unruh and Granwyth Hulatberi were born.

During a July 2001 appearance on CNBC’s “European Market Wrap,” Hulatberi appeared to discuss the upcoming protests against the G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy. Among his suggestions: a market for human rights violations, so that countries that want to abuse their citizens can buy “justice vouchers” from those who don’t. The show’s host took it in stride, but fellow guest Barry Coates, from the activist World Development Movement, was livid.

More people were introduced to the Yes Men via their recent high-profile escapades at the Republican National Convention in New York City, which earned them the title of “prankster invaders” in the New York Times. Doesn’t this mainstream media coverage put them in danger of being recognized? “Our target audience, swing voters, doesn’t read the New York Times,” Bichlbaum says.

He and Bonanno crashed the convention in Madison Square Garden disguised as Republicans. “People gave us their press credentials,” Bonanno admits. Once inside, they passed out more than 1,000 fliers asking folks to “Take the U.S. Patriot Pledge” and volunteer to have a permanent nuclear waste storage facility in their communities. And they made friends. Bichlbaum ingratiated himself to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, getting his photo taken with him. “He was probably the only rabid fan that Spencer Abraham had ever seen,” Bonanno jokes. Bichlbaum pipes in: “Mike got a photo of himself crouching behind Newt Gingrich!”

If the unique photographs weren’t enough to earn them a red shooting star on eBay, the Yes Men snagged another invaluable souvenir that would certainly be sought after: the 210-page script from that day’s RNC speeches. Found on the floor next to a garbage can, the teleplay included Arnold Schwarzenegger’s prime-time speech. “It had scripted pauses, as well as spontaneous eruptions from the audience,” Bichlbaum notes. “We also saved a list of delegates’ names and addresses. We can use it as a mailing list for something,” Bonanno adds impishly.

The Yes Men don’t have specific plans on how they will use this material, but they know that other opportunities for more political pranks will come up (all of which will be chronicled on the Yes Men’s Web site).

What sets the Yes Men apart from other political pranksters is the elaborateness of their disguises. They conduct interviews and online research and can create a mean PowerPoint presentation on short notice. An experienced special effects designer, Sal Salamone (who recently contributed his work to the hit musical “The Producers”), creates the elaborate costumes, like the Studio 54 homage to indentured servitude that Bichlbaum wore in Finland and the majestic Smokey the Log suit — two weeks in the making.

Salamone is also debuting another Yes Men “character,” a sort of party gorilla for the James Brown fan who votes — an orange orangutan sporting funky sunglasses and a suit made of (you guessed it) gold lamé. The satirical simian and the lovable log are part of the traveling “Yes, Bush Can” tour.

As they make their way through the swing states in a large white van, campaigning heavily through Nov. 2, the Yes Men will ask potential voters such loaded questions as: “Will you sign a petition supporting Bush’s tax cuts for the elite?” “Orren,” their orange orangutan, will serve as the Bush administration’s environmental policies mascot. Orren made a test run just last week in San Francisco’s Castro District as the Diversity Compassion Orangutan, there to support gay divorce on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign. (Specifically, he was promoting a preemptive annulment program for potential gay marriages, fully explained in this leaflet.)

Of course, this derision toward the president, his party and their politics is par for the course in this epoch of rebellious pop-culture politics. Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore — who makes a cameo appearance in “The Yes Men” — is chief among its patrons. Bichlbaum and Bonanno are slowly gaining a following from the underground up for their unique brand of highly organized but absurd comedic protest.

The Yes Men are in good (albeit odd) company among anti-administration groups like Guerrilla News Network (online uncensored hard news from the underground) and “F**k the Vote” (a satirical campaign to trade sex for votes against Bush). “Bush has been a real good leader of the activist community,” Bichlbaum says.

Yet, despite all the Bush-bashing, Bichlbaum says that not much will change for the Yes Men if the Oval Office occupant changes. “If Kerry wins, it’s not going to be over,” he says. “This momentum is going to have to carry us past November.” He believes that when people see the type of political protest that the Yes Men and others do, they will become “addicted to it, because it’s so fun.”

The police promptly ticketed some of the partygoers who were drinking in front of the house. So much for hirsute solidarity.

It’ s “Magnum P.I.” all over again. Just flip on MTV: The Foo Fighters’ frontman, Dave Grohl, has a goatee mustache hybrid, drummer Taylor Hawkins has the real deal (upper lip only). Doctor Matt Destruction of the Hives sports a ‘stache, and so does funky rapper Har Mar Superstar. But Angelenos aren’t growing facial hair just to mimic their favorite rock stars. No, L.A. is host to the mustache revival because everyone here likes to play a role: daddy, cop, stud, lounge singer, dictator and, lest we forget, porn star.

Flash-forward: It’s Tuesday night at the Three of Clubs, an amber-lit dive bar on Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine. It’s unusually crowded for a weeknight. The main draw: Tattooed Hollywood scenester Cali Dewitt is tending bar. Not only is he serving drinks, he’s serving them while wearing an oversize baseball cap and sporting a new, floppy mustache. He might blend in just fine over at the Hooters in Fayetteville, Ark., but in Hollywood, he’s getting all sorts of attention. And not just because he’s Hollywood gorgeous. Roars can be heard from regulars, apparently seeing his new look for the first time. “Why? Why?” asks one brunette incredulously. Dewitt explains that he’s grooming himself in preparation to accompany his brother’s band on tour. His plan, he says, is to be the “belle of the bus.” This isn’t a retro trend for him. And he’s not doing it to pick up guys. Dewitt is straight — he just thinks ‘staches are “cool.”

Traditionally, it’s been gay men who appropriate (and usually improve) hetero fashion. But in L.A., it’s always been hard to tell gay from straight; now mustaches are blurring the lines even more. Now that the “sensitive New Age guy” period is over, straight men are rediscovering their “masculinity” through the mustache. When viewed as part of a costume, it’s just over-the-top enough to offer a couched and disassociated peek into all aspects of manhood.

Just hours away from L.A., at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas, nine mustached men in their late 20s meet up for an annual event they call Mustacho Basho. Once a year, it’s déjà Village People. The styles range from “Fu Manchu” and “softball player” to, yes, “Hitler.” (The Saddam look does not seem to have taken off.) The accompanying outfits are equally diverse. One guy, working a ’70s hustler look, wears tight denim shorts and a green vest sans shirt. Another brings class to his ‘stache with dress pants, shirt and ascot.

“Some of my friends go over the top with their outfits to make sure everyone knows that the mustache is not serious,” says 29-year-old political consultant Gordon Hintz. He’s the guy in the white suit with the eye patch whose mustache credo is: “Blending in while looking ridiculous is a real art.”

And real art takes time and patience. Every year since the summer of 1994, Hintz, a Wisconsin native who lives in L.A., and a bunch of his friends spend eight weeks growing out their 5 o’clock shadow in preparation for the weekend when they will artistically prune their facial hair into mustaches.

“I wish I had the guts to go with a mustache for longer,” sighs Hintz, who shaves his facial hair as soon as the weekend is over.

Hintz would have likely been horrified by the party at which Monick’s friends were allowed to wear fake facial hair. For Hintz and his buddies, the thrill of the ‘stache is partly about solidarity, and partly about commitment to real growth. But Jeff Hartline, the 34-year-old contractor and host of that party, was just trying to be inclusive. He takes his own mustache very seriously. “I wanted to be a fireman when I was growing up,” he explains. “Firemen, policemen — guys in the ’70s who were male role models to my generation — all had mustaches.” Sadly, Hartline, a brunet, was unable to properly grow his own ‘stache. “It didn’t work,” he says sadly. “It grew out blond.”

Homegrown or store-bought, sporting a ‘stache often means that men like Hartline, Monick and Hintz are mistaken for gay — which they don’t mind, because it turns out chicks dig mustaches. Hintz swears that at the last Mustacho Basho, women were swarming all over him on the dance floor, even though he was dressed as a scoutmaster. (The costume also gave Hintz a chance to explore a more burning social question: As he puts it, “Why does a group that excludes homosexuals choose to dress in such unmanly uniforms?”)

Dan Monick’s girlfriend, 32-year-old freelance art buyer Hillary Bartos, thinks her man’s mustache is at once “gross” and oddly attractive. She wasn’t crazy about Monick’s new look at first, but she got used to it.

“It grew on me,” she says — with irony, one hopes. “I totally found it sexy after a while. He reminded me of a porn director — in a good way.”

“It’s awesome because you just don’t give a fuck,” says Monick. “I looked and felt totally sleazy. It made people uncomfortable for some reason.” But he managed to get past people’s intense scrutiny and says that the whole experience empowered him.

Monick was wearing a mustache before this new wave really swept L.A. Part of the fun was that, back then, he was one of the few guys in town working the look. All of that came crashing to a halt when one day he found himself on the Chung King Road (Chinatown’s famous gallery strip) confronted by dozens of young mustached men. Apparently they were part of a March of Dimes benefit: grow a moustache, collect a donation.

That’s when Monick finally decided it was time to shave.