April Fools Day 2011

Was your boss Michael Scott?

 

There's a reason I don't like that show. I don't think there is anything funny about working for a clueless dickhead boss who enjoys fucking with people for his own enjoyment.

 

The best April Fool's joke remains giving someone a message from Mr. Fox along with a zoo's phone number and telling them to return his call.

 

Lame people who think they're funny by pulling unfunny pranks and telling unfunny jokes? Sounds like an average day dealing with copy deskers.

 

I remember a few years ago in the days of the long-lamented newspagedesigner.com, a fairly prominent designer totally stole someone else's design for his own cover treatment, and people here were abuzz with drama. Eventually someone figured out what day it was. But it worked surprisingly well.

 

I had you pegged as more of a Ryan, but you're Toby!

 

That's awesome. If he's anything like mine, he will not be asked to return after today.

 

We're a weekly coming out on Fridays, so the stars aligned for us this year. I did a story about two city officials retiring today (which is true) to build a new college football stadium, which will be the new stadium for the successful college football team across the river from us.
Last year, a local baseball team played a joke about a star college quarterback who was kicked off the team joining said baseball team. News release was sent out about 10:40 p.m. on March 31. All three TV stations called the team's PR lady, who confirmed to each station the story was legit. Umm, it wasn't, but the stations didn't check other sources and went with it. Next day, the PR lady said haha, April Fools. The TV stations weren't amused.

 

While running to the store earlier I was listening to some (non-sports) talk radio where they had callers call in with the best/worst April Fool's jokes they pulled (or were pulled on them). Perhaps the best one was this:

A guy called in saying his daughter was born 20-years ago today. He said he & his wife didn't want to know the sex of the baby until it came out.
So during the delivery the doctor keeps saying "It's a boy, it's a boy, it's a boy" and then when the baby is fully delivered the doctor says "April Fools! It's a girl!"

 

30 years ago i was a very naive, 23-year-old reporter for the manhattan/bronx section of the ny daily snooze. when i arrived at my desk that morning, a phone message thingy had been left, marked 'urgent!,' to call 'mr. fox' at '212-(you-suck).' of course, it was the number for the bronx zoo, and the operator just sniped, 'happy april fool's day, sucker!' only she didn't sound even a teeny-tiny bit amused.(it was 9:50 a.m.; i can only imagine how many calls she had already fielded in search of 'mr. fox...'


of course, my editor and several others could barely contain themselves, wondering for the rest of the day what big scoop 'mr. fox' had for me...

hardy-har-har.

 

Arianna had a gone one today...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/a-word-about-digital-subs_b_843385.html