Tag: April Fools Day

April 1, 2025 – April Fools Day 2025

April 1, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I remember the days that comedy was king. It was staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live, sitcoms were the top shows on TV and slapstick comedies were the most popular movies. Now, I was a kid and taste’s change in me as well as the culture.

I can list off movie after movie that you had to see if you wanted to be in the in crowd like Airplane, Caddy Shack, Police Academy, Vacation, Revenge of the Nerds, Ghostbusters and many, many more. Some were more risque than others but yet still very popular amongst my grade school peers like Porky’s and Sixteen Candles. Nevertheless, comedies were everywhere.

I had a friend in middle school that gave me a cassette tape of the Dr. Demento show. It was a radio show that played all kinds of wacky songs and comedy bits on a weekly radio show. My brother and I listened to it several times and laughed and laughed. I don’t remember the time slot or station but it seems like it was on too late or a station that we didn’t get very well.

It’s always the friends. We weren’t permitted to stay up to watch Saturday Night Live mostly because we were committed to church Sunday mornings. I now occasionally watch it here and there and mostly find it disappointing rather than catching a good night’s sleep. But, it was pretty common to hear all about it on Monday morning at school.

My parents were interesting. They were very strict about how much TV we watched or movies we could rent. But, we could listen to the radio or read almost anything. But, if they heard somebody they respected say something, it was lights out. One time our Scoutmaster said that we were banned from listening to Guns n’ Roses because of their drunken behavior on an awards show. That then followed through to my household as well.

Of course we disobeyed. I really liked their music (still do) and that was really hard to enforce. I look back on a lot of this stuff now and I think that it is pretty tame compared to what access to things kids these days have. I have even asked myself, would I try to prevent my kids from watching or listening to this or that? My bias says no.

It is hard for me to remember whether Dr. Demento got banned or not. I kind of think yes. After listening to this YouTube throwback, I have to say that it does not appeal to my now either. But, to be twelve again, in a more innocent age this was entertainment. Some of those songs are still stuck in my head from that tape all those years ago.

This kind of humor seems pretty innocuous. A lot of it wouldn’t pass the DEI filters of today. I think that the root of humor has to be laughing at yourself first. How else would you have a parody song with the ‘Yoopers’ stereotyping themselves. Funny thing is that a lot of these songs would make it occasionally on popular radio. Dr Demento was just a show of all these kinds of songs strung together.

End Your Programming Routine: Just like last year, I am not big on pulling pranks. Listening to this kind of takes me back to the days of Mad magazine. Not everything in there was funny either. Some of it I didn’t get until much later in life like the parody lyrics to Born in the USA changed to Porn in the USA. All of a sudden, I felt like I was back to my youth.

April 1, 2022 – Marking Another April Fool’s Day

April 1, 2022 /

Along with Festivus, this might be in the AltF4 collection of recognized holidays. In tradition, I am supposed to play a prank on you guys. However, I have never been into playing practical jokes. I suppose it is my one areas of empathy.

I like jokes but not so much pranks. I think the difference is the physicality. When I was in college, some of the guys thought it was funny to pretend to trip and dump an entire 32oz drink all over you. It only happened to me a time or two, so no big deal but it wasn’t so fun for the person getting drenched with soda. About ten years ago, one of my coworkers bought donuts and injected them with horseradish (or something). I was out of town that day so I missed that one.

A few years ago, my wife played several tricks on my sons. She froze the milk in the cereal bowl (and a couple of things I cant remember). That triggered one of my sons to go whole hog on April Fools. Two years ago, he setoff some kind of stink bomb in our room in the middle of the night and then tried to saran wrap the door. It didn’t fully work but the prank was definitely not appreciated.

I could probably go for some kind of hidden camera ‘What Would You Do?’ type prank. Not a prank, but some kind of skit, sketch or otherwise unusual public behavior would be funny by me. Alternatively the video below has very harmless pranks. We have tons of videos of pranks and examples. It was one of the premises of America’s Funniest Videos.

End Your Programming Routine: The thing for me is that both parties should be able to laugh. Waking up to a house of burning sulfur for hours is not my idea of a good prank. In the end, you know your friends and family and yourself. So, maybe they like getting a 32oz soda dumped on them but I doubt it. Have fun and let me know what you come up with.

April 1, 2020 – April Fools Day or Census Day?

April 1, 2020 /

I was going to write about something completely different today. I didn’t even realize that it was going to be April Fools Day or Census Day yesterday. After my son kept me up half the night with pranks, I figure it is best to take the one day in ten years to discuss it’s significance. So today I will compare and contrast the Census vs. April Fools Day.

The Census is one of the few activities that our federal government activates that is actually prescribed in the Constitution. I am not sure what exactly the data is used for with the exception of counting for distribution of Representatives in the US House. History of the Census execution can be read from this link.

From Wikipedia: April Fools’ Day or April Fool’s Day (sometimes called All Fools’ Day) is an annual custom on April 1 consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting “April fools” at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The day is not a public holiday in any country except Odessa in Ukraine, where the first of April is an official city holiday.[1] The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor has been relatively common in the world historically.[2]

And now, back to the Census. Several years ago there was some controversy. There was to be a question about whether you were a citizen or not. I just filled out the form today and I can say that particular question was not present. There were very few questions… who lived at my address, what was their names and birthdates and what was the ethnic background.

The first race question was whether you identified as ‘Latino’ or not. Which I do not, but my wife and kids yes. Then the follow-up question is what particular country/tribe/etc do you identify. I chose French because that is my largest contributor. But for my wife and kids, they also needed to answer that question before I move on. I really don’t understand… the previous question identified as a Latin American Latino (Not Puerto Rican, not Spanish, not South American).

Back to April Fools day. There is a lot of pranking going on at my house. Waking up to ‘Fart Bombs’, my wife is waiting to pull a bathroom prank on the kids right now. I like a good laugh, but I really am not into pranks of this nature. I think that it is just kind of wasteful energy.

Back to the Census. Speaking of wasteful energy, how many ways do we need to count people? Isn’t everyone supposed to fill out a tax return? Names and birthdays are included. I am relatively sure that the very few people that do not fill out a return or are claimed on a return are really on the margin, are these the people that are going to fill out a census form?

Back to April Fools Day. Still waiting for the prank to happen. I have been enlisted to act surprised.

Back to the Census. The way I read the instructions, I was to claim that my exchange student lived at this house, as of April 1. He is defined as non-related resident. Why is this counted?

The Census hired a bunch of people that can no longer do what they were supposed to do, because of quarantine. What were they supposed to do anyway? The form is online. I was mailed multiple notifications that it was required that I participate. The only option I saw was to login to a website. I get that not everyone has online access. But, now what?

Happy April Fools Day or is it Census Day?