Soon it will be April and we’ll all be fools. Tired of being had year after year? Stooping to tie your shoes at a perfect stranger’s prompt, only to realize you’re wearing loafers? Rushing to your Aunt Ida’s hospital room after being beckoned there by your brother when it dawns on you that you don’t have an Aunt Ida? Running into your bedroom after your mate only to trip over a line of invisible fishing wire he hung at shin length just in time to get you? That’s all over. While we can’t guarantee someone else might not get you, we can give you some return ammo. We’ve talked to thousands of tricksters and used their expertise to bring to you the following tenets of tricking, the commandments of con. Don’t pull the gag on your boss When I asked my friend Dave for April Fools Gags, he said he’d pulled one that had almost gotten him fired. Though it was a good trick, tailor-made to the target, it went over too well and he had to stop its progress before the denouement. He had made one big mistake. He played the joke on his boss. His joke was a series of faked events too convoluted to go into here, but his choice of target was really a no-win situation. If the boss is fooled, he or she looks foolish in front of his or her employees, or in Dave’s case, cries. If you didn’t have to face the person who made you cry every day, wouldn’t you do anything in your power to stop it? If the boss gets wise to the joke, then you’ve been found out and it probably looks as though you used work time to set the chief up. Then again, it makes an amusing anecdote at cocktail parties. Don’t wimp out I considered playing a prank on a coworker this year. A bunch of us thought it would be funny to pretend we were all quitting our jobs at once and see what happened. It would have been funny, too, given the revolving door of employees at my regular job: making sugary treats at a national fast food chain. But I got scared. I got an attack of conscience. And there’s no room for a conscience in a jokester’s mind. It’s the one day of the year we get a get out of feeling bad free card. Take advantage of it. Find something timely In this media driven society we live in, there’s never been a better time to do a current events con. Ever since Paul Revere ran through the streets shouting, “The British are Coming! The British are Coming!” the wild events of the world have been fodder for parody. But remember, timely jokes have an expiration date. Few people will still fall for a tape of the mock-news footage from, say, Deep Impact, today. But saying Bill Clinton has malaria while watching a cleverly taped bit of footage from his sweat soaked, red faced speech in India – that might just work. Play on the hysteria of the day – Vladimir Putin has picked up Saddam Hussein as a drinking buddy – for credibility. Timely jokes are also often the easiest because you can usually just slip them into conversation with no visual aids or complicated setups. Mix them in with true hard-to-believe stories – Matthew McConaughey playing bongos nude, say – to remind your audience that anything can and has happened. Don’t forget about the Kick Me sign While certain jokes wear out from year to year (see previous item), others are worth investing in. Gags, especially those that first made us laugh at age 10. There are still hand shake buzzers, trick packs of gum that snap on your fingers when you pull a stick out and all manner of fake animal poop to position strategically. The best part about these gags is that they rarely have a lasting effect. How long can someone be mad about the fake roach you put in the fridge? The best joke I ever played was on my older sister who had spent many of our childhood years pulling the same jokes on me my brother had gotten her with. We rented a car for a road trip to Florida, and I realized the rental had an extra item I’d previously only heard about: heated seats. I turned my sister’s up to high, even though it was a balmy spring day. She sat down and we began the drive. I didn’t even smirk as I noticed her squirming in her seat, checking the heater and rolling down the windows. When she finally burst out “These seats are HOT” I laughed ’till I cried ’till I saw the reddened backs of my sister’s thighs. Maybe it was a little too hot, but the gotcha was worth it.
Our Digital Archive from 2000 – 2016
