This was all so easy, back in the before time. First of April, and off you'd go, inventing.
“We've decided to trade Bryant, Rizzo and Baez for a box of Cracker Jacks because Cracker Jacks are DELICIOUS,” you'd invent Theo Epstein saying.
Or:
“We've decided to let Coach Miller go because the Crazy Internet People make SO MUCH SENSE,” some Indiana University official would not really announce.
But it's no plush gig anymore, pranking the rubes as April slips in.
COVID-19 came and people got sick and people began to die, and life was suddenly nothing to prank about. Social beings to our last follicle, we live in a sort of national dimness now, isolated one from another in a way we can scarcely imagine even as it's happening. If this is an April foolie, it's a profoundly unfunny one.
It's also made the entire concept all but obsolete, because there's no wiggle room for invention when reality has become a mad scientist.
And so I can't concoct an April Fool's scenario in which Roger Penske, the new bus driver for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, announces he's moving the Indianapolis 500 from May to late August. Because that's actually happening.
I can't invent an empty Wrigley Field, an empty Fenway Park, an empty Yankee Stadium, because that's happening, too.
I can't fool anyone into believing an April without the Masters or Final Four, a May without the 500 or Kentucky Derby, a June without the NBA Finals or Stanley Cup Final. I can't even joke about the NFL and college football being affected, because that could actually happen, too.
Making stuff up is no fun when it's not making stuff up. Home truth.
Now, I suppose I could garnish these new realities with a few fake quotes, if I were desperate enough. Like have Roger Penske, who never sweats, say he's moving the 500 to the equatorial heat of August because he wants to see 250,000 other people sweat.
Or have Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick say Notre Dame fans won't miss coming to the Stadium on those blue-gray-sky October afternoons, because they all live in the past anyway. So they'll just fire up a few clips of Harry Stuhldreyer running the Notre Dame Box or Terry Hanratty winging it to Jim Seymour, and they'll be happy as clams.
But fake quotes without the fake framework to support them are a non-starter. And none of this is funny, anyway. It's just weird and awful, like living inside the first 200 pages of a Stephen King novel.
Although ...
Didja hear Philip Rivers is, um, an INDIANAPOLIS COLT now? And Tom Brady has left the Patriots to become – let's see – a TAMPA BAY BUCCANEER?
April Foo--!
Ah, shoot.
Or:
“We've decided to let Coach Miller go because the Crazy Internet People make SO MUCH SENSE,” some Indiana University official would not really announce.
But it's no plush gig anymore, pranking the rubes as April slips in.
COVID-19 came and people got sick and people began to die, and life was suddenly nothing to prank about. Social beings to our last follicle, we live in a sort of national dimness now, isolated one from another in a way we can scarcely imagine even as it's happening. If this is an April foolie, it's a profoundly unfunny one.
It's also made the entire concept all but obsolete, because there's no wiggle room for invention when reality has become a mad scientist.
And so I can't concoct an April Fool's scenario in which Roger Penske, the new bus driver for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, announces he's moving the Indianapolis 500 from May to late August. Because that's actually happening.
I can't invent an empty Wrigley Field, an empty Fenway Park, an empty Yankee Stadium, because that's happening, too.
I can't fool anyone into believing an April without the Masters or Final Four, a May without the 500 or Kentucky Derby, a June without the NBA Finals or Stanley Cup Final. I can't even joke about the NFL and college football being affected, because that could actually happen, too.
Making stuff up is no fun when it's not making stuff up. Home truth.
Now, I suppose I could garnish these new realities with a few fake quotes, if I were desperate enough. Like have Roger Penske, who never sweats, say he's moving the 500 to the equatorial heat of August because he wants to see 250,000 other people sweat.
Or have Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick say Notre Dame fans won't miss coming to the Stadium on those blue-gray-sky October afternoons, because they all live in the past anyway. So they'll just fire up a few clips of Harry Stuhldreyer running the Notre Dame Box or Terry Hanratty winging it to Jim Seymour, and they'll be happy as clams.
But fake quotes without the fake framework to support them are a non-starter. And none of this is funny, anyway. It's just weird and awful, like living inside the first 200 pages of a Stephen King novel.
Although ...
Didja hear Philip Rivers is, um, an INDIANAPOLIS COLT now? And Tom Brady has left the Patriots to become – let's see – a TAMPA BAY BUCCANEER?
April Foo--!
Ah, shoot.
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