Since today is April Fool’s Day, I’d like to take a moment and pay tribute to a great Dane—Mr. Samuel Soren Sorenson.
Sorenson didn’t invent April Fool’s Day, but he did found S.S. Adams Co.
While other corporations were wasting stockholder capital by peddling crap like iron lungs and antibiotics, S.S. Adams Co. invented and marketed such world-changing, life-altering products as Sneezing Powder, the Exploding Cigarette Box, the Snake Nut Can, Itching Powder, the Dribble Glass, the Joy Buzzer, the Bar Bug Ice Cube and the Squirting Nickle.
Sorenson died in 1965, but his memory lives on each time the buttocks of an 85 year old woman touch a Whoopee Cushion.
Hey…that’s nothing! My doctor tricked me by making me pee into a dribble-urine-specimen-container. Damn! He kills me almost as much as you do!
Muffled laughter from Belgium …
Owwww…but I really feel sorry for the next patient.
No doubt your doctor loaded the specimen into a squiting flower.
-S-
I have to say that April Fool’s Day is the only day out of the year that I’m glad you live in Spain. I suffered too much from you as a child. I’m still bearing the emotional scars of the April 1st morning that I woke up after you rolled masking tape and placed it on my pillow so it would get matted in my hip length, thick hair when I rolled over. Or, when I got a face full of water after I turned on the kitchen sink to discover that you put a rubberband around the water gun part of it. Do I even mention the bathroom? I thought the brown Buster Brown box you were giving away was the one you’ve had in your closet since childhood with the magic marker “Sal’s! Do Not Open!” writing all over it. We were always doomed when we say that come out of the closet on March 31st!
i loved the whopee cushion so much as a kid, that i bought one for my neice and nephew who are 8 and 5. they loved it, and it provided hours of entertainment for their silly aunt.
Loud guffaws from Germany…
Your post takes me back to the time when my brothers and I used to torture our poor Nonna with this type of practical joke. And she fell for it every single time. Or so we thought. We’d kill ourselves laughing watching her opening the snake nut can, gnawing on the rubber cookie or trying to fish the fake ice cube with a fly inside out of her drink. Very good sport, she was.
And I see your sister has revealed your true character, Sal. 🙂 I don’t remember getting many jokes played on my by my siblings aside from the bucket of water balanced on top of the door thing a couple of times, but maybe my memory is failing me in my old age.
Happy April Fool’s Day!
pretty funny stuff – I haven’t had anything done to me since my university years with roomates. Happy April fools day!
The best Poisson d’Avril ever must be when the BBC did a tongue-in-cheek report about spaghetti growing on trees in 1957!
Nina/Christina/Expat Traveller: The world is safe. I haven’t played a practical joke–whether for April Fool’s Day or otherwise–for many years. These days, my sole source of comic relief is this blog. Nina may have been one of my last victims. But getting back to that shoebox she refers to, it should still be in the same spot of the same closet at my parent’s house…provided that my mother didn’t clean it away like she did my Piranha Man poster. I began accumulating jokes (which I now realize were manufactured by SS Adams Co. in the mid-80’s. That shoebox contains (amongst other things) a whoopee cushion, rubber vomit, rubber dog poo, cigarette loads (which will get you sued today), a squirting chocolate bar, false teeth and a fake beard. At one time or another, it also contained hot pepper candy, garlic candy, tablets that grew into snakes when lit with a match, an ice cube with a bug in it. It’s just a matter of time before one of my nieces or nephews finds that box…then a second generation of hell-raising can begin.
Cream: I love that link. Spaghetti bushes! Funnier still that the BBC would pull such a prank. Who would’ve thought. Spike Milligan must’ve been on the editorial board.
I liked he first of april a lot when I was younger and still living in the small village, teh best part where to figure out which news in the local paper was the faked one. The autmatic dogwasher of that the fountain is going to spill wine instead of water. Seems boring but my siblings were not very creativ. In Spain you should be cautious on 28 of december “santos inocentes” the Spanish counterpart of the first april.
salu2
God bless the Good Doctor and may his soul rest in peace.. no matter where he may repose.
Oh gosh. I remember all those prank articles advertised all over the place in the 80’s! My brother was always a creative prank artist. One day, he decided to wake me up….. by pooring tobasco sauce on my lips. I must say that I am definitely not a morning person, and that he – although 2 years older and bigger than me – got his share of bruises (I was about 12 at that time – so no comment on sibling brutality!).
Eversince then, I love hot food. Should I thank him for it?? 🙂
Soory, pouring, not pooring.
I heard Bush put out the “Mission Accomplished” sign, again (for April Fools Day).
— DJG
One of my favorite April Fool’s Jokes:
Mount Milton Erupts
In 1980 the Channel 7 news in Boston ended with a special bulletin announcing that a 635-foot hill in Milton, Massachusetts, known as the Great Blue Hill, had erupted, and that lava and ash were raining down on nearby homes. Footage was shown of lava pouring down a hillside. The announcer explained that the eruption had been triggered by a geological chain reaction set off by the recent eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. An audio tape was played of President Carter and the Governor of Massachusetts declaring the eruption to be a “serious situation.” At the end of the segment, the reporter held up a sign that read “April Fool.” But by that time local authorities had already been flooded with frantic phone calls from Milton residents. One man, believing that his house would soon be engulfed by lava, had carried his sick wife outside in order to escape. The Milton police continued to receive worried phone calls well into the night. Channel 7 was so embarrassed by the panicked reaction that they apologized for the confusion later that night, and the executive producer responsible for the prank was fired.
More fun:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
— DJG
Just because he’s a Great Dane, doesn’t mean you should pick him up by his ears. (A vague reference to Victor Borge’s comment about LBJ picking his beagles up by their ears.)
— DJG
Box….box….what box????
Signed,
Big Mama
Why is it that my cool stuff always gets thrown away, yet those hideous “Days of Thunder” and “Top Gun” videos in the basement don’t?
To quote Grandpa, “That Whoopee Cushion will be worth money some day.”
Now that you mention the ice with the fly inside, I played that joke on my mom one year in my teens. She was mad! Wanted to toss it in the trash…