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Five More April Fools Day Hijinks For The Road
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 1, 2011
Modified Apr 1, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 1, 2011
Modified Apr 1, 2011
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Oh what a merry time we had today on this first of April, taking full advantage of the fooles and concocting hilarious gags that will fuel months of mass emails from Grandpa. We know you cannot get enough of these hijinks, so here are five more spoofs that are funnier than a suburban dad in a church parking lot.
- The Huffington Post is putting up a paywall for NY Times employees! It is ironic because the Huff Post is one of those parasitical aggregate websites that just copies and pastes articles from the NY Times! Except when they're playing Mad Libs with a trendy "Brooklyn Is the New ________" meme.
- The NYC DOT today released a study showing that pedestrian-on-pedestrian crashes are occurring are "alarmingly frequent." A Deputy DOT Commissioner told Transportation Nation, “The national average walking speed is 3 m.p.h. In New York, it’s way higher, at 4.4 m.p.h., so this is an especially dangerous epidemic for us here.” And yet the DOT plans to add hundreds of miles of new sidewalks this year!
- In other transportation news, budget cuts have forced the MTA to cut back the Second Avenue Subway to just one track. Sources tell Second Avenue Sagas the Second Ave. Subway will be just a one-track shuttle from 57th St. and Broadway to 96th St. and Second Ave. "The one-track route will still serve thousands of passengers but the configuration will mean that only one Q train at a time can go north from 57th St. or south from 96th St."
- Meanwhile, CBS 2 scored an exclusive interview with the Bronx Zoo cobra. Asked why he came back, the cobra revealed: "I attended the Inner Circle show the other night. I saw Mayor Bloomberg harnessed up in those Spider-Man pajamas. I was traumatized. I needed to go somewhere safe, somewhere familiar. It was the only place I could think of."
And funally tonight, Staten Island Assemblyman Matthew Titone introduced legislation designating pine as the official scent of the State of New York. According a press release sent out this morning:
Scientific studies for the perfume industry have shown that our earliest childhood memories are not of sounds, or sights or even the things we feel - but rather of the scents and aromas that surround us. From the fragrance of crayons to the aroma of fresh baked cookies, scents trigger strong memories which do not fade with time - unlike those of our other senses.
“However, while New York has an official flower, tree, bird, fish, animal, gem, fossil, beverage, fruit, insect, and muffin, we have no official scent unifying us as a state, and that stinks,” said Titone. Each community in New York has its own particular sights, sounds and smells that make it unique - for better or worse. In Richmond County, for example, we occasionally endure the smells of New Jersey.
Titone's proposal was met with immediate scorn from some constituents, who quickly bonded together as the Facebook group "New Yorkers Against PINE Being the 'Official Scent' of New York." The concerned citizen who started the group demanded a better scent, writing, "When I was a kid my dad had a Camara and in that Camara were about 20 pine tree air fresheners. One day I got so sick from the smell I threw up. One day I got so sick from the smell I threw up. There is no way I can let this happen. Here is a list of other possibilities: Pizza, Tanning Bed Lotion, Aqua Net, Sausage & Peppers, Garbage, That egg aroma you smell at that certain spot on the Belt parkway approaching the bridge, Drakkar Cologne."
Remarkably, the only one who didn't seem to grasp that this was an obvious parody of Titone's parody was State Senator Diane Savino, who blustered on the group's Facebook wall, "For the love of God! it is an April Fool's Day Joke!" To be fair, Savino was probably just standing up for the guy whose apartment she cleans on her days off.
Tagged
april fools
april fools day
pranks
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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