Arby’s April Fool

I was driving past Arby’s a couple of weeks ago and noticed the marquee sign out front.

NOW SERVING BURGERS

“You’re kidding me,” I said to myself.  Sure, Arby’s has branched into salads and they make the occasional chicken sandwich these days, but selling burgers like the rest of the competition?  That just smacked of selling out.  I remembered the days when Arby’s stood for “America’s Roast Beef, Yes Sir”.  It had to be a joke.

However, I got home and took a look at the Arby’s website.  Sure enough, they were now offering a “burger”, but it was unlike any burger I’d heard of and – frankly – I thought it fell outside the traditional definition of the word.  The Roastburger (yes, Roastburger) came in three varieties, but they all sounded like they had taken the recipe from Burger King and substituted “roast beef” any time it called for “Whopper patty”.  It had to be a joke.

The Roastburger runs a bit more than the traditional roast beef sandwich.  I was curious, but not curious enough to blow a lot of money or Weight Watchers points on something that sounded more interesting than delicious.  However, there was an on-line fan club I could join.  Arby’s would “occasionally” send me e-mails (read: every day and twice on Sunday), but they would also send me a coupon good for one free Roastburger.  I signed up and waited for my coupon to arrive… and waited… and waited.  My attention span on-line is not very long.  I gave up and figured it had just been a joke.

To my surprise, the coupon showed up in my inbox a few days later.  The coupon expired April first, so I didn’t have any time to lose.  It was cold and windy and pouring rain.  I jumped in the truck and drove over to the local Arby’s on the north side of Belvidere on my lunch hour.  The menu showed the Roastburger prominently displayed.  I waited in line and showed the woman up front my coupon.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “We don’t take this coupon.”  As I turned to leave, she asked after me, “Would you like to order a new Roastburger?”  I just laughed and marveled at the entire Roastburger conspiracy that had reeled me in.  I have to hand it to Arby’s; they had me going and I really thought they were going to give me some new sandwich.  I chuckled all the way home.  I can appreciate a good April Fool’s joke; even when it was on me.

Practical Jokes

I am a bit of a practical joker, but I’m not a mean spirited one.  You will never need to look for a bucket of water waiting on top of a half-open door… at least not from me.  I go for the subtle and the sublime… and I settle for goofy.  In any case, I like the recipient to be able to laugh with the joke as well.

My wife – bless her heart – is one of my frequent victims.  I play jokes on her for two reasons.  One, she is a very focused person, but that focus is on getting through school.  So, I have a lot of opportunity to spring something on her when she’s not paying attention to me.  Two, she is a great reactor.  After one of my little gags, I’ll find her standing silently, staring at me, with eye lasers set on flambé.  I will try my best to look innocent; sometimes I am able to pull this off because she doesn’t notice a joke for days or weeks (and by then I’ve forgotten all about it myself).

We watch Saturday Night Live on a semi-regular basis.  A few weeks ago, we finally got around to watching an episode with Christopher Walken.  Meka and I are both fans of Mr. Walken; for whatever reason, we both find him hilarious on SNL.  This episode had him in a sketch as a man who was terrified of his plants, so he gave them all googly eyes.  There wasn’t much in the way of jokes in the writing; it was all Christopher Walken.

Cut to Wal Mart late one night.  I think I was picking out cards for birthdays and happened to pass the craft aisles.  Lo and behold, you can by a dozen googly eyes at Wal Mart.  I hurried home (as best as you can hurry through Wal Mart… say, an hour later) and had googly eyes adorning every plant in the house.  I tried to be as subtle as possible when putting googly eyes on plants.  While they were obvious, they were relatively high up… as if designed to be seen by a tall redhead who might be watering them.

This gag turned out to be like a landmine, waiting for someone to trip it.  We got up for breakfast and I had to stifle a giggle every time I caught the eye of one of the plants in the kitchen or the family room.  We watched some TV later on while the plants watched us from the corners.  Finally, late that afternoon, there was a knock on my office door and there was Meka with eye lasers blazing.  I think the only thing that saved me is that she thought it was funny too.

They’re Heeeeere…

I shot my first actual film in 1983. Film was expensive and so was developing. We shot the movie right after school let out in June, but it was July before I had saved up enough allowance to get it out of hock at the K-mart photo lab. I brought it home and wound it around the projector. I called up my friends – cast and crew – to watch the flickery silent premiere on a screen set up in my basement.

Super 8 films aren’t very long. We watched it two or three times in ten minutes. While I was waiting for the film to rewind, my neighbor Lorraine from across the street brought up the subject of life after death. She had been visiting family back east and they had used a Ouija board. According to Lorraine, whose wide eyed expression showed that she was an expert on this subject, explained how they had contacted her dead grandfather. Later, they had accidentally contacted a demon when the pointer began spelling out B-E-G. To be honest, I wasn’t too impressed. However, no one really wanted to sit through another showing of Ray Blaster. We had a Ouija board on our game shelf, so we set it up and prepared for our foray into the supernatural.

It almost ended right there. Lorraine walked across the basement to get the Ouija board and said she felt a presence. I had been watching her shuffle her feet on the remnant of shag carpet we had in the corner; the “presence” was more like static electricity. I pointed this out and was branded a non-believer and relegated to the corner of the room where I sat next to the television with the projector in my lap. My next door neighbor Steve – a year younger than me – sat in the other corner in a matching brown chair. My brother David and his friend Scott sat next to one of the metal beams holding up the house. While Lorraine wouldn’t actually participate, she supervised the proceedings, standing over Steve’s older brother Tim and my friend Greg, who balanced the Ouija board on their laps.

The room was silent… almost silent. Every so often one of us would stifle a giggle. This would earn a hard look from Lorraine. Apparently we had to stay serious for at least three minutes or the spirits wouldn’t come. We could barely hold it together fifteen seconds. I heaved a sigh and sat idly playing with the movie projector. On one side was a built in outlet. The idea was you plugged a lamp into the projector and when you started the movie, the light would go out automatically. When the movie was done, the light would turn back on and you could rewind the film. That gave me an idea.

I took the film off the sprocket and turned the projector to the ON position. I had the lamp off, so – really – no one noticed. I leaned over and unplugged the television from the wall. I stretched and turned the TV on. Then I plugged the television into the projector and switched the projector off.

Nothing happened. I stood up and walked over to Lorraine.

“So, pick up anything yet?” I asked. At that moment, behind me the television slowly came to life. It was an old color set from the 1960’s and took a good two minutes to whine into a picture. Not that anyone noticed. There was a flash and then a flurry of noise and motion. I had to replay it back in my head in slow motion.

One second Lorraine was there, the next she was gone. The door to the basement was slamming shut. The next second David and Scott were tearing up the stairs, screaming. Steve pointed at the set which showed a bright white spot in the center of the screen. The Ouija board flew up in the air as Tim ran up the stairs after him.

“There’s got to be a logical explanation for this!” said Greg, but he didn’t stick around to figure out what it was. I smiled, turned the TV off and followed everyone else up the stairs. To their credit, my friends figured out that – somehow – I was responsible for scaring the living bejeebers out of everyone. The Poltergeist Television Gag (as it came to be known) ended up being one of my best practical jokes… one that’s echoed down through the ages.

We have Dish Network and every couple of days, the receiver box will turn itself on and off to process updates to the show listings or download some new application we’ll never use. For some reason, the reboot invariably turns on the television. We have a plasma HDTV; it takes a moment to kick on… sort of like the old Sears color set we had in days gone by. Even though I know what causes it, I have to admit… when it’s late at night… and I’m downstairs all alone… and all the lights are off except for one… and I’m reading a nice horror novel… and the television snaps on with a low click… I get a quick chill before I smile, shut the TV off again and think to myself, “Payback.”