Dear Readers:
If I have a vice--and I do, I do, I've got like 48--it's a tendency to go for the Cheap Laugh. I love jokes and spoofs and fooling around, and I look forward all year to bringing you The Planet's signature April Fool's edition. But this particular year I got kind of April Fooled myself by Destiny, a combination of Mother Nature's wrath and the harsh dictates of the computer gods.
I got some kind of flu with fever around about Thursday night and have been alternately wallowing in misery or ignoring it to soldier on with my April 1 edish. Then Monday morning my computer started going black and requiring periods of rest before it would start back up.
This morning I woke up feeling much better, a couple of pounds down but, predictably, as hungry as a bear in spring. As for the computer, it's on for the nonce but we had better make this snappy. I expect it's going to be more difficult and expensive to cure than your narrator! In any case, between my computer fading out and me doing it myself, the April 1 edish did not come out as smoothly as I had hoped. When the screen snapped off I thought it was the universe's way of telling me to lie down. So pieces came out as I was able to get them out, and some were announced on Facebook and others not. One link was broken for mysterious reasons that seemed to have nothing to do with either the computer's problem or my "operator error."
So here are links to each article, in order. They were meant to be read in order.
Article One is The Planet's "new reporter," Aline Dresswell's, report on the (still upcoming) first comprehensive pan-Dade gummint agency meeting, to include all the governing boards people in Dade seem interested in, and to exclude all the ones they've never heard of. Aline (note that I stole a still of Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada for her mug) is a fashion writer and can't seem to talk about anything else.
I got the idea for that when I was asked by reader Susie Talbott if I had a shoe fetish, since I always seem to be featuring photos of people's footwear. Nothing could be further from the truth, I told her, waving my tennis shoes in the air. I do perpetuate a little inside joke by always depicting Dade County Public Library manager Marshana Sharp as whatever shoes she's wearing. But this is because Marshana, not me, has a slobbering, uncontrollable, full-frontal foot fetish. Rumor has it even her tennis shoes have high heels.
Right, said Susie. But what about the school superintendent? I thought, well, the school superintendent does always have cute shoes, maybe I do sometimes snap 'em. Then again, when I was looking for photos for the Dresswell articles, I remembered some pics of very ugly shoes I'd taken, one as far back as November 2017. So. Maybe I do have some kind of shoe fetish! Luckily, it seems to be free-floating rather than settled in, since I can't afford to indulge it on what I make with the newspaper.
The next article is a new writer, Ernie H., taking over from Aline Dresswell after I shoot her for making fun of my ugly clothes. I don't feel that Ernie H. requires quite as much explanation. Click on his pic to go to that article.
Finally, I trotted out Charlene the Small-Town Snoop to take over after Ernie dissolved into whiskey and fate. For those who haven't been around long, Charlene started out as an advice columnist in this newspaper, on the premise that in a place like this everybody knows everybody else's business; so if you wrote to her that you worried your husband was having an affair with his secretary she would tell you no, it was that slutty teacher at the elementary school and they'd been at it since you went to visit your sister last Christmas. (You can go to Columns, then Advice, in the navigator to read to find Charlene's work.)
I was on shakier grounds with Charlene because of course I don't know much mean gossip about public officials. (I don't expect any exists! I expect they all live lives of sanctity and perfect rectitude!) So I just had Charlene taking shots at people in the audience.
Well, that's it. I expect explaining a joke kills it faster than anything else. But I thought I had better provide some coherent guide to the edish, since it came out so haphazardly yesterday.
I hope I will still be around next April to try your patience with my infantile attempts at humor. Until then, on to real nooz!
Robin Ford Wallace
robinfordwallace@tvn.net
