It's been a cow's age since an April Fool's joke really hit home for me. Might have been as long ago as 1982, when Jimmy Damron showed up for pregame warmups for the Alabama state championship soccer game with a walking boot on his foot. Jimmy was one of our best players, and we were fucked without him. He took the boot off to much amusement. We lost in a shootout. Good one, though, Jimmy.
So we won't be trying to pull any of that nonsense on a crowd as discerning at this one. Instead, we'll celebrate some stuff about fools.
Like the Stone Roses song Fool's Gold. Classic late 80s/early 90s British Madchester alterna-dance. I won this CD from the campus radio station at W&M. It's not exactly a banger, but it's got a funky vibe and you can nod your head to it.
Richard Russo is my favorite author. And Nobody's Fool is the first book of his that was turned into a film. It starred Paul Newman as Donald "Sully" Sullivan, a charming idler/hustler living in an upstate New York town modeled after Russo's home of Ballston Spa. Bruce Willis is terrific in a supporting role as Sully's frequent antagonist, and Melanie Griffith is phenomenal as Willis' wife and Sully's mutual sorta-crush. And all's well that ends well - Sully walks out of the book's final pages flush with cash and with a new dog to boot.
Heads up, this video has a brief NSFW moment towards the end that's universal in its depiction of a woman's ability to render the coolest fella a blushing dope:
In many ways, the movie's about the redemptive power of friendship and family ties, as this scene near the end with Sully and his pal Rub shows us. Don't need to know the whole movie to catch the emotional power here.
Is anybody out there? Fa-fa-fa foooolin':
Fool me once, friends. What've you got to add to the list?
Well, there's the premier episode of Yacht Rock, entitled "What a Fool Believes," if anyone still... still hasn't watched it.
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