Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

April Fools, 2004
For this years 04/01 prank, Venice Florida! dot com spoofs the Boone law firm
-- John Patten, 04/02/04
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

Got a comment? Make it here.

RELATED:
A fine year for April Foolery
Pranks that appeared elsewhere on the web
-- Wired, 04/02/04

GOTCHA!!!
Every year on April Fools Day, Venice Florida! dot com has participated in the grand tradition of web spoofery.

In case you missed this year's prank, here is a screen capture what readers saw when they pulled up the front of Venice Florida! dot com on April 1, 2004:

What readers saw was a frame page. The top of the frame was from Venice Florida! dot com's servers, which then linked to the actual web site of the Boone law firm. I did not reproduce or copy anything from their site, that was their actual web site, it was simply linked to from this site.

In case you can't read the top part of the frame, here is what it said:

Was Venice Florida! dot com offline during all of this? Absolutely not. In the very upper right hand corner of the page, Fozzie Bear's favorite word (Waka) appeared in tiny letters. Clicking on that led the reader into the actual Venice Florida! dot com web site. An additional hidden joke that a few folks actually found was the page name -- if for some reason a reader bookmarked the site into their saved Favorites List, the site would have appeared on the list as "Bing, Bang, Bong, Codec & Fruit."

For those of you who don't get the joke, the law firm of BBBK&F represent a number of land developers in and around the Venice area. Additionally, the firm is highly politically active and has been supportive in the elections of six of the current seven members of Venice City Council. Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;-)

Reactions to the joke were varied. I received a few phone calls wanting to know if I had sold the site to the Boones. Others called up and simply didn't get it at all until I casually asked them what the date on the calendar was.

One guy who did get it was Joe McKee, who runs the Venice Resident web site. Tucked away on the bottom of his front page was a link to the spoof along with a disclaimer that McKee "...had nothing to do with this, unfortunately."

While the Boones aren't the most beloved members of our community at times, they do have a pretty good sense of humor, so my thanks go out to them for being the gracious subject of this site's 2004 spoof. Also, my sheepish apologies for any imagined grievance (in other words, don't sue me, it was only a joke).

No Boones were injured or harmed during the making of this April Fools spoof. Please do not try this at home. Remember -- we are trained perfessionals.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.