2 April
Thank God that’s over. Last night we tuned in to a program we’d seen advertised earlier in the week, called “Dark Side of the Moon Program,” purporting to be an exposé of the US Apollo 11 moon landing. The show had been touted as an examination of the roots of the program, and it started with Werner von Braun and the arms race, but quickly devolved into a parody, with Donald Rumsfield, Henry Kissinger, and Stanley Kubrick’s widow all very convincingly explaining how, although there was a moon landing, everything produced in evidence thereof was actually faked, originally in preparation for failure, but in the end actually used because the program couldn’t get any pictures back. Having already been the victim of a prank (Greg, somebody’s hacked your ‘blog; it’s all porno!), I should have been prepared, but it wasn’t until the stock footage in use started getting ludicrously divorced from the discussion, particularly during Rumsfield’s discourse on CIA hit squads combing the jungles of Viet Nam for their brethren who’d perpetrated the “hoax,” that I was convinced at last of the program’s parodic content. I have to give the participants a lot of credit, although I was already convinced of the evil natures of Rumsfield and Kissinger. Meanwhile, although the list is predictably internet-heavy, it’s nice to see Dick Smith made the top 100 – and nearly top 10, coming in a number 12 – April Fool’s hoaxes of all time. Congratulations.