04-01-2001:

It was a joke. Honest.

APRIL FOOLS 2001
by John-Paul, ATF Staff Writer

It was 11pm on March 31st as I sat across from Lindsy and asked "Hey, isn't tomorrow April Fools days?" This, of course, led to a mad dash to create the bogus "@T THE FAIR" page which greeted site visitors for approximately 24 hours on that prankful day. The idea was not very original, I admit, but it did get quite a bit of attention.

Within hours, a trickle of e-mails (which would continue throughout the day) started coming in...

• "Happy April 1st to you as well. :) See you at Salisbury."
• "Great April Fools Day site, guys. *GRINS*"
• "Ok--it's Sunday morning and I admit, things are a bit fuzzy (I went out to celebrate my BD last night)--but I did figure out that you couldn't let April Fools Day go by without playing a prank on your website. Very funny!! I bet you wish you could see everyone's confused look on their faces when they pull up your site! Have fun!"

It appeared most immediately got the joke but there were some who, at least at first, didn't...

• " What happened? Went to your site today and you don't exist! You have been replaced by @t the fair - a guide to county fairs! That sucks! Let me know what's going on!"
• "Hoping that this is just an April Fool's joke. Was going to the At The Faire site to play with one of the puzzles and got redirected to an At The Fair (no e) site that part of some funky tractor ring. Not that I have anything against butter sculptures at county and state fairs, but...well, you know what I'm getting at!"

While a few played right along...

• "Hi. I am interested in being the head of your Tractor Webring Fan Club. Please advise!"

But overall, it seems most figured it out pretty quickly...

• " You had me going for a few minutes. I was checking your site to find out when the Waterloo Faire was and now I can view pictures of a butter cow. I think I am in Butter Heaven."

For the record, the Butter Cow and Butter Elvis are actually pictures from my other photo archive site at DisneyFans.com in the Iowa State Fair section. I'm guessing this is the most exposure those two pictures have ever received.

Useless Trivia:

• Time to make page: 30 minutes.
• Graphics not by us: 2 (the rooster background and the tractor picture were borrowed from other web sites after a quick net search).
• Inside jokes: 4(the names of the columnists are all variations of Lindsy's family members; "Can You Fix It?" by Bob is a reference to the children's TV show Bob the Builder which Lin's kids watch all the time; the Butter Cow and Elvis pictures are from our sister site, DisneyFans.com; the MP3 we put up there is a song we found last week that kept us rolling with laughter for days anytime we played it).
• Number of real links on the page: 3 (the e-mail link for the webmaster, the fair submission e-mail link, and the MP3 audio file).
• Number of items we thought were going to be funny: 23
• Number of items that were actually funny: 9

The joke page was viewed over 100 times during the 24 hour period it was available. For those of you who missed it the first time we present it here in its entirety:

@T THE FAIR

So, until next year ... happy April Fools from all of us At The Faire (dot com)! -- JPG & WWW

P.S. from Willa - Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! (Yes, they got married on April Fools Day...doesn't that explain quite a bit about me?)