According to Internet Media: It's getting to be that time of year when people run frantically through their office corridors looking for April Fools Day pranks that hit just the right place along the continuum between gentle playfulness and brutal cruelty. Jose Canseco and former Cardinal Ozzie Canseco's recent boxing trick play—Ozzie replaced Jose for a celebrity boxing gig, and was found out when he failed to have a depressing Twitter-aided meltdown in the ring—offer an easy template for any would-be office prankster to follow. I've cut Canseco's master-prank into handy list form, so just follow along!
Have an identical twin. It's important that your identical twin is good at baseball, but not nearly as good as you. It's difficult to remain identical through decades of hard living, steroids, and squalor, so plan ahead.
Have a solid baseball career, marked by occasionally worrisome paranoia and some minor PR nightmares. Okay, so you're not quite a Hall of Famer, and you're a bit of a jerk, and in hindsight all that muscle was a little suspicious, but hey! 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a season is nothing to sneeze at.
Become a national pariah. There are exceptions—you could, like Manute Bol, just be an extraordinarily generous person trying to raise money for your pet causes—but in general, you can't get into celebrity boxing unless you've made an ass out of yourself. People don't want to see celebrities they like get beaten up.
Run an increasingly depressing Twitter feed. Talk about how you've lost millions of dollars, how you don't know where you're going to live, how the forces massed against you have made your every day a living hell. Do this, somehow, without evoking any sympathy at all from your followers, whom you appear to loathe anyway.
Jackpot—Have your twin brother replace you in a celebrity boxing match.
Admittedly this requires a little set-up time—you might have to come in early the day of—but just imagine the look on your co-workers' faces.
Have an identical twin. It's important that your identical twin is good at baseball, but not nearly as good as you. It's difficult to remain identical through decades of hard living, steroids, and squalor, so plan ahead.
Have a solid baseball career, marked by occasionally worrisome paranoia and some minor PR nightmares. Okay, so you're not quite a Hall of Famer, and you're a bit of a jerk, and in hindsight all that muscle was a little suspicious, but hey! 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a season is nothing to sneeze at.
Become a national pariah. There are exceptions—you could, like Manute Bol, just be an extraordinarily generous person trying to raise money for your pet causes—but in general, you can't get into celebrity boxing unless you've made an ass out of yourself. People don't want to see celebrities they like get beaten up.
Run an increasingly depressing Twitter feed. Talk about how you've lost millions of dollars, how you don't know where you're going to live, how the forces massed against you have made your every day a living hell. Do this, somehow, without evoking any sympathy at all from your followers, whom you appear to loathe anyway.
Jackpot—Have your twin brother replace you in a celebrity boxing match.
Admittedly this requires a little set-up time—you might have to come in early the day of—but just imagine the look on your co-workers' faces.
