The Story Behind the Story

So by now it should be pretty clear that our little post on Sunday was an April Fools Joke.  Anyone who has been reading the blog with any sort of regularity over the past 18 months or so probably knows that I personally have extreme difficulty in even saying the name Justin Bieber without choking. Just imagine what it was like to be in my house on that fateful Sunday….

Originally, Amanda and I had a very different idea. I’m not going to get into that first idea because, well, I’m not interested in being publicly flogged, and I’m a little afraid of karma.  Maybe we’ll tell the the story in our “tell-all” book that will come out when we’re all about ninety years old or so. Regardless, the first idea was completely shelved rather quickly and we had decided to do a silly pictorial. Everyone needs a laugh, right?? If not at the expense of the band, why bother?!  As we were starting to get worried about finding enough photos of a couple band members (It’s simply fascinating as to just how many silly Simon photos there are out there. Does he pay to have a camera following him every single second?!? I just can’t imagine that paparazzi are THAT interested in a member of Duran Duran!), Amanda and I  conferenced via speaker phone. While we were chatting, my husband, who is never short on ideas or opinions (regardless of whether those ideas and opinions are good, requested…or otherwise…), suggested that for one day, instead of being Daily Duranie, we decide to throw our fandom for DD overboard in favor of another. This idea amused me almost immediately. Can you imagine coming to the blog and finding that we’d decided to become Timbaland fans or something??

I can see the men with the white coats showing up to my house right now…coming to take me away….hee hee… (yes, the pun to the infamous 1966 song by Jerry Samuels IS intended)

Of course, none of our friends would quite believe Timbaland, so the question became “Who?” My husband had plenty of really bad ideas, and finally I mentioned Justin Bieber.  From there, the idea morphed into what you should have read on Sunday (If you haven’t read that blog yet, give yourself a smack on the behind and go read it here.) Rather than go to the trouble of changing the entire blog, we felt it would be far more believable for us to set about trying to convince all of Duranland that we should get behind a petition to have the get Justin as an opening act for the US dates in August.

The way the writing worked was that while on speaker, we worked out the wording together, and I typed. Then I went back, read through the blog again for editing. Then I desperately tried to read the entire thing back aloud. The read-back didn’t work very well because I could barely get through a single sentence without laughing. My hand shook as I clicked on “publish”, and then Amanda and I both posted the title of the new blog on Facebook and Twitter. We said our goodbyes, and then sat back to wait.

Facebook is typically much slower to react than Twitter, partially due to the real-time nature of Twitter. This particular Sunday was no different, and for a brief time I worried that perhaps the blog would go completely unnoticed. That has happened before. (Yes, that means that a lot of you are missing some of our very best work. There are actually blogs in our history that have gotten VERY few views – and while I try not to be offended by that, I must say, you’re missing out!) In any case, after waiting for someone, anyone to notice enough to say something on Facebook, I decided to check out the action on Twitter. I was not disappointed.

As soon as I opened Twitter I could see that not only was Amanda online, but she had already begun getting tweets asking if we’d lost our sanity. While she and I really hadn’t discussed what we we would do to handle that particular situation, I think both of us realized that in order for the joke to truly work – we’d have to follow through and defend our work.  After requesting a very large, very dirty martini from my bartender (Thanks to my husband), I set about helping Amanda defend our opinions. It is amazing what a good Grey Goose martini will do to ease the inhibitions while you’re typing the words “Embrace The Beebs”. I really can’t tell you how many times I laid my head down on the table that day, laughing hysterically.

There were a few times that day when I had to admit that yes, it was a joke. There were more than one reader that announced they were going to have to unfollow us, and I couldn’t have that happen.  I can certainly understand why they felt that way. Other than those few instances, we stuck to our story, and I even tweeted the band – who are probably on a hiatus and will never read the blog anyway – just to see what would happen. By the evening, I was exhausted and the best part? We had exceeded our daily tweet limit and could no longer tweet back! I didn’t even realize there was a limit! I apologized to a few of our twitter followers through DM and excused myself for the night, knowing that we’d have plenty to deal with in the morning.

While writing the blog was very fun and reading the reactions and opinions was downright hilarious at times, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that at least in part, our blog was very true, and very realistic. That’s why so many fellow fans believed that we were serious, and that’s why our joke worked. (That and our fabulous acting skills I am sure.) It’s no joke that the band has not experienced a huge amount of commercial success from the album.  It’s also not a joke that the band does have an uphill battle in reaching younger fans. The question of course is whether or not those things are truly necessary in order to continue. I don’t have those answers, and once again I find myself thankful that those things are not a part of my job. I’m simply one of the many Monday Morning Quarterbacks out there, as is Amanda even if she’s the smarter one of the two of us. Speculation is part of my hobby, but I don’t hold any of the real answers. The beauty in defending our blog that day was reading and learning from some of the very poignant and descriptive reasons why the band shouldn’t care about that younger generation, why they should just concern themselves with their own craft, and even why some people feel strongly that certain songs on the album are simply just updated, re-mixed versions of songs like “Girls on Film” or “The Chauffeur”.

So the real story behind the story was that even though we set out to tell a joke, we learned something in the process. Not a bad way to spend April Fools Day, really.

-R