Michael Bay Watch

No master of yore, he's 'today'
Much faster than boring cliché
All boisterous noise
The Joyce of teen boys
A blast! We adore MICHAEL BAY!!!

Con With the Wind

This sleaze with the wandering mitts
Will squeeze her if blondie permits
Present her with jewels
And then, April Fools!
Turning tease, she'll abscond with the glitz!



Guy Kibbee falls for con woman Joan Blondell in Blonde Crazy (Roy Del Ruth; 1931). Title by windy David Cairns.

Wrecking Ball-Buster

These creators know squat about "punny",
Pen clichés only potheads find funny
Rhymes devoid of all sex,
I avoid reading "Wrecks"
You can't pay me -- there's not enough money.

Doug Rice

Peter Lorre is caricatured in the Daffy Duck cartoon Birth of a Notion (Robert McKimson; 1947). Doug Rice didn't actually write this--he just thought it. April Fools!

April Sours

The Smoking Pun

Foolish bloke and his money soon parted
He was broke, and what's more, brokenhearted
And thus lacking the means
Started snacking on beans
Acrid smoke from his his crack just departed.

Surly Hack

Bet you thought we were going to use "farted"...Oops! We just did. My apologies for abusing this lovely frame from Josef von Sternberg’s sweet smelling Underworld (1927).



Poe-lar Exploration

There was a young man of Nantucket
Whose ship was a leaky old bucket
He sailed to the Pole
And fell straight down a hole
The bottom was deep and he struck it.

David Cairns

A Nantucket limerick that is really about...sailing. April Fools! This 1884 etching by Robert Swain Gifford is called Wreck of the Grampus, and is an illustration from the novel 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket' by Edgar Allan Poe.

Necro-Philthy-Act

Entombed with the family jewels,
He's exhumed by some lunatic ghouls
Having found him equipped
They went down in his crypt
And consumed his huge...oops! APRIL FOOLS!

A front page from The Mad Ghoul (1943), a B which has nothing to do with this rhyme. Well, almost nothing.  Image source: Shock! Theater

Plumber and Dumber

Arising from fondling his tools,
her eyes were two big, limpid pools
Her drooling had drenched
his extra-large wrench--
You thought I meant family jewels?


April fools!

Bye Bye Wordy

There was a young lad from Japan
whose verses they never would scan
When he was asked why
he said, with a sigh
"Darn it all, I just can't help trying to get as many words as I possibly, possibly can in the last line."

April Fools! This limerick was recited by Psycho-Criminologist Carl Palmberg (Theodore Bikel) to Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward) in the based-on-fact I Want to Live! (Robert Wise, 1958). Graham was on death row at the time, so cramming as much as possible into the "last line" took on added meaning.

Purple Maize

A farmer who hailed from Nantucket
would carry his corn in a bucket
He'd squeeze on his cob
until his hand throbbed
and then he would bend down and...shuck it


Yeah, it really is just about corn.

April fools!

Try 'er Down Below

by Backthrow

A fair lass from North Carolina
For purposes here, we'll call "Dinah"
In an effort to flirt
She hiked-up her skirt
To show off her new denim shorts!

April Fool!