Rock-a-Palooza 2004 - Rock-afire Enquirer Vol. 2

RAE Enquirer #2

Come Clean

Before we end this exhibit, there is one more bit of randomness that was posted to SP.com in the past. Although it was never an actual April Fools joke, its relation to an earlier one makes it worthy of inclusion here. In 2004 for our Rock-a-Palooza event (a weeklong celebration of all things Rock-afire) we broke out an entirely new issue of the "Enquirer", with new topics and a second dose of the stupidity that made the first one so great!

The 1st issue of the Enquirer was brought back for the original Rock-a-Palooza event in 2003, and though it lasted only for a single day, it exposed a new group of fans to something they missed in the past. It got a lot of positive feedback so I thought it might be worthwhile to give it another shot. As luck would have it, I was given access to a stockpile of new photos, info, and more in the late-summer of 2003. Much of it I sat on for months, just so it could be first released in this goofy manner.

The photo of Michael Jackson holding the frog on stage with the Rock-afire Explosion is pretty well known today (it's been featured in the RAE documentary, here on this website, on the official CEI YouTube account, among other places). But in 2004 it was relatively unknown, which made for the perfect conversational piece - was it photoshopped? What was the story? This time I knew the backstory to it, but gave it the 'ol RAE Enquirer treatment just for grins. Although the story still makes me laugh, it's not quite as funny after the passing of MJ - just keep in mind that he was fair game 5 years ago!

Alongside the headline story was a bunch of other crap which bent the rules of good taste, hopefully without breaking them. This time around just about everything written was 100% made up garbage. The old "death of Aaron Fechter" gag made its return alongside a new "Aaron Fechter alive?" storyline - if I remember correctly, I had a blank space to fill at the bottom of the coverpage and had the article image there as a placeholder. That brought the idea of the "alive" story, and the thought of it being directly alongside the "death" story on the same cover was too hilarous to pass up.

Also buried inside of Vol 2 was the hidden sub-website "Come Clean - a Site for the Obsessed Fan" which was all about Hilary Duff. Ok, you CAN hate on me for this one ha ha. This little gem is one of my all time favorite projects simply because it is so damn random. A "tribute" page, "about" page, "awards" page, a "top 10" page, and a "guide"... and none of them particularly had a flippin thing to do with Hilary Duff. Hopefully this was still entertaining to those non-Duff fans out there (they make the baby Jesus cry by the way).

Here's some links to viewable versions: The Rock-afire Enquirer Vol. 2 and for those too lazy to try to find it in the above link, here's Come Clean - a Site for the Obsessed Fan. Oh, and I guess I can share a related bit of Hilary Duff randomness - if you perform the Konami Code (then press the "enter" key) on the SP.com intro splash page, you get a little Duff related treat! I never quite got the code perfected to do what it's supposed to, but what I was able to do is still active. LOL