Dumb & Dumber, April Fools’ Edition: Episode 1 — From Bachelor Nation to Sex Toys

Most of us muddle through life, trying to avoid embarrassing ourselves as much as possible.

I help us through that muddle. My purpose is to call out mistakes we should avoid, like marrying someone you barely know in a garish wedding on live television.

Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist in happier times/Instagram

Dumb & Dumber once again wraps up the month’s unforced errors. I begin with a quick examination of financial aches and pains. Tomorrow, I diagnose the real money maladies, so stay tuned.

— Abs versus Abs

David Beckham is suing a chain of gyms partially owned by Mark Wahlberg, seeking $14 million. Beckham claims he agreed to promote Wahlberg’s company, F45, before its IPO, in exchange for millions of dollars in shares after the company went public. But Becks claims F45 held back compensation until share prices collapsed.

The stock went public at over $16. It’s now trading at 15 cents.

Marky Mark hasn’t commented, but F45 says Beckham is bending the truth.

I offer my services to cover any hearings or depositions or trial or… anything, really.

— Podium Predicament

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee-Sanders’ office spent $19,000 on a lectern. Apparently she had the state pay for it, but the Arkansas GOP reimbursed the state after a reporter wrote about it.

Now an independent state audit of the incident, which cost taxpayers lord knows how much and produced a 68-page report, has found other problematic issues with the podium purchase, including altered records and “an otherwise unexplained $2,500 ‘consulting fee.’”

Here’s the lectern:

Someone paid a consultant $2,500 for this? I want that job.

— From “Fight On!” To “Give Up!”

It costs $380,000 to go to USC for four years. But for the price of an average home in Las Vegas, don’t expect a commencement ceremony at my alma mater this year.

The decision to nix the main stage commencement follows the arrests of dozens of protesting students and the cancellation of valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech for “safety reasons.” I’m sure it had nothing to do with some of her old social media posts supporting Palestinians, posts which USC’s well-paid administrators failed to check, even though it’s 2024 and this should be standard practice.

Here’s a small detail that caught my eye. Tabassum is not only a biomedical engineering major, she’s also studying for a minor in “Resistance to Genocide.” This is an actual USC program, because goodness knows you’re not gonna learn how to resist genocide except in college. If only Anne Frank had enrolled! I looked up the courses available, and — ironically, in this case — most of them are about the Holocaust.

From USC

— A Tarnished Golden Bachelor

The Golden Bachelor, Gerry Turner, and his wife of three months, Theresa Nist, are getting divorced. Maybe because ABC spent a fortune throwing them the worst wedding ever.

Everyone’s having a cow that true love couldn’t overcome the couple’s geographical distances and familial commitments. (Kids, when you grow up, you often buy a home and have families, and these things become important to you.) Former Bachelorette contestant Tyler Cameron expressed his dismay by declaring, “They have put a true stain on love in the Bachelor world.”

Puhleeeez.

Wanna know what I think? (Don’t answer that.) I think maybe Gerry and Theresa got to know each other better, didn’t like what they saw, and called it quits because they’re over 70 and they don’t have time to waste prolonging bad decisions.

— Boring Boeing

I’m tired of talking about Boeing. In April, an engine cowling ripped off an airplane in midair, there were new allegations of mishandling parts to meet deadlines, and its credit rating was cut close to junk as it burned through cash. Blah blah blah. But the headline that caught my attention involved the release of an internal Boeing review that revealed executives — including outgoing CEO David Calhoun — took personal flights worth more than $500,000 on private jets that weren’t properly accounted for.

If I worked at Boeing, I’d fly private, too.

— Trouble in Paradise

Six years ago, Anne Reynolds managed to grab a vacant lot on the Big Island of Hawaii for around $22,000. She loved the property’s “sacred” vibe, and she planned to use the space for a women’s meditative healing retreat.

But Anne had to stay in California during Covid, and during that time, a property developer apparently bulldozed her land and put up a house worth about $500,000. The developer thought it was a different lot (no one hired surveyors, oops). A realtor didn’t realize the mistake and sold the home.

“Are you kidding me?” Anne said when she found out.

The developer offered Anne a different lot but she doesn’t want it, and she also doesn’t want the house. Everyone is now suing everyone else, squatters have moved in and pooped on the floors, and Anne has seen her property tax bill skyrocket because now there’s a house!

Aloha.

— Bay Battle to the Bottom

The city of San Francisco unveiled a new public toilet that was going to cost $1.7 million until someone donated a prefab toilet that brought the cost down to $200,000. That means a 50-square-foot restroom went from $34,000 a square foot to merely $4,000. And they celebrated the toilet’s debut in style. (We’re #1! AND #2!)

But that wasn’t the only Bay Area Buffoonery in April. San Francisco is also suing Oakland for plans to rename its airport the San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport.

Yes, it’s confusing, but Oakland thinks the new name will make it easier to sell tickets. “People do not know that Oakland is by the San Francisco Bay,” says Danny Wan, director of the Port of Oakland. “That has been one of the Achilles’ heels of our marketing.” (Rampant crime might be another Achilles heel.)

I personally don’t want the secret about the airport to get out. OAK is smaller and more efficient than SFO. It’s the same reason I pick Burbank over LAX whenever possible.

In any case, SFO officials think Oakland is trying to mislead people into flying into a better airport with easier access to much of the Bay Area. So it’s suing.

SF has always looked down on its East Bay counterpart, but given the current state of affairs in the City by (the west side of) the Bay — including U.S. Senate candidate Adam Schiff losing his luggage there to thieves — maybe San Francisco should rename itself Oakland. Or maybe they can team up as a single metropolis called Hell.

— Sex Toy Scam

Finally, cheap knockoffs with fake five-star reviews on Amazon aren’t just for watches and slippers.

They’re coming for your sex toys, boys.

Brian Sloan — a veteran of the male sex toy industry who invented the “Autoblow” — wants to blow the lid off this story. He lays it out in a seven-minute video, explaining how foreign manufacturers of inferior products allegedly pay for excellent reviews.

Brian tells me he spent a decade in China, so “this is not an ‘anti-China’ thing.” He just wants men to know before they buy. “The American consumer is being bamboozled by extremely organized high-tech cheating.”

Caveat (cavity) emptor.

Once again, I’ve learned something new.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the official Dumb & Dumber list, plus Smart & Smarter, and a gender-fluid hippo.