Editor’s note: The following is a satirical article for The DisreGuardian, a series of articles published annually for The Guardian’s April Fool’s issue. Features will resume publishing normal content next week.
Last Friday, UC San Diego administration announced in a school-wide email that The UCSD Guardian will have to offer up “a whole song and dance” if it wants to continue operating in the coming year. Specifically, The Guardian staffers have been forced into headlining the 2025 Sun God Festival against their will and in violation of several clauses of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit coerced musical numbers.
The order follows the administration taking over the talent search process from Associated Students Concerts and Events, after ASCE’s various festival plans repeatedly fell through due to a series of misfortunes only attributable to the judgement of God.
Belfast-based drill rapper Potato Famine was initially engaged to headline the festival, though UCSD revoked his invitation after discovering his links to a dissident Irish republican terrorist group known as the “Based IRA.” Plans to give the headline spot to bedroom pop artist Kradeep Phosla fell through when ASCE discovered that he was actually UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla with his mustache turned upside down. The third-choice headliner, a singing parrot named Vercingetorix, became unavailable when he abruptly fled the United States and migrated north to Canada, squawking that America is “toast.”
UCSD shared The Guardian’s planned setlist along with the announcement, causing a mix of horror, confusion, and fear among the student population.
The festival will be opened by sports editors Kurt Johnston and Wyatt Bose, who will be performing “that Guardian chant that they always say they’re going to do at editor meetings but never actually end up doing.” Editor-in-chief Adalia Luo and Managing Editor Vivian Dueker plan to perform a duet of “Sportly Turkmenistan,” the most well-known composition of former Turkmen dictator Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. Associate Multimedia Editor Alex Reinsch-Goldstein will be performing a medley of Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs dressed in a Big Bird costume. Reinsch-Goldstein said that these kinds of embarrassing musical displays are nothing new in his family; his grandfather once performed an atrocious cover of “Sometimes When We Touch” live on Honduran television in 1977, standing on a wooden palette in the parking lot of the TV studio and accompanied by a motley assortment of musicians called “Banda Guan.”
“This one’s for you, Jacobo,” Reinsch-Goldstein said.
“It’s going to be really tough to top last year’s Sun God,” Khosla said. “But I think we can do it.”
