by Dave Barry
“Okay then!” you'll say, stepping out onto your new deck. “You kids are just going to miss out on all the AAIIIEEE.” This is the noise you make when you pick up a splinter the size of a harpoon.
Yes, a deck would certainly be a great addition to your home. But if you're like most people, you're reluctant to tackle such an ambitious project, for fear that you lack the “know-how” or will sever an important limb.
Well, you can stop worrying. For one thing, they are making amazing progress in the field of prosthetics. For another thing, building a deck is NOT as hard as you think! I've watched TV personality Bob Vila do it many times, and he is a regular “do-it-yourselfer” just like you, except that he has knowledge, skill, an unlimited budget, and a large staff of experts. So let's get started!
Step one is to select a site for your deck. You should do this in accordance with the principles of feng shui, an ancient Chinese philosophy whose name means, literally, “new fad.” Feng shui (pronounced “wang chung”) teaches us that where we locate our household items affects our happiness by controlling the flow of “ch'i,” which is a life force that is always around us, everywhere, all the time, like Regis Philbin.
You may be skeptical, but feng shui is actually based on solid astrological principles that have been scientifically verified by Shirley MacLaine and other leading Californians. These people pay feng shui consultants serious money to come to their houses and tell them things like what direction their beds should be pointing. If you think I'm making this up, check out any feng shui publication, such as Feng Shui for Modern Living (“The World's Biggest Selling Feng Shui Magazine”), which is filled with useful tips, such as this one from the April issue: “Keep your toilet seat down . . . to prevent ch'i being unnecessarily ‘flushed' away.” (You know how true this is if you've ever had to pay a plumber to fix a toilet clogged by a big glob of escaped ch'i.)
My point is that, unless you want all your ch'i flowing onto your neighbor's driveway, you need to locate your deck in exactly the right place. In my experience, the ideal location for a deck, considering all factors, is: indoors. Just lay some boards on your living-room floor and tell everybody it's a deck. This way, you can enjoy your deck without going outdoors and turning yourself into essentially a Dunkin' Donuts for mosquitoes.
If you insist on having a traditional outdoor deck, follow these steps:
1. Go outside and, wearing steel-tipped work boots, carefully pace off an area the size of a deck.
2. Mark the corners by driving stakes into the ground, using a No. 6 Whacking Hammer. If you hear screaming, you have lawn vampires, and you should call your Realtor immediately.
3. Drive to a giant mega-warehouse home-fixin's superstore that runs TV commercials wherein cheerful, knowledgeable employees help you find exactly what you need. Take beef jerky, as you will be wandering the aisles for days, because those commercials are a big pile of ch'i. You will need to purchase the following deck parts: beams, joists, posts, bevels, headers, footers, thrusters, barristers, and 8,000 metric feet of galvanized mahogany.
4. Nail these items together in the shape of a deck, as shown on the Bob Vila show.
That's all there is to it! Time to invite “the gang” over to enjoy some outdoor fun on your deck!
Important
SAFETY TIP: Send smaller, more expendable members of the gang out onto the deck before you try it.
NIGHTTIME SAFETY TIP: Everybody should wear garlic.
NEXT WEEK'S HOMEOWNER TOPIC: Faster Gardening Through Dynamite.
Was It “Hi-ho” or “Hi-yo,” or Did the Lone Ranger Have a Lisp?
Here in the newspaper business (Motto: “Eventually, We WILL Find Your Driveway”) we have a strict rule: We don't print ANYTHING unless we know it's true.
Except for the horoscope, of course. No offense, but if you take the horoscope seriously, your frontal lobes are the size of Raisinets. Also, some of the comics are not 100 percent accurate. For example, in real life, Garfield walks on four legs. He's a CAT, for gosh sakes!
Also, to be honest, many of us who work at newspapers don't hold the opinions that our newspapers express in the editorials. Some of us don't even know where these opinions come from. They just mysteriously appear, like Batman.
But basically, we try to be accurate. When we're writing our stories, we don't guess about facts. If we have ANY question, we thoroughly check the fact out by taking a poll of the journalists sitting around us in the newsroom.
For example, if we need the name of the U.S. secretary of state, we yell, “Anybody know the name of the U.S. secretary of state?” Then we listen to the various opinions of our cubicle neighbors. Only when we have carefully weighed their views do we proceed with writing the story (“The U.S. secretary of state, a short little lady possibly named ‘Marge,' said today that . . .”).
Yes, we have high standards for accuracy. That's why—despite all these new-fangled inventions such as the Internet, TV, the telegraph, etc.—surveys show that newspapers remain the most trusted source of news for consumers in the coveted demographic of People Who Are Dead or Older.
And that is why today I am deeply concerned about a letter I received from a concerned reader named Lloyd Peyton, who believes that I made a mistake in a column I wrote last year about my living room being infested by frogs. In this column, I quoted the Lone Ranger as saying: “Hi-ho, Silver, away!” According to Mr. Peyton, this is incorrect. He contends that the Lone Ranger said, quote, “Hi-yo, Silver, away!”—in other words, a “yo” instead of a “ho.” Mr. Peyton says that having the Lone Ranger say “Hi-ho” is like having Santa Claus go “Yo! Yo! Yo!” This really stunned me, because I grew up watching the Lone Ranger, and I always believed that he said “Hi-ho.” I never questioned this. What I DID question was how come he thought that putting on a little black mask would protect his Secret Identity. I mean, if you put on one of those masks, I guarantee you everybody will still know who you are (you are a dork wearing a mask). I had the same problem with Superman, who put on a pair of ordinary eyeglasses, and suddenly all the other characters thought he was a completely different person. (I bet they were BIG horoscope fans.)
Anyway, to settle the issue of “Hi-ho” vs. “Hi-yo,” I contacted William Safire, who is the world's highest-ranking English-language authority who is willing to take my calls. He did not hesitate for a second.
“Hi-yo,” he said. Next I checked with various professional newspaper editors, most of whom were certain, without even consulting their cubicle neighbors, that the Lone Ranger shouted “Heigh-ho.” In my dictionary, “Heigh-ho” is defined as “an exclamation of mild surprise, boredom, disappointment, fatigue, greeting, etc.” I find it hard to believe that this is the mood that the Lone Ranger wanted to convey to his horse moments after rounding up a passel of varmints. I also checked with various authors whom I happen to be in a very bad rock band with, including Amy Tan and Ridley Pearson, who both said “Hi-ho.” (Amy noted, “In the dubbed version in China, it was ‘Ai-yo, Shrivah!' ”)
Stephen King said: “Hi-yo. I used it in It (my novel It, that is) and I'm sure. My brother thought it was ‘Hi-Lo Silver, away,' but that makes zero sense.”
Other responses from friends and relatives included “High ho,” “Hiyo,” “Ohio,” and various versions that I cannot print in the newspaper, because they suggest that the Lone Ranger and Silver had perhaps spent a little too much time alone together, if you catch my drift. Anyway, having weighed the evidence, I now believe that I was incorrect, and that the Lone Ranger probably said “Hi-yo, Silver” as he rode off into the sunset with his faithful Indian companion, who, according to my cubicle neighbors, was named Madeleine Albright.
But now I'm wondering: If I was wrong about the Lone Ranger, am I also wrong about what I believe the little boy on Rin Tin Tin yelled to call Rin Tin Tin (“Yo, Rinny!”)? And what about what I believe was the Secret Yell that the boys on Lassie used to signal each other (“Kee-ah-kee!” answered by “Ki-yi-yi-yi!”)? Am I wrong about EVER
YTHING? If so, all I can say is, I'm in the right business.
Who Was That Masked Social Security Recipient?
TODAY'S ISSUE IN THE NEWS IS: Social Security.
Is Social Security safe? Experts tell us that unless we implement meaningful reform soon, the entire system will go bankrupt by the year 2050, plunging the nation into chaos and despair. I, personally, plan to be dead. So we don't need to worry about it.
Instead, let's talk about the ongoing debate over what, exactly, the Lone Ranger shouted to his horse, Silver, when he rode off into the sunset. As you may recall if you have no life, in a recent column I stated that I had always believed the Lone Ranger shouted “Hi-ho, Silver! Away!” But then I got a letter from a reader who insisted that the Lone Ranger shouted “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” So I checked with top language experts including William Safire and Stephen King, and they agreed that it was, in fact, “Hi-yo,” not “Hi-ho.”
So I wrote a column endorsing the “Hi-yo” version, and I believed that the matter was settled. Little did I realize that I was opening a can of worms. Because it turns out that this issue is not so simple. There are many unanswered questions, including: Why did the Lone Ranger shout to a horse that was standing right under him? And why would anybody put worms into a can? And then why would anybody OPEN the can? (The same question could be asked about Spam.)
But getting back to “Hi-ho” vs. “Hi-yo”: In response to my column, I received many letters from people who claim to have inside information about the Lone Ranger. I cannot print all of their letters here, but if you were to combine them into one generic letter, it would sound like this:
“Dear Mr. Barry: I am 263 years old, and I never missed an episode of the Lone Ranger on the electric radio, on top of which my aunt's cousin's dentist's husband once rode a bus with a man who knew the barber of a close friend of one of the show's original sagebrush wranglers, and I can state with absolute certainty that you are (choose one:) (a) absolutely correct; or (b) a moron, because the Lone Ranger DEFINITELY shouted (choose one:) (a) ‘Hi-yo, Silver!'; (b) ‘Hi-ho, Silver!'; (c) ‘Hi-o, Silver!'; (d) ‘Heil, Silver!'; (e) ‘It's Howdy Doody Time, Silver!' ”
To buttress their arguments, people sent in reams of information from various sources regarding the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto. I have been poring over this information, and have extracted the following salient facts (I am not making these facts up):
• The original Lone Ranger show was created at Detroit radio station WXYZ in 1933. This explains why Tonto called the Lone Ranger “Kemo Sabe,” a phrase that is derived from the name of a boys' summer camp in Michigan owned by the director's uncle.
• So when the Lone Ranger frowned in that thoughtful, serious manner of his, he may have been thinking: “I don't care HOW faithful he is; if he calls me a boys' summer camp in Michigan one more time, I'm going to put a silver bullet in his leg.”
• One of the actors who portrayed the Lone Ranger on the radio was named Brace Beemer.
• The letters in “Brace Beemer” can be rearranged to spell “Embrace Beer.”
• According to the story line created by the radio writers, the Lone Ranger was the great uncle of the Green Hornet, a masked superhero who battled the forces of evil, and whose secret identity was Britt Reed, newspaper publisher.
• If you know anything about newspaper publishers, it is hard to imagine them battling any force more evil than a sand trap.
• The Green Hornet's faithful companion was named “Kato,” whose namesake, Kato Kaelin, held the position of house-sitter for O. J. Simpson.
• In 1974, O. J. Simpson was in the movie The Towering Inferno, with Robert Wagner.
• In 1998, Robert Wagner was in Wild Things, with Kevin Bacon.
When we put all these facts together, we see that the question of exactly what the Lone Ranger shouted to his horse is a great deal more complex than we thought it was early in this column, before we decided to brace ourselves with a couple of beemers, if you catch our drift. Clearly what we need is for the president to appoint a federal commission, headed by the late Earl Warren, to examine the evidence and issue a report. Also, somebody needs to straighten out this Social Security mess. I've done all I can.
He Didn't Just Buy a House—He Bought a Home Repair Industry
We're moving. I blame my daughter. She's only five months old, but she has somehow acquired, at a conservative estimate, 250 million toys. Every morning, there seem to be more of them. I suspect they're having some kind of battery-powered sex while we sleep.
These toys make a lot of noise. In my youth, toys were passive lumps of wood or metal that were silent unless you whacked your brother on the head with them. But today's toys contain computer chips, so they can move and talk; this stimulates the mind of your child. Notice I say “your child.” MY child just wants to eat the toys. For example, she has an electronic Pooh bear who moves his head and says things like, “Would you like to play with me?” This stimulates my daughter to try to put Pooh's head into her mouth. Any day now, Pooh will hold up his paws and scream, “NOOOO!” But that will not stop my daughter. She is the Great White Shark of babies.
But my point is this: We have a smallish house, and we work at home, and it's hard to concentrate when the floor is covered with toys that are constantly trying to strike up conversations. So I called our Realtor and said: “We need to move.”
Now a truly compassionate Realtor, upon hearing these words, would have shot me in the head. Instead, our Realtor found us a larger house. We liked it immediately, although it needed a Little Work.
“It just needs some paint,” I told my wife. I can look at a house and know exactly what it needs, because in fifth and sixth grades I took Wood Shop.
So we had a Paint Guy look at the house. He told us—and we knew he was an expert, because he had a clipboard—that before he could paint it, it needed some carpentry work.
So we had a Carpentry Guy look at the house. He also had a clipboard.
“You see this?” he asked me, poking at a board. From my perspective, it looked no different from all the other boards in the house. From my perspective, the entire HOUSE is random boards. But the Carpentry Guy was looking at this board with the facial expression of a man stuck in an elevator with the national leadership of the Big Flatulent Persons Support Group.
“When we take this board off,” he said, ominously, “there's no telling WHAT we're gonna find.”
I wanted to say, “So let's not take it off!” But I didn't want him to think that I was not a manly masculine Wood Shop graduate.
The Carpentry Guy said that, before he could start dismantling the house, we needed to have somebody look at our windows. So we had the Windows Guy come out. He was visibly shaken. I thought he was going to drop his clipboard. Apparently our windows have some kind of deadly window leprosy. They must be replaced immediately with new windows, which, to judge from the price and delivery date, will be made from gem-quality diamonds on another planet.
Did I mention the Termite Guy? No? Well, he believes that termites might be eating our house. So we are going to “tent” the house, which involves surrounding it with a giant tent, filling it with a deadly gas, and then having the homeowners crawl inside and mercifully kill themselves before they can write any more checks.
No, that would be wrong. We have a job to finish. To make our new house habitable, we have to contact the Roof Guy, the Electricity Guy, the Plumbing Guy, the Gas Guy, the Alarm Guy, the Tree Guy, the Moving Guy, and all the other guys THEY will want us to contact. The clipboard industry is depending on us!
Meanwhile, we need to sell our old house. When people come to look at it, we scurry around hiding any possessions that would suggest to a prospective buyer that we are not Martha Stewart. For example, in our bathroom (this is true) we hide the big bottle of Plax mouthwash. We want prospective buyers to think, “It's a nice house! And the owners apparently have had no problems with dental plaque!”
&
nbsp; My big fear is that, when prospective buyers poke their heads into our daughter's room, the toys will start talking to them.
“These people are really slobs!” Pooh will shout. “They're hiding their Plax under the bathroom counter! Also, their daughter wants to eat my head!”
All I can say is, Pooh had better keep his fuzzy little mouth shut. Because I took Wood Shop. And I have a hammer.
How to Drive a Man Wild with Desire? Even a Stiff Breeze Works
When I'm in the supermarket checkout line, I always look at Cosmopolitan magazine to see if the editors have made any progress in their ongoing effort to figure out men.
I'm sure you're familiar with Cosmopolitan (“Fun—Fearless—Female”). It's the one with the cover that always has a picture of a woman who looks as though she has a prestigious and rewarding executive career as a hooker. Roughly half the articles in Cosmopolitan are devoted to explaining how you, the Cosmo reader, can make yourself look like the cover model. All you have to do is follow the two-step Cosmo Beauty Regimen:
STEP ONE: Using a combination of fun and fearless beauty procedures such as the Eyebrow Yank, the Hot Wax Torture, the Hydrochloric Acid Skin Peel, the Hoover Vacuum Home Spleen Removal, the Cage of Thigh-Eating Wolverines, and the Industrial Drain Cleaner Enema, you remove all of the physical elements that make you unattractive, such as your fat, hair, skin, fingerprints, and internal organs. At this point, you are essentially a skeleton with eyeballs, or, to put it another way, Ally McBeal.
STEP TWO: You smear your entire self with a complex system of foundations, bases, creams, lotions, gels, powders, moisturizers, conditioners, mousses, sprays, mascaras, eyeliners, lip glosses, enzymes, lacquers, organic papaya-enhanced roofing tars, etc., until you are encased inside an impenetrable layer of beauty products thick enough that there is no way for anybody to tell, without giving you a CAT scan, what you actually look like. You could be a Shetland pony under there.
