Dave Barry Talks Back

by Dave Barry

  At least Zippy had the decency to feel bad about what he did, which is more than you can say for Mousse, a dog that belonged to a couple named Mike and Sandy. Mousse was a Labrador retriever, which is a large enthusiastic bulletproof species of dog made entirely from synthetic materials. This is the kind of dog that, if it takes an interest in your personal regions (which of course it does) you cannot fend it off with a blowtorch.

  So anyway, Mike and Sandy had two visitors who wore expensive, brand-new down-filled parkas, which somehow got left for several hours in a closed room with Mousse. When the door was finally opened, the visibility in the room had been drastically reduced by a raging down storm, at the center of which was a large quivering down clot, looking like a huge mutant duckling, except that it had Mousse’s radiantly happy eyes.

  For several moments Mike and Sandy and their guests stared at this apparition, then Mike, a big, strong, highly authoritative guy, strode angrily into the room and slammed the door. He was in there for several minutes, then emerged, looking very serious. The down clot stood behind him, wagging its tail cheerfully.

  “I talked to Mousse,” Mike said, “and he says he didn’t do it.”

  People often become deranged by pets. Derangement is the only possible explanation for owning a cat, an animal whose preferred mode of communication is to sink its claws three-quarters of an inch into your flesh. God help the cat owner who runs out of food. It’s not uncommon to see an elderly woman sprinting through the supermarket with one or more cats clinging, leechlike, to her leg as she tries desperately to reach the petfood section before collapsing from blood loss.

  Of course for sheer hostility in a pet, you can’t beat a parrot. I base this statement on a parrot I knew named Charles who belonged to a couple named Ed and Ginny. Charles had an IQ of 260 and figured out early in life that if he talked to people, they’d get close enough so he could bite them. He especially liked to bite Ed, whom Charles wanted to drive out of the marriage so he could have Ginny, the house, the American Express card, etc. So in an effort to improve their relationship, Ginny hatched (ha ha!) this plan wherein Ed took Charles to—I am not making this up—Parrot Obedience School. Every Saturday morning, Ed and Charles would head off to receive expert training, and every Saturday afternoon Ed would come home with chunks missing from his arm. Eventually Ginny realized that it was never going to work, so she got rid of Ed.

  I’m just kidding, of course. Nobody would take Ed. Ginny got rid of Charles, who now works as a public-relations adviser to Miss Zsa Zsa Gabor. So we see that there are many “pluses” to having an “animal friend,” which is why you should definitely buy a pet. If you act right now, we’ll also give you a heck of a deal on a rug.

  THINGS THAT GO HORNK IN THE NIGHT

  These are indeed exciting times we live in, what with the radical political changes in Eastern Europe, the dramatic developments in South Africa, and of course the long-overdue Illinois Owl Vomit Study. This was alertly brought to my attention by reader Paul Baker, who sent an article from the Wisconsin State Journal headlined LAWMAKERS CHOKE ON OWL VOMIT STUDY. It seems that some Illinois legislators are upset because the state is funding a $180,000 study wherein researchers go around collecting owl vomit to see what they (the owls) eat, which could have important implications.

  “Owls spit up pellets of hair, bone, and teeth … at least once or twice a day,” states the article.

  This is also true of our small auxiliary dog, Zippy. His hobby is throwing up lizard parts when we’re trying to eat dinner. He’ll get that look of total concentration that dogs get when they have a really important task to perform, then he’ll hunch his body over and walk around in a circle making a noise that sounds like “hornk.” If you put him outside, he’ll sit patiently by the door until you let him back inside, then he’ll resume hornking. “Never throw your lizard parts up outside” is Rule No. 1 of the Dog Code of Ethics.

  So as you can imagine our dinners have a very appetizing ambience:

  MY WIFE: Would you like some more stew?

  ME: Sure, I’d love …

  ZIPPY: Hornk.

  ME: On second thought …

  ZIPPY: HORRRRNNK.

  MY SON: Look! A tail and a leg!

  ME: I think I’ll just lie down.

  And I’ll tell you something else that is not helping my appetite any: Our refrigerator currently contains a jug of pond water infested with mosquito larvae, which are so unappetizing as to make semi-digested lizard parts look like Chicken McNuggets. The reason we have mosquito larvae in our refrigerator, as you parents have already deduced, is that our son is doing a science-fair project, which involves seeing what happens to larvae when you put them into various environments such as the refrigerator environment, the hall-closet environment, etc. Here are our key findings:

  1. In the hall-closet environment, the larvae turn into mosquitoes and wait in the dark until you open the door, when they hurl their little bodies pathetically up against the side of the jar and, with their whiny little voices, go, “Please let me out please please PLEASE I won’t suck your blood I SWEAR.” But they are lying.

  2. In the refrigerator environment, the larvae do nothing, and after a while you don’t even notice them, leading to the danger that their jar will become part of the general population of Mystery Refrigerator Items like the leftover takeout Chinese food from the Carter administration, and then one day Grandpa Bob will come to visit, and in the middle of the night he’ll get thirsty and tiptoe out to the refrigerator, reach in, pull out what looks like a nice refreshing jug of iced tea, take a big swig and GAAAAAACCCCCKKKK thud to the floor. And then Zippy will throw up on him.

  But I will say this for our dogs: They never shot anybody. This is more than I can say for the dog in Lyngdal, Norway, that shot a man. According to a news article sent in by many alert readers, the man was hunting rabbits, and he set his gun down, and his dog “accidentally” hit the trigger, causing the gun to go off. Fortunately, the man suffered only minor injuries. Unfortunately, the rabbits saw the whole thing and have obtained a mail-order assault rifle.

  Just kidding, of course! But I am NOT kidding about the Arson Cat. According to an Associated Press story also alertly sent in by numerous readers, investigators concluded that a house fire in Lima, New York, was caused by “a cat playing with matches,” prompting us to once again ask ourselves, as concerned citizens, WHEN the government is going to come to its senses and order the mandatory sterilization of ALL cat owners.

  On a brighter note, the New Zealand Herald reports that a woman in Adelaide, Australia, received a hefty out-of-court settlement “after she was hit in the back by an eight-kilogram frozen tuna during the world tuna-tossing championships.” The story adds that the organizers of this annual event “are now trying to make the sport safer for spectators by developing a rubber tuna.”

  So there is Hope for Tomorrow. In fact, things are looking better already: Alert reader Perry Bradshaw sent me a news item stating that the governor of Minnesota, whose name (I am not making this governor up) is “Rudy Perpich,” has declared 1990 to be “The Year of the Polka.” I wouldn’t be surprised if this exciting event drew music enthusiasts from as far away as Illinois (“The Owl Vomit State”). I’d be there myself, but I have to taunt the hall-closet mosquitoes.

  READER ALERT

  EAT BUGS FOR MONEY

  I got hundreds of responses to this column, including dozens from people who were willing to eat bugs for free. Bear in mind that, under our system of government, these people can vote.

  BEETLEJUICE

  There comes a time in the life of every American citizen when Duty calls. “Hey! YOU!!” are Duty’s exact words, and unless you’re some kind of flag-desecrating pervert, you’re going to stand up, as Americans have stood up for more than 200 years, and you’re going to say, “Yes, I will participate in the Arbitron television-ratings survey.”

  I answered The Call one recent afternoon. The phone rang, and it was a person in
forming me that I had been selected to be an Arbitron household based on an exhaustive screening process consisting of being home when my number was dialed at random. As you can imagine, I was deeply moved.

  “Do I get money?” I asked.

  The reason I asked this is that a couple of years ago I was a Nielsen-ratings household, and all they paid me was two lousy dollars, yet they wanted me to write down every program I watched, which was virtually impossible because I’m a guy and therefore I generally watch 40 programs at once. Guys are biologically capable of keeping track of huge numbers of programs simultaneously by changing the channel the instant something boring happens, such as dialogue. Whereas women, because of a tragic genetic flaw, feel compelled to watch only one program at a time, the way people did back in the Middle Ages, before the invention of remote control.

  Anyway, it turns out that $2 is also all you get for being an Arbitron household. But I agreed to be one anyway, because, let’s face it, when anybody connected with the television industry asks you to do something, no matter how stupid or degrading it is, you do it. This is why people are willing to openly discuss their secret bodily problems in commercials that are seen by the entire nation. These people become famous for having secret bodily problems. When they go out to dinner, large celebrity-worshiping crowds gather to stare and point and whisper excitedly to each other, “Look! It’s Elston V. Quadrant, Hemorrhoid Sufferer!”

  At least these people get paid, which is more than you can say for the people who go on the syndicated TV talk show and seek to enhance public understanding of various tragic psychological disorders by candidly revealing that they are total wackmobiles (“I’m Geraldo Rivera, and these men are commercial-airline pilots with live trout in their shorts”).

  So I figured the least I could do, for television, was be an Arbitron household. This involves two major responsibilities:

  Keeping track of what you watch on TV.

  Lying about it.

  At least that’s what I did. I imagine most people do Because let’s face it: Just because you watch a certain show on television, that doesn’t mean you want to admit it. Let’s say you’re flipping through your 8,479 cable channels, and you come across a program called “Eat Bugs For Money,” wherein they bring out a large live insect, and the contestants secretly write down the minimum amount of money they would have to be given to eat it, and whichever one has the lowest bid has to actually do it. Admit it: YOU would watch this program. In fact, right now you’re saying to yourself, “Hey, I wonder what channel that’s on.” Unfortunately, at present it’s still in the conceptual stage. It’s based on an idea from my editor, Gene Weingarten, who has publicly stated that he would eat a live adult South Florida cockroach (average weight: 11 pounds) for $20,000.

  My point is that you’d watch this program, but you wouldn’t tell Arbitron. You’d claim that you watched a National Geographic special with a name like “The Amazing World of Beets.” In my Arbitron diary, I wrote that our entire household (including Earnest, who is, legally, a dog) mainly watched the network news, whereas in fact the only remotely educational programming we watched that week was a commercial for oat bran, which by the way is clearly no more intended for human consumption than insects are.

  Speaking of which, here is a Late Bulletin: My wife—this is the wonderful thing about Free Enterprise—has considered Gene Weingarten’s bid and announced that she would eat a live adult cockroach for just $2,000. If you sincerely feel you can beat that price, drop me a line c/o The Miami Herald, Miami, FL 33132, because I’d like to produce a pilot episode of “Eat Bugs For Money” with an eye toward—call me a Cultural Pioneer—advancing the frontiers of my income. I would also appreciate your lowest price on eating a nonpoisonous but hair-covered spider. Thank you.

  SKIVVYING UP THE PROFITS

  Recently—I bet this has happened to you—I ran out of clean underwear in Los Angeles. So I wandered into the men’s clothing department of an upscale department store, the kind of store where the salesclerks all have sharp haircuts and perfectly tailored suits that are far nicer than anything YOU own, and, although they act very deferential, you know they’re secretly watching to see which clothes you touch so they can have them burned later as a precaution against vermin.

  So I was skulking around, looking for the underwear section, and I came across the Ralph Lauren Exhibit, which, in addition to clothes, featured an old saddle, croquet mallets, and various other props associated with rich people. Ralph uses these to create a fashion look that has made him several zillion dollars, a look that I would describe as “Wealthy Constipated WASP.” His magazine advertisements feature Lauren-clad people with their hair slicked back, standing around in large antique-infested houses, looking grim, as if they have just received the tragic news that one of their key polo ponies had injured itself trampling a servant to death and would be unavailable for an important match.

  I myself am of WASP heritage, and although my family was not even close to wealthy, we knew WASPs who were, and I frankly cannot understand why any fun-oriented person would want to imitate their life-style. Wealthy WASPs have less fun in their entire lifetimes than members of other ethnic groups have at a single wedding reception. Trust me. I have been to both WASP and non-WASP weddings, and your WASP couple can get married, go on their honeymoon, came home, pursue careers, have children, and get divorced in less time than it takes for a non-WASP couple to get to the part of their reception where everybody drinks champagne from the maid of honor’s brassiere.

  Nevertheless, the WASP look has been very good to Ralph Lauren. So has another clothing line of his that I would describe as “Pretend Cowboy,” which is advertised via photographs of rugged male models, wearing designer cowboy outfits and authentic Wild West male fragrances, fixin’ to ride their tastefully color-coordinated horses down to the Old Tradin’ Post to purchase a heap o’ stylin’ gel.

  So anyway, I was looking at the Lauren Exhibit, and I came across this T-shirt. It was a regular white T-shirt such as you might use to mow the lawn in or mop up spilled Yoo-Hoo with, except for two things:

  1. On the front, in large letters, it had the words RALPH LAUREN STATE FAIR SEPT. 26–OCT. 1 and a large picture of a cowboy on a horse that was bucking wildly (perhaps because the cowboy was wearing too much male fragrance).

  2. The price was $57.50.

  Yup. Fifty-seven dollars and fifty cents. I once bought an entire suit for less than that. I admit that it was not an elegant suit. It was made from what appeared to be the same material they use to cover mattresses. I think it actually had a tag on the lapel that could not be removed under Penalty of Law. I was afraid to wear this suit late at night for fear that tired people would try to lie down on me. (Rim shot.) But at least it was a whole suit, for less than Ralph charges for a T-shirt.

  Not that I mean to be critical. Hey, people are buying these things, just as they are paying top dollar for jeans that appear to have been ripped to shreds by crazed wolverines. You know why? Because garments like these make a statement. You wear a Lauren State Fair T-shirt, and you are telling the world: “I paid $57.50 for this T-shirt. God alone knows what I would pay for an official Ralph Lauren jockstrap.”

  So I am all in favor of the designer T-shirt concept, and I am only sorry that the Lauren Exhibit didn’t feature any men’s briefs for $38.95 per leg hole, or whatever Ralph would charge. I wound up having to go elsewhere and purchase another famous designer underwear brand. A French one. Le Mart du K.

  ROTTEN TO THE CORE

  You residents of rustic, tractor-intensive regions such as Ohio will be pleased to hear that New York City has decided to become polite. Really. There’s a new outfit called New York Pride, which is attempting to get New Yorkers to at least pretend that they don’t hate everybody. This program resulted from a survey in which researchers asked tourists how come they didn’t want to come back to New York, and the tourists said it was because there was so much mean-spiritedness. So the researchers spat
on them.

  No, seriously, I think New York is very sincere about this. I was in the city recently, and right off the bat I noted that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Taxi Driver who took me to the hotel was very thoughtfully allowing pedestrians as much as .3 nanoseconds to get out of his way, which many of them graciously did even though a taxi does not, technically, have the right-of-way on the sidewalk. The driver was also careful to observe the strict New York City Vehicle Horn Code, under which it is illegal to honk your horn except to communicate one of the following emergency messages:

  The light is green.

  The light is red.

  I hate you.

  This vehicle is equipped with a horn.

  Even very late at night, when there were probably only a few dozen vehicles still operating in the entire city, they’d all gather under my hotel window every few minutes to exchange these vital communications.