Dave Barry Talks Back

by Dave Barry

  However, I don’t like to do business with an outfit unless I know something about it. So I’ve decided to develop a file on TRW. I’d certainly appreciate anything you can contribute. But I don’t want any wild speculative unfounded rumors, such as:

  TRW is the world’s largest distributor of hard-core pornography.

  TRW has destroyed two-thirds of the Earth’s ozone layer.

  TRW is a satanic vampire cult headed by the love child of Jim Bakker and Leona Helmsley.

  There is no need to run the risk that absurd statements such as these might get into print. In fact, it would probably be a wise idea for TRW to examine my file, from time to time, just to make sure nothing inaccurate appeared in there.

  I’m sure we can work something out.

  THE ROLL OF THE HUMORIST

  If you’re looking for a sport that offers both of the Surgeon General’s Two Recommended Key Elements of Athletic Activity, namely (1) rental shoes and (2) beer, then you definitely want to take up bowling.

  I love to bowl. I even belong to a bowling team, the Pin Worms. How good are we? I don’t wish to brag, but we happen to be ranked, in the World Bowling Association standings, under the heading “Severely Impaired.” Modern science has been baffled in its efforts to predict what will happen to a given ball that has been released by a Pin Worm. The Strategic Air Command routinely tracks our bowling balls on radar in case one of them threatens a major population center and has to be destroyed with missiles.

  But the thing is, we have fun. That’s what I like about bowling: You can have fun even if you stink, unlike in, say, tennis. Every decade or so I attempt to play tennis, and it always consists of 37 seconds of actually hitting the ball, and two hours of yelling “Where did the ball go?” “Over that condominium!” etc. Whereas with bowling, once you let go of the ball, it’s no longer your legal responsibility. They have these wonderful machines that find it for you and send it right back. Some of these machines can also keep score for you. In the Bowling Alley of Tomorrow, there will even be machines that wear rental shoes and throw the ball for you. Your sole function will be to drink beer.

  Besides convenience, bowling offers drama. I recently witnessed an extremely dramatic shot by a young person named Madeline, age 3, who is cute as a button but much smaller. We were in the 10th frame, and Madeline had frankly not had a good game in the sense of knocking down any of the pins or even getting the ball to go all the way to the end of the lane without stopping. So on her last turn, she got up there, and her daddy put the ball down in front of her, and she pushed it with both hands. Nothing appeared to happen, but if you examined the ball with sensitive scientific instruments, you could determine that it was actually rolling. We all watched it anxiously. Time passed. The ball kept rolling. Neighboring bowlers stopped to watch. The ball kept rolling. Spectators started drifting in off the street. TV news crews arrived. A half dozen Communist governments fell. Still Madeline’s ball kept rolling. Finally, incredibly, it reached the pins and, in the world’s first live slow-motion replay, knocked them all down. Of course by then Madeline had children of her own, but it was still very exciting.

  For real bowling excitement, however, you can’t beat Ponch, the bowling dog. I’m not making Ponch up; he holds the rank of German shepherd in the Miami Police Department, and he bowls in charity tournaments. He uses a special ramp built by his partner, K-9 Officer Bill Martin. Bill puts the ball on the ramp, then Ponch jumps up and knocks the ball down the ramp with his teeth. It looks very painful, but Ponch loves it. He loves it so much that as soon as the ball starts rolling, he wants to get it back, so he starts sprinting down the lane after it, barking, his feet flailing wildly around, cartoon-style, on the slick wood (this is a violation of the rules, but nobody is brave enough to tell Ponch).

  When Ponch is about halfway down the lane, he suddenly sees his ball disappear into the machinery, so he whirls around and flails his way back to the ball-return tunnel, where he sticks his head down into the hole, barking furiously, knowing that his ball is in there somewhere, demanding that it be returned immediately, and then suddenly WHAM there it is, hitting Ponch directly in the face at approximately 40 miles per hour, and he could not be happier. He is overjoyed to see his ball again, because that means Officer Bill’s going to put it on the ramp and Ponch can hit it with his teeth again! Hurrah!

  Not only is Ponch a lot of fun to watch, but he’s also very naive about scoring, so you can cheat. “Sorry, Ponch,” you can say, “I scored 5,490 in that last game, so you owe me a million dollars.” He’ll just wag his tail. Money means nothing to him. But touch his ball and he’ll rip out your throat.

  FULL-BORE BOOK TOUR

  I didn’t lose my luggage until Day 12 of the Book Promotion Tour From Hell. By then I was glad to get rid of it. I’d been dragging it to every North American city large enough to have roads, appearing on thousands of radio talk shows, all named “Speaking About Talking,” for the purpose of pretending to be enthusiastic about my book, although after about the fifth day I usually just staggered into the radio station, put my head down on the host’s lap, and went to sleep. Most hosts are accustomed to interviewing unconscious book-tour victims, so they’d just plunge ahead. “Our guest today on ‘Speaking About Talking,’” they’d say, “smells like the bottom of a homeless person’s shopping bag.”

  This was true. The reason was that, no matter how many days I’m on the road, I insist on taking only one small carry-on suitcase so as to prevent my luggage from falling into the hands of the Baggage People, who would pounce upon it like those grief-stricken Iranian mourners who nearly reduced the late Mr. Ayatollah Khomeini to Corpse McNuggets. So my garments and toiletry articles spend their days compressed into an extremely dense carry-on wad in which they are able to freely exchange grime, mayonnaise stains, B.O. vapors, etc., the result being that after several days my “clean” shirts look like giant community handkerchiefs and my Tartar Control toothpaste tastes like sock dirt. Eventually my luggage undergoes a process known to physicists and frequent fliers as “suitcase fusion,” wherein the contents all unite into one writhing, festering, pulsating blob of laundry that, when I get to the hotel room, climbs angrily out of the suitcase by itself and crawls over to the TV to watch in-room pornographic movies. This worries me, because the movie goes on my computerized hotel bill, and I’m afraid that when I check out, the clerk will say, in a loud and perky voice: “Mr. Barry, we certainly hope you enjoyed your stay here, especially your private in-room viewing of Return to Planet Nipple.”

  Actually I don’t have time to watch movies, because I have to forage for food. The split-second schedule of the Book Promotion Tour From Hell calls for me to arrive at the hotel five minutes after room service closes, so I usually enjoy a hearty and nourishing meal from the “mini-bar,” which is a little box provided as a service to hotel guests by the American Cholesterol Growers Association, featuring foodlike items that are perfect for the busy traveler who figures he’s going to die soon anyway, such as Honey-Roasted Pork Parts.

  After dinner it’s time to crawl into bed, turn out the lights, and listen to the Subtle But Annoying Air-Conditioning Rattle, which is required by law to be in all hotel rooms as a safety precaution against the danger that a guest might carelessly fall asleep. You notice that the bellperson never tells you about this. The bellperson gives you a lengthy orientation speech full of information that you have known since childhood, such as that you operate the TV by turning it on, but he never says, “Incidentally, the only way to stop the annoying rattle is to jam a pair of Jockey shorts into that air register up there.” No, part of the fun of hotel life is that you get to solve this puzzle for yourself, which I usually do at 1:30 A.M., just in time for the start of the Sudden Violent Outburst of Hallway Laughter Tournament, in which teams of large hearing-impaired men gather directly outside my door to inhale nitrous oxide and see who can laugh loud enough to dislodge my shorts from the air register. In less time than it took to form the Ha
waiian Islands the night has flown by and it’s 5:42 A.M., time for the Housekeeping Person, secure in the knowledge that I cannot pack a gun in my carry-on luggage, to knock on my door, just above the sign that says PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB in 127 languages, and inform me helpfully that she’ll come back later. But I usually get up anyway, because the sooner I check out, the sooner I can appear on a radio talk show and get some sleep.

  Sometimes I also go on TV, which is how I lost my luggage. What happened was, a TV crew was following me around, doing a story about a Typical Day on a book tour. They put a wireless microphone on me so they could record me making typical remarks, such as: “Is this recording me in the bathroom?” And: “I’m wearing a wireless microphone.” I made this last typical remark to a concerned security person after I set off the alarm at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. So he started poking around under my shirt, bravely risking Death by Armpit Fumes, and while this was going on some other unfortunate air traveler mistakenly walked off with my suitcase. I hate to think what happened to this person. My guess is that at some point he foolishly opened my suitcase and a tentacle of my laundry came snaking out and dragged him back inside.

  The airline people eventually gave me back my suitcase, but now I’m afraid to open it, because this person is probably still in there, being genetically combined with my Prell shampoo. So if you’re missing a friend or loved one who was last seen in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, I’ve got him, and I’ll be glad to return him when I come to your town, which will be any day now on the Book Tour From Hell. You’ll smell me coming.

  COFFEE? TEA? WEASEL SPIT?

  So I was getting on a plane in Seattle, and I was feeling a touch nervous because that very morning a plane was forced to make an emergency landing at that very airport after a window blew out at 14,000 feet and a passenger almost got sucked out of the plane headfirst. This is the kind of thing that the flight attendants never mention during the Preflight Safety Demonstration, although maybe they should. I bet they could put on a very impressive demonstration using an industrial vacuum cleaner and a Barbie doll, and we passengers would NEVER take our seat belts off, even when the plane landed. We’d walk out into the terminal with our seats still strapped to our backs.

  Anyway, the good news is that the passenger in Seattle was wearing his seat belt, and the other passengers were able to pull him back inside, and he’s expected to make a complete recovery except for no longer having a head. This will definitely limit his ability to enjoy future in-flight meals (“Would you like a dense omeletlike substance, sir? Just nod your stump.”).

  Ha ha! I am just joshing of course. The man retained all his major body parts. But just the same I don’t like to hear this type of story, because I usually take a window seat, because I want to know if a wing falls off. The pilot would never mention this. It is a violation of Federal Aviation Administration regulations for the pilot to ever tell you anything except that you are experiencing “a little turbulence.” You frequent fliers know what I’m talking about. You’re flying along at 500 miles an hour, 7 miles up, and suddenly there’s an enormous shuddering WHUMP. Obviously the plane has struck something at least the size of a Winnebago motor home—in fact sometimes you can actually see Winnebago parts flashing past your window—but the pilot, trying to sound bored, announces that you have experienced “a little turbulence.” Meanwhile you just know that up in the cockpit they’re hastily deploying their Emergency Inflatable Religious Shrine.

  Here’s what bothers me. You know how, during the Preflight Safety Demonstration, they tell you that in the event of an emergency, oxygen masks will pop out of the ceiling? My question is: Who wants oxygen? If I’m going to be in an emergency seven miles up, I want nitrous oxide, followed immediately by Emergency Intravenous Beverage Cart Service, so that I and my fellow passengers can be as relaxed as possible. (“Wow! Those are some beautiful engine flames!”)

  Anyway, nothing terrible happened on my flight, which was unfortunate, because there was a high school marching band on board. My advice to airline passengers is: Always request a non-marching-band flight. Oh, I’m sure that these were wonderful teenage kids on an individual basis, but when you get 60 of them together in a confined area, they reach Critical Adolescent Mass, with huge waves of runaway hormones sloshing up and down the aisle, knocking over the flight attendants and causing the older passengers to experience sudden puberty symptoms (the pilot’s voice went up several octaves when he tried to say “turbulence”).

  Mealtime was the worst. The entree was Beef Stroganoff Airline-Style, a hearty dish featuring chunks of yellowish meatlike byproducts that apparently have been pre-chewed for your convenience by weasels. I was desperately hungry, so I was actually going to attempt to eat mine, when one of the male band members seated near me, in the age-old adolescent tradition of Impressing Girls Through Grossness, launched into an anecdote about an earlier in-flight meal:

  “… so she was eating chocolate all day, right? And she gets on the plane and they serve her the meal, right? And she looks at it, and she goes, like, RALPH all over her tray, and it’s like BROWN and it’s getting ALL OVER her TRAY and onto the FLOOR, so she like stands up and she goes RALPH all over the people in front of her and it’s like running down their HAIR and …”

  This anecdote didn’t bother the band girls at all.

  “Ewwwwww,” they said, chewing happily. Whereas I lost my appetite altogether. I just sat there, a frequent flier looking at his Vaguely Beeflike Stroganoff and wondering how come airline windows never suck people out then you really need them to.

  I’M DAVE. FLY ME.

  I’m going to start my own airline. Hey, why not? This is America, right? Anybody can have an airline. They even let Donald Trump have one, which he immediately renamed after himself, as is his usual classy practice despite the fact that “Trump” sounds like the noise emitted by livestock with gastric disorders (“Stand back, Earl! That cow’s starting to Trump!”).

  Well if he can do it, I can do it. My airline will be called : “Air Dave.” All the planes in the Air Dave fleet will utilize state-of-the-art U.S. Defense Department technology, thus rendering them—this is the key selling point—invisible to radar. That’s right: I’m talking about a stealth airline.

  Think about it. If you’re a frequent flier, you know that the big problem with commercial aviation today is that the planes can be easily detected by Air Traffic Control, which is run by severely overstressed people sitting in gloomy rooms drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and staring at little radar-screen dots, each one representing several hundred carefree people drinking Bloody Marys at 35,000 feet. Naturally the air-traffic controllers become resentful, which is why they routinely order your Boston-to-Pittsburgh flight to circle Mexico City until the captain reports that the entire passenger sector is experiencing Barf Bag Overload.

  They won’t be able to do that stuff to Air Dave. They won’t even be aware that an Air Dave flight is in the vicinity until it screams past the control tower at Mach 2, clearly displaying its laser-guided air-to-tower missiles, and requests permission to land immediately.

  Air Dave planes will not park at a gate. Air Dave planes will taxi directly to the rental-car counter.

  The official Air Dave spokesperson will be Sean Penn.

  There will be no mutant in-flight “food” served on Air Dave. At mealtime, the pilot will simply land—on an interstate, if necessary—and take everybody to a decent restaurant.

  Air Dave will do everything possible to live up to its motto: “Hey, You Only Go Around Once.” There will be no in-flight movies. There will be live bands. Every flight will feature a complimentary Petting Zoo Cart. Air Dave will also boast the aviation industry’s finest in-flight pranks. For example, just after takeoff the door to the cockpit might “accidentally” swing open, revealing to the passengers that the sole occupant up there, cheerfully sniffing the altimeter, is a Labrador retriever named “Boomer.”

  All Air Dave planes will have skywrit
ing capability.

  Air Dave pilots will be chosen strictly on the basis of how entertaining their names sound over the public-address system, as in “First Officer LaGrange Weevil” or (ideally) “Captain Deltoid P. Hamsterlicker.” Pilots will be encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings with the passengers via regular announcements such as: “What the heck does THIS thing do?” and “Uh-oh!”

  In the event of an emergency, a ceiling panel will open up over each seat and out will pop: Tony Perkins.

  I’ve given a lot of thought to the flight attendants. My original idea was to use mimes, who would go around pretending to serve beverages, etc. But then I got to thinking about an opinion voiced a few months back by Al Neuharth, the brain cell behind USA Today (“The Nation’s Weather Map”). You may remember this: Mr. Neuharth wrote a column in which he was highly critical of today’s flight attendants, whom he described as “aging women” and “flighty young men.” And quite frankly I think he has a point, which is why all the flight attendants on Air Dave will be hired on the basis of looking as much as possible like the ultimate human physical specimen: Al Neuharth. Assuming we can find anybody that short.

  The Preflight Safety Lecture on Air Dave will consist of five minutes of intensive harmonica instruction. Passengers will also be notified that under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, anyone requesting a “light” beer must be ejected over Utah.

  Air Dave pilots will have standing orders to moon the Concorde.

  So that’s the Air Dave Master Plan. On behalf of Captain Hamsterlicker and the entire crew of Neuharths, let me say that it’s been a real pleasure having you read the column today. And remember: Under the Air Dave Frequent Flier program, if you log just 25,000 miles, we’ll let you off the plane.