by Dave Barry
And the Beach Boys were not just limited to car songs. They took on the important social issues, too, in songs such as “Be True to Your School” (actual lyric: “Rah rah rah rah sis boom bah!”) and “I Get Around” (actual lyric: “I’m a real cool head! I’m makin’ real good bread!”).
They don’t make music like that these days. In fact, sometimes they don’t even make music. I saw a TV show recently wherein a group of hip-hop DJs competed to see who was the best at making sounds with a record turntable. They’d put the needle on a record, then they’d spin the turntable forward and backward violently, thereby creating unique, by which I mean ugly, noises. I used to do that when I was seven, and my mom would yell, “STOP FOOLING WITH THE RECORD PLAYER!” But these guys were serious; they had expressions of intense concentration, as though it took vast artistic skill to simulate the sound of deranged squirrels fighting in an amplifier. A panel of judges looked on, frowning thoughtfully, as though they were listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (actual lyric: “Dum dum dum DUM”). I wanted to scream at the TV screen: “A turntable is NOT A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, you morons! It’s an APPLIANCE, like a toaster-oven! Or an accordion!”
So, OK, I’m too old to appreciate hip-hop. But I’m smack dab in the middle of the Beach Boys’ demographic, to judge from the crowd at the concert I attended. Many of us are grayer than we once were, and our loins are larger. But we still know how to “party hearty.” We had our cell-phone ringers set on “vibrate” and were ready to ROCK AND ROLL when the Beach Boys stormed onto the stage.
OK, “stormed” is a little strong. “Shuffled” is more accurate. Because the Beach Boys have gotten older, too. Although some of them apparently have gotten younger. A couple of the ones I saw definitely had not been born when they made their first record.
But even though some of the older Beach Boys could enter the Ernest Hemingway Look-alike Contest, they still SOUND like the Beach Boys, and that was all that mattered. Within 15 minutes the crowd was on its feet (it would have been on its feet sooner, but it has to be careful with its back). The Beach Boys sang a medley of their car songs, and I sang right along with them, and when, together, we sang the technical part of “Little Deuce Coupe” (“She’s ported and relieved, and she’s stroked and bored”) there was genuine emotion in my voice. But without question the highlight came when the entire crowd—not just us older folks in our 50s, but also the young people in their late 40s—joined together to sing “Barbara Ann,” all of us united for the moment by our inability to remember that one verse that goes something like:
Tried Betty Sue
Did the boogaloo
Went to the zoo
And I saw a tiger poo
It was a great night. And even though I didn’t get home until almost 10:20 P.M., I was so excited that I stayed awake until almost 10:27. ’Round, ’round, get around, I get around.
The Boob Tube
Recently, one of our local TV news shows in Miami did a special investigative report on—I swear—brassiere sizes. The station promoted this report relentlessly for several days. Every few minutes you’d hear an announcer’s voice saying, with an urgency appropriate for imminent nuclear attack: “ARE YOU WEARING THE WRONG BRA SIZE??” You’d have thought that women were dropping dead in the street by the thousands as a result of improperly sized brassieres. I was becoming genuinely concerned about this problem, despite the fact that, except on very special occasions involving schnapps, I don’t even wear a brassiere.
Unfortunately, although I saw dozens of promotions for this special investigative report, I never saw the report itself. I assumed that the message would be: “Wear the right size brassiere!” My editor, Tom Shroder, who has a keen interest in the issues, did watch the report, and he told me that it explored the troubling question of “women wearing brassieres that were tragically about 10 sizes too small for their breasts, which left said breasts with no other choice but to spill, tragically, out of the brassiere cups into the camera lens.”
But my point here is not directly related to brassieres, although it IS a lot of fun to use the word “brassiere” in a newspaper column, brassiere brassiere brassiere. My point is that, pound for pound, the most dramatic and entertaining programming on television is your local TV news shows. Their only serious competition is the cable channel that, 24 hours a day, features the TV Evangelists With Hairdos The Size Of Adult Yaks.
If you don’t receive the Big-Haired Evangelists channel, you need to march right down to your cable company and throw rocks through the windows until you get it, because these people are WAY more entertaining than any space alien you will ever see on Star Trek. My favorite is a woman with a gigantic mound of hair colored exactly the same designer shade as Bazooka brand bubble gum. Perhaps this fact explains why, almost every time I tune in, this woman is weeping. Her tear ducts must be as big as volleyballs. Using the standard evangelical measurement of Gallons of Weepage Per Broadcast (GWPB), this woman could very well be threatening the seemingly unbreakable records set back in the glorious ’80s by Hall-of-Famer Tammy Faye Bakker. I would pay serious money to see a Weep-Off between these two great performers.
But as entertaining as these shows are, their message tends to be somewhat repetitive (“God loves you! So send us money!”). Whereas on your local TV news shows, they’re always surprising you with dramatic new issues that you should be nervous about. Often these involve ordinary consumer items that, when subjected to the scrutiny of a TV news investigative report, mutate into deadly hazards. (John R. Gambling of radio station WOR in New York has a wonderful collection of promotions for these TV news reports, including one wherein the announcer says: “TONIGHT AT SIX: YOUR DRY CLEANING CAN KILL YOU!!”)
A while back, one of our Miami TV news shows—I think it was different from the one that warned us about improperly fitted brassieres brassieres brassieres—did a dramatic, heavily promoted investigative report on: frozen yogurt. This report, which seemed at least as long as Alien Resurrection, but scarier, investigated the possibility of deadly bacteria in our frozen-yogurt supply. If I understood the report correctly, there have never been any cases of any actual person actually being harmed by local frozen yogurt, but that seemed like a minor technicality. The point was: IT COULD HAPPEN! THE YOGURT OF DEATH!!
The way I have dealt with this menace is by taking the medical precaution of never eating frozen yogurt without first putting large quantities of chocolate fudge on it, on the scientific theory that the bacteria will eat the fudge and become too fat to do anything inside my body except sit around and belch. But I would not know to do this if it were not for local TV news.
I also would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories. Sometimes, to make sure I understand the point, they come right out and tell me, at the end of each story, whether it was “tragic” or “nice.”
FIRST PERSONALITY: What a tragic story, Bob.
SECOND PERSONALITY: Uh . . . no, it wasn’t.
FIRST PERSONALITY: It wasn’t?
SECOND PERSONALITY: No. That was the story about dogs playing mah-jongg.
FIRST PERSONALITY: Whoops! I had it confused with the story about the plane crashing into the orphanage! Ha ha!
SECOND PERSONALITY: Ha ha! Coming up, we’ll have part four of our special investigative report: “Formica: Silent Killer In Your Kitchen.”
Well, I see we’ve run out of time, so that’s all for this week’s column. Remember to be nervous about everything. And now for these words: brassiere brassiere brassiere.
And Don’t Forget . . . Tassels for All the Generals
Whatever you are doing, drop it right now, unless it is a baby. Because I have obtained some shocking information regarding our National Security—information that I am going to reveal to you now, despite the chilling fact that, by revealing it, I am placing myself in direct, personal peril of winning a Pulitzer Prize.
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This information concerns some alarming military research currently being conducted by a foreign power that represents the greatest single security threat to the United States, as measured not only by the magnitude of the physical danger, but also by the number of Celine Dion records.
That’s right: I am referring to Canada. As you may recall, last year I urged the United States to declare war on Canada over the issue of toilet smuggling. In the United States, we have a federal law, enacted by Congress, requiring that new consumer toilets be limited to 1.6 gallons of water per flush. There is an excellent reason for this law: Congress has the brains of an eggplant. But that does not change the fact that it is a law.
Canada, however, flagrantly disobeys this law, on the grounds that—get THIS for a legal technicality—it is a foreign country. In Canada, anybody, including convicted felons and underage children, can walk into any toilet store, purchase a 3.5-gallon-per-flush toilet, and openly flaunt it on the street, and the authorities do NOTHING. As I reported, some of these toilets are finding their way across the border into the United States. And what is our government doing? It is shooting cruise missiles at the Balkans, which do not even HAVE toilets.
When are we, as a nation, going to wake up and recognize the REAL threat to our security? No doubt you are aware that just recently, in our nation’s capital (Washington, D.C.), a number of highly strategic cherry trees were deliberately chewed by saboteur beavers. Ask yourself this: Where do beavers come from? The Balkans? No! Beavers come from Canada, and they take their orders from Canada and nobody else, as you know if you have ever tried to get one to fetch a ball.
And now, as if we did not already have enough reasons to declare war on Canada, comes word of this chilling research being conducted by the Canadian military. I have here a news article from the Canadian Press, written by Dennis Bueckert and sent to me, at great personal risk, by an alert secret undercover agent in Canada named Lauren Leighton, M.D. This article, about a new Canadian armed-forces program, contains the following chilling sentence, which I swear I am not making up:
“An elite unit at National Defence headquarters is actively studying whether to proceed with development of the world’s first combat bra.”
You read that correctly: The Canadian military is working on a combat brassiere. The article quotes Captain Frank Delanghe, an officer with the $184 million Clothe the Soldier Program, as saying: “No army that I know of has ever touched or even approached this issue.”
How can we, the American public, remain sanguine in the face of this news? Especially when we do not really know what “sanguine” means? How can we sit back and do nothing when an increasingly hostile, beaver-infested, big-toilet nation spends $184 million (nearly $37.50 American) on a program to develop a high-tech futuristic assault undergarment? How would you feel if you were an American soldier guarding our northern border, equipped with only a conventional brassiere—the basic design of which has not changed significantly since the Korean Conflict—knowing that at any moment, elite Canadian troops could come charging across No Person’s Land toward you, and the first sight you would see—a sight that would strike terror into the heart of even the most hardened combat veteran—would be the Cones of Doom?
And while we are asking the tough questions, I have one here that was sent in by concerned reader Margaret Wilson of Santa Barbara, California, who wants to know: How come we say “a pair of pants” and “a pair of shorts,” but NOT “a pair of bras”?
I wish I could inform you that our so-called “Defense Department” was trying to answer these questions, but I cannot. And that is why I am urging you to write your congressperson NOW and tell him or her that you want the United States to launch a massive wasteful federal program to match Canada’s military-undergarment research. Please keep your letter dignified. Do NOT lower yourself to cheesy wordplay such as “support our troops,” or “stay abreast of our enemies,” or “check out the Balkans on that lieutenant.” If we can get Congress to approve such a program, I have no doubt that the president will take a personal interest, especially when he realizes that, once we have perfected the Tactical Field Brassiere, we could adapt the same technology for even more advanced weapons. I am referring, of course, to the Stealth Thong.
A Watchdog Never Drops His Guard—Except for Dessert
Today’s topic is: Home Security
Recently my wife and I went to the home of some friends for a dinner party involving three couples and numerous pets. Our hosts are fond of animals: They have a big herd of turtles living in a decorative pond outside, and three dogs patrolling inside. Actually, one of the dogs is only slightly more mobile than a shrub; he’s around 47,000 years old in dog years and totally blind. He may in fact be medically dead. But dogs don’t get all mopey over physical disabilities. This particular dog still maintains a productive routine, which consists of every now and then getting to his feet (this takes about an hour) and wandering around until he bumps into something, which he sniffs. If he thinks it might be food, he tries to eat it; if it bites back, he knows it’s one of the other dogs.
The two younger dogs are more active; their job is to wait for people to come to the door, then bark loudly and angrily to communicate the fact that, based on their extensive experience as dogs, the people at the door are bad and somebody should bite them. Dogs are deeply suspicious of anybody using a door. Even if, when the door is opened, it turns out that the people standing there know the dogs, and in fact live in the house, the dogs will sometimes continue barking at them for a few seconds, in case it’s some kind of trick.
Dogs behave this way because they are extremely vigilant (I am using “vigilant” in the sense of “stupid”). I have some friends named Libby and Buzz who have a small, nervous dog named Elmo who is so vigilant that he would be classified, on the scale of animal intelligence, in the category of “mineral.” Elmo and Buzz have lived in the same house for several years now, but every time Buzz walks into a room where Elmo is on duty, Elmo reacts as though Buzz is an entire urban street gang, barking, growling, and running around in small, alarmed circles to let Libby know that Buzz is bad and she should bite him (she rarely does). After maybe 15 minutes, Elmo starts to remember who Buzz is, and he calms down. But if Buzz leaves the room for, say, 10 seconds, all the current drains out of Elmo’s mental battery, and when Buzz returns, YIKES! RED ALERT! Elmo goes off again, like a small, furry, defective car alarm. It is not a quiet household. But by gosh it is a secure household, thanks to Elmo’s vigilance.
But getting back to my story: We were having a nice dinner in our friends’ home, and during this dinner one of the dogs kept going to a window and growling. We paid no attention, because dogs are always growling—maybe at the moon, maybe at the turtles, maybe at the Federal Reserve Board—who can say?
After dinner, all of us, including the dogs, went into another room to have dessert and watch the Miami Heat play an important basketball game. Actually, the women watched the game; the men actively controlled the outcome by shouting at the screen. The dogs watched the dessert.
Through skillful team shouting, we men won the game, and everybody agreed it had been a pleasant evening. Then the women discovered that their purses, which had been in the kitchen, were gone. While we’d been shouting at the TV, a burglar had sneaked in and stolen them. He’d obviously been watching us through the window. The growling dog had been telling us this.
When we discovered the burglary, different people reacted in different ways. Some called the police; others smoked cigarettes, even though they have technically quit. I decided to go outside and look around the yard for Clues. Perhaps I would even find the perpetrator! Then, drawing on my prowess in the martial arts, I would wet my pants.
I was called back into the house by my wife, who had been informed by the police dispatcher that, by wandering around out in the dark, I was being really, really vigilant. The police came quickly. Needless to say, the dogs barked at them. (The young dogs, I mean; the dead do
g merely checked to see if they were food.) We later concluded that the reason the dogs did NOT bark at the burglar was that (a) they were busy watching the dessert, and (b) the burglar came in through the window, which apparently is not a violation of dog security rules.
The next day the purses were found a few miles away, minus cash but still containing credit cards, drivers’ licenses, makeup, tissues, pharmaceuticals, espresso machines, power tools and whatever else women keep in their purses. So it could have been a lot worse. And we can all learn some valuable lessons from this episode about home security, namely:
We should lock our doors AND windows.
Dogs will give you a lot of “false alarms,” but every now and then they may really know what they’re barking about.
On the other hand, maybe not.
Experts agree that, if you want REAL home security and peace of mind, turtles are worthless.
Nuke the Stalker Sparrow That Fowled Fabio
Before I get to today’s topic, which is celebrity-attacking birds, I want to issue a formal apology to the “Tri Cities.”
The “Tri Cities” are Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick, Washington, which call themselves the “Tri Cities” in proud recognition of the fact that there are three of them. I had not heard of these cities until recently, when I wrote a column about the Hanford contaminated nuclear dump site, which is located near the “Tri Cities.” My column was about the fact that radioactive ants, flies, and gnats had been discovered at Hanford; I expressed concern that they might mutate and become gigantic and attack Los Angeles and suck all the blood out of actress Fran Drescher.
