I'll Mature When I'm Dead

by Dave Barry

  Over the years, my celebrity status has provided me with certain “perks” that are not available to the public. For example, I was once a Grand Marshal in the Main Street Parade at Walt Disney World. This is a great honor, and if you ever get offered a chance to do it, you should definitely refuse. Number one, you have to wear mouse ears, so if you’re over six years old, you look like an idiot. Number two, despite the fact that you are the Grand Marshal of the parade, you aren’t really in the parade. At least I wasn’t.

  What happened was, they put me and my co-marshal, author Ridley Pearson, into an antique fire truck along with Daisy Duck and Clarabelle the Cow. I have nothing against either of these veteran Disney characters, but let’s be honest, their careers are not currently sizzling, especially in the case of Clarabelle, who hasn’t had a hit cartoon since roughly the Civil War. (Also, not to be catty, but she has had a lot of work done on her udder.)

  So anyway, Ridley and I and our families got into this fire truck with Daisy and Clarabelle, and then they sent us out into the Magic Kingdom, where literally fifty thousand people had been waiting restlessly in the heat to see the legendary Main Street Parade with all its spectacular floats. The problem was that the parade did not follow us. I don’t know if it was a prank or what, but for some reason the parade floats remained back in the staging area for at least ten more minutes. This meant that we were out there basically naked, with no float cover, two idiots in rodent ears sitting next to a B-list duck and cow in a fire truck creeping through this vast sea of restless expectant tourists at the speed of a tectonic plate. It was horrible. We had been instructed to wave, so we grimly waved for the whole parade route (roughly eighty-two miles) but hardly anybody waved back. You could see the puzzlement on their faces as they put down their video cameras and asked each other: “Who are these dorks?” And: “Where’s the actual parade?” And: “Is that Carl Hiaasen next to Clarabelle? ”

  Another “perk” that comes with being a minor celebrity is that I occasionally have the opportunity to interact with celebrities who are actually famous. For example, I once shared a microphone with Bruce Springsteen. This happened because I belong to a rock band called The Rock Bottom Remainders, which consists mostly of authors. Our biggest celebrity author is Stephen King, although he keeps a fairly low profile. For example, once I went to a baseball game with him, and he wore a ball cap, so most people didn’t recognize him. Just before the game started, the actor David Birney arrived and sat two rows in front of us. The woman sitting behind him wanted to get his autograph, but she didn’t have a pen. So she turned around, all excited, and asked if anybody had a pen. She borrowed one, used it to get David Birney’s autograph, then handed the pen back to: Stephen King.

  Anyway, The Rock Bottom Remainders get together once a year to play benefit concerts on behalf of literacy. You may have noticed that for some time now, literacy has been in a steep decline. I’m not saying the Remainders are totally responsible for this, but we’re probably a factor, because as a band, we suck. We routinely play entire songs without ever reaching full agreement on the question of what specific key we are in. So when people hear us perform, their reaction often is: “Maybe literacy isn’t such a great idea.”

  Anyway, one time the Remainders were performing at an event in Los Angeles, and Bruce Springsteen was there, and he joined us onstage for one song. As it happened, he and I shared a microphone, just a couple of celebrities chilling together. Here is a verbatim transcript of everything that was said between us:ME: G-L-O-R-I-A!

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Gloria!

  ME: G-L-O-R-I-A!

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Gloria!

  ME: I’m gonna shout it all night!

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Gloria!

  ME: Gonna sing it everyplace!

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Gloria!

  So to be totally honest, Bruce didn’t say anything to me except “Gloria!” But in the time we spent together, I could tell that, despite his celebrity, he’s a regular guy, a guy who puts his pants on just like everybody else, with the zipper in the front.

  Another perk that comes with being a celebrity is that you get to go into VIP areas. These are areas at clubs or events where only celebrities are allowed to go, so they’ll have some privacy while they engage in exclusive celebrity activities such as standing around. In my experience, this is mainly what VIPs do in their areas: They stand around. It’s not a significantly different experience from standing around in a civilian area. But for some reason, whenever there’s any kind of exclusive area, people develop a fierce desire to stand around inside it.

  It reminds me of lobsters. If you’ve ever looked at a tank of lobsters in a restaurant, you’ve noticed that most of them tend to clump together in one corner of the tank, even though they’d have more room if they spread out. They have decided, for whatever lobster reason, that this corner is more desirable than the other corners, where you might find one or two lobsters who weren’t allowed into the VIP corner because they are losers.

  I witnessed a dramatic demonstration of the pulling power of the VIP area during a party at the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia. Political conventions are excellent places to observe VIP-area-lust, because they’re teeming with high-level Washington-dwelling people who have chosen careers in public service specifically to avoid having any contact with the actual public. These people live for VIP treatment. Do you think that the Secretary of Commerce is motivated by an interest in the activities of the Department of Commerce? Don’t be a moron. Nobody even knows what the Department of Commerce does, including the employees, who spend their days planning elaborate pranks on the Department of Agriculture. No, the reason you want to be Secretary of Commerce is you get to ride around Washington in a limousine containing zero members of the public.

  At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it’s a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it’s a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Undersecretary.

  So at the conventions you have thousands of these highly status-conscious people swarming around, and every night all of them try to get into the same two or three exclusive parties. These parties are a HUGE deal, and it is truly pathetic the way people will whine and beg and grovel to get in. I know, because I’m one of these people. I have attended every political convention from 1984 on, and I estimate that I spend 93 percent of my time, as a professional journalist, trying to get into exclusive parties. Usually I fail, but every now and then I succeed, and it’s amazing, the elation you feel when you talk your way past the gatekeepers, leaving behind the pathetic losers standing around outside, because you know that once you get inside the exclusive party you’re going to have wild monkey sex with dozens of A-list Hollywood celebrities. (Or, if it’s a Republican convention, Bo Derek.)

  No, seriously, all you do at these parties is stand around. Often you don’t even see any A-list celebrities, because they’re standing around in an even more exclusive area inside the party, set aside for VIPs more important than you. Which means that, on some level, you’re still a loser.

  This was the situation I encountered at the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia. I was with a posse of five newspaper cartoonists, and we had managed, with great effort, to grovel our way into an exclusive party in a nightclub, only to discover that we were in the outer VIP area. There was an inner VIP area (possibly containing Bo Derek) that we couldn’t get into.

  We were wandering around when we came across a room with a platform in the middle, about the size of a Ping-Pong table, raised two feet off the floor. For some reason, possibly related to beer consumption, we decided to turn this into our own VIP area. We climbed ont
o the platform and stood there, six guys on a platform. Whenever anybody walked past, we’d shout, “Sorry! VIP area! You can’t come up here!”

  As you can imagine, this caused people to leave the room immediately. So for a while it was just the six of us in our VIP area. But then an amazing thing happened: Dick “Dick” Armey, who at that time was the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, entered the room. We invited him to join us. Incredibly, he agreed.

  So now we had an actual VIP on our VIP platform. This had an immediate and powerful effect on the people entering the room: They’d see the House majority leader, and they wanted to be on the platform. Of course we didn’t let just anyone join us. We were total assholes about it. We admitted only those who belonged to one of three elite groups: (1) people whom Dick Armey knew personally; (2) people whom we knew personally; and (3) women.

  Even so, within minutes we had easily thirty people jammed together on this smallish platform in the middle of an otherwise basically empty room, with more people pleading to be allowed on. Granted, some of these people just wanted to be on the platform as a goof. But I think the majority wanted to be up there because they genuinely believed it was more desirable to be squashed into a VIP area than to stand comfortably in a non-VIP area three feet away.

  Why do people act this way? For the same reason lobsters do: They have brains the size of sesame seeds.

  Which brings us to reality television. As a minor celebrity, I am concerned about the effect it is having on the overall celebrity population. Consider the following celebrity news item, which I found on the People magazine Internet site:KARDASHIAN SISTERS NOT BARING ALL . . . YET

  For now, it’s keeping it on with the Kardashians.

  The three TV reality star sisters—Kim, 28; Khloe, 24; and Kourtney, 29—will not be appearing nude together in a spread in Playboy.

  “Although we would be flattered,” blogs Kim, “no one has even asked us, so I don’t know where this rumor has sparked from.”

  So essentially in this item People is reporting that Kim Kardashian has posted an item on her blog denying an untrue rumor that most people would never have heard of if Kim Kardashian hadn’t posted it on her blog in the first place. In other words, nothing happened. This is considered news because Kim Kardashian is what is known as a “reality show personality.” She has appeared on Dancing with the Stars as well as in a widely distributed homemade sex video. It goes without saying that she also has a fragrance line. Kim and her sisters Khloe and Kourtney are the stars of the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which is about all the fascinating celebrity things that you do when you are a Kardashian, such as eat. Also appearing on the show are other members of the Kardashian Klan, including their mom and their stepfather, Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, whose son, Brody Jenner, is also a reality-show personality, having appeared on a number of reality shows and dated several other reality-show personalities, including Nicole Richie, who was on a reality show with Paris Hilton.12

  My point is that thanks to reality TV, all of these people are now celebrities, despite the fact that the only one who has ever actually done anything is Bruce Jenner.13 And the Kardashians are just a tiny part of the vast, ever-expanding reality-show industry, which is constantly vomiting out new celebrities, adding to the strain on our nation’s already overburdened VIP-area resources.

  Also contributing to the celebrity glut is the disturbing phenomenon of “celebrity DJs.” These are the people who put on headphones and play records while adjusting knobs with expressions of great intensity, as if they are performing a particularly challenging violin solo, when in fact they are PLAYING A FREAKING RECORD, which requires NO MORE ARTISTIC TALENT THAN REHEATING A BURRITO IN A MICROWAVE OVEN.

  I apologize for using capital letters, but this is a serious problem. America has become a nation where more citizens can name the contestants on American Idol than can name their own important government leaders, such as the Secretary of Commerce.

  We need to do something about the celebrity surplus, and I have an idea, which I got from agriculture. Think about it: What do we do when our farms produce surplus wheat, and it starts to pile up in grain silos? We export it to other countries! Do you see where I’m going with this? That’s right: We need to start putting minor celebrities into grain silos.

  If that turns out to be legally questionable, we should export them. This would not be difficult. All we’d have to do is park a cruise ship in Los Angeles and announce a new reality show called Celebrity Cruise with the Stars. Within minutes there would be Kardashians storming up the gangway. As soon as the ship was full, we’d untie it and send it steaming off to someplace that doesn’t produce enough celebrities of its own, such as Asia. Granted, at some point these people might try to get back to the United States. But that is exactly why we have a navy.

  By following this program, America could get back to a saner and simpler time; a time when being a celebrity meant something; a time when it was easier for veteran traditional minor celebrities such as Clarabelle and myself to get into popular restaurants. I know I speak for both of us when I assure you that we will not take this privilege lightly. As celebrities, we will conduct ourselves with dignity and never knowingly pose naked for Playboy without adequate compensation. We recognize that we are role models for the public. This is why I always make sure that I wash my hands after I pee in a public restroom. I don’t want somebody recognizing me and going around telling people, “Hey, you know who doesn’t wash his hands after he pees? Carl Hiaasen!” Because as I say, Carl is a friend.

  Tips for Visiting Miami

  No. 1: Are You Insane?

  Some years ago I proposed a new tourism-promotion slogan for Miami. I even had a bumper sticker made. It said:COME BACK TO MIAMI!

  We Weren’t Shooting at You.

  For some reason this slogan never caught on with Miami’s tourism industry. Which is a shame, because we need to improve our image. According to a poll by the Zogby organization, 67 percent of Americans agree either “somewhat” or “strongly” with the statement that “Miami is plagued by crime.” This is very upsetting to those of us who live here and love our city. It makes us want to visit every single one of those 67 percent of Americans personally, so we can tell them what Miami is really like, and then kill them with machetes.

  But seriously, we are sick and tired of being saddled with the hackneyed, outdated Miami Vice and Scarface image of Miami—a city crawling with homicidal maniac drug dealers like Al Pacino, casually committing horrendous acts of violence and, worse, speaking with ludicrously fake Cuban accents. The truth is that only a small percentage of Miami’s population consists of violent criminals, and the bulk of those are elected officials. The rest of us Miamians are regular people, just like the people in your town: We work hard, try to raise our kids right, and are always ready to help out our neighbors by laying down covering fire when they go outside to get their newspapers.

  I’ll grant you that in the past Miami has had some problems with “putting out the welcome mat” for tourists. I’d say the low point came in 1994, when a group of Norwegians, headed for a vacation in the Bahamas, made a common rookie-visitor mistake: They landed at Miami International Third World Airport

  (Motto: “You Can Have Your Luggage When You Pry It From Our Cold, Dead Fingers”). Most travel experts recommend that even if your final destination is Miami, it’s better to fly to an airport in some other city—if necessary, Seattle—and take a cab from there. Or, as Savvy Air Traveler magazine suggests, “simply jump out of the plane while it’s still over the Atlantic.”

  Nonetheless these Norwegian tourists landed at MIA, where they boarded a free courtesy shuttle van that was supposed to take them to a hotel. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the van was then boarded by two men who diverted it and robbed the Norwegians at gunpoint. That is correct: Their hotel courtesy van was hijacked. This story got BIG play in Norway, which does not have a lot of violent crime. If there
were a TV crime show called CSI: Norway, most of the cases would involve improperly labeled herring.

  So the van hijacking was definitely a “black eye” for Miami tourism. It did not help that in the same year, there was another unfortunate, highly publicized incident involving a European tourist. This was a German who spent the night at a hotel near the Miami airport. When he checked out the next morning, he complained about a bad smell in his room. So a maid went to check it out. She looked under the bed, and, to her horror, she found: an Amway representative.

  No, seriously, what the maid found under the bed was even worse: a human corpse. This was not a recently deceased corpse; the police concluded it had been there for quite a while.

  As you might imagine, this was another story that became a big media deal back in the tourist’s home country. The Germans are known for being finicky about cleanliness. They might let it slide if a hotel housekeeping staff failed to notice a dust bunny or two under the bed, but they draw the line at decayed corpses. If you find a corpse under the bed at a German hotel, you can be sure it’s a fresh corpse. Once again, Miami looked bad.

  But my point is, these stories took place during a different era, specifically: the past. Miami today is a completely different city. What would you say if I told you that, since the year 2000, the city’s overall rate of violent crime is down 17.3 percent, and crime against tourists is down by 36.8 percent? If you would say, “You are totally making those numbers up,” you would be correct. But I’m pretty sure things are better.

  I’m not saying Miami is Disney World. As in any other large urban area, you have to use your common sense to avoid potentially dangerous situations. To give you an idea what I mean by “potentially dangerous situations,” here’s the beginning of a Miami Herald story from November 2006: “A manhunt is on for fifteen men who crashed a baby shower in a rented hall, killed a partygoer, and wounded four other guests with AK-47 assault r ifles.”