by Dave Barry
Because Tom and Gene are severely rhythmically impaired, neither one could actually chant “Air Ball;” they both just nervously blurted it out a few times very fast—airballairballairball—and there was no way to determine, without sensitive instruments, what, if any, musical key they were in. But it could have been F.
Anyway, my research convinced me that Professor Heaton is correct: Something is causing Americans to chant “Air Ball” in F. But what? I believe that the most logical explanation—you probably thought of this—is: extraterrestrials. As you know if you watch the TV documentary series The X-Files, when anything weird happens, extraterrestrials are almost always responsible. In this case, beings from another galaxy are probably trying to communicate with us by transmitting powerful radio beams that penetrate basketball fans’ brains and cause them to “spontaneously” chant in the key of F. I imagine that eventually the aliens will switch the fans to another key, such as A, and then maybe C, and so on until the aliens have musically spelled out some intergalactic message to humanity, such as “FACE A DEAD CABBAGE.”
Or it could be something else. I have no idea what they’re trying to tell us; I just know we’d better do what they say. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling an overpowering urge to do “the wave.”
READY TO
WEAR
Today’s Topic Is: Fashion Tips for Men
This topic was suggested by a letter from John Cog of Norfolk, Virginia. Here’s the entire text:
“How come when I’m standing in front of a full-length mirror with nothing on but socks, white socks look OK, but dark-colored socks make me look cheap and sleazy?”
This letter was passed along to me by my Research Department, Judi Smith, who attached a yellow stick-on note that says: “This is true.” Judi did not say how she happens to know it’s true; apparently—and I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation—she has seen John Cog of Norfolk, Virginia, wearing nothing but socks.
But the point is that dark socks, as a lone fashion accessory, create a poor impression. This is a known fact that has been verified in scientific experiments wherein fashion researchers put little white socks on one set of naked laboratory rats, and dark socks on another, then exposed both groups to a panel of leading business executives such as Bill Gates, who indicated that they would be “somewhat more likely” to hire from the white-sock group, should their personnel needs ever include a rat.
What this means, men, is that if you’re dressing for an important job interview, church supper, meeting with my Research Department, or other occasion where you could wind up wearing nothing but socks, they should be white.
Likewise, if you’re going to be wearing just your underwear, you should always tuck your undershirt way down into your underpants. This is the “look” favored by the confident, sharp-dressing men found in the underwear section of the now-defunct Sears catalog, who are often depicted standing around in Rotary-Club-like groups, looking relaxed and smiling, as if to say: “Our undershirts are tucked way down into our underpants, and we could not feel better about it!”
These men live in Sears Catalog Men’s Underwear Town, where all the residents, including on-duty police officers, wear only underwear. All the residents are always in a good mood because they live only a few pages away from Sears Catalog Women’s Underwear Town, which is occupied by hundreds of women who stand around all day wearing nothing but brassieres and underpants and thinking nothing of it. Sometimes, late at night, they all get together for wild parties in the Power Tools section.
The happy mood in the Sears underwear towns stands in stark contrast to the mood in Calvin Klein Perfume-Ad Town, where you’d think people would be ecstatic, because they’re always writhing around in naked coeducational groups like worms in a bait bucket, but they always have troubled expressions on their faces, as if they’re thinking: “Somebody in this coeducational group had Mexican food for lunch.”
One last underwear tip: No doubt your mom always told you that your underwear should be clean and free of holes or stains, because you might get in a car crash and be taken, unconscious, to the hospital, and people would see your underwear and possibly ridicule it. Your mom was absolutely right, as we can see from the following unretouched transcript from the emergency room of a major hospital:
Doctor: What do we have here?
Nurse: We have a car-crash victim who has severe head trauma and a broken neck and massive internal injuries and is spewing blood like a fire hydrant.
Doctor (briskly): Okay, let’s take a look at his underwear… WHOA! How do you get Cheez Whiz THERE?
(Laughter from everybody in the emergency room, including gunshot victims.)
Our final fashion tip for men concerns those special occasions when, for whatever reason, you want to wear something on top of your underwear. What style of clothing is right for you? The answer—taking into consideration your particular age, build, coloring, and personality—is: “clothing that has been picked out by a woman.” Because the sad truth is that males, as a group, have the fashion sense of cement.
Oh, I realize that there are exceptions—men who know how to pick out elegant suits and perfectly color-coordinated accessories. But for every man walking around looking tasteful, there are at least ten men walking around wearing orange plaid Bermuda shorts with non-matching boxer shorts sticking out above AND below, and sometimes also poking out through the fly.
Men are genetically programmed to select ugly clothing. This dates back millions of years, to when primitive tribal men, responsible for defending their territory, would deck themselves out in face paint, animal heads, and nose bones so as to look really hideous and scare off enemy tribes. If some prehistoric tribal warriors had somehow got hold of modern golf clothing, they would have ruled the rain forest.
In conclusion, men, please remember that the fashion tips contained in this column are just the “basics.” To learn more about the current men’s fashion “scene,” get a copy of Esquire or GQ and study the ads and articles presenting the latest styles, making a mental note to never, ever wear any of them, because unless you’re a male model, you’d look stupid. Just wear a regular blue suit like everybody else and try to have both shoes the same color. You can get that Cheez Whiz out with bleach.
FORE PLAY
It’s a gloriously sunny day in Miami, and I’m standing in a semicircle of maybe 500 people on a carpet of lush, sweet-smelling, green-glinting grass, the kind that makes you want to get naked and roll around on your back like a dog.
But the people around me are not doing that. They’re silent and solemn, like a church congregation, except that a lot of them are smoking cigars. They’re staring intently at some tiny figures way off in the distance. I’m staring, too, but I can’t quite make out what the figures are doing.
Suddenly the crowd murmurs, and 500 heads jerk skyward in unison. I still can’t see anything. The crowd holds its breath, waiting, waiting, and then suddenly …
PLOP
… a little white ball falls from the sky, lands in the middle of the semicircle, and starts rolling. Immediately the crowd members are shouting at it angrily.
“Bite!” they shout, spewing saliva and cigar flecks. “BITE!!” This is how they tell the ball they want it to stop rolling.
The ball, apparently fearing for its life, stops. The crowd members applaud and cheer wildly They’re acting as though the arrival of this ball is the highlight of their lives.
Which maybe it is. These are, after all, golf fans. And this ball was personally hit by—prepare to experience a heart seizure—Jack Nicklaus.
This exciting moment in sports occurred at the Doral-Ryder Open golf tournament, an event on the professional golf tour, wherein the top golfers from all over the world gather together to see who can take the longest amount of time to actually hit the ball.
I don’t know about you, but when I play golf—which I have done a total of three times in my life—I don’t waste a lot of time. I just gr
ab a club, stride briskly to the ball, take a hearty swing, then check to see if the ball has moved from its original location. If it hasn’t, I take another hearty swing, repeating this process as necessary until the ball is gone, which is my cue to get out another ball, because I know from harsh experience that I will never in a million years find the first one. I keep this up until there are no balls left, which is my cue to locate the part of the golfing facility where they sell beer. In other words, I play an exciting, nonstop-action brand of golf that would be ideal for spectators, except for the fact that most of them would be killed within minutes.
Your professional golfer, on the other hand, does not even think about hitting a ball until he has conducted a complete geological and meteorological survey of the situation—circling the ball warily, as though it were a terrorist device, checking it out from every possible angle; squatting and squinting; checking the wind; taking soil samples; analyzing satellite photographs; testing the area for traces of O.J. Simpson’s DNA, etc. Your professional golfer takes longer to line up a six-foot putt than the Toyota corporation takes to turn raw iron ore into a Corolla.
I know that it may sound boring to watch grown men squat for minutes on end, but when you see a pro tournament in person—when you’re actually watching these world-class golfers line up their shots—it is in fact unbelievably boring. At least it was for me. I would rank it, as a spectator sport, with transmission repair.
“HIT THE BALL, ALREADY!” is what I wanted to shout at Jack Nicklaus, but I did not, because the crowd would have turned on me, and my lifeless body would have been found later buried in a sand trap, covered with cigar burns. Because these fans worship the golfers, and they seem to be truly fascinated by the squatting and squinting process. The more time that passed with virtually nothing happening, the more excited the golf fans became, until finally, when Jack got ready to take the extreme step of actually hitting the ball, everybody was nearly crazy with anticipation, although nobody was making a peep, because putting is an extremely difficult and highly technical activity that—unlike, for example, brain surgery—must be performed in absolute silence.
And so, amid an atmosphere of tension comparable to that of a Space Shuttle launch, Jack finally bent over the ball, drew back his putter, and gently tapped the ball.
“GET IN THE HOLE!” the crowd screamed at the ball. “GET IN THE HOLE!”
The ball, of course, did not go in the hole. Your world-class golfers miss a surprising number of short putts. Too much squatting, if you ask me.
“NO!” shouted the crowd, when the ball stopped, maybe an inch from the hole. Some men seemed to be near tears; some were cursing openly. These people were furious at the ball. They did not blame Jack. Jack worked hard to line up this putt, and here this idiot ball let him down.
But Jack was magnanimous. He tapped the ball in, and the fans applauded wildly, as well they should have, because it is not every day that you see a person cause a little ball to roll six feet.
When Jack had acknowledged the applause, the next famous world-class golfer in his group, John Daly, began considering the many, many complex factors involved in his putt, which he will probably be ready to attempt no later than June. Let me know if he makes it. I’ll be in the grass just beyond the refreshment area, rolling around like a dog.
This is me getting ready to go for a ride in a stunt biplane. It was tremendously exciting and fun. Then we took off, and it was horrible. This happened in 1987, and I am still nauseated.
WARP
SPEED
Here’s what I want you to do: Open your mouth wide. Now take your index finger and stick it WAAAYYYY down your throat and hold it there until your digestive system is in Violent Reverse Thrust Mode.
Congratulations! You’ve just experienced what it feels like to fly in a fighter jet. I know this because I recently went up in a high-performance Air Force F-16 fighter equipped with an extremely powerful engine, sophisticated electronics, spectacular aerobatic capabilities, and—thank God—a barf bag.
There was no beverage-cart service.
The way I got into this was, I spoke at a banquet for personnel at the Homestead (Florida) Air Reserve Base, which is slowly recovering after having had large sectors of it blown into another dimension by Hurricane Andrew. A banquet organizer had suggested that I might want to go up in an F-16, and some friendly fighter pilots from the 93rd Fighter Squadron convinced me (there WAS beverage service at this banquet) that this would be a lot of fun.
Valuable Tip: Never assume that you and fighter pilots have the same definition of “fun.” Your fighter pilot is not a normal individual. Your fighter pilot is an individual who, as a child, liked to ride his bicycle “no-hands.” You may also have done this, but your future fighter pilot was doing it on the roof of his house. The fact that these pilots have grown up and received a lot of training and been entrusted by the government with multimillion-dollar aircraft does not change the fact that they are also—and I say this with respect—completely out of their minds.
But I was feeling brave when I arrived at Homestead Air Reserve Base, ready for my preflight training. Friendly Air Force personnel got me a flight suit; while I was putting it on in the locker room, I noticed that there was a little gold plaque over each urinal, each saying something like “MAJ. GEN. (Name) RELIEVED HIMSELF HERE SEPTEMBER 9, 1989.” Then I noticed similar gold plaques over the sinks. Then I saw a plaque on the washing machine, reading: “THE ENTIRE 906TH TACTICAL FIGHTER GROUP RELIEVED THEMSELVES HERE MARCH 8, 1991.”
Fighter-pilot humor. And I was trusting these guys.
Next I underwent an hour of Egress Training, which is when you learn how you get out of the airplane if something goes wrong (“although probably nothing will,” they keep telling you). How you get out is: very, very fast. In fact, your seat is actually a small but powerful rocket that will blast you 900 feet straight up if you yank on the yellow handle between your legs, but you’re supposed to do this only if the pilot yells “BAIL OUT BAIL OUT BAIL OUT”—he has to say it three times—and you definitely want to have your head back when you yank it unless you want your kneecaps to pass completely through your eye sockets, which would be bad because you need to check to make sure your parachute has deployed, because if it hasn’t you should yank on this other yellow lever over here, and if you’re coming down over water you need to inflate your life preserver by pulling on these two red knobs, but first you have to get rid of your oxygen mask by pressing outward on these two metal tabs and yanking the mask forward and …
… and so on for an hour. Correctly egressing a fighter jet requires WAY more knowledge than medical school.
After Egress Training, the pilot, Major Derek Rydholm, gave me a Preflight Briefing in which he demonstrated, using a blackboard eraser, some of the aerial maneuvers we’d be doing.
“We’ll be simulating at attack situation like this,” he’d say, moving the eraser around in rapid little arcs. “We’ll be feeling some g-forces.”
I now realize that, right after we left the briefing room, the eraser threw up.
Actually, my F-16 ride went pretty well at first. Sitting behind Derek in the two-person cockpit, I felt nervous, but my physical discomfort was fairly minor.
Then we took off.
We took off with afterburners. It was like in Star Trek, when they go to Warp Speed. Then we made an unbelievably sudden, violent right turn that made me feel like a clove in a giant garlic press and separated my stomach from the rest of my body by at least two football fields.
And that was just taking off. After that we did attack maneuvers. We did rolls. We broke the sound barrier and then flew straight up for three miles. Then we flew upside down. My stomach never caught up with us. It’s still airborne over the Florida Keys, awaiting landing instructions. Here’s the conversation Derek and I had over the intercom:
Derek: That’s called an aileron roll.
Me: BLEAAARRGGGHH
Derek: You okay back there?
> Me: HOOOGGGGHHHH
I’m not saying it wasn’t thrilling. It was. I am deeply indebted to Derek Rydholm and the 93rd Fighter Squadron and the entire U.S. Air Force for enabling me to be among the very few people who can boast that they have successfully lost their lunch upside down at five times the Earth’s gravitational pull. And despite my discomfort, and the reservations I’ve expressed in this column, I can honestly say that, if I ever get a chance to go up again, I’ll let you go instead. Although you probably won’t get to ride in the plane I used. I think they had to burn it.
DASHING THROUGH
THE SNOW…
Skiing is an exciting winter sport, but it is not for everybody. For example, it is not for sane people. Sane people look at skiing, and they say: “WAIT a minute. I’m supposed to attach slippery objects to my feet and get on a frozen chair dangling from a scary-looking wire; then get dumped off on a snow-covered slope so steep that the mountain goats are wearing seat belts; and then, if by some miracle I am able to get back down without killing myself, I’m supposed to do this AGAIN??”
As I get older—which I am currently doing at the rate of about five years per year—this is more and more how I view skiing. I’ve been looking for an alternative winter sport that does not force a person to become so intimately involved with gravity. And so recently I went to Idaho (official state motto: “Convenient to Montana”) to experience two winter sports that seemed better-suited to the mature sportsperson in the sense that you can do them while sitting down. In an effort to make my trip as tax-deductible as humanly possible, I’ve decided to write a two-part series about these sports. This week’s Featured Winter Sport is: snowmobiling.
