Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus
Page 19
This was Hyatt’s polite way of saying, “If you steal our towels, we’ll charge you 75 bucks.”
So I stole the sign.
Really. I kept it in my guest bathroom for a couple of years, to amuse guests. When I told the Oprah producer about this, she decided it was perfect, but there was a problem: She said it was “essential” that I bring the sign to the show, so I could deposit it, on the air, in a big “give-back” crate, where they’d be collecting all the stuff that people had stolen. Unfortunately, I was in St. Louis on a book tour, and the sign was back in my guest bathroom in Miami.
So I called my fiancée, Michelle, and asked her to send the sign, via Federal Express, to the Oprah show in Chicago. But with only one day to go, I was desperately afraid that the sign wouldn’t get there on time, and at the last minute they’d cancel my appearance and put on some diet-book author who had confessed to the O.J. slayings, and my big chance would be gone forever.
I spent several anxious hours sitting in my St. Louis hotel room, fretting about this. And then, suddenly, a thought struck me: The hotel was a Hyatt. So I looked around, and sure enough, there was a little plastic sign, very similar to the one I’d stolen. It was actually a no-smoking sign, but I figured that the TV viewers would never know the difference.
So I stole it.
So at this point, I had stolen a SECOND hotel sign, plus I was planning to lie on the air, all so I could get on an Oprah show that was supposed to be about confessing your sins.
As it turned out, when I got to Chicago, the first sign had arrived, and I was able to deposit it in the “give-back” crate. Also I had a nice chat with Oprah, who is—and this is my honest, candid assessment, in no way influenced by any hope that she will have me back on her show—the most perfect human being in world history.
So everything worked out for the best, except I still have a stolen Hyatt “no-smoking” sign. My concern is that the Hotel Theft Police will brand me as a repeat offender and throw me into Hotel Prison, where there’s nothing to eat but pillow chocolates and you never get any sleep because every ten minutes somebody knocks on your cell door and yells “HOUSEKEEPING!”
Actually, that sounds a lot like a book tour.
This is a publicity photo taken by a professional photographer. Professional photographers always make me do wacky stuff like get into a cold pool (which I hate) with a cigar (which I hate); this shows everybody how wacky I am. It’s undignified and demeaning, but I do it, because the only other option would be to get a real job.
About the Author
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and the bestselling author of Dave Barry in Cyberspace, Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys, Dave Barry Turns 40, and other books. He lives in Miami, Florida.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1997 by Dave Barry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following copyrighted material: The Miami Herald for the photographs and the Asbury Park Press for the excerpts from the article “Man Struck with Pasta Also Stabbed.”
Special thanks to Bill Frakes for use of the photograph and to the Popular Music and Society journal for use of the excerpts from the article “Air Ball: Spontaneous Large Group Precision Chanting.”
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Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 98-96346
eISBN: 978-0-307-41975-0
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