DAVE BARRY IS NOT TAKING THIS SITTING DOWN Read online

  “We can peck you to death,” is their unmistakable message, “and the authorities will do nothing to us, because we are ducks.”

  More than once I found myself stomping on the accelerator and rocketing away at top golf-cart speed (“mosey”), with a herd of irate ducks waddling after me, like a terrifying scene from a Steven Spielberg movie called Jurassic Duck.

  But the scariest phenomenon on the golf course, as I noted earlier, is the golfers. Basically, every time they hit the ball, they go through two distinct phases:

  PHASE ONE—They are a foursome of serious, middle-aged accountants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc., gathering around a golf ball, studying it intensely, as though it were an unexploded terrorist bomb. Then one of them takes a club, stands over the ball, waggles his butt around, hauls off and hits the ball, which leads to . . .

  PHASE TWO—All four golfers instantly transform into lunatics, gyrating their bodies and screaming contradictory instructions at the ball (“STAY UP!” “GET DOWN!” “STAY DOWN!” “GET UP!”). They sound like the deranged homeless people you sometimes see shouting on city streets, the difference being that, at least some of the time, somebody might be listening to the deranged homeless people, whereas the ball never listens to the golfers. It goes wherever it wants, laughing the laugh of the truly carefree.

  So what with the golfers and “Gator” and the gangsta ducks, it was a scary day out there on the “links.” But I’m pleased to report that we got through The Dave Barry Classic without any unnecessary deaths, although as of this morning there still were several tee shots that had not yet returned to Earth, so if you live within 250 miles of Miami, you are advised to cower under your bed until further notice.

  And if, God forbid, something bad should happen, you may rest assured that the Red Cross will be there for you.

  Another Road Hog with Too Much Oink

  If there’s one thing this nation needs, it’s bigger cars. That’s why I’m excited that Ford is coming out with a new mound o’ metal that will offer consumers even more total road-squatting mass than the current leader in the humongous-car category, the popular Chevrolet Suburban Subdivision—the first passenger automobile designed to be, right off the assembly line, visible from the Moon.

  I don’t know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the “Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure.” In the TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf, and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface—all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody ever drives on an actual road. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming with deer, squirrels, birds, and other wildlife species that have fled from the forest to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles barreling through the underbrush at 50 miles per hour.

  In the real world, of course, nobody drives Sport Utility Vehicles in the forest, because when you have paid upward of $40,000 for a transportation investment, the last thing you want is squirrels pooping on it. No, if you want a practical “off-road” vehicle, you get yourself a 1973 American Motors Gremlin, which combines the advantage of not being worth worrying about with the advantage of being so ugly that poisonous snakes flee from it in terror.

  In the real world, what people mainly do with their Sport Utility Vehicles, as far as I can tell, is try to maneuver them into and out of parking spaces. I base this statement on my local supermarket, where many of the upscale patrons drive Chevrolet Subdivisions. I’ve noticed that these people often purchase just a couple of items—maybe a bottle of diet water and a two-ounce package of low-fat dried carrot shreds—which they put into the back of their Subdivisions, which have approximately the same cargo capacity, in cubic feet, as Finland. This means there is plenty of room left over back there in case, on the way home, these people decide to pick up something else, such as a herd of bison.

  Then comes the scary part: getting the Subdivision out of the parking space. This is a challenge, because the driver apparently cannot, while sitting in the driver’s seat, see all the way to either end of the vehicle. I drive a compact car, and on a number of occasions I have found myself trapped behind a Subdivision backing directly toward me, its massive metal butt looming high over my head, making me feel like a Tokyo pedestrian looking up at Godzilla.

  I’ve tried honking my horn, but the Subdivision drivers can’t hear me, because they’re always talking on cellular phones the size of Chiclets (“The Bigger Your Car, the Smaller Your Phone,” that is their motto). I don’t know who they’re talking to. Maybe they’re negotiating with their bison suppliers. Or maybe they’re trying to contact somebody in the same area code as the rear ends of their cars, so they can find out what’s going on back there. All I know is, I’m thinking of carrying marine flares, so I can fire them into the air as a warning to Subdivision drivers that they’re about to run me over. Although frankly I’m not sure they’d care if they did. A big reason why they bought a Sport Utility Vehicle is “safety,” in the sense of, “you, personally, will be safe, although every now and then you may have to clean the remains of other motorists out of your wheel wells.”

  Anyway, now we have the new Ford, which will be even larger than the Subdivision, which I imagine means it will have separate decks for the various classes of passengers, and possibly, way up in front by the hood ornament, Leonardo DiCaprio showing Kate Winslet how to fly. I can’t wait until one of these babies wheels into my supermarket parking lot. Other motorists and pedestrians will try to flee in terror, but they’ll be sucked in by the Ford’s powerful gravitational field and become stuck to its massive sides like so many refrigerator magnets. They won’t be noticed, however, by the Ford’s driver, who will be busy whacking at the side of his or her head, trying to dislodge his or her new cell phone, which is the size of a single grain of rice and has fallen deep into his or her ear canal.

  And it will not stop there. This is America, darn it, and Chevrolet is not about to just sit by and watch Ford walk away with the coveted title of Least Sane Motor Vehicle. No, cars will keep getting bigger: I see a time, not too far from now, when upscale suburbanites will haul their overdue movies back to the video-rental store in full-size, 18-wheel tractor-trailers with names like The Vagabond. It will be a proud time for all Americans, a time for us to cheer for our country. We should cheer loud, because we’ll be hard to hear, inside the wheel wells.

  Bon Appétit

  Today’s topic is: The Art of Cooking

  Cooking was invented in prehistoric times, when a primitive tribe had a lucky accident. The tribe had killed an animal and was going to eat it raw, when a tribe member named Woog tripped and dropped it into the fire. At first the other tribe members were angry at Woog, but then, as the aroma of burning meat filled the air, they had an idea. So they ate Woog raw.

  Yes, cooking can be hazardous. I learned this lesson from a dramatic true incident that occurred in my childhood. My family was at home, waiting for company to arrive; my mom was cooking one of her specialties, creamed chipped beef, in a double boiler. There was a knock at the door, and we all went to the living room to greet our company, which was fortunate because at exactly the instant we opened the door, the double boiler exploded violently, sending what seemed like thousands of gallons of creamed chipped beef flying in all directions with tremendous force. I believe that if there are intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, one day their astronomers will detect traces of this particular entree spreading out across the cosmos at nearly the speed of light, and they will, by extrapolating backward, calculate that a cataclysmic Big Beef Bang took place on Earth in 1958.

  The point is that, as a safety precaution, you should never cook anything, including toast, without wearing a welding helmet. Also you should choose a recipe that is appropriate for the individuals who will be
eating it. For example, you do not need to make an elaborate dish if the individuals are dogs. A dog will eat pretty much anything; one major reason why there are no restaurants for dogs is that the customers would eat the menus. So a dog will happily eat the same recipe forever. You can feed a dog “kibble,” which is actually compressed dirt, every single day for 13 years, and the dog will consider you to be the greatest cook in world history. It will lick the ground you walk on.

  The situation is similar with guys. Guys generally like to find a recipe that works for them and stick with it. For example, I know a sportswriter named Bob who, to my knowledge, has never in his life cooked anything except Stouffer’s frozen French bread pizza. This is all he has in his freezer. If he hosted a Thanksgiving dinner, he’d serve a large Stouffer’s French bread pizza, stuffed with smaller Stouffer’s French bread pizzas. At the Stouffer’s factory, they probably have a whole department devoted exclusively to Bob, called “The Department of Bob,” which monitors Bob’s pizza consumption and has a fleet of loaded resupply trucks ready to roll when he runs low.

  If you’re not cooking for guys or dogs, you should use a more elaborate “gourmet” type of recipe, which you can find in magazines such as Bon Appétit (literal translation: “Chow Down”). The problem here is that the people who are creating these recipes are also snorking down cooking wine by the gallon, and after a while they start making up words. Take “fennel.” There is no such thing as “fennel,” yet many of your gourmet recipes call for it. Other examples of imaginary ingredients are “shallots,” “capers,” and “arugula.” So what frequently happens when you try to make a gourmet recipe is, you’re progressing briskly through the steps, and suddenly you come across an instruction that the gourmet chef obviously dreamed up moments before passing out face-down in the béarnaise sauce, such as “Carmelize eight minced hamouti kleebers into a reduction of blanched free-range whelk corneas.”

  Thus to be a successful cook, you need to learn how to adapt gourmet recipes to the “real world” by making substitutions. For example, recently I was looking through the December issue of Bon Appétit, and I found a recipe called “Sweet Potato Soup with Lobster and Orange Crème Fraîche.” I was very interested in making this recipe; the problem was that some of the ingredients, such as “leeks,” were obviously imaginary, whereas others, such as lobster, were members of the cockroach family. No problem! I simply looked around my kitchen for appropriate substitute ingredients, and I was able to adapt the Bon Appétit recipe to meet my specific needs, as follows:

  SWEET POTATO SOUP WITH LOBSTER AND ORANGE CRÈME FRAÎCHE

  In a medium room, remove wrappers from eight miniature Three Musketeers bars left over from Halloween.

  Eat bars.

  Feed wrappers to dog.

  With a little ingenuity, you can achieve results very much like this in your own kitchen. I bet that when word of your culinary prowess gets around, people will be flocking to your door! Let’s hope they’re bringing pizza.

  Road Warrior

  If you do much driving on our nation’s highways, you’ve probably noticed that, more and more often, bullets are coming through your windshield. This is a common sign of Road Rage, which the opinion-makers in the news media have decided is a serious problem, currently ranking just behind global warming and several points ahead of Asia.

  How widespread is Road Rage? To answer that question, researchers for the National Institute of Traffic Safety recently did a study in which they drove on the interstate highway system in a specially equipped observation van. By the third day, they were deliberately running other motorists off the road.

  “These people are MORONS!” was their official report.

  That is the main cause of Road Rage: the realization that many of your fellow motorists have the same brain structure as a cashew. The most common example, of course, is the motorists who feel a need to drive in the left-hand, or “passing,” lane, even though they are going slower than everybody else. Nobody knows why these motorists do this. Maybe they belong to some kind of religious cult that believes the right lane is sacred and must never come in direct contact with tires. Maybe one time, years ago, these motorists happened to be driving in the left lane when their favorite song came on the radio, so they’ve driven over there ever since, in hopes that the radio will play that song again.

  But whatever makes these people drive this way, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can honk at them, but it will have no effect. People have been honking at them for years: It’s a normal part of their environment. They’ve decided that, for some mysterious reason, wherever they drive, there is honking. They choose not to ponder this mystery any further, lest they overburden their cashews.

  I am very familiar with this problem, because I live and drive in Miami, which proudly bills itself as The Inappropriate-Lane-Driving Capital Of The World, a place where the left lane is thought of not so much as a thoroughfare as a public recreational area, where motorists feel free to stop, hold family reunions, barbecue pigs, play volleyball, etc. Compounding this problem is another common type of Miami motorist, the aggressive young male whose car has a sound system so powerful that the driver must go faster than the speed of sound at all times, because otherwise the nuclear bass notes emanating from his rear speakers will catch up to him and cause his head to explode.

  So the tiny minority of us Miami drivers who actually qualify as normal find ourselves constantly being trapped behind people drifting along on the interstate at the speed of diseased livestock, while at the same time we are being tailgated and occasionally bumped from behind by testosterone-deranged youths who got their driver training from watching the space-fighter battle scenes in Star Wars. And of course nobody EVER signals or yields, and people are CONSTANTLY cutting us off, and AFTER A WHILE WE START TO FEEL SOME RAGE, OK? YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, MISTER NEWS MEDIA OPINION-MAKER??

  In addition to Road Rage, I frequently experience Parking Lot Rage, which occurs when I pull into a crowded supermarket parking lot, and I see people get into their car, clearly ready to leave, so I stop my car and wait for them to vacate the spot, and . . . nothing happens! They just stay there! WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING IN THERE??!! COOKING DINNER???

  When I finally get into the supermarket, I often experience Shopping Cart Rage. This is caused by the people—and you just KNOW these are the same people who always drive in the left-hand lane—who routinely manage, by careful placement, to block the entire aisle with a single shopping cart. If we really want to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States, we should employ Miami residents armed with shopping carts; we’d only need about two dozen to block the entire Mexican border.

  What makes the supermarket congestion even worse is that shoppers are taking longer and longer to decide what to buy, because every product in America now comes in an insane number of styles and sizes. For example, I recently went to the supermarket to get orange juice. For just one brand of orange juice, Tropicana, I had to decide whether I wanted Original, HomeStyle, Pulp Plus, Double Vitamin C, Grovestand, Calcium, or Old-Fashioned; I also had to decide whether I wanted the 16-ounce, 32-ounce, 64-ounce, 96-ounce, or six-pack size. This is WAY too many product choices. It caused me to experience Way Too Many Product Choices Rage. I would have called Tropicana and complained, but I probably would have wound up experiencing Automated Phone Answering System Rage (“. . . For questions about Pulp Plus in the 32-ounce size, press 23. For questions about Pulp Plus in the 64-ounce size, press 24. For questions about . . .”).

  My point is that there are many causes for rage in our modern world, and if we’re going to avoid unnecessary violence, we all need to “keep our cool.” So let’s try to be more considerate, OK? Otherwise I will kill you.

  Weird Science

  Today’s topic for young people is: How to Do a School Science-Fair Project

  So your school is having a science fair! Great! The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American sch
ool system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.

  Ha ha! No, seriously, although a science fair can seem like a big “pain,” it can help you understand important scientific principles, such as Newton’s First Law of Inertia, which states: “A body at rest will remain at rest until 8:45 P.M. the night before the science-fair project is due, at which point the body will come rushing to the body’s parents, who are already in their pajamas, and shout, ‘I JUST REMEMBERED THE SCIENCE FAIR IS TOMORROW AND WE GOTTA GO TO THE STORE RIGHT NOW!’ ”

  Being driven to the store by pajama-wearing parents at the last minute is the most important part of any science-fair project, because your project, to be legal, must have an Official Science-Fair Display Board. This is a big white board that you fold into three sections, thus giving it the stability that it needs to collapse instantly when approached by humans. The international scientific community does not recognize any scientific discovery that does not have an Official Science-Fair Display Board teetering behind it; many top scientists fail to win the Nobel Prize for exactly this reason.

  Once you have returned home and gotten your display board folded into three sections (allow about six hours for this) it’s time to start thinking about what kind of project to do. The prize-winning projects are the ones that clearly yet imaginatively demonstrate an interesting scientific principle. So you can forget about winning a prize. What you need is a project that can be done at 1 A.M. using materials found in your house. Ideally, it should also involve a minimum of property damage or death, which is why, on the advice of this newspaper’s legal counsel, we are not going to discuss some of our popular project topics from previous years, such as “What Is Inside Plumbing?” and “Flame-Proofing Your Cat.”