by Dave Barry
We gathered around to watch Larry fight the barracuda. His plan was to catch it, weigh it, and release it with a warning. After 10 minutes he almost had it to the boat, and we were all pretty excited for him, when all of a sudden ...
BA-DUMP ... BA-DUMP ...
Those of you who read music recognize this as the soundtrack from the motion picture Jaws. Sure enough, cruising right behind Larry’s barracuda, thinking sushi, was: a shark. And not just any shark. It was a hammerhead shark, perennial winner of the coveted Oscar for Ugliest Fish. It has a weird, T-shaped head with a big eyeball on each tip, so that it can see around both sides of a telephone pole. This ability is of course useless for a fish, but nobody would dare try to explain this to a hammerhead.
The hammerhead, its fin breaking the surface, zigzagged closer to Larry’s barracuda, then surged forward.
“Oh ****!” went Larry, reeling furiously.
CHOMP went the hammerhead, and suddenly Larry’s barracuda was in a new weight division.
CHOMP went the hammerhead again, and now Larry was competing in an entirely new category, Fish Consisting of Only a Head.
The boys were staring at the remainder of the barracuda, deeply impressed.
“This is your leg,” said the dentist. “This is your leg in Jaws. Any questions?”
The boys, for the first time all day, were quiet.
Captains Uncourageous
There comes a time in a man’s life when he hears the call of the sea. “Hey, YOU!” are the sea’s exact words.
If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately. That’s what I should have done recently when I was called to sea by my friends Hannah and Paddy, who had rented a sailboat in the Florida Keys. They love to sail. Their dream is to quit their jobs and sail around the world, living a life of carefree adventure until their boat is sunk by an irate whale and they wind up drifting in a tiny raft and fighting over who gets to eat the sun block. At least that’s the way I see it turning out. The only safe way to venture onto the ocean is aboard a cruise ship the size of a rural school district. Even then you’re not safe, because you might become trapped in your cabin due to bodily expansion. Cruise ships carry thousands of tons of high-calorie food, and under maritime law they cannot return to port until all of it has been converted into passenger fat. So there are at least eight feedings a day. Crew members often creep into cabins at night and use high-pressure hoses to shoot cheesecake directly down the throats of sleeping passengers.
But on cruise ships you rarely find yourself dangling from poles, which is more than I can say for the sailboat rented by Hannah and Paddy. The captain was a man named Dan, who used to be a race-car driver until he had heart trouble and switched from fast cars to sailboats, which are the slowest form of transportation on Earth with the possible exception of airline flights that go through O’Hare. Sometimes I suspect that sailboats never move at all, and the only reason they appear to go from place to place is continental drift.
Nevertheless, we were having a pleasant day on Captain Dan’s boat, the Jersey Girl, doing busy nautical things like hoisting the main stizzen and mizzening the aft beam, and meanwhile getting passed by other boats, seaweed, lobsters, glaciers, etc. The trouble arose when we attempted to enter a little harbor so we could go to a bar featuring a band headed by a large man named Richard. This band is called—really—Big Dick and the Extenders. We were close enough to hear them playing when the Jersey Girl plowed into what nautical experts call the “bottom.”
The problem was an unusually low tide. Helpful people in smaller boats kept telling us this.
“It’s an unusually low tide!” they’d shout helpfully as they went past. They were lucky the Jersey Girl doesn’t have a cannon.
We’d been sitting there for quite a while when Captain Dan suggested, with a straight face, that if some of us held on to a large pole called the boom and swung out over the water, our weight might make the boat lean over enough to get free. I now realize that this was a prank. Fun-loving sailboat captains are probably always trying to get people out on the boom, but most people aren’t that stupid.
We, however, had been substantially refreshed by beverages under a hot sun, so we actually did it. Four of us climbed up, hung our stomachs over the boom, kicked off from the side of the boat, and NOOOOOO ...
Picture a giant shish-kebab skewer sticking out sideways from a boat 10
feet over the water, except instead of pieces of meat on it, there are four out-of-shape guys, faces pale and sweating, flabby legs flailing, ligaments snapping like rifle shots. We instantly became a tourist attraction. A crowd gathered on shore, laughing and pointing. Some of them were probably sailboat captains.
“Look!” they were probably saying. “Captain Dan got FOUR of them out on the boom! A new record!”
Meanwhile, next to me, Paddy, a middle-aged attorney who is not, let’s be honest, built like an Olympic gymnast, who is in fact built a lot like a gym, was saying, in an unusually high voice, “We better bring the boom back now. OK? Now? OK?? WE BETTER BRING THE BOOM BACK NOW! BRING-THE-BOOM-BACK-NOW!! I SAID ...”
“HANG ON!” Captain Dan was shouting. “She’s about to move!”
People on shore were now taking pictures.
“IT’S AN UNUSUALLY LOW TIDE!” a helpful boater was shouting.
“Please,” Paddy was saying, very quietly now.
“I think she’s moving!” Captain Dan sang out.
In fact, the Jersey Girl was exhibiting no more flotation than central Nebraska. As I clung to the boom, listening to Paddy whimper, two thoughts penetrated my pain: (1) He was paying for this experience; and (2) If you have to die, you want it to be for a noble cause. You don’t want it to be for Big Dick and the Extenders.
It turned out we didn’t die. We finally got swung back onto the boat and began thinking about leading our lives without moving any muscles ever again. And eventually Captain Dan got the boat unstuck. He needed the help of a motorboat. I am certain this was also true of Columbus.
The Living Bra
I had hoped that we could get the new year under way without any reports of ecologically dangerous shellfish attacking women’s undergarments, but I see now that I was a fool.
I have here an alarming news article written by Christopher Taylor of the Watertown (New York) Dally Times and sent in by several alert readers. The headline, which I am not making up, says: LARGE COLONY OF ZEBRA MUSSELS FOUND CLINGING TO BIG BRASSIERE.
In case you haven’t heard, the zebra mussel is a hot new environmental threat. Forget the killer bees. Oh, sure, they got a lot of scary headlines—KILLER BEES SIGHTED IN MEXICO; KILLER BEES SIGHTED IN TEXAS; KILLER BEES BECOME AMWAY DISTRIBUTORs—but they never lived up to their potential. Whereas at this very moment, the zebra mussel is raging out of control in the Great Lakes region. Well, OK, maybe “raging” is a strong term. As a rule, mussels don’t rage. You rarely hear swimmers being advised: “If you see a mussel, try to remain calm, and whatever you do, don’t provoke it.”
Nevertheless, we have reason to fear the zebra mussel, which gets its name from the fact that it roams the plains of Africa in giant herds.
No, seriously, it gets its name from the fact that it has a striped shell, which grows to about an inch long. About five years ago a group of zebra mussels, possibly carrying forged passports, came from Europe to the Great Lakes in the bilge water of a European ship, and they’ve been reproducing like crazy ever since. They are the Sex Maniacs of the Sea. Here’s a quote from an August 1991 Washin ton Post article:
“Each female can produce 30,000 eggs a year, leading to huge colonies of billions of the animals clinging to every available surface. Recently, marine biologists have discovered concentrations reaching 700,000 mussels a cubic yard. ...”
So apparently spaying them on an individual basis is out of the question. But something has to be done, because zebra mussels are clogging up water-supply pipes, and they’re spreading fast. Controlling them
could cost billions of dollars—money that will have to come out of the pockets of the scumballs who wrecked the savings-and-loan industry.
No! That was another joke! The money will of course come from low-life taxpayers such as yourself, which is why you need to stay informed about this story, especially the giant-brassiere angle. Here are the key quotes from the Watertown Daily Times story:
A large brassiere pulled from waters near the Genesee River at Rochester was carrying the largest colony of zebra mussels found so far in Lake Ontario. ...
The brassiere—and the mussels—are now under observation at the Department of Environmental Conservation Fisheries Research Station at Cape Vincent.
DEC Supervisory Aquatic Biologist Gerard C. LeTendre said the bra was scooped up while DEC staff were trawling for dead lake trout near the Genesee River ... Because of the size of the garment, Mr. LeTendre said, more than 100 mussels had managed to attach themselves to it.
“Whoever that bra belonged to was of large proportions,” Mr. LeTendre said. “It was huge.”
This episode raises a number of troubling questions, including:
* They were trawling for dead trout?
* Is that sporting?
* Could it possibly be that the zebra mussels have become carniverous and ate the original bra occupant?
* Has anybody seen Dolly Parton in person recently?
In an effort to get to the bottom of this, I called the research station and grilled Gerard LeTendre.
“Is it true,” I said, “that you have a large brassiere under observation?”
“It’s really just in a box in my office,” he said. “The newspaper made it sound like we have it in an aquarium.”
He also said they still don’t know who owns the bra.
“We know it’s a four-hook bra,” he said. “But it didn’t belong to a large person. It was just a very well-endowed person.
He said that many people have offered suggestions about what to do with the bra, including “holding a Cinderella-type contest to see who it fits.”
For now, however, the mystery remains unsolved. Meanwhile, the zebra mussels continue to multiply. Even as you read these words, a huge colony of them could be clustering ominously around a Sears catalog that fell overboard, nudging it open to the foundation-garments section. It is a chilling thought, and until the authorities come up with a plan of action, I am urging everybody to take the sensible precaution of developing a nervous facial tic. Also, if you must wear a brassiere, please wear it on the outside, where the Department of Environmental Conservation can keep an eye on it. Thank you.
Reader Alert
This section contains several true-life adventures, including the incident wherein Calvin Trillin and I came within inches of being savagely attacked by a dangerous and heavily armed criminal. Or possibly not. (I should note for the record that Trillin claims he acted much more heroically than the way he is depicted in this column; my feeling about that is, if he wants to appear heroic, he should write his own column about it.)
This section also contains the column I wrote about my first encounter with the world-famous Lawn Rangers precision lawnmower drill team of Arcola, Illinois. Since then I’ve returned to Arcola twice to march with this proud unit in the annual Broom Corn parade, a wonderful small-town, heartland event that features a tremendous outpouring of what can only be described as “beer.”
Crime Busters
Somebody has got to do something about crime in the streets. Every day it seems as though there are more criminals running loose out there, and the quality of their work is pathetic.
I base this statement on a crime experience I had recently in the streets of New York City while visiting Calvin Trillin, who lives in New York and divides his time pretty much equally between being a well-known writer and trying to park his car. This experience, which I am not making up, occurred as we were returning to Calvin’s house at about 1 A.M. after an evening of business-related nonpersonal tax-deductible literary research. Just as we reached his door, a criminal appeared from out of the darkness and attempted to rob us. Up to that point, I have no criticism of the criminal’s technique. He had done an excellent job of victim selection: In terms of physical courage, Calvin and I were probably the two biggest weenies abroad in Manhattan at that hour. A competent criminal, armed with any plausible weapon, including a set of nail clippers, could have had us immediately begging for mercy and handing over our wallets and promising to raise additional cash first thin in the morning by applying for second mortgages.
But this criminal had a terrible plan of action. He had both hands in his jacket pockets, and he was thrusting the jacket material out toward us, the way the bad guy’s jacket sticks out on TV when he has a gun in his pocket and he doesn’t want everybody to see it. Clearly Calvin and I were supposed to think that the criminal had two guns pointing at us.
Here’s what the criminal said: “I’ll blow both of your heads off.”
Later on, in our detailed post-crime critique, Calvin and I found numerous flaws in this approach. For one thing, if the criminal really had two guns, why on earth would he hide them? As Calvin pointed out: “You would definitely want to show your guns to a couple of schlubs like us.”
Also, two guns was definitely overkill. According to my calculations, two guns figures out to one gun per hand, which raises the question: How was the criminal planning to take our wallets? Was he going to ask us to hold one of his guns for him? Was he going to have us stick the wallets in his mouth? If so, he would have had trouble giving us our post-robbery instructions, such as “Don’t try following me!” or “Don’t try anything funny!”
CRIMINAL (with his hands in his pockets and our wallets in his mouth): Donghh ghry angyghing ghunny! ME: What CRIMINAL (getting angry): DONGHH GHRY ANGYGHING GHUNNY! CALVIN: I think he’s saying “Don’t I have a big tummy.” ME (hastily): No! You’re very sueve! Really! Sir!
But the criminal’s silliest move, in my opinion, was threatening to blow both of our heads off. That would be an absurd waste of bullets. A much more efficient way to gain our cooperation would have been to simply blow Calvin’s head off. I would then have cooperatively handed over Calvin’s wallet.
So it was a very poorly planned robbery. I would like to say that Calvin and I, even as we were staring down the menacing barrels of the criminal’s jacket pockets, instantly detected all the flaws with our computerlike brains. But frankly, due to the amount of literary research we had done that evening, our brains were not so much in computer mode as in Hubble Space Telescope mode, if you get my drift.
Nevertheless, I’m very proud of how we handled the situation. Actually, it was Calvin who took charge. You never really know what kind of gumption a man has, what kind of spine, what kind of plain old-fashioned “guts,” until you see how he handles himself when the chips are down and all the marbles are on the line. Calvin looked at the criminal and he looked at me, and then, drawing on some inner reserve of strength and courage, he pressed the intercom button and said, “Alice, let us in.”
Alice is Calvin’s wife. She buzzed the door lock, and we opened the door and went inside, leaving the criminal out there with his jacket pockets still pointing at us. He never did blow our heads off, although the next morning I wished that he had.
Anyway, it was a pretty sorry performance, and if he is in any way representative of the criminals out there today, this is yet another area where the United States is heading down the tubes. I hope that the criminal, if he is reading this, has enough self-respect to learn from the criticisms I’ve outlined here and get his act together. Although in all fairness I should warn him that Calvin and I have given our performance some thought, and if this criminal ever tries to rob us again, he might be in for a little surprise. Because next time we’re going to take strong, decisive action. Next time we’re going to have Alice come out and give him a piece of her mind.
False Alarm
The man was standing right outside our master bath
room. He couldn’t see Beth and me, standing in the hallway, but we could see him clearly. His face was covered with a stocking mask, which distorted his features hideously. He was dressed all in black, and he had a black plastic bag stuck in his back pocket.
He was using a screwdriver to open our sliding glass door.
You always wonder what you’re going to do in a situation like this. Run? Fight? Wet your pants?
I’m not experienced with physical violence. The last fight I had was in eighth grade, when I took on John Sniffen after school because he let the air out of my bike tires. Actually, I didn’t know that he did this, but he was the kind of kid who would have, and all the other suspects were a lot larger than I was.
The man outside our house was also larger than I am. He jerked the screwdriver sideways and opened the door. Just like that, he was inside our house, maybe six feet from where Beth and I were standing.
Then he saw us. For a moment, nobody spoke. “CUT!” yelled the director.
“Way to go, Ozzie!” I said to the stocking-masked man. “Looking good! Looking criminal!”
“I’m wondering if his bag is too dark to show up,” said Beth.
Everybody wants to be a director.
Anyway, as you have guessed, Ozzie wasn’t a real burglar. He was part of a production crew that was using our house to shoot a promotional video for the company that installed our burglar alarm. Here in South Florida it’s standard procedure to have burglar alarms in your house, your car, your workplace, and, if you’ve had expensive dental work, your mouth.