by Dave Barry
Paul and I arrived at the Marlin Hotel and immediately determined that we were the oldest people who had ever set foot in there by a good 30 years. The party featured very loud music and many avant-garde people lounging around amid the new, reincarnated hotel decor, which included, among other sophisticated touches, window treatments that looked like gigantic shower curtains. We did not see any Rolling Stones. But there were several famous people on hand, including:
—An artist named Kenny something whose work “is in like museums all over the place.”
—An actor named Antonio something who had been in a Janet Jackson video AND a Calvin Klein underwear commercial.
Paul and I got this information from a 20-year-old woman hair stylist named Nate (pronounced “Na-TAY”), who also gave us both free advice on what to do with our hair. She told Paul to use gel. She told me—and this is a direct quote—“You should rock the Caesar.”
“I should rock the Caesar?” I asked.
“Definitely,” said Nate.
“You really should,” said Paul.
It turns out that “rock the Caesar” means getting the style of haircut worn by the Roman emperor Julius Caesar and the TV actor George Clooney. I definitely plan to adopt this style, just as soon as William Rehnquist does.
So anyway, Paul and I were sitting in a corner, a pair of fossils with outmoded hair, when the front door opened, and guess who walked in, in all his rock-idol glory? That’s right: Elvis.
No, seriously, it was Mick Jagger. When I saw him, I felt a thrill, and I will tell you why: Because suddenly, there was somebody at the party who was even older than I am. He’s only a little older if you calculate it in normal human years; but he has been living rock-star years, which take a much greater toll. In person, he looks like Yoda wearing a Mick Jagger wig.
But he seemed like a pleasant enough person, as near as I could tell from watching a crowd of avant-garde people trying to get as close to him as possible while pretending not to. I considered trying to push my way in there and strike up a conversation with Mick, maybe try to find out the correct chords to “Under My Thumb.” But it seemed like a lot of work, plus it was 10:30 P.M., way past my bedtime. So Paul and I left. But I enjoyed the evening. The way I see it, I was, briefly, hanging out with an actual Rolling Stone. If you see it differently, get offa my cloud.
Decaf Poopacino
I have exciting news for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal’s digestive tract.
And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane. These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like “mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino,” beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products, and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.
Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are catching an airplane. We want to strike the lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream “GET OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU TREND GEEKS, AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!” But of course we couldn’t do anything that active until we’ve had our coffee.
It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. I bet this kind of thing does not happen to heroin addicts. I bet that when serious heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do not tolerate waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them orders a hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles.
The reason some of us need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun.
No! Wait! What I meant to say is: Like any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we ingest too much. This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a group of workers, who were supposed to be making a birdbath, began drinking Egyptian coffee, which is very strong, and wound up constructing the pyramids.
I myself developed the coffee habit in my early 20s, when, as a “cub” reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania, I had to stay awake while writing phenomenally boring stories about municipal government. I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and chicken-noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and they tasted pretty much the same. But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I’ve had several cups. (I can’t do anything useful afterward, either; that’s why I’m a columnist.)
But here’s my point: This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo Bishop. He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to a “private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee,” which “at $300 a pound . . . is one of the most expensive drinks in the world.” The invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a “member of the weasel family” that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a “natural fermentation” takes place, and the berry seeds—the coffee beans—come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted, and sold to coffee connoisseurs.
The invitation states: “We wish to pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a rarity.”
Or, as Bo Bishop put it: “They’re selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound.”
I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze. Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta. I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they’d been, but they looked like regular coffee beans. In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off.
Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel?
So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some. You know how sometimes, when you’re really skeptical about something, but then you finally try it, you discover that it’s really good, way better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it.
But I predict it’s going to be popular anyway, because it’s expensive. One of these days, the people in front of me at the airport coffee place are going to be ordering decaf poopacino. I’m thinking of switching to heroin.
Good for What Ails You
Recently I was lying on the sofa and watching my favorite TV show, which is called, Whatever Is On TV When I’m Lying on the Sofa. I was in a good mood until the commercial came on. It showed an old man (and when I say “old man,” I mean “a man who is maybe eight years older than I am”) helping his grandson learn to ride a bicycle.
I was watching this, wondering what product was being advertised (Bicycles? Dietary fiber? Lucent?) and the announcer said: “Aren’t there enough reasons in your life to talk to your doctor about Zocor?”
The announcer did not say what “Zocor” is. It sounds like the evil ruler of the Planet Wombax. I figure it’s a medical drug, although I have no idea what it does. And so, instead of enjoying my favorite TV show, I was lying there wondering if I should be talking to my doctor about Zocor. My doctor is named Curt, and the only time I go to his office is when I am experiencing a clear-cut medical symptom, such as an arrow sticking out of my head. So mainly I see Curt
when I happen to sit near him at a sporting event, and he’s voicing medical opinions such as “HE STINKS!” and “CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW BAD THIS GUY STINKS??” This would not be a good time to ask him what he thinks about Zocor (“IT STINKS!”).
Television has become infested with commercials for drugs that we’re supposed to ask our doctors about. Usually the announcer says something scary like, “If you’re one of the 337 million people who suffer from parabolical distabulation of the frenulum, ask your doctor about Varvacron. Do it now. Don’t wait until you develop boils the size of fondue pots.”
At that point, you’re thinking, “Gosh, I better get some Varvacron!”
Then the announcer tells you the side effects.
“In some patients,” he says, “Varvacron causes stomach discomfort and the growth of an extra hand coming out of the forehead. Also, one patient turned into a lemur. Do not use Varvacron if you are now taking, or have recently shaken hands with anybody who is taking, Fladamol, Lavadil, Fromagil, Havadam, Lexavon, Clamadam, Gungadin, or breath mints. Discontinue use if your eyeballs suddenly get way smaller. Pregnant women should not even be watching this commercial.”
So basically, the message of these drug commercials is:
You need this drug.
This drug might kill you.
I realize that the drug companies, by running these commercials, are trying to make me an informed medical consumer. But I don’t WANT to be an informed medical consumer. I liked it better when my only medical responsibility was to stick out my tongue. That was the health-care system I grew up under, which was called “The Dr. Mortimer Cohn Health-Care System,” named for my family doctor when I was growing up in Armonk, New York.
Under this system, if you got sick, your mom took you to see Dr. Cohn, and he looked at your throat, then he wrote out a prescription in a Secret Medical Code that neither you nor the CIA could understand. The only person who could understand it was Mr. DiGiacinto, who ran the Armonk Pharmacy, where you went to get some mystery pills and a half-gallon of Sealtest chocolate ice cream, which was a critical element of this health-care system. I would never have dreamed of talking to Dr. Cohn about Zocor or any other topic, because the longer you stayed in his office, the greater the danger that he might suddenly decide to give you a “booster shot.”
We did have TV commercials for medical products back then, but these were non-scary, straightforward commercials that the layperson could understand. For example, there was one for a headache remedy—I think it was Anacin—that showed the interior of an actual cartoon of a human head, so you could see the three medical causes of headaches: a hammer, a spring, and a lightning bolt. There was a commercial for Colgate toothpaste with Gardol, which had strong medical benefits, as proven by the fact that when a baseball player threw a ball at the announcer’s head, it (the ball) bounced off an Invisible Protective Shield. There was a commercial for a product called “Serutan.” I was never sure what it did, but it was definitely effective, because the announcer came right out and stated—bear in mind that the Food and Drug Administration has never disputed this claim—that “Serutan” is “natures” spelled backward.
You, the medical consumer, were not required to ask your doctor about any of these products. You just looked at the commercial and said, “A hammer! No wonder my head aches!” And none of these products had side effects, except Colgate, which, in addition to deflecting baseballs, attracted the opposite sex.
I miss those days, when we weren’t constantly being nagged to talk to our doctors, and we also didn’t have a clue how many grams of fat were in our Sealtest chocolate ice cream. Life was simpler then, as opposed to now, when watching TV sometimes makes me so nervous that I have to consume a certain medical product. I know it’s effective, because it’s “reeb” spelled backward.
A Critic, a Crocodile, and a Kubrick—Voilà!
As a noted film critic, I assume that you are eager to read my impressions of Eyes Wide Shut, the controversial much-discussed final film in the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick, or, as he was known to those of us who considered him a close personal friend before he died, “Stan.”
What is one to make of Eyes Wide Shut? Is this the chef d’oeuvre, the pièce de résistance if you will, of this legendary cinematic auteur? Does it possess the penultimate exigency, the insouciant escargot, the frisson de voiture of Stan’s earlier work? Or does it succumb to the inevitable bouillabaisse en route that every great roman à clef experiences when he reaches the point that the great French director Renault Citroën once, in a moment of pique, described as fromage de la parapluie (literally, “umbrella cheese”)?
These are, indeed, some questions. And if one is to truly address them, one has an obligation, as a noted cultural commentator as well as a human being, to have some direct knowledge of the film in question. Thus it was that this critic—reluctantly pausing in his ongoing project of reading the complete unabridged works of Marcel Proust in the original French handwriting in a drafty room with poor lighting—went to the cinematic theater for a personal firsthand viewing of Eyes Wide Shut.
This critic will not, as the great Italian director Ronzoni Sono Buoni used to say, “beat around amongst the shrubbery.” This critic will come right out—at risk of violating the First Rule of serious cinematic criticism (“Avoid clear sentences”)—and tell you exactly what Eyes Wide Shut is about: It is about two and a half hours long. That is frankly more time than this critic can afford to spend in a cinema, because at this critic’s current rate of cinema-concession-snack consumption (CCSC), which is one box of Goobers per 45 minutes of film viewing, this critic would soon develop what the great German director Audi Porsche Messerschmitt referred to as ahugengrossenbiggenfattenheinie. After two and a half hours, it would take a construction crane to hoist this critic back out of his seat.
And so this critic elected to instead view another film playing at the same theater, Lake Placid, which is about half as long as Eyes Wide Shut, but involves even less actual viewing time if you, like this critic, close your eyes tight for certain scenes, such as the one at the beginning where a scuba diver is swimming in the lake and something grabs him from underwater, so his friend tries to rescue him by pulling him back into the boat, and the only really positive thing you can say about the diver at that point is that, if he had survived, he would never again have had to worry about finding pants in his size, if you get this critic’s drift.
Lake Placid explores a classic literary theme—a theme that has fascinated artists from Homer to Shakespeare to Milton to Milton’s younger brother, Arnold, namely: What happens when an Asian crocodile swims over from Asia and winds up in a secluded lake in Maine, where it grows to a length of 30 feet?
The answer is: some serious chomping. Because naturally, after the crocodile eats half of the diver in the opening scene, more people immediately show up and insist on swimming in the lake with their legs dangling down invitingly like big fat corn dogs with feet. One of the great mysteries of the cinema is why characters insist on plunging into bodies of water known to contain hungry irate marine life-forms with mouths the size of two-car garages. More than once this critic has been tempted to shout, “GET OUT OF THE WATER, YOU CRETINS!” But of course the characters cannot hear. Also, there some risk associated with spraying semi-chewed Goobers into the hair of the person sitting in the row ahead.
And so the audience of Lake Placid—which, for the showing attended by this critic, consisted mostly of large families who apparently had mistaken the theater for the Playtime Day-Care Center for Loud Hyperactive Children—can only sit and chew helplessly as the crocodile eats various minor characters, not to mention a bear, a moose, and part of a helicopter. This sets the stage for the film’s climactic scene, in which—this critic is not making this scene up—the heroes lure the crocodile into a trap by flying the injured helicopter over the lake and dangling from it, in a sling at the end of a long cable, a live cow. Not since the heyday of the great Japanese director Nissan Kawasaki h
as this critic seen a more effective cinematic use of airborne livestock. If that cow does not win an Oscar for Best Supported Actor, then this critic will have some very harsh words for somebody.
In conclusion, Lake Placid is a worthy addition to the cinematic genre of Movies Where Body Parts Frequently Wash Ashore. As for Eyes Wide Shut: Although this critic has not seen it personally, cinematic sources say that it has a certain je ne sais quoi (literally, “movie stars naked”). So this critic is giving both of these fine films two thumbs up. That’s a total of four thumbs up. So it’s a good thing that spares are washing ashore.
Grammar: De Letter of De Law
At this juncture in the time parameter we once again proudly present “Ask Mister Language Person,” the No. 1 rated language column in the United States according to a recent J. D. Power and Associates survey of consumers with imaginary steel plates in their heads. The philosophy of this column is simple: If you do not use correct grammar, people will lose respect for you, and they will burn down your house. So let’s stop beating around a dead horse and cut right to the mustard with our first question:
Q.
I often hear people use the word “irregardless,” as in: “Irregardless of what you may or may not think, moths are capable of remorse.” So finally I decided to look “irregardless” up in the dictionary, but I can’t figure out what letter it begins with.
A.
Grammatical experts disagree on this.
Q.
What are the correct lyrics to the song “It’s Howdy Doody Time!”?