DAVE BARRY IS NOT TAKING THIS SITTING DOWN

by Dave Barry

  Once the turkey is defrosted, you simply cook it in a standard household oven at 138.4 degrees centimeter for 27 minutes per pound (29 minutes for married taxpayers filing jointly). Add four minutes for each 100 feet of your home’s elevation above sea level, which you should determine using a standard household sextant. Inspect the turkey regularly as it cooks; when you notice that the skin has started to blister, the time has come for you to give your guests the message they’ve been eagerly awaiting: “Run!” Because you left the plastic wrapper on the turkey, and it’s about to explode, spewing out flaming salmonella units at the speed of sound.

  As you stand outside waiting for the fire trucks, you should take a moment to count your blessings. The main one, of course, is that you will definitely not be asked to host the big family Thanksgiving dinner next year. But it’s also important to remember—as our Pilgrim foreparents remembered on the very first Thanksgiving—that two excellent names for rock bands would be “The Turkey Spiders” and “The Flaming Salmonella Units.”

  Independence Day

  This year, why not hold an old-fashioned Fourth of July Picnic?

  Food poisoning is one good reason. After a few hours in the sun, ordinary potato salad can develop bacteria the size of raccoons. But don’t let the threat of agonizingly painful death prevent you from celebrating the birth of our nation, just as Americans have been doing ever since that historic first July Fourth when our Founding Fathers—George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Bob Dole, and Tony Bennett—landed on Plymouth Rock.

  Step one in planning your picnic is to decide on a menu. Martha Stewart has loads of innovative suggestions for unique, imaginative, and tasty summer meals. So you can forget about her. “If Martha Stewart comes anywhere near my picnic, she’s risking a barbecue fork to the eyeball” should be your patriotic motto. Because you’re having a traditional Fourth of July picnic, and that means a menu of hot dogs charred into cylinders of industrial-grade carbon, and hamburgers so undercooked that when people try to eat them, they leap off the plate and frolic on the lawn like otters.

  Dad should be in charge of the cooking, because only Dad, being a male of the masculine gender, has the mechanical “know-how” to operate a piece of technology as complex as a barbecue grill. To be truly traditional, the grill should be constructed of the following materials:

  —4 percent “rust-resistant” steel;

  —58 percent rust;

  —23 percent hardened black grill scunge from food cooked as far back as 1987 (the scunge should never be scraped off, because it is what is actually holding the grill together);

  —15 percent spiders.

  If the grill uses charcoal as a fuel, Dad should remember to start lighting the fire early (no later than April 10) because charcoal, in accordance with federal safety regulations, is a mineral that does not burn. The spiders get a huge kick out of watching Dad attempt to ignite it; they emit hearty spider chuckles and slap themselves on all eight knees. This is why many dads prefer the modern gas grill, which ignites at the press of a button and burns with a steady, even flame until you put food on it, at which time it runs out of gas.

  While Dad is saying traditional bad words to the barbecue grill, Mom can organize the kids for a fun activity: making old-fashioned ice cream by hand, the way our grandparents’ generation did. You’ll need a hand-cranked ice-cream maker, which you can pick up at any antique store for $1,875. All you do is put in the ingredients, and start cranking! It makes no difference what specific ingredients you put in, because—I speak from bitter experience here—no matter how long you crank them, they will never, ever turn into ice cream. Scientists laugh at the very concept. “Ice cream is not formed by cranking,” they point out. “Ice cream is formed by freezers.” Our grandparents’ generation wasted millions of man-hours trying to produce ice cream by hand; this is what caused the Great Depression.

  When the kids get tired of trying to make ice cream (allow about 25 seconds for this) it’s time to play some traditional July Fourth games. One of the most popular is the “sack race.” All you need is a bunch of old-fashioned burlap sacks, which you can obtain from the J. Peterman catalog for $227.50 apiece. Call the kids outside, have them line up on the lawn, and give each one a sack to climb into; then shout “GO!” and watch the hilarious antics begin as, one by one, the kids sneak back indoors and resume trying to locate pornography on the Internet.

  Come nightfall, though, everybody will be drawn back outside by the sound of loud, traditional Fourth of July explosions coming from all around the neighborhood. These are caused by the fact that various dads, after consuming a number of traditionally fermented beverages, have given up on conventional charcoal-lighting products and escalated to gasoline. As the spectacular pyrotechnic show lights up the night sky, you begin to truly appreciate the patriotic meaning of the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written by Francis Scott Key to commemorate the fledgling nation’s first barbecue:

  And the grill parts’ red glare;

  Flaming spiders in air;

  Someone call 911;

  There’s burning scunge in Dad’s hair

  After the traditional visit to the hospital emergency room, it’s time to gather ’round and watch Uncle Bill set off the fireworks that he purchased from a roadside stand operated by people who spend way more on tattoos than dental hygiene. As Uncle Bill lights the firework fuse and scurries away, everybody is on pins and needles until, suddenly and dramatically, the fuse goes out. So Uncle Bill re-lights the fuse and scurries away again, and the fuse goes out again, and so on, with Uncle Bill scurrying back and forth with his Bic lighter like a deranged Olympic torchbearer until, finally, the fuse burns all the way down, and the firework, emitting a smoke puff the size of a grapefruit, makes a noise—“phut”—like a squirrel passing gas. Wow! What a fitting climax for your traditional old-fashioned July Fourth picnic!

  Next year you’ll go out for Chinese food.

  High-Fivin’, Bosom-Ogling Soccer Lizard Must Die!

  The only time I got really scared was when the mob surrounded me and began beating on my head. Fortunately, it was not my usual head: It was the head of a giant lizard.

  I was wearing the giant-lizard head because—and this is why people who value their dignity should avoid journalism—I thought it would be fun to write about being a sports-team mascot and engaging in comical hijinks with the crowd. The mascot that I wound up being is named “P.K.,” which stands for “Penalty Kick.” P.K., a seven-foot green lizard, is the mascot for the Miami Fusion, a professional soccer team of which I’m a big fan.

  I like soccer because there’s a lot of action and drama. There are no time-outs, so the only way players can catch their breath is to sustain a major injury, which some of them are very good at. A guy will get bumped by another player, or a beam of sunlight, and he’ll hurl himself dramatically to the ground, writhing and clutching his leg (not necessarily the leg that got bumped) and screaming that the referee should get a priest out there immediately to administer the last rites, or at least call a foul. The referee generally ignores the player, who, after a while, gets up and continues playing. Some players suffer four or five fatal injuries per game. That’s how tough they are.

  Here’s another example of soccer-player toughness, which I am not making up: Last year, in Brazil, there was a soccer match between two arch-rival teams, one of which is nicknamed “The Rabbits.” The other team scored a goal, and the guy who scored it celebrated by reaching into his shorts, pulling out a carrot, and eating it. He had a carrot in his shorts the whole time! Talk about team spirit! You wonder what he’d do if he played a team nicknamed “The Eel Eaters.”

  But back to my point: I asked Fusion officials if I could wear the P.K. costume at a game, and they said OK. And so one Sunday afternoon I found myself in an office next to the stadium, struggling into the P.K. outfit, which includes green leggings, green arms with only four fingers per hand, big feet, a four-foot tail, and a larg
e lizard head with buggy eyes and a grinning, snouty mouth. Helping me put these items on was the regular Fusion mascot, Tony Mozzott, who, when he is not a giant lizard, manages a supermarket meat department. As he attached my tail, Tony gave me some mascotting tips, such as: “I high-five people, because if you shake their hands, they’ll try to take off your fingers.”

  Finally I was suited up, and, with Tony guiding me, I waddled into the stadium. I wish you could have seen the crowd reaction. I wish I could have seen it, too. But it turns out that—biologists, take note—lizards actually see through their mouths, and my mouth was pointing down at a 45-degree angle, so all I could see was legs and small children. I saw a lot of children. They love to run directly into mascots at full speed, and they tend to hit you right where you’d carry your carrot, if you catch my drift.

  Keeping a wary eye out for incoming tots, I moved slowly and blindly around the stadium, pausing every now and then to wave at the crowd, enthusiastically and totally cluelessly, exactly like a U.S. presidential candidate. It was going pretty well until I wandered into the stadium end zone, where a group of hard-core soccer fans hang out. Going there was a bad idea for two reasons: (1) Serious soccer purists are not fond of the mascot concept; and (2) The opposing team had just scored a goal. So the mood in the hard-core zone was unhappy.

  Of course P.K. the lizard did not know any of this. P.K. was just shuffling along, a big, blind, green, high-fivin’, wavin’ wad of fun. My first inkling of trouble came when man stuck his face deep into my mouth opening and made a very uncomplimentary remark. Hoping to win him over via hijinks, I attempted to high-five him, but somebody grabbed me, and then somebody else yanked on my tail, and within seconds there were people all around me, shouting and grabbing and pounding on my head. It was like being inside the bass drum at a Metallica concert.

  The problem with being a mascot in this situation is that you have no way to indicate distress: Your mascot face keeps right on smiling happily. But believe me, the inner lizard was scared. Fortunately, Tony and some security guards quickly came to my rescue, and the remainder of my stint as mascot went smoothly. The rest of the crowd seemed friendly; I high-fived and waved at a lot of invisible people. I also noted one interesting fact: If you’re wearing a lizard costume, and a woman walks up and stands right in front of you, you are looking, through the lizard’s mouth, directly at the female attributes that women are always accusing guys of looking at. You can’t help it! But the woman cannot tell, because the eyeballs on your mascot head appear to be making mature eye contact with her.

  I pass this fact along for you guys who are pondering a career in the giant-lizard field. My advice is, stay out of the end zone. And wear a cup.

  Build Yourself a Killer Bod with Killer Bees

  If there’s one ideal that unites all Americans, it’s the belief that every single one of us, regardless of ethnic background, is fat.

  It was not always this way. There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans did not obsess about fat. In those days, a man could be portly and still be considered attractive. The standards were also more lenient for women: Marilyn Monroe, whom nobody ever called skinny, was a major sex goddess.

  By today’s beauty standards, of course, Marilyn Monroe was an oil tanker. Today’s beauty ideal, strictly enforced by the media, is a person with the same level of body fat as a paper clip. Turn on your TV, and all you see are men and women who would rather have both eyeballs removed via corkscrew than eat a slice of pizza. These are genetic mutants: You can see their muscles, veins, and neck bones almost bursting through their fat-free skin. I don’t know who decided that the see-through look was attractive; I, personally, have never heard anybody express lust for anybody else’s internal organs. But we normal humans are constantly exposed to the zero-fat mutants in the media, and we naturally assume that we’re supposed to look like them. This is of course impossible, but we try. We diet constantly, especially young women, many of whom now start dieting while still in the womb.

  And of course we spend millions of dollars on “exercise,” defined as “activity designed to be strenuous without accomplishing anything useful.” For example, we drive our cars to health clubs so we can run on treadmills. But we do NOT run to the health club, because then we would be accomplishing something useful. We pedal furiously on exercise bicycles that do not go anywhere. We take elevators every chance we get, but we buy expensive machines that enable us to pretend we’re climbing stairs. It would not surprise me if yuppies started paying potato farmers for the opportunity to go into the fields and burn fat by pretending to conduct a harvest, taking great care not to dig up any actual potatoes.

  If you think that’s ridiculous, then you haven’t seen “Tae-Bo.” This is the current hot fad, advertised extensively on TV by perspiring mutants. As I understand it, Tae-Bo is based on martial arts; the difference is that martial artists actually learn to defend themselves, whereas Tae-Bo people throw pretend punches and kicks strictly for fitness purposes. While they’re busy kicking air and checking their abdominals, an actual mugger could walk right up and whack them with a crowbar.

  But never mind practicality. The point is that right now Tae-Bo is very, very hot, which means that soon everybody will get bored with it. That’s what always happens with exercise trends: People realize that, after countless hours of pretending to climb stairs or punching the air, they still bear a stronger resemblance to the Michelin Tire Man than to the TV mutants. So they give up on that particular trend and look for a new one.

  Will this craziness ever end? Will Americans ever come to their senses and stop wasting millions and millions of dollars on hopeless efforts to look like people who don’t really look like people? I hope not, because I’m planning to cash in on this. I got my idea from a wonderful newspaper article, sent in by alert veterinarian Steven Berry, from the April 7, 1999, edition of the Leader News of Central City, Kentucky. The article, written by Paul Camplin, is headlined “Cobbs Invented Odd Sport of Bee Fighting as Family Entertainment.” It concerns the descendants of Bunn and Betty Cobb of Calhoun, Kentucky, who have gotten together annually for about 70 years to fight wild bees for fun. The article states:

  “Without use of protective gear, one of the group approaches the bumble-bee hive and whacks it with a stick. When all of the now angry bees come flying out the group of bee fighters simply fight off the bees as best they can with large clumps of maple leaves.”

  The article, which I am not making up, is illustrated by photos of members of the extended Bunn family, including grandparents, wildly waving branches at bees.

  When I saw those photos, I knew I was looking at a gold mine. I’m talking about the Next Big Fitness Trend: “Tae-Bee.” I’m going to make a 30-minute TV infomercial wherein enthusiastic hired mutants stress the benefits of bee-fighting (“. . . and while you’re OUCH burning fat, your arm motion is also OUCH building those OUCH . . .”).

  In no time millions of Americans will be ordering the Tae-Bee workout videotape, along with the Official (Accept No Substitutes!) Tae-Bee Maple Leaf Clump and of course the Official Tae-Bee Box o’ Really Mad Bees. And if you don’t think Americans will pay good money to get stung, I have one word for you: “ThighMaster.”

  So laugh if you want: I’m going to get rich on this thing. And then I’m going to hire a personal trainer. His sole job will be to order my pizza.

  High-Tech Twinkie Wars Will Be No Picnic

  I’ll tell you when I start to worry. I start to worry when “officials” tell me not to worry. This is why I am very concerned about the following Associated Press report, which was sent to me by a number of alert readers:

  RICHLAND, WASH.—Radioactive ants, flies and gnats have been found at the Hanford nuclear complex, bringing to mind those Cold-War-era “B” horror movies in which giant mutant insects are the awful price paid for mankind’s entry into the Atomic Age.

  Officials at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site insist there is no danger of Hanford
becoming the setting for a ’90s version of Them!, the 1954 movie starring James Arness and James Whitmore in which huge, marauding ants are spawned by nuclear experiments in the desert.

  Should we trust these “officials”? I’ll let you decide for yourself what the answer is (NO). But consider:

  For years, “officials” insisted that our cars needed air bags for safety; then, when we GOT air bags, “officials” started warning us how dangerous they are, the result being that many concerned parents now strap their children to the car roof.

  For years, “officials” told us that marijuana was an evil criminal drug. Now they tell us that it has “important medical benefits warranting further investigation, but first let’s order a pizza.”

  Every year, “officials” tell us to turn all our clocks ahead one hour, only to turn around a few months later and tell us to turn them BACK. Make up your minds, “officials”!

  My point is that we cannot trust “officials” any farther than we can throw them by the leg. This is especially true when it comes to the Hanford nuclear complex. When this complex was built, “officials” said it was safe; now the whole area glows like a Budweiser sign. So when “officials” tell us that the radioactive Hanford insects are NOT going to mutate into giant monsters like the ants depicted in the 1954 movie Them!, it clearly is time to study this movie and see what happened, because it is about to happen again.

  I did not see Them!, but I do have a plot summary from a book called Guide for the Film Fanatic. It states that after James Whitmore and James Arness discover the giant mutant ants marauding around the New Mexico desert, they kill most of them by burning their nest; however, some ants escape, and the heroes “trace them to Los Angeles.” The book doesn’t say why the heroes would have to “trace” the ants; you’d think that if marauding insects the size of houses showed up in a heavily populated area, it would be mentioned prominently in the news media, but Guide for the Film Fanatic makes it sound as though Arness and Whitmore had to track the ants down via detective techniques: