Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits

by Dave Barry

  “it should be 135 miles per hour.”

  29—The Minnesota Twins win the World Series. President Reagan, as is the custom, calls up manager Tom Kelly and nominates him to the Supreme Court.

  November

  1—In the ongoing heroic effort to trim the federal budget deficit, House and Senate conferees agree not to order appetizers.

  7—Totally true item: The Herald refuses to publish an episode of the comic strip “Bloom County” because it contains the quotation, “Reagan sucks.” To explain this decision, the Herald runs a story containing the quotation, “Reagan sucks.” Several days later, in response to a letter from an irate “Bloom County” fan, the Herald prints an explanatory note containing the quotation, “Reagan sucks.”

  8—Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, large chunks of his scalp falling off, angrily demands the United States do something about “acid rain.”

  10—Don Johnson announces he is leaving Miami, dealing a severe blow to the area’s hopes to repeat as winner of the Biggest Cockroach Contest.

  12—In continuing media coverage of the “character issue,” presidential candidates named Bruce “Dick” Babbitt and Albert “Dick” Gore, Jr., state that they have tried marijuana, but no longer use it. “Now we just drink gin till we throw up,” they state.

  13—George Bush reveals that he tried to smoke marijuana, but nobody would give him any.

  15—In their continuing heroic deficit-reduction efforts, House and Senate conferees agree to continue working right through their 2:30 racquetball appointment.

  17—In Geneva the final obstacle to a superpower summit is removed as U.S. negotiators agree not to notice the mark on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s forehead.

  22—In ceremonies marking his retirement as secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger is presented with a pen-and-pencil set, manufactured by the General Dynamics Corporation for $352.4 million.

  24—The city of Cleveland, Ohio, announces that it has developed tactical nuclear weapons, and does not wish to hear any more jokes.

  29—The world financial community’s faith in the U.S. economy is restored as heroic House and Senate conferees hammer out a breakthrough compromise deficit-reduction measure under which $417.65 will be slashed from the

  $13.2 billion pastry budget of the Federal Bureau of Putting Up Road Signs with Kilometers on Them.

  30—In a pre-summit public relations gambit designed to show that he is a normal human, Mikhail Gorbachev is interviewed by Tom Brokaw, who, clearly nervous, addresses the Soviet leader as “Premier Forehead Mark.”

  December

  1—For the first time, all 257 presidential candidates appear in a televised debate, which is beamed via satellite to a nationwide live audience consisting of Mrs. Brendaline Warblette of Elkhart, Indiana, who tells the press that, after viewing the debate, she leans toward “What’s his name, Cuomo.”

  2—In a widely hailed legal decision, the judge in the bitter divorce dispute between Joan Collins and Peter Holm orders them both shot. Mikhail Gorbachev appears on jeopardy.

  5—In a cost-cutting move, financially troubled Eastern Airlines announces that its domestic flights will operate without engines. “Most of them never take off anyway,” explains a spokesman.

  8—In Washington, the long-awaited U.S.-Soviet summit meeting gets off to an uncertain start as President Reagan attempts to nominate Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to the Supreme Court.

  9—The summit concludes on a triumphant note as, in the culmination of 10

  years of negotiations between the superpowers, Gorbachev and New York Governor Mario Cuomo sign a historic agreement under which both sides will move all of their mid—and short-range long-term strategic tactical nuclear weapons 150 feet to the left.

  12—Michael Jackson, angered over persistent media reports that he has had extensive plastic surgery, strikes a People magazine reporter with one of his antenna stalks.

  15—Under intense pressure from the United States to reduce the trade deficit, Japanese auto manufacturers agree to give their cars really ugly names.

  18—Playboy magazine offers Tammy Faye Bakker a record $1.5 million if she will promise never, ever to pose nude.

  23—Motor Trend magazine names, as its Car of the Year, the new Nissan Rat Vomit.

  27—Oscar C. Klaxton, an employee of the U.S. Department for Making Everybody Nervous, wins a $10,000 prize for dreaming up the concept of a deadly invisible “hole” in the ozone layer.”

  28—Cleveland declares war on “Chad.”

  31—The year ends on a tragic note as an Iowa farmer backs up his tractor without looking and accidentally kills an estimated 14 blond 43-year-old Democratic presidential contenders named Dick. Knowledgeable observers suggest, however, that this will have little impact on anything.

  Air Bags For Wind Bags

  Every now and then I like to suggest surefire concepts by which you readers can make millions of dollars without doing any honest work. Before I tell you about the newest concept, I’d like to apologize to those of you who were stupid enough to attempt the previous one, which, as you may recall, involved opening up Electronic Device Destruction Centers.

  The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic devices, such as televisions and VCRS, in to the destruction centers, where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed, consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones repaired at so-called factory service centers, which in fact consist of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic devices with cheap cigars and going, “Lookit all them wires in there!”

  I thought the Electronic Device Destruction Center was a sure-fire concept, but apparently I was wrong, to judge from the unusually large amount of explosives I received in the mail from those of you who lost your life savings and, in some cases, key organs. This made me feel so bad that I have been sitting here for well over five minutes wracking my brains, trying to think of an even more sure-fire moneymaking concept for you.

  One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let’s say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate—FWWAAAAAAPPPP—thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. (“Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAAPPPP.” This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring air bags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: There are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.

  But fortunately for you, I have come up with an even better money-making concept: The “Mister Mediocre” fastfood restaurant franchise. I have studied American eating preferences for years, and believe me, this is what people want. They don’t want to go into an unfamiliar restaurant, because they don’t know whether the food will be very bad, or very good, or what. They want to go into a restaurant that advertises on national television, where they know the food will be mediocre. This is the heart of the Mister Mediocre concept.

  The basic menu item, in fact the only menu item, would be a food unit called the “patty,” consisting of—this would be guaranteed in writing—”100

  percent animal matter of some kind.” All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, pretend-bacon bits, Cheez Whiz, a Speci
al Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, and a little slip of paper stating: “Inspected by Number 12.” The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn’t get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover’s Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover’s Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as “Nuggets.”

  Mister Mediocre restaurants would have a “salad bar” offering lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, pretend-bacon bits, Cheez Whiz and a Special House Dressing made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, tended by an employee chosen on the basis of listlessness, whose job would be to make sure that all of these ingredients had been slopped over into each other’s compartments.

  Mister Mediocre restaurants would offer a special “Children’s Fun Pak” consisting of a patty containing an indelible felt-tipped marker that youngsters could use to write on their skin.

  Also, there would be a big sign on the door that said:

  DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH REGULATIONS!

  ALL EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS BEFORE LEAVING THIS RESTAURANT!

  If you’re a Smart Investor who would like to get a hold of a Mister Mediocre restaurant franchise before the federal authorities get wind of this, all you need to do is send me a fairly large amount of money. In return, I’ll send you a complete Startup Package consisting of an unsigned letter giving you permission to use the Mister Mediocre concept. You will also of course be entitled to free legal advice at any time. Like, for example, if you have a situation where your Drivethru customers are taking one bite from their patties and then having seizures that cause them to drive over pedestrians in a fatal manner, you just call me up. “Hey,” I’ll advise you, for free. “Soufids like you need a lawyer!”

  Iowa’s Safe But You’ll Be Sorry

  Here are some helpful summer vacation Travel Tips, designed to help you make sure that your “dream vacation” will be just as fun and smooth and fatality-free as it can possibly be.

  This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has “deregulated” the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in midair. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings, which have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course certain restrictions do apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, New jersey, and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.

  And now, for those of you who are planning to take your vacations abroad this summer, we have these words of reassurance from the travel industry, which by the way will be wanting all the tour money up front this year: Relax!

  There is no need to be worried about the fact that most foreign countries are crawling with violent anti-American terrorists with no regard for human life! Experts do advise, however, that you take the simple common-sense precaution of renouncing your U.S. citizenship and wearing a turban. Also, while in public places abroad, you want to make a point of making loud remarks such as: “Say! I speak English surprisingly well, considering I am not a U.S. citizen!” and “Unlike a U.S. citizen, I’m wearing a turban!”

  Most Americans, however, plan to “play it safe” this year and vacation near the exact geographical center of the United States, as far as possible from the Libyan navy. Come July, we could have millions of people clotted together in Iowa, looking for public toilets. So I thought it might be a good idea to find out what Iowa has in store for us, attractionwise. I called up their tourism bureau and spoke to a nice woman named Skip Strittmatter, who told me that they have a whole list of 25 Top Tourist Attractions in Iowa, including Des Moines, the Mississippi River, ethnic festivals (“We’re one of the top states in ethnic festivals,” says Skip Strittmatter), and late in July a big bicycle ride across Iowa on a bicycle. “It’s quite famous,” says Skip Strittmatter, who also notes that you can bet on dog races in both Council Bluffs and Dubuque.

  Another major reason to be attracted to Iowa is the annual Riceville Mosquito Shootout. This is still the truth. Riceville is a small town on the Wapsipinicon (Indian for “white potato”) River, the result being that the town has mosquitoes,a fact which it has turned into a Tourist Attraction by having an annual event wherein they distribute roughly 400 cans of Raid, generously donated by the manufacturer, Johnson Wax, to the townspeople. Then, at a prearranged time, they sound the tornado siren and everybody rushes outside and blows the hell out of the local mosquito population, which doesn’t return for sometimes up to a week and a half, depending on rain. The Shootout is preceded by a picnic where they give away mosquito-related prizes, including one year a working telephone shaped like an insect, generously donated by Johnson Wax. The dial was on the bottom.

  I got all this information straight from the man who conceived the whole Mosquito Shootout concept, M. E. Messersmith, editor and publisher of the Riceville Recorder. He tells me that more and more non-Riceville people are showing up at the Shootout every year, and I think you should definitely make it the cornerstone of your vacation plans, if they decide to have it again, which they probably will, only they haven’t set a definite date. I asked Messersmith if there were any other attractions in the Riceville area that people might want to visit after they experience the Shootout, and he quickly reeled off a lengthy list including beautiful farmland, a lake with fish in it, farms, a nine-hole golf course, crops of different kinds, a bowling alley, and agriculture. Plus, Messersmith noted, Riceville is Just 40 minutes away from the world-famous Mayo Clinic,” which I suppose would be mighty handy if your touring party got trapped for any length of time in a giant cloud of Raid.

  I don’t mean to suggest, by the way, that Iowa is the only safe and fun place to go this summer. I’m certain Kansas has also cooked up plenty of attractions. My recommendation is: Take an extra day, and see both. And let’s not forget some of the other fine natural attractions we have here in the U.S.A., such as Theme Land, Theme World, Theme-Park World, ThemeLand Park, ThemeLandWorld Park, and Six Flags over Adventure Park Land Theme World. All of these fine attractions offer Fun for the Whole Family, such as food, rides, food, and Comical Whimsy in the form of college students wearing costumes with enormous heads. These would make ideal disguises for terrorists.

  Europe On Five Vowels A Day

  Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the past 30

  years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. Oh, sure, they speak some English, but usually just barely well enough to receive a high-school diploma here in the United States. This can lead to problems for you, the international traveler, when you need to convey important information to them, such as “Which foreign country is this?” and “You call this toilet paper?”

  To their credit, some countries have made a sincere effort to adopt English as their native language, a good example being England, but even there you have problems. My wife and I were driving around England once, and we came to a section called “Wales,” which is this linguistically deformed area that apparently is too poor to afford vowels. All the road signs look like this:

  LLWLNCWNRLLWNWRLLN—3 km It is a tragic sight indeed to see Welsh parents attempting to sing traditional songs such as “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to their children and lapsing into heart-rending silence when they get to the part about “E-I-E-I-O.” If any of you in our reading audience have extra vowels that you no longer need, because for example your children have grown up, I urge you to send them (your children) to: Vowels for Wales, c/o Lord Chesterfield, Pa
rliament Luckystrike, the Duke of Earl, Pondwater-on-Gahardine, England.

  But the point I am trying to make here is that since the rest of the world appears to be taking its sweet time about becoming fluent in English, it looks like, in the interest of improving world peace and understanding, it’s up to us Americans to strike the bull on the horns while the iron is hot and learn to speak a foreign language.

  This is not an area where we are strong, as a nation: A recent poll showed that 82 percent of the Americans surveyed speak no foreign language at all. Unfortunately, the same poll showed that 41 percent also cannot speak English, 53 percent cannot name the state they live in, and 62 percent believe that the Declaration of Independence is “a kind of fish.” So we can see that we have a tough educational row to hoe here, in the sense that Americans, not to put too fine a point on it, have the IQs of bait. I mean, let’s face it, this is obviously why the Japanese are capable of building sophisticated videocassette recorders, whereas we view it as a major achievement if we can hook them up correctly to our TV sets. This is nothing to be ashamed of, Americans! Say it out loud! “We’re pretty stupid!” See? Doesn’t that feel good? Let’s stop blaming the educational system for the fact that our children score lower on standardized tests than any other vertebrate life form on the planet! Let’s stop all this anguished whiny self-critical fretting over the recently discovered fact that the guiding hand on the tiller of the ship of state belongs to Mister Magoo! Remember: We still have nuclear weapons. Ha ha!

  Getting back to the central point, we should all learn to speak a foreign language. Fortunately, this is easy.

  HOW TO SPEAK A FOREIGN LANGUAGE:

  The key is to understand that foreigners communicate by means of “idiomatic expressions,” the main ones being: