by Dave Barry
Well that just shows how much YOU know. Because it turns out that Best Poems of 1995 is now available at a special pre-publication discount price of just $49.95. But listen to what you get: You get “a superb collection of over 3,000 poems on every topic,” as well as “an heirloom quality publication” with “imported French marbleized covers.”
I called the number listed on the National Library of Poetry letterhead; a pleasant-sounding woman answered, and I asked her which specific poetic accomplishments of mine the judges had reviewed before selecting me as one of the Best Poets.
“Um,” she said, “we don’t have that available right now. All that information is closed in a backup file system.”
I frankly have had very few poetic accomplishments. I once thought about writing poems for a line of thoughtful greeting cards, but I finished only one, which went:
Thinking of you
At this special time
And hoping your organ
Removal went fine.
Of course I have to produce an entirely new poem for Best Poems of 1995. I asked the woman at the National Library of Poetry if there were any special literary criteria involved; she said the only one was that the poem had to be, quote, “Twenty lines or less.”
I was happy to hear that. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a long poem. And if there’s another thing I hate, it’s a poem wherein the poet refuses to tell you what the hell he’s talking about. For example, when I was an English major in college, we spent weeks trying to get a handle on an extremely dense poem called The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, only to conclude, after endless droning hours of classroom discussion, that the poem was expressing angst about the modern era. I felt like calling Eliot up and saying, “Listen, T.S., the next time you want to express angst, just EXPRESS it, okay? Just say ‘Yo! I’m feeling some angst over here!’”
I believe that if some of your former big-name poets such as Homer and Milton (neither of whom, to my knowledge, was invited to be in Best Poems of 1995) had observed the National Library of Poetry’s twenty-line limit, their careers would be in a lot better shape today.
Anyway, I wrote a poem for Best Poems of 1995. I call it, simply, “Love.” Here it is:
0 love is a feeling that makes a person strive
To crank out one of the Best Poems of 1995;
Love is what made Lassie the farm dog run back to the farmhouse to alert little Timmy’s farm family whenever little Timmy fell into a dangerous farm pit;
Love is a feeling that will not go away like a fungus in your armpit;
So the bottom line is that there will always be lovers
Wishing to express their love in an heirloom quality book with imported French marbleized covers;
Which at $49.95 a pop multiplied by 3,000 poets
Works out to gross literary revenues of roughly $150,000, so it’s
A good bet that whoever thought up the idea of publishing this book
Doesn’t care whether this last line rhymes.
I sent this poem in to the folks at the National Library of Poetry. If you think that you, too, have what it takes to be one of the Best Poets of 1995, you might want to send them a poem of your own; their address is Box 704, Owings Mills, MD 21117. Tell them Dave sent you.
And T.S., if you send something in, for God’s sake keep it simple.
THE MEDICAL
BOOM
I will frankly admit that I am afraid of medical care. I trace this fear to my childhood, when as far as I could tell, the medical profession’s reaction to every physical problem I developed, including nearsightedness, was to give me a tetanus shot. Not only that, but the medical professionals would always lie about it.
“You’ll hardly feel it!” they’d say, coming at me with a needle the size of a harpoon.
As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula. Granted, Dracula would come into your room at night and bite into your neck and suck out all your blood, but there was a positive side to this; namely, you could turn into a bat and stay out all night. Whereas I could see no pluses with the tetanus shot.
Of course today I no longer have this childish phobia, because, as a mature adult, I can lie.
“I just had a tetanus shot this morning!” I can say, if the issue ever arises. “Eight of them, in fact!”
But I’m still afraid of medical care. And I’m not encouraged by TV medical dramas such as ER. If you watch these shows, you’ve probably noticed that whenever some pathetic civilian gets wheeled into the hospital emergency room on a stretcher, he or she is immediately pounced upon by enough medical personnel to form a hospital softball league, all competing to see who can do the scariest thing to the victim. Apparently there’s a clause in the standard Television Performers’ Contract stating that every character in a medical drama gets to take a crack at emergency patients:
First Doctor: I’ll give him a shot!
Second Doctor: I’ll pound his chest!
Third Doctor: I’ll stick a tube way up his nose!
Fourth Doctor: I’ll find an unoccupied section of his body and cut it open for no good reason!
Janitor: I’ll wash his mouth out with a toilet brush!
Now you’re probably saying: “Dave, you big baby, those are just TV shows. In real life, bad things do not happen to people who fall into the hands of medical care.”
Excuse me for one second while I laugh so hard that my keyboard is short-circuited by drool. Because I happen to be holding in my hand a bulletin-board notice that was sent to me by a Vermont orthopedic surgeon named either “David H. Bahnson, M.D.,” or “Oee Bali,” depending on whether you’re reading his letterhead or his signature.
Dr. Bahnson told me, in a phone interview, that he found this notice over the “scrub sink,” which is the place where doctors wash their hands after they operate so that they won’t get flecks of your vital organs on their Lexus upholstery.
No, seriously, the scrub sink is where they wash their hands before operating, and Dr. Bahnson said that this notice had been prominently displayed there for several months. It is titled—I am not making this up—”EMERGENCY PROCEDURE: FIGHTING FIRE ON THE SURGICAL PATIENT.”
Yes, you read that correctly. Dr. Bahnson told me that, although it has not happened to him, fires sometimes break out on patients during surgery, particularly when hot medical implements accidentally come into contact with surgical drapes.
The bulletin-board notice discusses two types of situations: “small fire on the patient” and “large fire on the patient.” There are step-by-step instructions for dealing with both of these; Step 3 under “large fire on the patient,” for example is: “Care for the patient.”
I was surprised that the procedure was so definite. You’d think that, what with all these medical lawsuits, the instructions would call for more caution on the part of the doctors. (“Mrs. Dweemer, we think you might be on fire, but we won’t know for sure until we have a specialist fly in from Switzerland to take a look.”)
Now before I get a lot of irate mail from the medical community, let me stress that not all surgical patients catch on fire. Some of them also explode. I am referring here to a November article from The Medical Post, sent in by alert reader Lauren Leighton, headlined: “BEWARE EXPLODING PATIENTS.” This article states that nitrous oxide—which is sometimes used as an anesthetic in stomach surgery—can get mixed up with intestinal gases, which have been proven to be highly combustible in countless scientific experiments conducted in fraternity houses. If this mixture is ignited by a spark from a surgical implement such as an electric cautery, the result can be what the article refers to as “intraabdominal fires.”
In what could be the single most remarkable statement that I have ever read in a medical article, one expert is quoted as saying—I swear this is a real quote—”Patients aren’t exploding all over, but there is potential for it.”
Ha ha! I certainly am feeling reassured!
No, really, I’m sure we’re ta
lking about a very small number of patients exploding or catching on fire. So if you, personally, are scheduled to undergo surgery, you needn’t give this matter another thought, assuming that you have taken the basic precaution of having a personal sprinkler system installed on your body.
No, seriously, I’m sure your operation will go just fine. And even in the unlikely event that you do explode, you may rest assured that, no matter how many pieces you wind up in, every one of those pieces will, in accordance with modern medical standards, receive a tetanus shot.
GOBBLE, GOBBLE,
EEEEEEEEEK!
We are approaching the Thanksgiving holiday, when we pause to reflect on our blessings by eating pretty much nonstop for an entire day, then staggering off to bed, still chewing, with wads of stuffing clinging to our hair.
It’s a spiritual time, yes, but it can also be a tragic time if an inadequately cooked turkey gives us salmonella poisoning, which occurs when tiny turkey-dwelling salmon get into our blood, swim upstream, and spawn in our brains (this is probably what happened to Ross Perot). That’s why the American Turkey and Giblet Council recommends that, to insure proper preparation, you cook your turkey in a heated oven for at least two full quarters of the Vikings-Lions game, then give a piece to your dog and observe it closely for symptoms such as vomiting, running for president, etc.
Someday, perhaps, we won’t have to take these precautions, not if the U.S. government approves a radical new concept in poultry safety being proposed by a company in Rancho Cucamonga, California. I am not making up Rancho Cucamonga: It’s a real place whose odd-sounding name, if you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean “Cucamonga Ranch.” I am also not making up the poultry-safety advance, which was discussed in a lengthy news story by Randyl Drummer in the May 16 issue of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, sent in by many alert readers. Before I quote from this story, I need to issue a:
WARNING TO TASTEFUL READERS: You should NOT—I repeat, NOT—read the rest of this column if you are likely to be in any way offended by the term “turkey rectums.”
The story appears on the Daily Bulletin’s business page, under the headline PACER BACKING NEW USE FOR GLUE. It begins, I swear, as follows:
“RANCHO CUCAMONGA—Jim Munn hopes that the government and the poultry industry will get behind his process for gluing chicken and turkey rectums.”
Jim Munn, the story explains, is the president of a company called Pacer Technology, which makes Super Glue. Munn, the story states, believes that meat contamination can be reduced by “gluing shut the rectal cavities of turkeys and chicken broilers.” (Needless to say, this would be done after the chickens and turkeys have gone to that Big Barnyard in the Sky; otherwise, everybody involved would have to be paid a ridiculous amount of money.)
The story states that “Munn became intrigued by a poultry rectal glue product after a federal inspector contacted him and said he had used Super Glue on a turkey.”
I frankly find it hard to believe that a federal employee would admit such a thing, after what happened to Bob Packwood, but Jim Munn thought it was a terrific concept. He plans to market the product under the name—get ready—”Rectite.”
“Poultry officials applaud the idea,” states the story.
I do, too. I am all for gluing turkeys shut; in fact, I think they should be glued shut permanently, because, as a consumer, I do not wish to come into contact with those gross organs, necks, glands, etc. that come packed inside them. There are few scarier experiences in life than having to put your unarmed hand inside the cold, clammy recesses of a darkened turkey and pull those things out, never knowing when one of them will suddenly come to life like the creature in the movie Alien, leap off your kitchen counter, and skitter around snacking on household residents.
So I urge you to telephone your congressperson immediately and state your position on this issue clearly and forcefully, as follows: “I favor gluing turkey rectums!” And while you have your congressperson on the line, you might want to point out that the Walt Disney Company is secretly using cartoon movies to promote sex. Yes. I have here a document from an organization called the American Life League, titled “OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON DISNEY’S PERVERTED ANIMATION.” The document states that Disney has been putting smut into its cartoon movies, and cites the following examples, which I am still not making up:
In Aladdin, “when Prince Ababwa calls on Princess Jasmine on her balcony, a voice whispers, ‘Good teenagers, take off your clothes.’” The document further asserts that in the same movie, Abu the monkey says a bad word.
In The Little Mermaid, the officiator in the wedding scene “is obviously sexually aroused.” Not only that, but “the box cover of The Little Mermaid contains a phallic symbol in the center of the royal castle.”
In The Lion King, when Simba plops down, “The cloud of dust that he stirs up, to the upper left of his head, forms the letters S-E-X.” (Which, if you remove the hyphens, spells “sex.”)
None of this surprises me. I have been suspicious of the Disney people ever since it was first pointed out to me, years ago, that Donald Duck does not wear pants. There is WAY more of this perversion going on than we are aware of, and it is not limited to Disney Look at the shape of the Life Savers package! Are we supposed to believe that’s coincidence?
No, this kind of thing is everywhere, and today I am calling on you readers, as concerned individuals with a lot of spare time, to look for instances of hidden perversion in commercial products, then report them to me by sending a postcard to: Smut Patrol, c/o Dave Barry, Miami Herald, Miami, FL 33132.
Working together, we WILL get to the bottom of this. And then we will glue it shut.
MESSAGE
FROM THE
STARS
We are not alone.
I make this statement in light of an article sent to me by alert reader Steve Kennedy, who found it in an academic journal called Popular Music and Society. The article, written by a college professor named Cherrill P. Heaton, is titled “Air Ball: Spontaneous Large Group Precision Chanting.”
The article concerns a phenomenon that often occurs at basketball games when a visiting player shoots an “air balt”—a shot that misses everything. Immediately, the crowd, in a sportsmanlike effort to cause this player to commit suicide, will start chanting “AIR-ball… AIR-ball…”
Professor Heaton, who teaches English but is also interested in music, noticed an odd thing about the “Air Ball” chant: The crowd members always seemed to start at precisely the same time, and in perfect tune with each other.
“As any director of a church choir or secular chorus knows,” Professor Heaton writes, “getting a mere twenty or thirty trained singers to sing or chant together and in tune is not always easy. Yet without direction… thousands of strangers massed in indoor auditoriums and arenas are able, if stimulated by an air ball, to chant ‘Air Ball’ in tonal and rhythmic unison.”
But there’s more. Using his VCR, Professor Heaton taped a bunch of basketball games; he discovered that, no matter where the games were played, almost all the crowds chanted “Air Ball” in the same key—namely, F, with the “Air” being sung on an F note, and the “Ball” on a D note.
This is an amazing musical achievement for Americans, who are not noted for their skill at singing in unison. Listen to a random group of Americans attempting to sing “Happy Birthday,” and you will note that at any given moment they somehow manage to emit more different notes, total, than there are group members, creating a somber, droning sound such as might be created by severely asthmatic bagpipers, so that the birthday person, rather than feeling happy, winds up weeping into the cake. It’s even worse when Americans at sporting events attempt to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” because not only does this song contain an estimated 54,000 notes, but also the crowd has only the vaguest notion of what the words are, so what you hear is a vaguely cattle-like sound created by thousands of people murmuring uncertainly, in every conceivable key, abo
ut the ramparts red gleaming. And yet according to Professor Heaton, somehow these same sports fans, all over the country, almost always spontaneously chant “Air Ball” in the same key, F.
I decided to check Professor Heaton’s findings myself. Under the carefully controlled scientific conditions of my living room, I chanted “Air Ball” out loud several times. I then picked up my electric guitar, which I keep close to my computer for those occasions when, in the course of my research, I develop an urgent journalistic need to sing “Mony Mony.” Using this guitar, I figured out which key I had chanted “Air Ball” in: It was F.
Still skeptical, I called my office at the Miami Herald. The phone was answered in a spontaneous manner by a writer named Meg Laughlin.
I said: “Meg, I want you to do the chant that basketball fans do when a visiting player shoots an air ball.”
And Meg, with no further prompting, said: “Nanny nanny boo boo?”
Meg is not a big basketball fan.
Continuing my research, I called Charlie Vincent, a professional sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press, who claims he has never sung on key in his life, and who immediately, without prompting, chanted “Air Ball” smack dab in F. Then I called professional musician and basketball fan Al Kooper; he not only chanted “Air Ball” in F, but also told me that, back in the 1960s, he used to spend hours eavesdropping on people and painstakingly writing down the musical notes that they used in ordinary conversation.
“Hey, cool!” I said. “What did you do with this information?”
“I lost it,” he said.
Finally I decided to try the acid test: I called my current and former editors, Tom Shroder and Gene Weingarten, who are the two least musically talented human beings on the face of the Earth. These guys could not make a teakettle whistle; it would indicate that it was ready by holding up a little sign that said “tweet.”