by Dave Barry
Gary, the Talent Executive, gave us a briefing on how to play the game; this briefing consisted almost entirely of detailed instructions on how to spin the wheel.
“Make sure your hand is dry,” Gary said. “Reach as far to the right as you can, get a good grip on the upper part of the spoke, and then pull.”
We all practiced spinning the wheel and calling out consonants, although some celebrities, unfamiliar with the rules, tried to call out vowels.
“You have to buy a vowel,” Gary said, several times. “Once you spin, you’re committed to calling a consonant.”
When all of us celebrities were fairly confident that we didn’t have a clue what was going on, the live studio audience was brought in, and we began taping. In the interest of drama I am not going to reveal the outcome of my game, which has not aired yet, except to say, in all modesty, that I did get to the Bonus Round, where I had ten seconds to try to solve the following phrase:
-OME -0 L - - E
You have no idea how truly stupid you can feel until you try to guess a hidden phrase in front of a live studio audience—every single member of which, you are convinced, knows the answer. For ten seemingly endless seconds, sounding like a person with some kind of language-related brain malfunction, you blurt out random incorrect answers (“HOME TO LOVE!” “ROME TO LIVE!” “NOME NO LIKE!” “DOME SO …”)
Of course I’m sure that you, Mr. or Ms. Smarty Pants Reader, immediately figured out the right answer, which is: “SOME DO DOOT.”
No, really, I’m sure you solved it. If not, you should watch the show. Or you can contact me. If you play your cards right, maybe I’ll sell you a vowel.
THIS ONE
WILL KILL
YOU
I really didn’t want to get into another fight with the classical-music people.
Awhile back I wrote a column in which I was mildly critical of classical music on the grounds that it sucks and I hate it. Rather than respond to these arguments on their intellectual merits, many classical-music fans responded with snotty personal attacks in which they suggested that I am the kind of cultural moron who sits around all day watching TV with a beer in one hand and the remote control in the other. This is a lie. Sometimes I have beers in BOTH hands, forcing me to operate the remote control with my feet.
No, seriously, I happen to be a highly cultured individual. I have been involved in tour groups that walked briskly past some of the world’s finest works of art. I personally own several hardcover books and have read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back out loud at least 400 times. I am perfectly comfortable ordering food in a swank French restaurant (“Mr. Garçon, I’ll have the beef en route”).
In short, I have culture out the wazoo. I just have never cared for classical music, because I believe that the artistic themes it embodies are not presented in a manner that is intellectually relevant for the modern listener. Take, for example, the following actual unretouched lyrics, written by Lorenzo da Ponte for the Mozart opera Cosi Fan Tutte (literally, Annie Get Your Gun):
Che sembianze! Che vestiti!
Che figure! Che mustacchi!
After carefully analyzing these lyrics, the objective critic is forced to arrive at one incontrovertible conclusion: They are written in a completely foreign language, probably Spanish. You have to ask yourself how in the world these opera people expected to reach a modern audience if they didn’t even have the common courtesy to write in English. Compare the seemingly deliberate impenetrability of their lyrics with the inviting clarity of the 1964 song “Mammer Jammer,” in which Don and Dewey, exploring the complex depths of human relationships, state:
You got to do the Mammer Jammer
If you want my love.
Please do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that people cannot enjoy opera. I am just saying that these people are wrong. They also could be in big medical trouble. I base this statement on an Associated Press article, sent in by many alert readers, concerning an alarming incident in Denmark involving an okapi, which is a rare African mammal related to the giraffe. The article states that this okapi—I am not making this quotation up—”died from stress apparently triggered by opera singers.”
The okapi was not actually attending an opera when this happened. It was in a zoo located 300 yards from a park where opera singers were rehearsing. A zoo spokesperson was quoted as saying that okapis “can be severely affected by unusual sounds.”
So here are the essential facts:
An okapi, minding its own business, was killed by opera music being sung three football fields away.
Okapis are members of the mammal family.
Most human beings, not counting Congress, are also members of the mammal family.
When I consider these facts together, a very disturbing question comes to my mind, as I’m sure it does yours: What were three football fields doing in Denmark?
Another question is: Could opera, in sufficient dosages, also be fatal to human beings? The only way to find out is to conduct a scientific experiment, in which we would take a group of volunteer subjects—and as the person proposing this experiment, I am willing to courageously volunteer that these subjects be scientists from the Tobacco Institute—strap them into chairs, and blast opera at them twenty-four hours a day until such time as they are dead.
Of course to ensure that this experiment was scientifically valid, we’d also need what is known technically as a “control;” this would be a second group of volunteer Tobacco Institute scientists, who would be strapped into chairs and blasted with some other kind of music. I am thinking here of the Neil Diamond Christmas album.
Once this experiment had proved scientifically that opera music is fatal, it would be time to think about requiring that some kind of Surgeon General warning be prominently displayed on Luciano Pavarotti. Also we’d have to study the effects of “secondhand opera,” which is what you get when inconsiderate individuals start humming opera music in a poorly ventilated office, and suddenly their coworkers are dropping like flies, especially if their coworkers happen to be okapis.
Ultimately, we may have to ban opera altogether, along with—you can’t take chances with the public health—ballet, nonrhyming poetry, movies with subtitles, and any kind of sculpture that does not accurately depict naked women. I realize that, for taking this stand, I’m going to be harshly criticized by the so-called cultured crowd. But I frankly cannot worry about that, because I have the courage of my convictions. Also, Inspector Gadget is on.
THE FAT
LADY SINGS
My advice to you, if you ever get invited to play the part of a corpse in an opera, is: Ask questions. Here are some that I would suggest:
Does the plot of this opera call for the corpse to get shoved halfway off a bed headfirst by people shrieking in Italian?
If so, is this corpse wearing a nightgown-style garment that could easily get bunched up around the corpse’s head if the corpse finds itself in an inverted position with its legs sticking up in the air on a brightly lit stage in front of hundreds of people whom the corpse does not personally know?
If so, what, if any, provisions will be made to prevent a public viewing of the corpse’s butt?
Fool that I am, I failed to ask these questions when I was invited to be a deceased person in an opera. This invitation resulted from a column I wrote concerning an animal in a Denmark zoo that died from stress brought on by hearing opera singers rehearse. I concluded that opera is probably fatal and should be banned as a public-health menace, just like heroin, or aspirin bottles with lids that can actually be opened.
This column generated a large amount of mail from irate opera lovers who:
Pointed out that they are far more sophisticated, urbane, and cultured than I am, and
Used some really dirty words.
(Here is an actual quote from one of these letters, slightly modified for the family-newspaper audience: “Cost Van Tutte is Italian and not Spanish, you sock plucker. Duck shoe,”)
&nbs
p; But I also got a very nice letter from Janice Mackey, general manager of Eugene Opera in Eugene, Oregon (civic motto: “Eventually You Stop Noticing the Rain”). She invited me to play a corpse in Eugene Opera’s January 8 performance of Gianni Schicchi (pronounced “Johnny SKEE-kee”), a work by the famous opera dude Puccini (“Poo-CHEE-nee”), who I believe also wrote the 1966 Tommy James hit “Hanky Panky” (“Hang-kee PANG-kee”). As a professional journalist, I am always looking for new ways to get paid for being motionless, so I said sure.
Eugene is located in southwest Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything. To get there, you have to take a series of “commuter” airplanes, each one smaller than the last, until finally there isn’t room for both you and the pilot, and you have to fly yourself. “Eugene is that way!” the airline personnel tell you, gesturing vaguely. “Just look for the rain cloud!”
But Eugene Opera turned out to be a very professional outfit featuring baritones, sopranos, bassoons, tremors, mezzanines, etc. I attended a brief rehearsal, during which the professional opera singers practiced shoving me off the bed and gave me invaluable dramatic tips on playing dead (“Don’t move”). They also filled me in on the plot of Gianni Schicchi, which involves a wealthy thirteenth-century Florentine named Buoso Donati, who is pursued by a seemingly indestructible android from the future.
No, wait, that’s the plot of Terminator II. The plot of Gianni Schicchi is that Buoso is dead, and a bunch of people sing very loudly about this in Italian for 45 minutes of opera time, which, for a normal human, works out to roughly a month. I spent most of this time lying still on the bed with my mouth open. This turns out to be very difficult. When you have to hold perfectly still in front of hundreds of people, you become a seething mass of primitive bodily needs. You develop overpowering urges to swallow, twitch, scratch, burp, emit vapors, and—above all—lick your lips. “YOU NEED TO LICK YOUR LIPS RIGHT NOW!” is the urgent message your brain repeatedly sends to your tongue. You find yourself abandoning all concerns about personal hygiene and praying that Puccini was thoughtful enough to include a part in Gianni Schicchi where the singers decide, for whatever reason, to lick the corpse’s lips.
But this is not what happens. What happens is that the singers, while searching for Buoso’s will, shove the corpse off the bed, the result being that I had to hold perfectly still while upside down, with my face smushed into a low footstool and my legs in the air, through several arias (“aria” is Italian for “song that will not end in your lifetime”). Fortunately, under my nightgown I was wearing tights, so the audience was never directly exposed to my butt, which could have triggered a potentially deadly stampede for the exits.
Finally the singers put the corpse back up on the bed, so for the rest of the opera I could just lie there thinking explicit bodily thoughts. At times I also listened to the music, and I have to say that, although I am by no means an opera aficionado (literally, “guy”), I was deeply moved by one part, which was when a stagehand, Doug Beebe, crept up behind my bed, unseen by the audience, and whispered, “Dolphins 21, Chargers 8.” He was updating me on an important NFL playoff game in which I had a strong artistic interest. And although the Dolphins ultimately lost, I definitely enjoyed performing in Gianni Schicchi and did not find the experience to be the least bit fatal, so I sincerely apologize to all the opera fans I offended.
Except for the gas poles who wrote the nasty letters.
BORRRINNNG!
I was at an airport, reading a newspaper, when the World’s Three Most Boring People sat down next to me and started talking as loud as they could without amplifiers. They were so boring I took notes on their conversation. Here’s an actual excerpt:
First Person (pointing to a big bag): That’s a big bag.
Second Person: That is a big bag.
First Person: You can hold a lot in a bag like that.
Third Person: Francine has a big bag like that.
First Person: Francine does? Like that?
Third Person: Yes. It holds everything. She puts everything in that bag.
Second Person: It’s a big bag.
Third Person: She says whatever she has, she just puts it inthat bag and just boom, closes it up.
First Person: Francine does?
Second Person: That is a big bag.
I want to stress that this was not all that they had to say about the big bag. They could have gone on for hours if they hadn’t been interrupted by a major news development: namely, a person walking past pulling a wheeled suitcase. This inspired a whole new train of thought: (“There’s one of those suitcases with those wheels.” “Where?” “There, with those wheels.” “John has one.” “He does?” “With those wheels?” “Yes. He says you just roll it along.” “John does?”)
And so on. It occurred to me that a possible explanation for some plane crashes might be that people like these were sitting close enough to the cockpit for the flight crew to hear them talk (“There’s a cloud.” “Look, there’s another…”) and eventually the pilot deliberately flies into the ground to make them shut up.
The thing is, these people clearly didn’t know they were boring. Boring people never do. In fact, no offense, even YOU could be boring. Ask yourself: When you talk to people, do they tend to make vague excuses—”Sorry! Got to run!”—and then walk briskly away? Does this happen even if you are in an elevator?
But even if people listen to you with what appears to be great interest, that doesn’t mean you’re not boring. They could be pretending. When Prince Charles speaks, everybody pretends to be fascinated, even though he has never said anything interesting except in that intercepted telephone conversation wherein he expressed the desire to be a feminine hygiene product.
And even if you’re not Prince Charles, people might have to pretend you’re interesting because they want to sell you something, or have intimate carnal knowledge of you, or because you hold some power over them. At one time I was a co-investor in a small aging apartment building with plumbing and electrical systems that were brought over on the Mayflower; my partner and I were regularly visited by the building inspector, who had the power to write us up for numerous minor building-code infractions, which is why we always pretended to be fascinated when he told us—as he ALWAYS did—about the time he re-plumbed his house. His account of this event was as long as The Iliad, but with more soldering. I’m sure he told this story to everybody whose building he ever inspected; he’s probably still telling it, unless some building owner finally strangled him, in which case I bet his wife never reported that he was missing.
The point is that you could easily be unaware that you’re boring. This is why everybody should make a conscious effort to avoid boring topics. The problem here, of course, is that not everybody agrees on what “boring” means. For example, Person A might believe that collecting decorative plates is boring, whereas Person B might find this to be a fascinating hobby. Who’s to say which person is correct?
I am. Person A is correct. Plate-collecting is boring. In fact, hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby (This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print.) The New Age is boring, and so are those puzzles where you try to locate all the hidden words. Agriculture is important but boring. Likewise foreign policy. Also, come to think of it, domestic policy. The fact that your child made the honor roll is boring. Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down. Talking about golf is always boring. (Playing golf can be interesting, but not the part where you try to hit the little ball; only the part where you drive the cart.) Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.
Speaking of sports, a big problem is that men and women often do not agree on what is boring. Men can devote an entire working week to discussing a single pass-interference penalty; women find this boring, yet can be fascinated by a four-hour movie with subtitles wherein the entire plot consists of a man and a woman
yearning to have, but never actually having, a relationship. Men HATE that. Men can take maybe 45 seconds of yearning, and then they want everybody to get naked. Followed by a car chase. A movie called Naked People in Car Chases would do really well among men. I have quite a few more points to make, but I’m sick of this topic.
LET’S
DO LUNCH
I am not one to drop names, but I was recently invited to a private luncheon with Hillary Rodham Clinton, First Lady of the Whole Entire United States.
This is true. I got the invitation from Mrs. Clinton’s office, and I said that heck yes, I would go. I will frankly admit that I was excited. Mrs. Clinton would be the most important federal human with whom I have ever privately luncheoned.
I did once attend a dinner with Richard “Dick” Cheney when he was the secretary of defense under President George “Herbert Walker” Bush, but that was not a one-on-one situation. That was at the Cartoonists’ Dinner at the Washington Post, an annual event wherein political cartoonists get a chance to come out from behind their drawing boards and, in an informal setting with high-level federal officials, make fools of themselves. At least that’s what generally happens. I am not one to generalize, but cartoonists, as a group, exhibit a level of social sophistication generally associated with pie fights. In high school, when the future lawyers were campaigning for class president, the future cartoonists were painstakingly altering illustrations in their history books so that Robert E. Lee appeared to be performing an illegal act with his horse.