Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus (7 page)

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.

W
e 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, about 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.”

Because Tom and Gene are severely rhythmically impaired, neither one could actually
chant
“Air Ball;” they
both just nervously blurted it out a few times very fast—
airballairballairball
—and there was no way to determine, without sensitive instruments, what, if any, musical key they were in. But it
could
have been F.

Anyway, my research convinced me that Professor Heaton is correct: Something is causing Americans to chant “Air Ball” in F. But what? I believe that the most logical explanation—you probably thought of this—is: extraterrestrials. As you know if you watch the TV documentary series
The X-Files
, when anything weird happens, extraterrestrials are almost always responsible. In this case, beings from another galaxy are probably trying to communicate with us by transmitting powerful radio beams that penetrate basketball fans’ brains and cause them to “spontaneously” chant in the key of F. I imagine that eventually the aliens will switch the fans to another key, such as A, and then maybe C, and so on until the aliens have musically spelled out some intergalactic message to humanity, such as “FACE A DEAD CABBAGE.”

Or it could be something else. I have no idea what they’re trying to tell us; I just know we’d better do what they say. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling an overpowering urge to do “the wave.”

T
his topic was suggested by a letter from John Cog of Norfolk, Virginia. Here’s the entire text:

“How come when I’m standing in front of a full-length mirror with nothing on but socks, white socks look OK, but dark-colored socks make me look cheap and sleazy?”

This letter was passed along to me by my Research Department, Judi Smith, who attached a yellow stick-on note that says: “This is true.” Judi did not say how she happens to
know
it’s true; apparently—and I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation—she has seen John Cog of Norfolk, Virginia, wearing nothing but socks.

But the point is that dark socks, as a lone fashion accessory, create a poor impression. This is a known fact that has been verified in scientific experiments wherein fashion researchers put little white socks on one set of naked laboratory rats, and dark socks on another, then exposed both groups to a panel of leading business executives such as Bill
Gates, who indicated that they would be “somewhat more likely” to hire from the white-sock group, should their personnel needs ever include a rat.

What this means, men, is that if you’re dressing for an important job interview, church supper, meeting with my Research Department, or other occasion where you could wind up wearing nothing but socks, they should be white.

Likewise, if you’re going to be wearing just your underwear, you should always tuck your undershirt way down into your underpants. This is the “look” favored by the confident, sharp-dressing men found in the underwear section of the now-defunct Sears catalog, who are often depicted standing around in Rotary-Club-like groups, looking relaxed and smiling, as if to say: “Our undershirts are tucked way down into our underpants, and we could not feel better about it!”