Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down (21 page)

What, exactly, is the Internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a “modem,” can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo. This is called “logging on,” and once you are “logged on,” you can move the “pointer” of your “mouse” to a “hyperlink,” and simply by “clicking” on it, change your “pointer” to an “hourglass.” Then you can go to “lunch,” and when you come back, there, on your computer screen, as if by magic, will be at least 14 advertisements related to Beanie Babies (which currently are the foundation of the entire world economy). This entire process takes place in less time than it takes for a sperm whale to give birth to twins.

The business community is insanely excited about the Internet. Internet companies are springing up like mushrooms, inspired by such amazing success stories as
Amazon.com
, which started doing business just a few years ago, and is already losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A LOT of Internet companies are losing money like crazy, yet their stock prices are soaring; in fact, the more an Internet company loses, the more desirable it becomes to investors. This seems like a paradox, but there’s a very logical economic explanation: Internet investors have the brains of grapefruit. If you started a company called Set Fire to Piles of Money.com, they’d be beating down your door.

Here in the newspaper business, we have definitely caught Internet
Fever. In the old days, we used to—get this!—actually
charge money
for our newspapers. Ha ha! What an old-fashioned, low-tech, non-digital concept! Nowadays all of the hip modern newspapers spend millions of dollars operating Web sites where we give away the entire newspaper for free. Sometimes we run advertisements in the regular newspaper urging our remaining paying customers to go to our Web sites instead. “Stop giving us money!” is the shrewd marketing thrust of these ads. Why do we do this? Because all the other newspapers are doing it! If all the other newspapers stuck pencils up their noses, we’d do that, too! This is called “market penetration.”

My point is that if the newspaper industry—which still has not figured out, despite centuries of operation, where your driveway is—can get into the Internet, then you can, too. Simply follow the clear, detailed instructions set forth in this column, and you’re on your way! I sincerely hope you get very, very rich. Because then I can be your friend.

A
s a man, I believe that, every now and then, a man should do something manly. So when I got invited to the North Texas Earthmoving Field Day, my manly reaction was: “HECK yes.”

The North Texas Earthmoving Field Day is a very manly annual event organized by the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), which is a member of the Texas A&M University System. The Earthmoving Field Day is a massive gathering of big studly machines of the type you sometimes see in the distance, pushing around humongous masculine piles of dirt. The basic idea behind Earthmoving Field Day is that people looking to buy heavy equipment can actually climb into the cabs of these machines and grab the controls and perform a “hands-on” assessment of their capabilities, by which I mean have a
whole
bunch of manly mechanized fun with those babies.

When I was maybe six years old, I spent many hours on a dirt pile next to my house, making roads and stuff with toy trucks and bulldozers. This was hard work, because in addition to pushing the heavy equipment around, I had to make the motor noise with my mouth—
BRRRMMMMMM
—for hours on end, keeping a fine mist of spit raining down on the construction site. Almost all boys do this, yet for some reason most of us, when we grow up, rarely operate any piece of equipment more impressive than hedge trimmers.

I flew to Dallas on an airplane full of hedge-trimmer-owning briefcase
toters from the world of dot-com. But I entered a new realm entirely when I rented a car and drove west for a manly piece, into the country, until I saw a large testosterone cloud on the horizon, indicating the Earthmoving Field Day site. I joined a parade of pickup trucks headed for the top of a big old hill that was in danger of sinking under the weight of dozens and dozens of dozers, graders, loaders, trenchers, backhoes, cranes, scraper boxes, skid steers, rock crushers, and every other dang kind of machine that is designed to deliver, in no uncertain terms, the following message to the Earth: MOVE.

We’re talking about some large units here. We’re talking about machines the size of your house with wheels the size of your car, machines that get zero miles per gallon and have the word “WARNING” in big black letters all over them, followed by statements that inevitably begin, “TO PREVENT SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH …”

Walking around, admiring and climbing into these rigs, were hundreds of guys, virtually every single one of whom wore work boots, Wrangler jeans, a T-shirt, and either a ball cap or a cowboy hat. Most wore belts with large manly buckles, some of which were pointing almost straight down under the weight of bellies large enough to contain Richard Simmons. These guys don’t belong to health clubs: They chew tobacco while digging the holes that
become
health clubs.

I was given a tour of the Field Day by the guy who started it, Mike Griffith, a Texan who pronounces “vehicle” as “vee-hickle” and uses many Texas expressions such as “that vee-hickle is slick as a whistle.” He gave me a ball cap and drove me around on a rugged vehicle that he preferred to drive directly through dirt mounds, rather than around them. Mike showed me various Field Day activities, which included safety seminars and skills competitions. But the main activity, which at any given moment hundreds of guys were engaged in, was randomly digging big holes and then filling them back in, or moving a mound of dirt the size of, say, Vermont, from one side of a field to another, and then moving it back. And if you don’t think that would be fun, then you are, no offense, probably a woman.

I got to operate several pieces of equipment, including a great big yellow thing that is technically called an “excavator,” although most of us would call it a “steam shovel.” This thing could knock down a post office in 5 minutes, and—this is why I love America—they put it into the hands of a
humor columnist
. Onlookers ran for cover as, with my ball cap firmly on my head, I yanked randomly on the control levers, causing the giant metal shovel to zoom and flail around like a crazed robot dinosaur on speed. But I stayed with it, and finally I managed to pick up a huge wad of dirt, move it 25 feet, and drop it, slick as a whistle. In the old days, it would have taken a humor columnist
weeks
to do this.

Satisfied with my day’s work, I went to the food tent and lined up with the other men for a manly meal of barbecued meat slabs with extra cholesterol brought in by truck. Then, sadly, it was time for me to return to the world of dot-com hedge trimmers. The only evidence of where I’d been was the dirt on my shoes. Also, there was some moisture on my rental-car dashboard. Because, driving back to the airport, I couldn’t help making the motor noise.

I
f there’s one question that troubles every thinking person, it’s this: Does cheating go on in professional wrestling?

In an effort to find an answer, I recently attended a tournament sanctioned by Florida Championship Wrestling. I chose FCW for two solid journalistic reasons:

• It is a venerable circuit in the “minor leagues” of professional wrestling, where the potential stars of tomorrow learn the ground rules, the “do’s and don’t’s,” that make up the ethical standards of the sport.
  
• It is near my house.
  

The FCW tournament I attended was held at the Miccosukee Indian Gaming Center, located west of Miami on the edge of the Everglades. This is one of the few gaming facilities where you can gamble on bingo, slot machines, poker, etc., and then—merely by walking a short distance—get eaten by alligators.

I watched the wrestling matches from a seat right next to the commissioner of FCW, Bernie Siegel. It is Commissioner Siegel’s job to monitor the sport closely for cheating and impose stiff punishments on wrongdoers.

“I haven’t had an eye exam in years,” he told me.

In the first match, a wrestler who had been losing suddenly gained the upper hand (so to speak) by kicking his opponent in a very sensitive masculine region.

“Did you see that?” I asked Commissioner Siegel.

“See what?” he answered.

The referee didn’t see it either, even though he was standing about two feet from the wrestlers. It takes a special type of person to be a professional-wrestling referee, the type of person who, if he had been present when the
Hindenburg
was being consumed by a giant ball of flame, would have been looking, with intense interest, at the ground.

In the next match, a wrestler thumbed his opponent in the eye, yanked on his hair, and then choked him for approximately five minutes while the referee hovered alertly nearby, looking for violations.

“These are world-class athletes,” observed Commissioner Siegel.

Next, in one of the featured matches, a wrestler named Larry Lane fought “Playboy” Bobby Davis, who is 350 pounds of highly disciplined, superbly trained, expertly conditioned fat. Lane was winning, but then Davis’s “manager,” a woman named Ebony, who was wearing a pair of shorts that would be two sizes too small for Barbie, distracted the referee while a third wrestler, Tony Apollo, who was supposed to be injured and who was not, technically, even in this match, climbed into the ring and whacked Lane over the head from behind with his crutch.

“I didn’t see anything there,” said Commissioner Siegel, before I even asked him.

In another featured match, a wrestler named Anthony “The South Beach Stud” Adonis distracted the referee by asking him about the rules (“Our referees are trained to be instructive at all times,” said Commissioner Siegel). For several minutes, while the referee patiently explained the rules, directly behind his back, Adonis’s opponent, Billy Viper, was writhing on the mat in agony while being repeatedly kicked in the masculine region and clawed in the eyeball region by Adonis’s manager, a woman named Babe.

“We’ve had people get their eyes gouged out,” observed Commissioner Siegel, adding, “They become referees.”

As he spoke, Tony Apollo, who was not technically in
this
match, either, slipped a folding chair into the ring for Anthony Adonis to whack Billy Viper with.

“It looks like he’s slipping a chair into the ring,” I said.

“I’ll have to check the tape on that,” said Commissioner Siegel.

In subsequent matches, a wrestler beat his opponent in the face with a cowbell (yes, a cowbell); a manager named Abudadein (“The Master of Darkness”) used his staff (“The Staff of Darkness”) to knock out a security guard; and Duke “The Dumpster” Droese appeared to be about to win his match when his opponent, the Cuban Assassin, clubbed him senseless with a flagpole holding a Cuban flag, which the Cuban Assassin’s manager, a woman named Fantasy, had slipped into the ring unobserved.

“Is he allowed to hit him with the flagpole?” I asked.

“He hit him with the
flagpole
?” responded Commissioner Siegel.

All in all, it was an exciting evening of athletic competition. And although at times it appeared, to my untrained eye, that some of the contestants might possibly have been taking liberties with the rules of fair play, I realize that this could hardly be possible if the commissioner of Florida Championship Wrestling, who happens to be a licensed attorney and whose whole JOB is to keep an eye on things, did not see any violations. So rest easy, America: The popular sport of professional wrestling is definitely “on the up and up.” Its integrity is protected by safeguards every bit as stringent as the ones used to protect America’s most vital nuclear secrets. You think I’m joking.

I
may be 51 years old, but, darn it, I’m still a “rock-and-roll kind of animal.” So when a friend named Gene offered me some tickets to a Beach Boys concert, I jumped at the chance. As a result, I strained my back and had to lie down for six days.

But after the pain subsided I was very excited, because I’m a huge Beach Boys fan. I’ll never forget the first time I saw them in person, back in 1964, at a fantastic concert in New York … Wait, no, it was Philadelphia, and it might have been 1967. And come to think of it, it wasn’t the Beach Boys; it was the Bee Gees. Or maybe the Turtles. It was definitely a plural name. Although now that I think of it, I’m not 100 percent sure I was there.

But never mind the details. The point is that I’ve loved the Beach Boys’ music since
way-y-y
back when I was in junior high school, and America was happy and carefree because the Civil War was finally over. I went through puberty with the Beach Boys (not
literally
, of course; we all had separate rooms). Their songs expressed a new kind of feeling that was stirring deep within the bowels of my loins; a feeling of vulnerability, of tenderness, and—yes—of sexual desire.

For cars, I mean. When the Beach Boys sang “She’s real fine, my 409 … my four-speed, dual-quad, Posi-Traction 409,” they were giving voice to the fantasy of every pimple-speckled male at Harold C. Crittenden Junior High. We
lusted
for Posi-Traction! Whatever it was!

I still know all the words to all the Beach Boys’ car songs. When I’m driving, and the radio plays “Shut Down,” which is about a drag race, I sing along at the top of my lungs: “He’s hot with ram induction, but it’s understood; I got a fuel-injected engine sittin’ under my hood.” The truth is that I have no idea what kind of engine I have sittin’ under my hood. I could have a food processor sittin’ under there. But the Beach Boys still make me feel like Mr. Stud Piston.

And the Beach Boys were not just limited to car songs. They took on the important social issues, too, in songs such as “Be True to Your School” (actual lyric: “Rah rah rah rah sis boom bah!”) and “I Get Around” (actual lyric: “I’m a real cool head! I’m makin’ real good bread!”).