Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down (23 page)

The two younger dogs are more active; their job is to wait for people to come to the door, then bark loudly and angrily to communicate the fact that, based on their extensive experience as dogs, the people at the door are bad and somebody should bite them. Dogs are deeply suspicious of anybody using a door. Even if, when the door is opened, it turns out that the people standing there know the dogs, and in fact live in the house, the dogs will sometimes continue barking at them for a few seconds, in case it’s some kind of trick.

Dogs behave this way because they are extremely vigilant (I am
using “vigilant” in the sense of “stupid”). I have some friends named Libby and Buzz who have a small, nervous dog named Elmo who is so vigilant that he would be classified, on the scale of animal intelligence, in the category of “mineral.” Elmo and Buzz have lived in the same house for several years now, but every time Buzz walks into a room where Elmo is on duty, Elmo reacts as though Buzz is an entire urban street gang, barking, growling, and running around in small, alarmed circles to let Libby know that Buzz is bad and she should bite him (she rarely does). After maybe 15 minutes, Elmo starts to remember who Buzz is, and he calms down. But if Buzz leaves the room for, say, 10 seconds, all the current drains out of Elmo’s mental battery, and when Buzz returns, YIKES! RED ALERT! Elmo goes off again, like a small, furry, defective car alarm. It is not a quiet household. But by gosh it is a
secure
household, thanks to Elmo’s vigilance.

But getting back to my story: We were having a nice dinner in our friends’ home, and during this dinner one of the dogs kept going to a window and growling. We paid no attention, because dogs are always growling—maybe at the moon, maybe at the turtles, maybe at the Federal Reserve Board—who can say?

After dinner, all of us, including the dogs, went into another room to have dessert and watch the Miami Heat play an important basketball game. Actually, the women watched the game; the men actively controlled the outcome by shouting at the screen. The dogs watched the dessert.

Through skillful team shouting, we men won the game, and everybody agreed it had been a pleasant evening. Then the women discovered that their purses, which had been in the kitchen, were gone. While we’d been shouting at the TV, a burglar had sneaked in and stolen them. He’d obviously been watching us through the window. The growling dog had been telling us this.

When we discovered the burglary, different people reacted in different ways. Some called the police; others smoked cigarettes, even though they have technically quit. I decided to go outside and look
around the yard for Clues. Perhaps I would even find the perpetrator! Then, drawing on my prowess in the martial arts, I would wet my pants.

I was called back into the house by my wife, who had been informed by the police dispatcher that, by wandering around out in the dark, I was being really, really vigilant. The police came quickly. Needless to say, the dogs barked at them. (The young dogs, I mean; the dead dog merely checked to see if they were food.) We later concluded that the reason the dogs did NOT bark at the burglar was that (a) they were busy watching the dessert, and (b) the burglar came in through the window, which apparently is not a violation of dog security rules.

The next day the purses were found a few miles away, minus cash but still containing credit cards, drivers’ licenses, makeup, tissues, pharmaceuticals, espresso machines, power tools and whatever else women keep in their purses. So it could have been a lot worse. And we can all learn some valuable lessons from this episode about home security, namely:

1. We should lock our doors AND windows.
   
2. Dogs will give you a lot of “false alarms,” but every now and then they may really know what they’re barking about.
   
3. On the other hand, maybe not.
   
4. Experts agree that, if you want REAL home security and peace of mind, turtles are worthless.
   

B
efore I get to today’s topic, which is celebrity-attacking birds, I want to issue a formal apology to the “Tri Cities.”

The “Tri Cities” are Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick, Washington, which call themselves the “Tri Cities” in proud recognition of the fact that there are three of them. I had not heard of these cities until recently, when I wrote a column about the Hanford contaminated nuclear dump site, which is located near the “Tri Cities.” My column was about the fact that radioactive ants, flies, and gnats had been discovered at Hanford; I expressed concern that they might mutate and become gigantic and attack Los Angeles and suck all the blood out of actress Fran Drescher.

This column prompted a somewhat critical article in
The Tri-City Herald
, which is the leading newspaper in the “Tri Cities” area. The article pointed out that my column, in focusing on radioactive insects, ignored many of the positive things happening in the “Tri Cities” area, such as (these are direct quotes) “the winning Tri-City Americans hockey team” and “the booming construction going on behind Columbia Center mall.”

The Tri-City Herald
article prompted yet ANOTHER article, this one in
The Seattle Times
(motto: “We Cover
The Tri-City Herald”)
. The
Times
article quoted a “communications specialist” with the Hanford cleanup company who objected to my statement that the dump site “glows like
a Budweiser sign.” The communications specialist states: “That’s a little bit more than inaccurate.”

The
Times
story also notes that:

• Authorities prefer to call the insects “contaminated,” rather than “radioactive.”
  
• According to the president of The Tri-City Visitors and Convention Bureau (this is another direct quote): “The reality is that the real story, so to speak, is that the community has many positive attributes, like a great quality of life.”
  
• The Hanford site also produces (I swear I am not making this up) contaminated tumbleweeds “on a regular basis.”
  

So anyway, I feel terrible. The first rule of journalistic balance is: “Before you report that an area has radioactive ants, ALWAYS check to see if it also has a winning minor-league hockey team.” And I violated that rule. So I hereby apologize to the “Tri Cities.” I’m sure it’s a wonderful area that everybody should visit immediately. To help promote tourism there, I’ve come up with some slogans:

• “The Tri Cities Area … Contaminated—NOT Radioactive!”
  
• “Relax! That Booming Sound You Hear Is Nothing More Than Construction Behind the Columbia Center Mall!”
  

There! I hope that patches things up between me and the “Tri Cities.” If there is anything else that I, personally, can do from 3,000 miles away, please let me know!

Now let’s turn to celebrity-attacking birds. I broach this topic in light of an alarming recent incident involving Fabio, the megahunk male supermodel with long flowing hair and a certain special way of looking at a woman that says to her: “My chest is the size of a UPS truck.”

On March 30, Fabio was at the Busch Gardens theme park in Williamsburg, Virginia, to help inaugurate a new roller-coaster ride,
“Apollo’s Chariot,” named for Apollo, the ancient Roman god of motion sickness. With the press on hand to witness this historic event, Fabio climbed into a seat in the front row of the coaster, and off he went. At some fateful point during the two-minute ride, Fabio collided with—you guessed it—a contaminated tumbleweed.

No, seriously, he collided with a bird. He was not seriously hurt, but in the Associated Press photo I saw, he had blood on his nose and the stunned look of a man who has gone beak-to-beak with Terror.

Busch Gardens officials attempted to downplay the incident, calling it “relatively minor.” They told the press that nearly a million people have ridden roller coasters there, and Fabio was the first one ever to collide with a bird. We do not have to be trained statisticians to understand what this means: It means
the bird did it on purpose
. The bird community has probably been waiting for
years
to get Fabio up in a roller coaster and take a whack at him.

And this will not be the end of it. As any bird scientist (or “orthodontist”) will tell you: Once a bird tastes celebrity blood, it wants more. Today it is Fabio; tomorrow it could be the Spice Girls. That’s why I urge President Clinton to go on TV and bite his lip in a sincerely weepy manner until Congress approves a program wherein we lash expendable volunteer celebrities such as Dennis Rodman, The McLaughlin Group, and actress Fran Drescher to roller coasters and send them up around the clock until they are attacked by birds, at which point F-16 fighter escorts open fire (on the birds).

Let’s do this NOW. Let’s not wait until celebrity roller-coaster attack birds—which, like “contaminated tumbleweeds,” would be an excellent name for a rock band—puncture a truly irreplaceable national treasure such as, God forbid, Adam Sandler. Let’s keep our nation free from terror, from sea to glowing sea.

O
ne evening my wife mentioned, casually, that she had been talking to the son of one of her friends, a little boy named Alexander, about his upcoming fourth birthday.

“Alexander says he’s having a Batman party,” my wife said.

“Hm,” I said.

“So I told him that maybe Batman would come to the party,” my wife said.

“Hm,” I said.

My wife said nothing then. She just looked at me. Suddenly, I knew who was going to be Batman.

I was not totally opposed. In my youth I read many Batman comics, and it seemed to me that he had a pretty neat life, disguised as wealthy playboy Bruce Wayne, waiting for the police commissioner of Gotham City to shine the Bat Signal onto the clouds (it was always a cloudy night when the commissioner needed Batman). Then Bruce would change instantly—it took him only one comic-book panel—into his Batman costume and roar off in the Batmobile to do battle with the Forces of Evil or attend a birthday party.

Of course Bruce owned his own Batman costume. I had to rent mine. It consisted of numerous black rubber pieces, similar to automobile floor mats, with strings so you could tie them to your body. One piece was shaped like rippling chest muscles, so you could transform
yourself, like magic, from a flabby weakling into a flabby weakling wearing an automobile floor mat.

It took me a lot longer than one comic panel to get into this costume, but finally I was ready to speak the words that strike fear into the hearts of criminals everywhere: “Michelle, could you tie my G-string?” It turns out that a key part of the Batman costume is this triangular floor mat piece that protects the Bat Region. It’s very difficult to attach this piece to yourself without help, which could explain why Batman hooked up with Robin.

At last I was ready. In full Bat regalia, I stepped out of the house, and—as crazy as this may sound—for the first time I truly understood, as only a crusader for justice can understand, why people do not wear heavy black rubber outfits in South Florida in August. Staggering through the armor-piercing sunshine and 384 percent humidity, I made it to the Batmobile, which was disguised as a wealthy playboy Toyota Celica.

When we got to Alexander’s house, in accordance with our Bat Plan, I remained outside in the Batmobile while Michelle went to the backyard, where the party was going on. We had bought Alexander a Batman walkie-talkie set; Michelle gave Alexander one unit and told him to use it to call Batman. These Batman walkie-talkies contain actual transistors, so when Alexander called me, I was able to hear, on the other unit, clear as a bell, a random bunch of static. Interpreting this as the Bat Signal, I pulled the rubber Bat Cowl over my head, thus rendering myself legally blind, and drove the Toyota Batmobile into the backyard.

The effect on the party guests, as you would expect, was electrifying. The adults were so electrified that some of them almost wet themselves. The younger guests were stunned into silence, except for Matthew, age one, who ran, crying, to his mom, and probably did wet himself.

With all eyes upon me, I stopped the Batmobile, flung the door open, and, in one fluid, manly motion, sprang out of the seat, then
got retracted violently back into the seat, because I had forgotten to unfasten my seat belt. Eventually I was able to disentangle my cape and stride in a manly, rubberized way over to the birthday boy.

“Happy birthday, Alexander!” I said, using a deep Bat Voice. After that the conversation lagged, because, let’s be honest, what are you going to talk to Batman about? The pennant races? So we just stood there for a while, with Alexander staring at me, and me trying to look manly and calm despite the fact that after 30 seconds in the sun I could have fried an egg on top of my cowl.

Finally the cake arrived, and everybody sang “Happy Birthday,” and I announced that I had to go fight crime. Striding back to the Batmobile, I opened the car door, turned dramatically toward the youngsters, and said, quote “BWEEPBWEEPBWEEPBWEEP.” Actually, it was the Batmobile that said this, because I had forgotten to deactivate the Bat Alarm. I climbed into the front seat, slammed the door with several inches of cape sticking out the bottom, and backed manfully and blindly into the street. Fortunately there was nothing in my way, because I would definitely have hit it, and the law would not have been on my side. (“Mr. Barry, please tell the jury exactly what you were wearing as you backed your car over the plaintiff.”)

The next day, Alexander’s mom reported that the first thing he did when he woke up was turn on his walkie-talkie and call Batman. He said he could hear Batman, but Batman couldn’t hear him because he was busy fighting evil supercriminals named Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze. This was almost true: Batman was actually battling Heat Rash. So he will be out of action for a while. The next superhero from this household to visit Alexander—and I have made this very clear to Michelle—will definitely be Cat Woman.

R
ecently I was at a party hosted by a younger couple, defined as “a couple that had not yet been born when I started worrying about cholesterol.” You will never guess whose music these young people were playing: Bobby Darin’s. Yes. Bobby Darin, hepcat swinger from my youth, is cool again!