Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down (20 page)

Finally I was suited up, and, with Tony guiding me, I waddled into the stadium. I wish you could have seen the crowd reaction. I wish I could have seen it, too. But it turns out that—biologists, take note—lizards actually see through their mouths, and my mouth was pointing down at a 45-degree angle, so all I could see was legs and small children. I saw a lot of children. They love to run directly into mascots at full speed, and they tend to hit you right where you’d carry your carrot, if you catch my drift.

Keeping a wary eye out for incoming tots, I moved slowly and blindly around the stadium, pausing every now and then to wave at the crowd, enthusiastically and totally cluelessly, exactly like a U.S. presidential candidate. It was going pretty well until I wandered into the stadium end zone, where a group of hard-core soccer fans hang out. Going there was a bad idea for two reasons: (1) Serious soccer purists are not fond of the mascot concept; and (2) The opposing team had just scored a goal. So the mood in the hard-core zone was unhappy.

Of course P.K. the lizard did not know any of this. P.K. was just shuffling along, a big, blind, green, high-fivin’, wavin’ wad of fun. My first inkling of trouble came when man stuck his face deep into my mouth opening and made a very uncomplimentary remark. Hoping to win him over via hijinks, I attempted to high-five him, but somebody grabbed me, and then somebody else yanked on my tail, and within seconds there were people all around me, shouting and grabbing and pounding on my head. It was like being inside the bass drum at a Metallica concert.

The problem with being a mascot in this situation is that you have no way to indicate distress: Your mascot face keeps right on smiling happily. But believe me, the inner lizard was scared. Fortunately, Tony and some security guards quickly came to my rescue, and the remainder of my stint as mascot went smoothly. The rest of the crowd seemed friendly; I high-fived and waved at a lot of invisible people. I also noted one interesting fact: If you’re wearing a lizard costume, and a woman walks up and stands right in front of you, you are looking, through the lizard’s mouth, directly at the female attributes that women are always accusing guys of looking at. You can’t help it! But the woman cannot tell, because the eyeballs on your mascot head appear to be making mature eye contact with her.

I pass this fact along for you guys who are pondering a career in the giant-lizard field. My advice is, stay out of the end zone. And wear a cup.

I
f there’s one ideal that unites all Americans, it’s the belief that every single one of us, regardless of ethnic background, is fat.

It was not always this way. There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans did not obsess about fat. In those days, a man could be portly and still be considered attractive. The standards were also more lenient for women: Marilyn Monroe, whom nobody ever called skinny, was a major sex goddess.

By today’s beauty standards, of course, Marilyn Monroe was an oil tanker. Today’s beauty ideal, strictly enforced by the media, is a person with the same level of body fat as a paper clip. Turn on your TV, and all you see are men and women who would rather have both eyeballs removed via corkscrew than eat a slice of pizza. These are genetic mutants: You can see their muscles, veins, and neck bones almost bursting through their fat-free skin. I don’t know who decided that the see-through look was attractive; I, personally, have never heard anybody express lust for anybody else’s internal organs. But we normal humans are constantly exposed to the zero-fat mutants in the media, and we naturally assume that we’re supposed to look like them. This is of course impossible, but we try. We diet constantly, especially young women, many of whom now start dieting while still in the womb.

And of course we spend millions of dollars on “exercise,” defined
as “activity designed to be strenuous without accomplishing anything useful.” For example, we drive our cars to health clubs so we can run on treadmills. But we do NOT run to the health club, because then we would be accomplishing something useful. We pedal furiously on exercise bicycles that do not go anywhere. We take elevators every chance we get, but we buy expensive machines that enable us to pretend we’re climbing stairs. It would not surprise me if yuppies started paying potato farmers for the opportunity to go into the fields and burn fat by pretending to conduct a harvest, taking great care not to dig up any actual potatoes.

If you think that’s ridiculous, then you haven’t seen “Tae-Bo.” This is the current hot fad, advertised extensively on TV by perspiring mutants. As I understand it, Tae-Bo is based on martial arts; the difference is that martial artists actually learn to defend themselves, whereas Tae-Bo people throw pretend punches and kicks strictly for fitness purposes. While they’re busy kicking air and checking their abdominals, an actual mugger could walk right up and whack them with a crowbar.

But never mind practicality. The point is that right now Tae-Bo is very, very hot, which means that soon everybody will get bored with it. That’s what always happens with exercise trends: People realize that, after countless hours of pretending to climb stairs or punching the air, they still bear a stronger resemblance to the Michelin Tire Man than to the TV mutants. So they give up on that particular trend and look for a new one.

Will this craziness ever end? Will Americans ever come to their senses and stop wasting millions and millions of dollars on hopeless efforts to look like people who don’t really look like people? I hope not, because I’m planning to cash in on this. I got my idea from a wonderful newspaper article, sent in by alert veterinarian Steven Berry, from the April 7, 1999, edition of the
Leader News
of Central City, Kentucky. The article, written by Paul Camplin, is headlined “Cobbs Invented Odd Sport of Bee Fighting as Family Entertainment.” It concerns
the descendants of Bunn and Betty Cobb of Calhoun, Kentucky, who have gotten together annually for about 70 years to fight wild bees for fun. The article states:

“Without use of protective gear, one of the group approaches the bumble-bee hive and whacks it with a stick. When all of the now angry bees come flying out the group of bee fighters simply fight off the bees as best they can with large clumps of maple leaves.”

The article, which I am not making up, is illustrated by photos of members of the extended Bunn family, including grandparents, wildly waving branches at bees.

When I saw those photos, I knew I was looking at a gold mine. I’m talking about the Next Big Fitness Trend: “Tae-Bee.” I’m going to make a 30-minute TV infomercial wherein enthusiastic hired mutants stress the benefits of bee-fighting (“… and while you’re OUCH burning fat, your arm motion is also OUCH building those OUCH …”).

In no time millions of Americans will be ordering the Tae-Bee workout videotape, along with the Official (Accept No Substitutes!) Tae-Bee Maple Leaf Clump and of course the Official Tae-Bee Box o’ Really Mad Bees. And if you don’t think Americans will pay good money to get stung, I have one word for you: “ThighMaster.”

So laugh if you want: I’m going to get rich on this thing. And then I’m going to hire a personal trainer. His sole job will be to order my pizza.

I’
ll tell you when I start to worry. I start to worry when “officials” tell me not to worry. This is why I am very concerned about the following Associated Press report, which was sent to me by a number of alert readers:

Should we trust these “officials”? I’ll let you decide for yourself what the answer is (NO). But consider:

• For years, “officials” insisted that our cars needed air bags for safety; then, when we GOT air bags, “officials” started warning us how dangerous they are, the result being that many concerned parents now strap their children to the car roof.
  
• For years, “officials” told us that marijuana was an evil criminal drug. Now they tell us that it has “important medical benefits warranting further investigation, but first let’s order a pizza.”
  
• Every year, “officials” tell us to turn all our clocks ahead one hour, only to turn around a few months later and tell us to turn them BACK. Make up your minds, “officials”!
  

My point is that we cannot trust “officials” any farther than we can throw them by the leg. This is especially true when it comes to the Hanford nuclear complex. When this complex was built, “officials” said it was safe; now the whole area glows like a Budweiser sign. So when “officials” tell us that the radioactive Hanford insects are NOT going to mutate into giant monsters like the ants depicted in the 1954 movie
Them!
, it clearly is time to study this movie and see what happened, because it is about to happen again.

I did not see
Them!
, but I do have a plot summary from a book called
Guide for the Film Fanatic
. It states that after James Whitmore and James Arness discover the giant mutant ants marauding around the New Mexico desert, they kill most of them by burning their nest; however, some ants escape, and the heroes “trace them to Los Angeles.” The book doesn’t say why the heroes would have to “trace” the ants; you’d think that if marauding insects the size of houses showed up in a heavily populated area, it would be mentioned prominently in the news media, but
Guide for the Film Fanatic
makes it sound as though Arness and Whitmore had to track the ants down via detective techniques:

Anyway, the heroes finally locate the giant ants in the Los Angeles sewer system, where, according to
Guide for the Film Fanatic
, there is “a thrilling finale.” The
Guide
gives no details on this finale, so we don’t know whether the ants are killed, or mutate again and become agents, or what.

But the point is this: If, as now seems likely, the radioactive insects at the Hanford complex mutate and start marauding, they will almost certainly head for Los Angeles. This is a terrifying prospect. Imagine how you would feel if you tuned in to the evening news and learned that, for example, Fran Drescher had been sucked dry by a gnat the size of a water buffalo. You’d feel pretty excited. You’d hope there was video.

But innocent people could also be hurt, and that is why we need to take action NOW. Instead of frittering away billions on this
Star Wars
missile-defense system, we need to use that money to construct, in the desert outside of Los Angeles, a 100-foot-high, 500-foot-long, fully functional Hostess Twinkie. The giant insects would be attracted to the Twinkie, and while they were munching on it, an Earth-orbiting manned space station would launch a rocket-propelled, laser-guided, nine-story-high, 18,000-pound man’s shoe, which would, by the time it reached the Twinkie, be traveling at over 6,000 miles per hour, resulting in a Stomp of Doom that would hurl globs of cream filling as far as St. Louis.

Of course building a weapons system this size would not be easy. There would be political considerations: Powerful members of Congress would insist on having giant Twinkies built in their states, too. But that is a small price to pay for national security. We must proceed with this! We already have the technology! Which means, of course, that so does China.

E
verybody—by which I mean “not you”—is getting rich off the Internet. We are constantly seeing stories in the media about young Internet entrepreneurs who look like they should be mowing lawns for spending money, except that they have the same net worth as Portugal. Six months ago, they were college students, sitting around their dorms, trying to figure out what body part to pierce next; now they’re the CEOs of Something-Dot-Com, and they’re buying mansions, jets, camels, etc., not to mention van Gogh and Renoir (I’m not talking about their paintings; I’m talking about their actual
corpses)
.

When we read about these spectacularly successful young people—who, through their boldness and vision, have realized the American Dream, and in so doing have created the greatest economic boom the world has ever seen, thereby benefiting all of us—we cannot help but express our gratitude as follows: “I hope they get leprosy.”

No! We must not be petty and jealous, just because these people are young AND rich. Instead we must philosophically ask ourselves: “Are these young zillionaires truly
happy
? Does all that money really give them any more pleasure than I can get from simply watching a sunrise, or chatting with an old friend?”

You cretin: Of COURSE it does. These people are so rich that, if they want, they can install giant hydraulic hoists under the entire horizon, so they can raise it up and watch the same sunrise TWICE. And
they can buy all the old friends they want. They can buy YOUR old friends. When you ask your old friends to come over and chat, they’ll say, “Sorry! I’ve been invited to a 22-year-old zillionaire’s house to watch him raise the horizon!”

So the bottom line is, if you want to be happy in today’s economy, you need to be rich, too. This means that you have to become involved with the Internet, which has brought about the most revolutionary change in business communications since 1876, when the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell first figured out how to make callers on hold listen to Barry Manilow.