A former TV star came down a golden escalator with paid supporters cheering and I dug up 1992’s NOT JUST ANOTHER BOOGER-BREATH DOOTBRAIN. Nine years later, the Orange Avenger is still with us. And so is Dave Barry.
VOTE FOR DAVE BARRY! From THE ADVENTURES OF BARKER AJAX, PSYCHO JOURNALIST.
It’s time once again to play SABOTAGE THE CANDIDATE!, the exciting journalistic phenomenon that’s captured the imagination of drooling DEMENTED dweebs everywhere.
WIN BIG PRIZES. That’s right! Do not turn this page. Learn how YOU CAN BE A WINNER. Keep reading.
WILD DOG’s surprise guest – campaigning without Secret Service protection – has been called THE FUNNIEST MAN IN AMERICA by those renowned humor experts from the New York Times Book Review.
Now, that’s funny. Like getting an ethics award from the Savings & Loan industry.
Speaking of awards, and he does, this week’s delegate-hunting wordsmith won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize. For, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP, “Distinguished Commentary.” Competition for 1992 is likely to include WAYNE’S WORLD, as well as the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarette machines.
If you guessed we captured DAVE BARRY!, you’ve got way too much time on your hands. Way. If you looked at the title of this story and then guessed, that’s okay, you’re still eligible.
Unless you guessed wrong.
The uniformed guard behind the reception desk at The Herald – it really happened – never heard of Dave Barry. Who, by the way, is more famous in Miami than Don Shula’s Sans-a-belt trousers.
The Wild Dog Crew rode five flights of escalators to Barry’s floor. Like shopping at Nordstroms with half the customers speaking Spanish.
Must be nice to have an office.
The words “Federal Bureau Somethingsomething” got us right by Barry’s formidable secretary, who resembles Loni Anderson in the right light. Must be nice to have a secretary.
One flash of our CAPT. DON’S MAGIC GOLD-PLATED SHIELD and Barry ushered us into a LUSHly-decorated computer room overlooking Biscayne Bay. Former home of Bebe Rebozo. MR. BARRY DID NOT COMMENT ABOUT MR. REBOZO.
Mr. Barry was HARD at work when the CAUGHT YOU IN THE ACT! team dropped in on our way to the beach.
“We have CRACK SECURITY here,” Barry alibied. “If you came in and said, ‘Hi, I’m here to KILL THE EDITOR,” our people are trained to reply, ‘You’ll have to sign in. Here’s your badge.’ If anyone ever goes berserk in the newsroom, that person will be wearing a badge. They’re VERY STRICT about that.”
The day we burst into his office, Dave Barry, syndicated in over 400 newspapers – so many he’s lost count – is disguised as a high school sophomore named Herb. When he was voted Class CLOWN (and Best Beatle Haircut) at Pleasantville (N.Y.) High, he looked like a Gerber poster child.
Now 44, with hardly used, still tender skin, Barry must produce his driver’s license to buy a beer. He’s smart, famous, and apparently takes fetus hormone injections available only to the very rich. I don’t even have medical insurance, for christsake.
Yes, he’s thought about aging, and….
“I’m against it,” Barry interrupts, quicker than you can say PACT WITH THE DEVIL. “I do not intend to participate in that particular trend. I’m not going to age. Too many yuppies doing it. It’s a decision I’ve made and I’m willing to live with it.”
He dresses like he’s recently renewed his endorsement contract with the L.L.Bean catalog. Bottom to top, his NAKED ankles FIRMly fill boat moccasins, SENSOUSly-faded jeans are MOLDED to a LITHE frame, and a natural fiber sweatshirt protects his YOUTHFUL, almost hairless arms from the THROBBING air conditioning. (Miami is so tough, they CHILL THE INSIDES of otherwise perfectly good buildings.)
I can see his heart beat pulse in his wrist. I am close enough to strangle him.
As towns go, Miami most resembles the bar scene in STAR WARS. “South Florida…I love it,” Barry sings, misquoting a Randy Newman tune. “It’s weird and different. To some people scary, because a lot of people don’t speak English. And because everybody drives according to the laws of his or her individual country of origin.”
Barry can only give me an hour of his PRECIOUS TIME.
I pretend I’m a professional journalist in complete control of my faculties, so I say something amusing about how in Canada, for example, it’s considered safety-conscious to drive with the left-turn signal blinking at all times.
Barry chuckles, like there’s a drying spit ball about to drop on my head. He knows, every time he climbs into his Tom Hanks edition (“I bought the car for the luggage that came with it.”) Ford Bronco with the MY KID STOLE YOUR KID’S LUNCH MONEY bumper sticker, he’s just one Canadian away from the auto-body shop.
“Canadians drive according to the law,” says the former reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Penn., “just not the laws from this planet. Not even the laws of gravity.
“Miami is a very non-ordinary place to live. Not too many cities are having big battles in official government circles over whether or not it should be legal to sacrifice goats. Here, that’s a legitimate local municipal issue. They do chickens, too, down here. More than once in my life I have seen chicken parts hanging from trees.”
“DAVE BARRY’S ECONOMIC PACKAGE. 1. Every Middle-class American will receive $10,000 cash from the government. 2. Make that $20,000. 3. Sometimes, without warning, U.S. Air Force Bombers will fly over randomly chosen middle-class communities and drop bales of money. 4. I see no reason why the IRS has to know about any of this.”
Read his lips. Watch his mouth move. Smell his breath. DAVE BARRY IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. Having tossed his visor and underwear into the proverbial political ring, whatever that means, Barry remains buoyant about his chances to grill burgers in the Rose Garden next January. About the same time he moves the White House to South Beach. And paints it pink.
How’s the campaign going?
“It’s going real well,” says the ONLY NON-SLEASEBALL IN THE RACE. “I’m running in third place. The way it’s going, I’ll be the only candidate for either party.
Some voters, mostly INSTITUTIONALIZED, see Barry as a combination of BILLIONAIRE PATRIOT Perot on the left and Ayatollah Buchanan on the right.
“Is Perot on the left?,” Barry ponders. “I’ve never been clear where he is. THE TRUTH IS, if George Bush was running against a can of Armour Potted Meat Product, that product would get 30% of the vote. Buchanan would do real well in Austria. The Austrian primary, I think he’s HOLDING on for that.”
So, the campaign is going SWELL?
“Campaign is going real SWELL,” Barry goes into SPIN CONTROL. “I’ve asked my supporters to keep their car lights off during the day. If you just look out the window here at the traffic, you’ll see it’s really catching on.”
A veritable ground SWELL. “I CAN FEEL IT SWELLING,” Barry confides.
We both look out the window. I wonder what he’s thinking. Probably all the places his Pulitzer Prize winning ass would rather be than locked in this computer room with me. I’m thinking, if there’s just the two of us in here, and the little dweeb goes flying out the window plummeting to a glass-sharded bloody death, well, I’m going to need a very good explanation. Very good indeed.
Many lanes of many cars, each with a single passenger, are backed up. The draw bridge opens to let one yacht pass through. The “One man, One boat” principle has made the country what it is today.
Barry denies he spends his weekends cruising BACK AND FORTH forcing bridges to go UP AND DOWN.
“No, I don’t have a boat BIG ENOUGH to do that,” says Barry, who’s looking forward to being COMMANDER IN CHIEF. “My first act as President would be to hire jet fighters to just fly around. Any time it looked like a boat was about to stop all the traffic, they’d have my authority to blow it out of the water.
“Okay, so we would lose a few boaters, but think of all the HAPPY commuters there would be. You see them all stopped for some guy who probably made all his money selling narcotics and now he’s drifting off to sea.”
It’s time to SURPRISE THE CANDIDATE! This week’s question was sent in to us by… never mind who. In addition to a bunch of vaguely suggestive thoughts about what “that cerebral studmuffin” can do the next time he’s in the Lake Oswego area, our reader wants to know, why does Mr. Barry spend so much space – perhaps better used for important social issues – on exploding animals?
“Well, somebody has to.” Barry doesn’t sweat the small stuff. “What I’ve learned is, don’t worry about what people think too much, if you want to be a humor columnist.”
For the record, we never actually saw his Pulitzer Prize.
“No one has ever checked that in the history of the world. Every newspaper I’ve ever gone to, somebody has won a Pulitzer Prize. Why would you dispute it? I keep telling young journalists, ‘Don’t bother trying to actually win a Pulitzer Prize, just get the reputation of having already WON THE PULITZER.'”
We told him, you have to live with yourself. “No!,” Barry, SHARP AS AN ELBOW, responded, “I don’t have to live with myself.”
Any witnesses? Did anybody actually see you with the award? Have you ever been with an award before? Barry spent eight years teaching business executives not to write “Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosure…;” how does a guy like that win the Pulitzer?
Here’s a sample from Barry’s winning entry.
“New York has more commissioners than Des Moines, Iowa, has residents, including…the Commissioner for Bicycle Messengers Bearing Down On You at Warp Speed with Mohawk Haircuts and Pupils Smaller than Purely Theoretical Particles…. Times Square is best known as the site where many thousands of people gather each New Year’s Eve for a joyous and festive night of public urination… It also serves as an important cultural center where patrons may view films such as Sex Aliens, Wet Adulteress, and, of course, Sperm Busters.”
Guess you just had to be there.
“I did a column about New York, and a column about the Pulitzer Prizes. A vicious attack on New York, a vicious attack on the Pulitzer Prizes,” Barry admitted, obviously succumbing to our savvy interrogatory technique. (Available on videotape: GERALDO’S 60 MINUTES OF MOI.)
“That was key. I’ve been on Pulitzer juries now,” BARRY CONFESSES, somewhat SHEEPishly, “so I know for a fact, the two things you hate most at the end of that week is 1) New York, and 2) the Pulitzer Prizes. So, you’re very STRONGLY SYMPATHETIC to anybody who is making fun of them.
Barry’s night job is writing best sellers, like his thrilling whodunit BABIES AND OTHER HAZARDS OF SEX. “Imaginative use of white space,” a critic raved. Where does Barry go from here?
“Nowhere. I mean, I’m happy. And I think I’m secure. I have the best job I know of. Of anybody I know of.” He pauses. “There’s no area of my life where I think, Boy, I need to change this.”
He’s happy. He’s got the best job. Listen to him. I could kill this guy and probably get off. Justifiable Homicide.
“All my life, I’ve always felt reasonably secure,” says Barry, “even when I was making $87.50 a week and living in New York City. I was really poor, basically. Sometimes the country’s in a recession and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we’re in wars. Sometimes we’re not. I think about those things.”
Meanwhile, I’m thinking, if I can’t write well enough to win a Pulitzer, maybe I’ll just kill a Pulitzer prize winner who’s really famous. And get in all the papers nationally. Four hundred or so for sure.
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD. “I guess when you sum it all up,” Barry starts to add and subtract, “underneath the thin veneer of joy and happiness, and talent and tallness and good looks… be sure to stress tall, good looks, and the charm. And lean. And HARD AS A PICK HANDLE… But, underneath that lean, tall, EXTREMELY HANDSOME – IN A CRUEL YET HUMOROUS WAY – I’m just hoping,” Barry multiplies and divides, “a lot of WILD DOG’s readers … how many? One thousand? If every one of those people were to send twenty-five dollars, just twenty-five dollars from each one, what a better world this would be.”
You can see by the end of the page, that’s about all the time we have for this edition of ENDORSE THE DUDE!
This could be the break I’m looking for. Kill him. Plead temporary insanity. Get out of jail in six years with two or three finished manuscripts. No rent. Regular hours.
Next week on SELL YOURSELF TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER!, we ask the question, if Oprah Winfrey isn’t Elvis Presley, how come we never see them together?
We’ll ask Elvis. Who is, by the way, a WILD DOG subscriber. Tune in.
“Once you see government bodies operate up close, you start to realize no one connected with them is any better than you are. So, you begin to wonder why these dootbrains are in charge of your life.”
Maybe if I can get him to take me to his house. They’ll find him floating in that scum pond he calls a pool out back. Make it look like an accident.
“No offense, Barker, but after the fifteenth or twentieth time a reporter says I just want to spend a couple of days with you and get to know you, and meanwhile, I’ve got to write a column,” Barry by now is talking very fast and backing up toward the door. “I have a child. I’ve got a life to lead.” He seems a little spooked. “So, it’s nothing. I’m not being any more reclusive with you than with anybody else.”
This guy is crazier than I am. How does he get away with it, I wonder. Everybody’s clown is nobody’s fool.
Maybe we could get together for a couple of beers. Just the two of us. Somewhere remote, away from all his cloying fans. We’ll see who gets the biggest laugh then, Mr. Youthful, Mr. Rich, Popular and Famous, Mr. Pulitzer Prize-winning, Happily-Married with a Pool, Mr. Bestseller….We’ll see who’s laughing then. HA, HA, HA!
“I know!,” Barry said. “I’ll give you P.J. O’Rourke’s number. He’s got more time than I do.”
Then it comes to me, DAVE BARRY IS AMERICA’S SMARTEST MAN.
“Mr. O’Rourke? Good evening, sir. My name is Barker Ajax.
“Dave Barry suggested I give you a call.”