Baseball at the 1982 Central American and Caribbean Games

Transcription

DAVE BARRY: It's nice to be here, at Google in New York. I actually have done a couple of events at Mountain View, including one where I performed. I'm in a rock band of authors, with Stephen King, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Ridley Pearson, Greg Iles, Roy Blount Jr., Scott Thoreau. A bunch of authors. They're very good authors. We're a horrible band. We play-- Roy Blount has described our genre as hard listening music. And I say we play-- I call it the rumor method of music, which is everybody in the band is holding an instrument and playing something. And then a rumor goes around that there's been a chord change. Whoa, you know. And we all switch to another chord, but not necessarily the same other chord. But anyway, we spent a day in Mountain View. That was a lot of fun. They give us this detailed elaborate tour, and gave us no information at all. I think it's a Google thing. Like we would say, are there any questions? And we'd go, how many servers do you have? And they go, we can't tell you that. Where's the electricity come? We can't tell you that. So anyway, the food was great. And the cafeteria was great. And Sergey and Larry were there dancing to us. So it was a fun experience. I'm going to talk about my book. My book actually has a major Google component, which I will get to after I've softened you up, and hope that you don't hate me. So I can talk about it. But it's a series of essays on a bunch of different topics. The title is meaningless, as is true of almost all of my books. I write what I think are funny essays, and then the publisher says, well, we need a title. We need a theme. And we sort of make one up at the last minute, and that becomes the title of the book. Although there is there a sort of roughly a kind of a happiness and unhappiness element to the book. But mainly it's a series of essays. The first one is called "Bite Me, David Beckham." And it is based on the fact that my wife is a soccer writer. She's a sportswriter for the "Miami Herald," and she covers soccer. Covers the World Cup. Does a lot of soccer stuff. And David Beckham, who is considered by many people-- including, I believe, my wife-- the handsomest person on the planet, is trying to start a soccer team in Miami. And so he is sort of wooing the whole city of Miami, including the media. And my wife is the main soccer writer in Miami. So she spends an inordinate amount of time with David Beckham. Now that ordinarily wouldn't cause me any insecurity all, except that I've never been really good about how I look. And I explain, in the book, why I'm insecure about my looks. And one of the things I do-- I went to Pleasantville High School, right up, not too far from here. I graduated, class of 1965, Pleasantville High School. And I want to show you why I'm insecure about my looks. This is my high school yearbook photo. OK? That is the best I could do. That wasn't me on a bad day. This is me looking as good as I can in high school-- as a senior in high school. I've got, like, Soviet Union glasses. Which now, are, like, retro and hip. I'd like to punch the hipsters in the mouth when they put these glasses on ironically, because I had to wear them. Also, note my hair. Just a quick note of my hairstyle. I'm not saying it's wonderful now, but it was really bad then. My dad cut my hair. And my dad was a professional Presbyterian minister. And he was a good Presbyterian minister, but they don't train them in hair design. But he bought a pair of-- he worked in New York City, bought a pair of hair clippers at Grand Central Station, and that's how he cut my brothers' and my hair. And I agree that we should get assault rifles out of the hands of the American public, but first we need to get the hair clippers away from the dads who are still cutting hair. So anyway, I write an essay about the awkwardness, the insecurity, of looking like that as a kid. And it sort of sticks with you the rest of your life, the image you form of yourself as a kid. And now having to deal with David Beckham suddenly being really interested in impressing my wife. I was just going to read you one little part of it. After I show, in the book, the picture of my high school year book, I say-- Anyway, my point is that in high school I was not physically attractive to the opposite sex, namely girls. But, Dave, I hear you remarking, looks aren't everything. There are plenty of other qualities besides cuteness that girls look for in boys. Good point. And when I say good point, I mean you are a stupid idiot. The girls at Pleasantville High School were not interested in, quote, plenty of other qualities besides cuteness. I know this, because I had plenty of other qualities besides cuteness. Sarcasm, for example. I had a black belt in sarcasm. I went entire years without ever saying anything that was not basically the opposite of what I actually thought. Also, I could make realistic farting sounds with my hands. These are just two of the many qualities other than cuteness I had in high school. None of them impressed girls. You will never hear a high school girl say about a boy, in a dreamy voice, he's so sarcastic. I have an essay, also, about-- it's a letter to my daughter. I have a 15-year-old daughter, Sophie. And she's just turned 15. And so she is eligible for a Florida driving permit. And so I've written a letter to her, which begins, "Dear Sophie, so you're about to start driving. How exciting. I'm going to kill myself." I say this because I live in Miami. I moved there in 1986 from the United States. There are many adjustments. And Miami isn't as dangerous as it used to be. People worry about that. We have a new attitude down there, a new tourism promotion slogan-- come back to Miami, we weren't shooting you. But the driving is still quite an adventure in Miami. When I first got there, I thought, nobody here knows the law. I now realize that everybody in Miami is driving according to the law-- of his or her individual country of origin. And there are some countries where, apparently, it's traditional to put on the left turn signal first thing in the morning. Maybe put it on the night before, just to make sure it's working. It's the only place I've ever lived where the driver's manual shows you how to give the finger. Or people will pass you in a car wash. And I know you guys are working on self-driving cars, I think that's great. We already have that in Miami. If you drive in Miami, you'll see many like, no head at all, just hands. These are seniors, on the road of Miami. There's a lot of folks down there, senior citizens. A lot of them from here, from New York, who I don't think drove a lot most of their lives. I think they took public transportation. Then they moved to south Florida, and lost the vast majority of their sight and hearing, and got driver's licenses. Which down there come with your Happy Meal. This actually happened, there was a-- you can Google this, in fact. Miami police stopped a 72-year-old man driving a Chevrolet Cobalt, which in itself is not so unusual. It's where they stopped him. And this is true-- runway nine, Miami International Airport. This man burst through the perimeter gate without realizing it, and was on the runway when they stopped him. Which, to me, shows a lack of awareness. If I'm driving, and I realize I'm tailgating a 757, I would say, I'm not on the expressway anymore. But he was out there. And the thing is, that's my airport. I can't get near a plane, there, with shampoo. This man was out there with a Cobalt. But anyway, we have a lot of seniors. And we also have a lot of people who drive-- this is, again, the seniors. They divide the labor of the driving, older couples. And I have been in the car with couples like this. The man drives, but the woman sees. He can't see anymore, but he still drives, because that's what the man does. So she's in the, you know, the passenger seat, going, Harry, the light, it's a green arrow. Green arrow. No, no, red, red. And that's how they-- Anyway, this is the environment in which my daughter-- I have to introduce-- she's legally going to be allowed to drive in. And I point out in my letter to her that just because the state of Florida thinks she can drive, that doesn't mean-- I mean, Florida, as far as I can tell, there's nobody it doesn't think can drive. If alien beings arrive here from another planet, they'll have Florida driver's licenses. The only thing we will know for sure about them. So anyway, I wrote a letter to her explaining how to drive. And I, in there, discuss the Florida drivers manual, which is a festival of misinformation. It states, for example, that if there is no marked speed limit, you're supposed to go 35 miles an hour. If you do that in Miami, you will receive gunfire from behind you. So I have a Q&A in here, designed to help my daughter understand how driving actually works in the state of Florida, as opposed to how the driver's manual says. And I'll just read you a couple of Q&A from it. Q, How is the turn signal used in Florida? A, It is used to indicate other motorists that you do not realize your turn signal is blinking. Q, Could it also be used to signal your intention to change lanes? A, Interesting nobody has ever tried that. Q, What is the best kind of food to eat while driving? A, Any food, such as a sandwich, turkey leg, oyster, or Ding Dong that can be eaten one handed, so you still have a hand free for texting. Q, What if an emergency situation arises that might require me to operate the steering wheel? A, Use your forehead to honk the horn until the emergency has passed. Q, My car's engine seems to have stopped, and I hear a burbling noise. A, Are you a senior citizen? Q, Yes. A, You have driven into a swimming pool. Q, I've had a few drinks, how can I tell if I should drive? A, Take this simple test, are you wearing your underpants on your head? Q, Not my underpants, no. A, Then you are good to go. Q, What's all that shouting? A, Are you a senior citizen? Q, Yes. A, You have struck a pedestrian. There's an essay, I call it "The Real Mad Men," which is about my parents' generation. I'm a baby boomer, I'm way older than all of you. But my parents were even older than I was. They were the greatest generation. And what got me, writing this essay, was watching the TV show "Mad Men," which I think is a great TV show. And on "Mad Men," if you've ever seen it, you know that everybody drinks and smokes all the time. Which I do remember. It was very accurate. My parents drank and smoked like crazy, and all their friends did, too. And then they got in cars, and did everything we're not supposed to do. But in "Mad Men" everybody's always kind of depressed, and full of anxiety. And at what I remember about my parents-- we lived in Armonk, up in Westchester County-- was that they weren't depressed. That they had great times. They had wonderful parties. They had parties long after they had us, that's how I know they had them. We would sit and watch them drink and smoke, and just have a great time. And sing and dance, and do all these things. And it occurred to me that my generation, the baby boomers, stopped doing that stuff. We all did, you know-- sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll-- until we had kids. And then we just suddenly stopped, and became this very serious kind of parent that was into parenting, which is a verb my parents would never have used. And we spent the rest of our lives trying to parent our children, and remove all the obstacles from their paths, and helicopter around them. And, you know, follow them around trick-or-treating, and pounce on them in case they got something dangerous, like an apple. And my parents didn't do that. They didn't do any of that stuff. They didn't take us to play dates. They sent us out to play. They didn't know where we were. They served us gluten. Openly. Openly, people did gluten back then. So I talked about that. And there's a whole essay about the difference, then, between my parents' generation and mine. In which mine doesn't compare particularly well. There's a long essay about Brazil and soccer. As I said, my wife's a soccer writer. And she goes the World Cup. And I've gone to the last two World Cups. And my daughter, who's 15, plays on a travel soccer team. I don't know if any of you have ever played travel soccer, but the basic idea, is every weekend you get in the car drive 200 miles, to play another team that also got a car and drove 200 miles, sometimes starting at the same place you did. And the reason you do that, is you have to play in a place where there's a chance somebody will be killed by lightning. Because the rule in Florida is, you cannot play soccer unless it's under heavy downpours. If we ever want to really do something serious to eliminate the drought in California, or sub-Saharan Africa, schedule my daughter's soccer team there, and it will rain. It will rain for days and days. Anyway, so I talk, in the book, about Brazil, about soccer, about the World Cup. And why I love soccer. I've become a the big soccer fan. But also acknowledge the criticisms that are usually leveled at soccer by people. Many Americans who detest the sport. And I'll just give you a couple of the criticisms I list here. The players sport haircuts-- I'm talking about pro soccer. The players sport hair cuts that were apparently administered by a blind heroin addict in the men's room of a Bulgarian disco in 1978. Whenever they collide with something, such as another player, a tallish blade of grass, or an unusually dense patch of air, they try to draw a foul by hurling themselves dramatically to the turf, grabbing a random knee-- it's always a knee-- and adopting the agonized facial expression of a man being castrated by irate lobsters. Not to single out any specific nation, but there are Italian players who spend enough time lying on the ground to be biologically classified as zucchini. I talk about homeownership, which is the unhappiness part of the happiness book. And in an essay that is titled, Everything I Know About Homeownership, I Learned From Johnny Carson. And it's actually, it was a true story. The first humor book I wrote was in the early '80s, and it was called "The Taming of the Screw," which was a parity of a do-it-yourself book. And it was kind of a funny book tour, because at the time, I was completely unknown as a humorist. And when I went on tour, many of the radio stations I went to thought I was a serious home do-it-yourself guy. Which made for some pretty-- like, I was across from a guy in, I believe, St. Louis. A radio guy, been on radio a million years, and I was just another interview he was going to do. Another interview. And his eyes were bloodshot, I'm pretty sure he'd been drinking at lunch. And he's thinking, OK, here's the do-it-yourself book guy, I'll just ask him a question, and he'll just take it, and it'll be over. And his first question to me is, so I see-- and he's, like, opening the book for the first time ever in history, for him-- so you talk about insulating your home. What do you say about that? And I go, well, the best place to put it is on your driveway. And he goes, what? Well, it's just easier. Because if you go up in the attic, it's like, spiders. Just put it on your driveway, and you still get the tax credit. So he realized what-- anyway I was that kind. But the first interview I did, the first actual book tour event I did, and the first time I was ever, ever on television anywhere-- local or national, any television showw-- was on the Johnny Carson show, for this book. I'm really not, to this day, sure exactly how that happened, but somehow my little humor book ended up in the hands of a Tonight Show producer named Shirley Wood. She was this tough old broad, chain smoking. And she calls me up and goes, I think your book's funny. I go, thank you. And she goes, are you funny? You know? And that's really, actually what she sounded like. That's actually a little more feminine than she sounded. She asked me some questions, and she said, OK, remember these answers. And then she flew me out. They flew me out to Los Angeles. And this is-- I've never been on television for anything. And that was my first, again. She came back stage. I'm in a green room, I'm in the backstage dressing room next to The Pointer Sisters. I'll never forget this. Like, The Pointer Sisters, Dave Barry. That was my experience. And Shirley Wood comes into my dressing room and goes, do you remember what you're supposed to do? Yeah, yeah. Drink this. And she hands me a glass of wine. Not like a little glass, a water glass full of wine. And made me drink it. And that's how I-- really-- and that's how I went out. So I go out, and I had a seven minute spot on "The Tonight Show." They don't do that much anymore, where they have, like, unknown authors. But there I was, on the Johnny Carson show, at the end of the show. It was called the author's spot. And it went great. I later realized that the reason went great-- I thought, wow, television is easy, you know, everybody laughed. I later realized it went great because Johnny Carson was one of the best interviewers ever. And he was masterful at giving me the laughs. So anyway, as soon as it ended, as soon as our seven minutes ended the band starts playing. As soon as the camera's off, Johnny Carson lights a cigarette. And he turned to me, and the only thing that he ever said to me, just to me, that we weren't on the air was, I used to try to do it yourself. Pause. You can't do shit yourself. And I laughed. And that was it. Anyway, but I thought of that when I was writing this chapter. Because I've been a homeowner for a long, long time. And I've owned many, many homes over the years. And I've learned that I cannot do anything myself. I have to hire a guy with a truck to come. Guy with a truck. And he always comes, and there's a certain ritual to the guy with the truck. If you are a homeowner, I'm sure you've been through this ritual. He comes in, first he wants to ask you some questions. Which I hate, because if I knew the answers, I wouldn't call the guy with the truck. But he always wants to know something like, can you tell me where your demodulation juncture is? It should be near the Boolean overpass valve. And I never know where anything is. I say, I'm sorry. I'm sitting there looking at whatever stupid thing I'm looking at on my computer screen, which looks like I'm doing nothing. But I'm a humor writer. If I'm looking at a Japanese game show, there's a professional reason for it. OK? But anyway, so he goes off. And then, the part I hate the most is when he wants to come and show you something. They always have to show you. Can I show you something? Mr. Barry, can I show you something? And first of all, I don't want to see it, because it's not going to be good. It's never a good thing. The truck guy never says, you see this? That's exactly the way that's supposed to look. That's not going to cost you a nickel. That is never what the truck guy has to talk to you about. It's always something very expensive, that was always done wrong. And you always want to say, well, whoever did it wrong was in a truck. I'll tell you that, right now. So anyway, I wrote a chapter about-- an essay about not being able to do things yourself. Having to call the truck guy. And the big culprit in the do-it-yourself world. The one that keeps convincing people they can do things themselves, is like, you know, the big-- what's the name? The big hardware store that advertises all-- why am I'm blanking on it? AUDIENCE: Home Depot? DAVE BARRY: Home Depot. Home Depot. They run those commercials where there's like a happy, cheerful homeowning couple. One minute they're in the Home Depot store looking at tiles. You know? And then they show like one second of them wearing goggles and drilling something, or screwing a screw in. And then there's a whole new kitchen. Which is a very misleading view of do-it-yourself. So I propose, in my book, a new kind of hardware store called Reality Based Hardware. It would be a hardware store where if you went in, we have specially trained representatives there. If you went in, they would actively try to discourage you from whatever it is you were trying to do. So I have a little dialogue here, between a homeowner and an employee of Reality Based Hardware. Homeowner, I want to install a ceiling fan. Employee, Really? Homeowner, Yes. Employee, You want to install a machine with long, sharp blades whirling at high speeds directly over the heads of live human beings? Homeowner, Well, yes. Employee, I see. And do you have any particular expertise in this area? Any training in the field the ceiling fan installation? Homeowner, Um, no, not in ceiling fan insulation, per se. Employee, In what, then? Homeowner, I'm a dentist. Employee, I see. And would you comfortable having a professional ceiling fan installer give you a root canal? Homeowner, Well, no, but that's a different. Employee, I'd like you to take a look at this photograph of a recent, quote, do-it-yourself ceiling fan installation. Homeowner, My god, is that? Employee, Yes. His hand. It landed eight feet away. I have an essay in here about Russia. I went to Russia last fall, with a friend of mine named Ridley Pearson, the co-author of some books I wrote. We went for the US State Department to Russia, as part of a program to improve relations between the two nations. So you see how that's working out. So anyway, I wrote an essay about it. You won't really learn a lot about Russia, because I never understood what anybody was saying. But I had a pretty good time, except for-- I ate Mexican food. I ate a chimichanga. This is true. It's like, amazing, how many non-Russian foods you can get in Moscow. And I developed a case of global thermonuclear diarrhea. I guess my main piece of advice is, if you go to Russia, don't eat the Mexican food. Just like a weaponized chimichanga. And I close the book with a letter to my grandson. I became a grandfather last May. I really, I get no credit for that. My son Rob, he actually works here in New York. He works for "The Wall Street Journal." But he-- well, actually his wife had the baby. I'll be technical here. And I wanted to write a letter to him, passing on the wisdom that I've learned. It was an interesting thing. You know, I kind of envision what it would be like to be like to be a grandson-- I would be a grandfather-- it didn't start out the way I pictured it. My daughter-in-law is Jewish, and so they decided to have a Briss. I don't know if you're familiar with the Briss, but basically-- and I want to stress before I start, I love Judaism. My wife is Jewish. She's Cuban Jewish. My joke is, they didn't come on rafts, they parted of the Caribbean. So I love Judaism. It's a great religion, except for I'm not so big on the Briss concept. The way it works is, it's a tradition, that when the baby is born, on the eighth day the baby has to be circumcised, and then there are deli platters. Sometimes on the same surface. And I looked-- when I found I was going to be involved in this Briss, I looked in the Bible-- which is online, you'll be glad to know. The way it came about, the story is, in the Bible, there's a whole explanation why Jews do this. Abraham, he's 99 years old, Abraham. He's like the patriarch of-- and God comes to see him, which is never a good thing in the Bible. It's kind of like when the truck guy wants to show you something. God never comes to say, hey, I just turned all of Lake Erie into beer. Come on. Never anything great like that. It's always something like, you're going to smite somebody, you're going to have to sacrifice, you're going to have to build something out of, you know, goat skins, whatever. God has got something in his mind, some bee in his bonnet. In this case, God tells Abraham, I'm going to make you-- you're going to be the patriarch-- you're going to be the forefather of all these kings. I'm going to give you the land of Cannan. Cannan is the biblical word for what is now Long Island. But he said, we have to have a token of our covenant, is you have to circumcise yourself. I'm not kidding, It's right there in the Bible. He's telling a 99-year-old man that he has to circumcise himself. And you think, like, why would that be the token? You know? Why can't they just shake hands? And speaking of shaking hands, not only has Abraham got to circumcise himself, but God tells him he has to circumcise everybody in his household. How would you like to be in that household? Hey, guess what God told me to do. You know? So anyway, my grandson had a Briss. And I was chosen-- I was given the honor-- I was told it was an honor-- of being the Sandek, which is the person who holds the baby's legs. While the Mohel-- which is a Hebrew word for snipper-- performs the actual circumcision. That was my first real interaction with my grandson. Holding his legs while he's being circumcised. And I, you know, I pictured something like fishing. You know? Or learning to skateboard, or something. But no-- so I'm just kind of hoping he's forgotten all about that. But anyway, this leads me to the one I've been scared to talk about. There's one other topic I wrote an essay about in this book, Google Glass. And I bought a pair. With my own money, I bought. I became-- they call it an explorer. Is anybody here-- no, I don't even want to know if anybody here is from the Google Glass. And I wrote about Google Glass. So I was going to read you a little bit of it, and you'll see where I'm coming from. And then you can throw stuff at me. Before you read this review of Google Glass, I want to stress that I am totally down with modern technology. I'm not some clueless old fart shouting hello, hello into a mobile phone he is holding upside down. Although I have done that. I love new technology. I am what is known as an early adopter. Over the decades, I have spent 10s of thousands of dollars adopting new technology that I use for periods of time ranging from one week to as long as three weeks. At which time it ceased to be as new as it once was, leaving me with no choice but to buy a newer one. I have boxes and boxes filled with old new technology. And still more boxes containing dense tangled snarls of cables and power adapters, that I would need if I ever wanted to make the technology work again. Which, of course, I never would, because it is old. I have been buying GPS units since the days when they had tiny black and white screens, and said only, you are probably in either North or South America. I have owned mobile phones the size of LeBron James. I early adopted every single version of the Windows operating system, including Vista, which summoned hell demons who possessed your computer and played pranks, such as changing all your verbs to adjectives. And I continued early adopting Windows versions after that. If Windows came out with a version called Windows Stab You in the Eyeball With a Fork, I would adopt it. And I skip over the point where own like 11 electric guitars. Now the point is, I consider myself to be pro technology, and knowledgeable about gadgets. So when I heard about Google Glass, I wanted it. I wasn't sure exactly what it did, it but I knew it was new and it apparently involved electricity. It also involved Google, of which I am a huge fan. And this is true, I am. Google has basically replaced my brain. That's also basically the-- there was a time when, if somebody asked me a question, say, who is Socrates? I had to manually think about it. Whereas now I just Google it, and boom, I have the answer. Quote, an ancient dead person. Google makes thinking so much easier. If Google had existed when I was in college, I would have spent the entire four years getting high and listening to Moby Grape, instead of just 87% of the time. So anyway, I got Google Glass. It cost $1,500, which sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that it's 100% tax deductible if you write about it in this book. What is Google Glass? Its a lightweight electronic device, sort of like a high-tech looking eyeglass frame without lenses but you wear on your head. On the front right side of the device is a tiny camera and a miniature screen, that you can theoretically see with your right eye. There's also a tiny microphone and speaker. It connects wirelessly to the internet through Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth phone. So basically, when you put on Google Glass, you're wearing a tiny hands-free computer with direct access to the unimaginably vast information resources of the internet. Think for a moment about what this means. It means you look like a douche bag. So anyway. Seriously, you do. There is no getting around it. My daughter-- who has been my daughter for her entire life, and therefore has developed a very high tolerance for being embarrassed by me-- refused to walk into a restaurant with me until I removed my Google Glass. If you go to the official Google website for Google Glass, you will see photos of attractive young people wearing Google Glass as they engage in a variety of modern youthful activities. Biking, running, golfing, chopping organic vegetables, et cetera. Google has enough money to buy whatever it wants. Asia, for example. So you know they paid the for the absolute best looking photos of the absolute best looking Glass wearing individuals money could buy. They still look like douche bags. So anyway, that's-- and I'll be honest, I don't give Google Glass a great review. It's probably because I'm 67 years old, and I could never really see the thing. But I wore them. Wore them for a weekend. I went to wedding with them. I was very popular with other guests. And then I did close it. I know that you've discontinued, for now, the current version, and looking at improvements. And I proposed some improvements. And one of them would be, like an invisibility cloak. But, you know, when the next one comes out, I'll buy it. Because that's the kind of early adopter I am. So anyway, that's the Google part of my book. So, I don't how long I've gone on. They told me there was a timer, but I can't find it. So I would be happy to take questions on anything, except anything that requires knowledge. I'm not good at that. That's why I became humor writer. Yeah? AUDIENCE: Our daughter, as it turns out, is the same age as your daughter. DAVE BARRY: 15. AUDIENCE: This surprises me considerably, because for years we read your articles and books, and marveled at the fact that the timing was perfect. They were coming out at just the time when we needed your advice-- DAVE BARRY: That's why I'm here. AUDIENCE: --for what our daughter was just about to go trough. So somehow you wrote those books, apparently two and a half years in the past. Or in no time at all. DAVE BARRY: Is this a math question? AUDIENCE: I was impressed at the time. I'm more impressed, because as I said, you apparently wrote these things in no time at all, and got them out to us in time to save our lives. DAVE BARRY: I'm happy to do it. My daughter's 15, and I've written some about the issues with 15-year-old girls, which is boys, is the issue. And I don't like them. And we need a cure for puberty. But my proposal-- I don't know if you've had to deal with it-- they come around. They come around the house, the boys do. And I would never let them in, in a million years. Because I know what they're thinking. My wife lets them in. What I would do is have a trap. A steel trap. A humane trap outside the front door. And it would clang shut, and there would be a teenage boy in it. And I would take him out in the Everglades and release him in a humane manner. But my wife, as I say, lets them in. And some of them have hair on their legs. I can't stand this. That alone should be-- anyway. Yeah? AUDIENCE: I hope you don't mind a question from a senior citizen. DAVE BARRY: No. AUDIENCE: I live in New York City, so I don't have a car. I'll get one when I move to Florida. DAVE BARRY: Come on down to Florida, yeah. What a lot of seniors like to do is-- just to make sure they have enough mass-- get two Oldsmobiles and have them welded together. Get that big mass around you. AUDIENCE: But listen, a question, not about your book, but about something that happened a long time ago, long before Sophie was born. Back in the late '80s, early '90s, I think you were one of the first, if not the first, sort of mainstream author that was regularly syndicated on the network. On the internet, ARPANET at that time. And I think it wasn't with your authorization, at least initially. It was just people were taking your stuff. We had a mailing list for awhile. I think that Brad Templeton picked you up on ClariNet as one of the first syndicated authors, and such. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to be an author and suddenly discover that, totally separate from what you thought was your syndication pattern, there was this bunch of geeks on the internet that were syndicating your stuff. How did react to that? And has it made any difference in your career to have been one of the first internet syndicated authors? DAVE BARRY: I do remember it quite well. And it took me a while to figure out what was happening. But people wrote-- back then we had letters-- and some sometimes they would write me letters and send me printouts, and said, you realize you're on this? And I thought it was cool. What's funny about it-- I have about nine thoughts trying to come out once, so I'll try to pick one. What was really funny about it is if the newspaper business had had any brains back then, they would have seen something that they never did see. And now the newspaper businesses is going out of business because it's run by English majors. But I thought, well this is really interesting, that all these people-- you know, it didn't occur to me to look at it financially, because it wouldn't have made any difference to me anyway. You know, I was already in whatever papers I was in. And I don't think it was taking anything away from my way of making a living. And I just figured, well those people will also buy books, and stuff like that. So I thought that it was great. I do remember the "Miami Herald" and Knight Ridder going way out of their way to try to stop it. And failing utterly. Again, English majors versus people who actually understood the internet. So I just sort of remember it as kind of an interesting time. And that's all gone, right? Those mailing lists, whatever those? AUDIENCE: They're still there, they just don't get-- they're not-- in fact, they probably have more people on them than they did then. But it's a much tinier percentage of the world than it was then. DAVE BARRY: At some point, I got involved-- I was able to actually post onto it, or whatever the word would be. And what I do remember, was after one really long drunken night in London-- I was on a book tour in London with a very funny newspaper columnist over there. And I wrote him a really ridiculously obscene email at the end of the evening, thanking him. And using the term Mr. Chuckle Trousers, which had great significance that night. And instead of going just to him, it went to everybody in the world. So that was my other big lesson about that. Yeah? AUDIENCE: Dave, thanks for coming. DAVE BARRY: Thank you. AUDIENCE: So I have a couple questions. DAVE BARRY: What kind? AUDIENCE: A couple questions. First of all, my parents live in Miami, so I've been looking at your stuff for years. DAVE BARRY: Everyone's parents live in Miami. AUDIENCE: But we came from South America, so. DAVE BARRY: OK. AUDIENCE: From Columbia. DAVE BARRY: Columbia! AUDIENCE: No threat. DAVE BARRY: No, I have many Colombian friends. AUDIENCE: So first question is, what-- DAVE BARRY: Can I tell you the first Colombian guy I met in Miami? I know I'm interrupting your question, but-- This was in the '80s, when there were a lot of Colombians there for the wrong reasons. You know, they were not software engineers. And I was meeting, as it happened, a police officer in a bar in South Beach. And he had not arrived yet. And it was not like a close friend police, it was a guy-- I was doing a column, and he was going to meet be there. So I'm sitting there, and this guy comes over to me, and he goes, are you Dave Barry? And I go, yeah, I am. And he sits down. He's a nice guy. We're chatting away. After a while I said, well, what do you do? And he goes, I'll be honest with you, I'm a narcotics trafficer. I said well, do you mind if like we carry on this conversation in, like, another state? But the other one, the other Colombian thing-- it's actually in this book. In the Uruguay Columbia game at the World Cup this-- yes, I sat in the Colombian rooting section. And we actually rooted for them. But I sat with a bunch of Colombians. And they said, where are you from? And I said, Miami. He said that's the same as Colombia. Which is really kind of true. And they won that game, as you may recall. It was a good game. But anyway, go ahead. And can you do the dance that your team does? AUDIENCE: I'm not going to. DAVE BARRY: OK. AUDIENCE: My first question is, what prompted you to move to Miami in the first place? DAVE BARRY: OK, you want me to answer that first? AUDIENCE: Yup. DAVE BARRY: Good, then I don't have to remember it. The "Miami Herald" hired me. And for reasons of-- incredibly poor planning on their part-- they located the "Miami Herald" in Miami. Rather than an English speaking country or city. But anyway, no. The "Herald" hired me, and at first I didn't want to move there. I lived in suburban Philadelphia at the time. In lovely little quiet suburban, not even really suburban, more like a forested place. And I went to Miami, and I said, my god, I'm never going to move down here. And they said, you don't have to. You can stay in Miami and be our humor columnist. I mean stay in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania and be our humor columnist. So I, for three years, was the humor columnist for the "Miami Herald," but living in suburban Philadelphia. And during those three years, I kept visiting-- to do stories and whatever-- and I came to love Miami. And I really love it now. I would never live anywhere else. I mean, it is, as you know, it's a completely insane city, but it's a really interesting, fun city. And it doesn't look like that out there, now, there. AUDIENCE: Right. Absolutely. So my second question's sort of related to that. Do you think your career would have been very different had you not had the craziness of Miami? DAVE BARRY: Yeah, it probably would. I mean, definitely, probably, 60% to 70% of the material I've had over the years has come from where I am. So, yeah it would have been different. I mean, I still would have been a humor writer, but I would never have known about the kind of wild world down there, which, to this day sort of fuels me. I feel alive when I'm down there. If nothing else, because of the random gunfire. No. It's not so bad. It's really not. It's not random, really. It's much more targeted than it used to be. AUDIENCE: Thank you. DAVE BARRY: You're welcome. Yeah? AUDIENCE: Hi. Thanks for coming. My dad and I used to listen to your books in the car on the way to school in the morning. DAVE BARRY: You're trying to make me feel even older than I already am, right? This is right after the Civil War, you and your dad. AUDIENCE: But one of our favorite books was "Dave Barry in Cyberspace." And I was wondering, in the intervening years, I'm sure the internet's had a big impact on your career, and such. So is it time to write "Dave Barry in Cyberspace 2.0?" DAVE BARRY: I don't know. Melissa, who introduced me, was saying the same thing. That she really liked that. See, I find that book hideously embarrassing now. You know, everything about it just so dated. And it moves so fast, I don't know that I could ever write about the internet in a book that wouldn't immediately be so out of date. I wrote a book about bad songs, once, it was kind of the same thing. At the time, when I wrote it, it was like in the early '90s, and everybody was sort of listening to the same music then. But you could never-- to write that book now. And besides, I don't even know what bad would mean anymore, to be honest with you. No, you know, these kids today with their rock 'n' roll. I don't know. I write, occasionally, about the internet, it's just so much a part of our lives, but I don't think I would ever try to write a book about it. I don't think you can capture it anymore. AUDIENCE: Thanks. DAVE BARRY: Not that I even did then. Yeah? AUDIENCE: So I have a story to thank you, and then a question. So, I didn't grow up here. I grew up in Israel. And when I met my family-- my wife's family did grow up in New York, upstate New York. And it was kind of important to me to make a good impression them but I had like zero cultural reference basis. So I discovered two things that could make me, like, impress my wife's parents, especially her father. One was reading the baseball stats the night before, so I could quote them back at him in the morning. But the other thing was, my view of American culture was very much shaped by your books. And I only had your '80s books, so it might have been a little outdated. But it definitely made a very favorable impression. So, who knows, I might not be here today if it weren't for you. Thank you. DAVE BARRY: Wow! So you owe me money. AUDIENCE: What? DAVE BARRY: The way I read that question. AUDIENCE: The actual question is, so, the persona you project in your books is, like obviously, a very exaggerated version of lots of things. But I've always wondered if, like, there's some basis in fact. For example, when you describe how you go and buy a car by sitting at the Dairy Queen opposite, and so on. You can see that I'm reading your old books. Is that, like, an exaggeration of something that happened, or is it just totally unrelated to your actual persona? DAVE BARRY: No, no. I mean, I don't run around the house making jokes. And I compare it to, like, if you lived with a magician, and all day long he was pulling coins out of your ears, you would hate him. So I think I'm a normal person. But yes, most humor comes from something real. I've always said that what people laugh the hardest at is not something that nobody would have thought of before, but it's something that everyone already does sort of think on some level, and you've just pointed it out to them. That's when people really laugh the hardest. So generally, I never think in terms of, like, I'm going to use this. I'm going to use this for material. I'm going to use this. Just sort of living a life, material will come to you. Anyway. By the way, I went to Israel the year before last. With my temple, which I belong to, because-- like, there's orthodox, conservative, reformed-- mine is relaxed. They'll let anybody in. So I belong to it, even though I'm not Jewish. And I loved Israel, except for the camel ride, which I'm sure no Israeli would ever do. The Bedouin have a camel ride in the desert. You go in the bus, and they stop, and there's like a train of camels with saddles, and then you go around. And what I remember, was when they give you the little lecture-- the safety lecture-- the Bedouin guy. When you climb onto the saddle, he goes, do not scream when camel is getting up. Camel is getting up a little funny. And I'm going, like, how bad can it-- Waah! But after, like, riding just, like, a quarter of a mile on a camel, which is not a comfortable ride, I'm thinking, no wonder the Middle East is so tense. If this is how people are getting around. Anyway, thank you. Yeah? AUDIENCE: Thanks for coming. DAVE BARRY: Yeah. AUDIENCE: So I told my family that you were speaking here today, and my dad said, wow, well, your younger brother-- who's a freshman in high school-- has a writing assignment to write an article in the style of Dave Barry. So you're still influencing many high schoolers today. DAVE BARRY: Which is a little terrifying to me. Over the years, I've heard that many times. The one thing that I hate the most, is when the teacher assigns them, read this, he's a great American humorist. Like, when I heard that from my teachers, I already hated whoever it was that I had to read. You know? And like, every now and then, the teacher will send me a whole batch of-- the students all had to write something to me, like, you know, about my essay. And usually it's just like, I read your essay, it was funny. Sometimes it was like, I didn't think it was that good. Well, fuck you, kid, I didn't ask you to read it. It wasn't my idea that you had to read this thing. I'm sorry. I don't mean your brother or sister. AUDIENCE: I'll let you know what his sentiments are. But related to your style, have you found that that voice in your head has remained essentially the same since high school? Or have you consciously adapted it? Or has it become more optimistic or more cynical over the years? DAVE BARRY: I get asked that a lot. I don't really know. I don't feel as though I've changed at all. I must have changed, because I've been doing this for like, what, 40 years, something like that. I don't feel any differently. If I have changed, it's been pretty gradual. I still feel basically that what I do is I write silly humor, rather than satire, which I always viewed as humor that was not funny. Or meaningful, point making humor. I'm just looking for the next easy joke. I'm not really trying to help anybody. And every now and then somebody will say to me, you know, people, when I laughed, it made me feel better. I was going through a tough time in my life, and I read your stuff, and I felt better. Or I got along better with my son. And I said, that's great, but I would have done it even if it made you feel worse. Because it's the only skill I actually have. Anyway. I don't think I've changed much. AUDIENCE: All right, well, keep it up, then. DAVE BARRY: Thank you, I will. Yeah? AUDIENCE: Hi, thank you for coming. DAVE BARRY: No, it's my pleasure. AUDIENCE: My dad and I read your articles as well, very consistently. I read "Tricky Business" and "Big Trouble," and I think I have a very good sense of-- you have a very distinct voice. And somehow I totally missed that "Big Trouble" was made into a movie. Someone tells me about it, and I'm like, oh no. Oh no, they're going to mess it up. There's no way they're going to capture his voice in film form. And I was so happy that it really felt like it was your writing in movie form. DAVE BARRY: I'm glad you liked it. There actually is, in my Russia essay, in this book. "Big Trouble" is-- I wrote a novel set in Florida called "Big Trouble," where basically a couple of losers get hold of a nuclear bomb suitcase. They think it's emeralds, but it's a nuclear weapon. And this was hilarious madcap plot. The only problem is that the movie was supposed to come out on September 12, 2001. The day after 9/11. And so you're not going to have a madcap comedy about a bomb in a plane come out after-- nobody gets killed in the movie or in the book-- but still, it was just all wrong. So the movie came out kind of, like, secretly six months later. And it didn't make much of a ripple. It became sort of a cult-- you can still see it on TV, sometimes. But when I went to Russia, the one thing I learned from the talks Ridley and I gave around Russia. I would always ask them, what do they think our stereotypical views of them are. What are their stereotypical views of us? Their stereotypical views of was always like, we're a bunch of consumer obsessed people who don't care about [INAUDIBLE]. You know, totally accurate, to be honest. And they always said ours of them was that they are vodka drinking, balaklava playing gangsters. I heard the word gangsters over and over again. So the last night I was there, we were in St Petersburg. And we were at the American consulate, where they have, once a month, a movie night, where they bring in Russian citizens and show them American movies. These usually people who speak some English. And it's meant to just build relations between the two countries. And usually it's some traditional American classic. But because I was there, they decided to show them "Big Trouble". Which was fine. And then he said, would you introduce the book to the crowd, and then answer questions after? And I said, sure. So I get up in front of all of these Russians. And I just gone over the plot, because I hadn't seen it in years. And I realized that there are Russians in-- the good news is there are Russians in this movie. The bad news is they're gangsters. The only Russian characters in movie. Because it was based on an actual incident in Miami, where they closed down a bar in Jai-Alai, which was Russians selling surplus Soviet illegally obtained military weaponry. And I turned them into people who were selling a nuclear suitcase. But anyway, I had to get up in front of all these Russians, and say, there are Russians in it. So, big smiles. They're gangsters. You know, like. But they're really smart gangsters. The American gangsters are stupid in my movie. So I don't know if that mollified them. Did you have a question, or am I just blithering away up here? AUDIENCE: That was great. But I was curious how much influence you were able to have in the movie. And also being a fan of your "Peter and the" series, hearing that that may be becoming a movie as well. If you'll be able to influence that in the same way you influenced "Big Trouble"? DAVE BARRY: With the movie, not really much. I mean, I got to hang around and watch them make it, which was fun. And see how ridiculously the amount of money they spend on things like food when they make a movie. And Barry Sonnenfeld, who was the director, was very nice to me. And he allowed me free access to the set at all times, which I later learned was because I never suggested anything. Usually they don't want the writer anywhere near it, because they change everything. You sort of get used to that. "Peter and the Star Catchers," I don't know that it will ever be a movie. There was talk that it would be. This is the prequel to "Peter Pan," that I wrote with a guy named Ridley Pearson, the guy I went to Russia with. And we end up running a bunch of books. It did become a Broadway play-- which won five Tony awards-- called "Peter and the Starcatcher." And it's still touring the country as a play. The play was adapted by a guy named Rick Ellis, who wrote "Jersey Boys." And it's actually a lot funnier than the book we wrote. We wrote sort of a straightforward kids' adventure story. And Rick made it for grownups, and very, very funny. Anyway, that's what happened to that. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Thanks for coming. DAVE BARRY: Everybody says that. You're very polite. I mean, I had to come. Katie McKee, back there, my publicist, made me come here, because she wants the food here. She likes the cafeteria. AUDIENCE: I had a simple question about how do you think the-- generally, when I try to show American humor to my parents, who are from India, they kind of think, like, that's very banal. It's not really-- They don't even laugh at, like, things which I laugh at. And I find it really wise. Some say, for example, all the beer is much faster. I would tell it to my parents, and they would say, hmm, OK. DAVE BARRY: You need new friends, dude. AUDIENCE: What are the general humor that you have found, since you have presented at Russia-- you covered a lot of Russia. I was hoping to look through, like, all right, India, India, no, no. DAVE BARRY: I didn't get to India. AUDIENCE: And so what are the sets of humor that you find-- say, satire is probably not-- you do mention that it's not probably that cross cutting. Try talking satire to your girlfriend, and making, not so much. Right? So that actually works across all cultures very well. And what are some which don't really jell, and they sometimes insult people. DAVE BARRY: Yeah, I've never really been sure. The only foreign country where my humor has, I know, has done reasonably well, is England. And as you probably know, they speak English over there. Not as well as we do, in my-- no. Even then, it's difficult. The first book tour I went on in England. They all think we're idiots, I mean, the Brits, in terms of humor. They think they are way more sophisticated than we are. And maybe they are, I don't know. But they feel that American humor, it tends to be primitive, and they're much more attuned to sarcasm and irony. Again, they may be right. But I remember, I went on a book tour. I don't even remember the book. This was, like, a long time ago. And I would go into BBC show after BBC show, that's all I did. And I would get into a little studio with a very well educated BBC guy, who would speak much better than I did. And we'd do an interview for an hour. And then I go out and get in a car, drive through London traffic for an hour. And go back into, what looked to me, like, exactly the same room. Maybe even the same BBC guy. You know? They have, like, 300 shows. And do another. But what I remember was, this book-- "The New York Times" had run a book review where some reviewer who didn't even work for "The New York Times" said, Mr Barry is the funniest man in America. And so, of course every, publicity person ever since used that quote. "New York Times," funniest man in America. It really wasn't "The New York Times," and who cares what "The New York Times" thinks about humor, anyway? But every single BBC interviewer would start this way, our next guest has been described as the funniest man in America. Which was like, we'll see about that. And would have to win them over. You know? So it was painful. But that's the only country where I'm sure of it. I, every day practically, get a book of mine in the mail, that the publishers have to send you when it gets published. And half the time I don't even know what the book is, since I can't even read it. It's not even in our alphabet. So I don't know what book it is. I have no idea what it's saying. I have no if anybody thinks it's funny anywhere, at all. I just don't know. But I think you should tell everyone in India to buy my book and find out. Thank you. Yeah. AUDIENCE: Thank you for coming. DAVE BARRY: No, thank you. AUDIENCE: Aw, you're welcome. I'm wondering how you feel about-- you know, Florida humor has become more popular these days, with, like, the Florida Man Twitter account, and the Florida Woman Twitter account. And, like, everything that people from Florida do. Like when that guy ate that person's face, or I don't know, whatever they do. DAVE BARRY: That was hilarious. AUDIENCE: Yeah. Not so much for that person whose face got eaten. But for everybody else. I'm wondering how you feel about Florida humor becoming more, like, degenerate and more mainstream, I guess, and different from the, sort of like, '80s Florida humor, where like, it was mostly cocaine gangsters shooting each other. DAVE BARRY: I'm for it. I mean, in fact, I'm planning to write a book about it, about Florida. There is something-- you know, after all these years there-- I used to just say, well, we're just saying that because we're here. But I genuinely think there is something truly unusually weird about Florida. At one point, we just overtook California in the just weirdness level. And there's really no one clear explanation for what happened, except that everybody who's there is there for a bad reason. Nobody ever just says, I'm going to go to Florida, and live a clean, upright life, and be productive. That person doesn't exist. You know, they went there because they're done with working. Or they know that it's easier to do illegal things there. Or you could run for office in five minutes and win. My proposal in Miami was that to streamline our government, when we have an election, we should swear them in and indict them in one ceremony. I've been in Miami 30 years, and like, gee, they come and go. People just show up, and they're suddenly, like, pillars of the community, and then they're in jail. In Miami is only one, like, part of the wilderness. Then there's Orlando, which is its own kind of weird. So I'm for it. I'm for the prevalence of Florida awareness out there, because I hope to write a book about it. So purely for just venal reasons, I think it's good. AUDIENCE: Makes sense. DAVE BARRY: Yeah? AUDIENCE: So near the beginning, you said that when you're in high school, you could make farting noises with your hands. DAVE BARRY: Yeah. AUDIENCE: Can you still do that? DAVE BARRY: Well, could you hold the microphone? I'm not in-- wait! That far away? [FARTING NOISES] DAVE BARRY: Thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm sure if Joyce Carol Oates were here, you would ask her to do that, as well. Well anyway, I think we're sort of through the allotted time, and well beyond it. But thank you all for coming. This has been-- I actually enjoyed this. And I don't always say that on book tour, but this was fun. Thank you.