Dave Barry double header

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna.

 

 

DAVE BARRY

All hot and bothered over winter sports

 

Have you ever wondered how professional journalists cover an international

sporting event? Well too bad, because I'm going to tell you.

 

In February I spent three weeks at the Winter Olympics in Utah (``Where the

Party Never Stops Until 8:30 p.m.''). I was part of the press corps swarming

around Olympic events in thermal underwear, asking penetrating questions

such as: (1) Who won this event? (2) How can you tell? (3) What is this

event called again?

 

As you can see by these questions, the Olympic press corps does not always

have a solid grasp on the events it's covering. Take, for example, ''short

track speed skating.'' This is one of those sports that nobody you know has

ever heard of, let alone participated in. You suspect that the Olympic

organizers invent these sports just to see if they can trick the press corps

into covering them. Clearly this was the origin of curling (''I know! Let's

have the competitors flail the ice with brooms!'' ``No! Even the press corps

isn't stupid enough to fall for THAT!'').

 

I spent two nights watching short track speed skating, and I never did

figure it out. It consists of people skating around very fast in a little

circle, bent way over, with their faces almost touching the skater directly

ahead, looking like performers in a musical extravaganza called

Proctologists on Ice. So far, so good: It appears to be a race. But almost

always, just before the end of the race, most of the competitors would fall

down. This happened so often it appeared to be the preferred strategy

(``Uh-oh! Finish line coming! Time to fall down!'').

 

So the winner often turned out to be a competitor who, until the end of the

race, had not been at all competitive. One much-publicized Olympic

short-track event was won by an Australian man who, many eyewitnesses

believe, was not even IN the race, because it is a known fact that there is

no ice in Australia. This man was sitting off to the side, trying to figure

out which skate went on which foot, when suddenly the race officials handed

him a gold medal.

 

On those rare occasions when the leading competitors failed to fall down,

the apparent winner would cross the finish line, skate around triumphantly

for maybe a minute, and then . . . get disqualified. I am serious. In the

key races I saw, the officials invariably declared that the winner had

violated some rule, and therefore somebody ELSE was the actual winner. Then,

no matter who had won, a formal protest would be filed by Korea, which as

far as I can tell is the only place in the world that takes this sport

seriously.

 

So imagine you're a journalist covering this event. You watch the big race.

At the end, the ice is littered with fallen proctologists. Out of this

chaos, a random winner emerges, and is immediately disqualified, at which

point the formal Korean protest is filed. The crowd, 13,000 people, is on

its feet, going: ``Huh?''

 

And now you, the journalist, must write a story on this. Step 1 is to ask

the journalists around you if they have any idea what just happened. (This

is basic journalism procedure; it's what enables journalists who cannot

correctly fill out their mileage reimbursement forms to write stories about

the collapse of Enron.)

 

Once all the journalists have determined, by interviewing each other, that

nobody has the faintest clue how short track speed skating (or Enron) works,

it's time for the entire press corps to race downstairs in a mob and

interview the participants. The irony is, at least in short track speed

skating, the reporters already know what the participants will say. No

matter what question they're asked, they'll shrug and respond: ``That's

short track!''

 

This is how they explain EVERYTHING in their sport -- the falling down, the

disqualifications, everything. If an alien spacecraft crashed onto the ice

and a 75-foot-high two-headed lobster popped out and sang My Way, the

skaters would shrug and say: ``That's short track!''

 

At this point, you, the journalist, race back to the media workroom, where

you risk being decked by microphones wielded by angry roving Korean TV

crews, who are DEMANDING SOME ANSWERS on this gigantic story, which has both

North and South Korea on the brink of declaring war on somebody. Somehow you

must ignore the bedlam around you and, in minutes, produce your

authoritative story, armed with only two facts: (1) Nobody knows what

happened; and (2) Whatever it was . . . It was short track!

 

This is the kind of heroic effort that we in the media made night after

night at the Winter Olympics, so that the next day's newspaper would have a

story that, you, the reader, could ignore, because you don't care about

short track speed skating. Not that you should! It's a minor story, really.

Until the missiles start arriving from Seoul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sniffing out new weapon is hardly a sweet task

 

The United States is developing an Odor Bomb.

 

''Why?'' you are saying. ``Don't we already have New Jersey?''

 

Fine, make your little jokes. But this happens to be a serious matter of

National Security. According to news items sent in by several alert readers,

the Department of Defense has asked scientists to develop an odor that is

repulsive to all humans, regardless of culture. This odor could be used by

the military to harmlessly clear people out of a given area.

 

On the other hand, it would attract dogs. The more disgusting something

smells, the more a dog wants to take a hearty whiff. I recall one time when

I was home playing host to a hostile stomach virus, and I suddenly had an

urgent need to (as we used to say in college) talk to Ralph on the big white

phone. I made it as far as the hallway before I went down on all fours and

released most of my bodily contents, including, I am pretty sure, my spleen.

It was beyond repulsive, but it caused my dog, Earnest, to go into a state

of wild dog elation, vibrating with happiness and barking joyfully into my

right ear, as if to say: ``THIS is the best Christmas EVER!!''

 

So the Odor Bomb would not be effective against dogs. But it would

definitely work on humans. I know this, because I was present, decades ago,

at a historic demonstration of the power of stink. This was in 1962, when my

class at Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School of Armonk, N.Y., took the

annual ninth-grade class trip to the Boston area. This included Salem,

Mass., where we toured The House of the Seven Gables, the setting used by

the prominent boring author Nathaniel Hawthorne for his famous book,

Portnoy's Complaint.

 

No, seriously, the book was called The House of the Seven Gables, and as you

recall (SURE you do) the house contains a secret passageway. While my class

was tromping through this passageway, one student -- whom I will refer to

here as ''Clifford,'' because his name was Clifford -- released a MAJOR

odor. One theory was that it was a stink bomb that Clifford had purchased

from the famous Jack's Joke Shop in Boston.

 

Another theory was that it was organically produced by Clifford, who had a

gift for that kind of thing. Whatever it was, it smelled so bad that they

had to evacuate the entire house, including all seven gables. That was the

last Boston class trip ever taken by students from Harold C. Crittenden

Junior High. So let me just say, on behalf of my classmates, by way of

sincere apology to all the succeeding classes: Neener neener.

 

But my point is that the Pentagon's Odor Bomb concept is theoretically

sound. According to an article in National Geographic Today, odor scientists

are studying a mixture of aromas from ''vomit, human waste, body odors,

burnt hair and rotting garbage.'' The scientists report that when volunteers

sniff this mixture, they -- prepare for a startling scientific finding -- do

not care for it. Perhaps some day, our troops will use such an odor to force

the enemy to flee an area. If that doesn't work, we'll escalate to

less-humane weapons, such as videos of the ''comedian'' Carrot Top.

 

But here's what has me worried about odor weapons: OTHER COUNTRIES MAY

ALREADY BE AHEAD OF US. I say this because of two alarming foreign products

brought to my attention by alert reader Tom Lemley, who sent me empty

containers for these products, which I swear I am not making up.

 

One product is called ''Drastic Toilet Air.'' It comes in a spray can, on

which the only English words are ''Drastic Toilet Air,'' ''New'' and

''Produced by Johnson Wax Egypt.'' All the other words are in a foreign

language, so we don't know whether this product is supposed to combat

drastic toilet air, or -- this is what scares me -- it actually IS drastic

toilet air, which could be a powerful weapon, in addition to an excellent

name for a rock band.

 

The other product is an Iranian laundry detergent called: ''Barf.'' Right on

the box, in big red letters, it says: ''Barf.'' It also says: ``To obtain

best result soak very dirty clothes in a solution of Barf for a few minutes

and then proceed normally.''

 

I'm sorry, but I don't see how we, as a nation, can ''proceed normally''

knowing that the Iranians have Barf, and the Egyptians have Drastic Toilet

Air. The logical question is: What does Iraq have? I hate to be an alarmist,

but I am frankly scared. Because neither I, nor anybody I know, has any idea

whatever became of Clifford.

 

 

Hare Krishna --

 

your servant, Balarama Dasa