Since the average reader of this Substack tends to be hundreds of years old more mature, you may not be aware of what a modern video game looks like. You may be, like me, more familiar with the games that were popular when video games first appeared, back in the 1970s. Remember those? Remember that electrifying moment when you first experienced the thrill of interacting with the revolutionary mind-blowing visionary technical innovation that was... Pong?

To refresh your memory, here’s a video of some hot vintage Pong action. (You don’t have to watch the whole thing. Life is too short.)

Talk about interactive excitement! You could move your paddle both up and down! And the little dot bounced off it! We had never seen anything like it. Back then I was a reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., and for several months I deposited a non-trivial portion of my salary, in the form of quarters, into a Pong machine in a bar called Joe’s Sportsman’s Lounge. Was this a poor use of my extremely limited funds? Yes. Should I have been using that time to write boring stories about boring meetings of boring government officials droning on about boring topics such as zoning and sewage? Again, yes. But Pong was WAY more fun.

After Pong we got more technologically advanced games such as Space Invaders, which had more sophisticated and lifelike graphics:

Unlike Pong, which was pretty mindless, Space Invaders told a story. It made you, the player, the main character in a gripping drama, the plot being that all these aliens are coming down from space to kill you, and no matter how many of them you shoot, there are always more aliens coming, so that regardless of how hard you try or how skilled you are, eventually you will die. Just like real life!

Yes, those early games were fun and educational. But in time, as the members of my generation grew older and started families, many of us stopped playing video games because our children kept beating us we became interested in more intellectual pursuits.

Meanwhile, however, the video-game industry kept growing. Today it’s huge. And the games...

OK, let me try to describe a modern video game. I was introduced to this one by my 7-year-old grandson, Kyle, who wanted to play against his Bop Bop (my grandkids call me Bop Bop). Which was sweet! Kyle handed me a game controller, which had a bunch of buttons on it. He didn’t give me any instructions, but I assumed I’d figure out what to do. Probably just shoot the bad guys, right? How hard could it be? I mean, not to brag, but back in the day old Bop Bop was not too shabby at Space Invaders!

So Kyle started the game, which is called Super Smash Brothers. This is what it looked like:

It was insanely complex. There were strange things all over the screen, and everything was moving fast and making weird noises. Presumably one of the things was the character I was supposed to be controlling, but I had no idea which one. So I pressed some buttons, and whatever I did caused my character to immediately leap to his death. I mean this happened literally within three seconds after the game started. My character got a new life, but again the first thing he did was commit suicide. Clearly this character would rather die than be controlled by an old fossil like Bop Bop.

Within 15 seconds I had used up all my lives and was resigned to watching Kyle’s character, controlled by Kyle’s nimble thumbs, darting all over the screen, expertly dispatching all kinds of hideous creatures. It was pretty humiliating for me, although Kyle thought it was hilarious.

Let’s see who’s laughing when it’s time for him to collect Social Security.

But my point is, modern video games have gone light years past Space Invaders. They’re also wildly popular: Hundreds of millions of Americans play video games regularly, and there are billions of players worldwide. The video-game industry has become a $200-billion-a-year entertainment behemoth, way bigger than the movie industry.

Which brings us back to Grand Theft Auto, or GTA. This is a hugely successful video-game franchise, and on November 19 it will release its latest game, GTA VI, which is believed to have cost over a billion dollars to develop, which would make it the most expensive entertainment product ever. The video-game world is VERY excited about this. Nearly half a billion people have watched the trailer. (Yes, video games have trailers.) Here it is:

It almost looks like a movie, right? The difference is, in the game, you, the player, control the main characters as they encounter various scenarios. There are two main characters in GTA VI, Jason and Lucia, and as I understand the storyline, they go around committing a wide range of crimes, including armed robbery, homicide, assault, drug trafficking, carjacking, extortion, arson and failure to signal lane changes. In other words, they are violent criminals. Nevertheless we are sympathetic to them, because they are hot and have a lot of sex trying to build a better life for themselves.

Here’s why I’m interested in GTA VI: It’s set in Miami. My town! In the game they don’t call it Miami: They call it “Vice City,” and they call Florida “Leonida.” But the game is totally based on Miami, with many of the scenes depicting, with uncanny realism, what everyday life looks like down here. For example, this scene could be my neighborhood...

...the only difference being that in real life the iguana would be several feet longer and holding a small household pet in its mouth. So in addition to being an exciting game, GTA VI is, in a way, a vivid portrait of Miami, presenting it as an exciting and fascinating town, filled with interesting people and places to see and rob. Which is why it makes perfect sense that some local government officials, when they heard about GTA VI, thought: “A game depicting our community as rife with squalor, drowning in drugs, teeming with dirtbags and beset by violent crime? This is a golden marketing opportunity!“

Really.

Back in June, according to a story in The Miamian, officials of Miami-Dade County approached Rockstar Games, the publisher of GTA VI, with a proposal for a marketing partnership wherein various locations in Miami, in conjunction with the rollout of the game, would be temporarily transformed into real-world simulations of Vice City. The county even created a “pitch deck” of slides envisioning what these locations might look like. One of them is Miami International Airport, which would become “Vice City Airport.” Here’s the pitch slide:

Looks glamorous! As a frequent user of this airport, I applaud the idea of sprucing it up. But I think it would be nice if, as part of the process, they made an effort to fix the parts of the airport — there are many — that have been broken for what feels like decades. Currently the way the airport deals with broken things is to put signs in front of them declaring that they are being modernized. For example, here’s a photo I took of a “moving walkway” that I believe has not actually moved since the French and Indian War:

It would be great if, as part of the Vice City re-imagining, the airport could tackle these embarrassing eyesores and transform them into something fun and inviting:

But my absolute favorite part of Miami-Dade County’s marketing proposal for GTA VI — which you’re going to think I’m making up, but I swear I am not — involves the sewer system. Yes. Here’s the pitch slide:

That’s right: They proposed Vice City manhole covers. If THAT wouldn’t attract hordes of tourists, I don’t know what would. Picture a well-traveled married couple, trying to decide on a vacation destination:

WOMAN (reading newspaper): OK, the British Museum is exhibiting the Bayeux Tapestry, and there’s a big Cézanne exhibit in Paris, and... Wait a minute! Miami has a coordinated series of artist-designed manhole covers and utility-box wraps! They highlight the subterranean infrastructure!

MAN: Holy moly! I’m booking flights RIGHT NOW to Vice City Airport!

These are just some of the bizarre innovative marketing ideas Miami-Dade County proposed. As I write these words, it’s not clear how many of them will actually be executed. Although — speaking of being executed — some local officials, including the sheriff, have objected to the idea of the government hyping a game in which players can shoot government employees in the form of the police. Nevertheless, according to the Miami Herald, Miami-Dade recently made a deal in which Rockstar Games will pay the county $975,000, and as a result on Tuesday workers assembled a giant “Welcome to Vice City” sign on the roof of the downtown Miami basketball arena. There may be more exciting changes coming, as Miami transforms itself into an even more insane place than it already was. I’ll keep an eye on the manhole covers.

And now it’s time to hear from you wonderful commenters, whom I love more than ever after reading all your thoughtful and supportive words responding to last week’s Substack about Michelle suddenly and unexpectedly losing her job. Michelle also read your comments, and she wants you to know she really appreciates them. Today is her last day as a sportswriter, after 40 years; here’s her goodbye column.

I’m not crying; you’re crying.

OK, today we have three scientific polls.

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“That must be so much fun!” they say. “You get to go to all the games!”

Which is true! She has gone to SO many games. She covered 14 Olympics (seven summer, seven winter) and nine World Cups (seven men’s, two women’s). She has covered Super Bowls, World Series, NBA finals, tennis majors, auto racing, golf and more, much more, thousands of matches and games, often with front-row seats. So that has to be fun, right?

Not really! Don’t get me wrong: Sportswriting is an exciting job. But “fun” is not the word I would use. Consider this little slice of Michelle’s career:

It’s April 1, 2023, and she’s in Houston’s NRG Stadium to cover the Final Four in the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. There are 75,000 people (me among them) packing the stands, and it’s very loud, fans yelling, bands playing, cheerleaders cheering. Michelle is in the middle of all the noise, sitting courtside, so close to the game that at one point she has to swat away an errant basketball to keep it from hitting her laptop computer.

On the court, Florida Atlantic University is playing San Diego State in the first semifinal game. The Miami Herald editors want Michelle’s story “at the buzzer” -- immediately after the game ends.

That will be nine seconds from now. FAU leads by one point, 71-70, but San Diego State has the ball. A player named Lamont Butler races the length of the court and, with 0.6 seconds on the clock, launches a 17-foot jump shot. This is the most important shot in the history of either school. Everybody in the building is watching the ball. The place is insane.

Here’s the situation for Michelle:

If the shot goes in, she has to send, in the next three minutes, an accurate, coherent and complete 1,000-word story saying that San Diego State won.

If the shot doesn’t go in, she has to send, in the next three minutes, an accurate, coherent and complete 1,000-word story saying that FAU won.

These are two very different stories. The game will end in less than a second. And Michelle, as the ball descends, doesn’t know which story she will have to produce.

As it happens, the ball goes in. The San Diego players and fans go berserk; FAU collapses in grief. From the stands, I can see Michelle at courtside, surrounded by bedlam, hunched over her computer, typing furiously. She has three minutes to get her story in. And guess what? As soon as she’s done, she has to cover another game, the semifinal between the University of Miami and the University of Connecticut. Those players are already warming up. The Herald wants that story at the buzzer also.

So Michelle gets to watch two games tonight! How much fun is THAT?

Sportswriters are, by necessity, the best deadline writers there are, and Michelle is as good on deadline as anybody. In 2008, at the Beijing Olympics, she was part of the massive press corps at the swimming venue to watch Michael Phelps go for his historic eighth gold medal. This was the biggest single event of those Olympics; the Herald needed Michelle to send her story the instant the race was over. Not a few minutes later: That instant.

As the race was starting, Michelle’s phone rang. It was me, back in Miami, Mister Mom calling to ask Michelle if she knew the location of a specific one of our 8-year-old daughter’s estimated 987 headbands.

“I CAN’T THINK ABOUT HEADBANDS NOW YOU IDIOT!” is how most people would have responded. I definitely would have. But that isn’t how Michelle responded.

“It’s in her nightstand,” she said, calmly. “Second drawer. I have to go. Bye.”

Michael Phelps won his gold medal, and Michelle’s story got to the Herald seconds later, faster than the Associated Press story did, which is the equivalent of winning a gold medal for deadline sportswriting. And our daughter’s headband was exactly where Michelle told me it was.

Michelle has been a sportswriter for four decades. For most of her career, she has written more than 400 stories a year. So we’re talking thousands of stories, containing tens of thousands of names and statistics, and I’m guessing that in all that time she got maybe a dozen facts wrong. She had to be accurate, because she was — in fact still is — a woman, which means that every time she writes a story, she has to prove that she knows what she’s talking about. Men do not have to prove this, because men have penises, which give men a natural ability, from birth, to speak authoritatively about all sports, all the time. This is why a casual male sports fan can watch three minutes of a football game between two teams he has never seen before and declare, with complete confidence, that the coaches — who have been coaching for years, and whose jobs depend on their teams’ performance, and who have been up late night after night preparing for this game — have NO IDEA what they’re doing. The casual male sports fan can tell this at a glance, thanks to his penis.

Unfortunately, female sportswriters — although I for one am thankful for this — lack that biological advantage. So they have to be extra careful to get their facts right, and even then they face more scrutiny than a man would. Sometimes they have to deal with outright hostility, especially when they intrude into the sacred male sports space of (speaking of penises) the locker room.

There are people who believe that women sportswriters enjoy being in men’s locker rooms. All of those people are men. The truth is, women sportswriters hate going into the locker room. But when it’s the only place where the media can conduct player interviews, they do it, because they have to. It can be very unpleasant. Over the years, Michelle, trying to do her job, was subjected to all kinds of gross locker-room nastiness. She was once shoved to the floor by a professional football player who objected to her presence (he was punished by the NFL). Things have gotten better over the years, as more women have entered sports media. But it’s still not easy.

Which is not to say Michelle doesn’t love her job. She absolutely, passionately does. The good experiences far outweigh the bad; the adrenaline rush of meeting a deadline never gets old; and sportswriting has enabled her to travel the world. It has been a great career, and she has poured her heart into it. I can’t count the number of times she was still up at one a.m., two a.m., three a.m., whatever it took, because she wanted to get in just one more quote, to make her story just a little better.

She lived for her job.

For 40 years.

And now it’s gone.

A few days ago, Michelle was informed — on a brief video call, by two corporate guys she did not know, who did not know her — that, effective in two weeks, her position would no longer exist. Dozens of her colleagues also got axed. There was no warning. Boom said the bean counters, and all those jobs disappeared.

That’s how it is in newspapers these days. Papers that were once thriving, vibrant civic institutions are now, in many markets, shriveled husks, shuffling zombies, if they still exist at all. There are a bunch of reasons for this, some of them the newspaper industry’s own fault. I’m not writing this to assign blame. I’m writing it to lament the fact that a lot of the newspaper people losing their jobs are, like Michelle, really good at what they do, and really care about how they do it, and now all the stories that they would have written will never get written. And Facebook and X and YouTube can’t begin to make up for that loss.

And it sucks.

OK, this has NOT been a humorous Substack. I apologize for the serious tone. By way of a palate cleanser, here’s the headline of a recent story in the Wall Street Journal that was brought to my attention by field correspondent Ridley Pearson:

The gist of the story, as the headline suggests, is that — follow me closely — marmots are terrorizing California hikers and stealing their shoes. Here’s an actual quote from one of the terrorized hikers: “You don’t expect to get licked when you go to sleep in the woods.”

To which I would respond: That depends on your hiking companion Yikes.

Anyway, until they get this marmot situation under control, I would advise you to stay out of California, unless you absolutely have to go there, in which case, go barefoot.

In other news this week, apparently there’s a solid chance that Artificial Intelligence is going to wipe out the entire human race. But between the terrorist marmots and Michelle’s termination, I feel I already have enough to fret about. So I’m going to stop here and turn the discussion over to you lovely, generous paying subscribers. Today we have two scientific polls:

One last thing: Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, You know what to do, me hearties.

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This story was brought to my attention by alert reader Thomas Gibson, M.D., and I immediately knew it was important, because Popular Mechanics has long been a trusted source of information about science in general, and particularly scientific things that could very well happen in the future. For example, way back in 1957 Popular Mechanics published this cover:

That’s right: In 1957, Popular Mechanics predicted that we would have flying cars by 1967, and... by God we did! You younger readers belonging to Whatever Gen We’re On Now probably are unaware of this, but I’m sure you Boomers remember how in the late Sixties we all used to soar gaily above the suburbs in our Hiller’s Aerial Sedans, enjoying the view and laughing at the neighbor far below who gestured angrily at us...

...as we dropped our empty beer bottles onto his yard, because back then, in addition to having flying cars, we had fewer rules about littering and DUI. Yes, those were carefree times, but they came to a screeching halt in 1972 when Richard Nixon signed a bill creating the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which immediately banned both flying cars and Lawn Darts, and also mandated that aspirin packaging had to be physically impossible to open without industrial power tools. And nobody ever had fun again.

But my point is, when Popular Mechanics reports that scientists have been burying massive quantities of underwear, and that, quote, “the disturbing result confirmed their worst fears,” then I for one want to know more. So took the unusual journalistic step of actually reading the article, which states that researchers at the University of Zürich planted more than 2,000 pairs of tighty-whitey-style cotton briefs, size small, in various locations around Switzerland, “as well as 12,000 teabags.” That’s right: They planted underpants AND teabags all over Switzerland. After a month, the researchers dug these items up, and they made an astounding scientific discovery: The underpants got very dirty.

Trigger Warning: The following photo is disgusting.

But that was not the point of the study. The point was to assess the health of Swiss soil by measuring how quickly it caused the underpants and tea bags to rot. Contrary to what ignorant non-scientists such as (no offense) you might believe, soil is not just dirt. Healthy soil is actually a complex biosystem teeming with billions of tiny microörganisms, as we can see when we peer at a soil sample through a microscope:

Scientists tell us that these microörganisms play a vital role in the Earth’s ecology, because they cause things to decompose via a process called “decomposition,” without which everything would eventually become composed.

According to the Popular Mechanics article, the standard method for measuring soil decomposition is to bury tea bags, but the Swiss researchers decided to also use underpants, because they thought this would “attract more public attention.” And it’s working! I mean, here I am writing about it. Although I think they could have gotten even more attention if they had planted 2,000 brassieres.

Anyway, the Swiss researchers found that a lot of soil is unhealthy, especially if the soil is being used to grow lawns. This is the “disturbing result” that confirmed the researchers’ “worst fears.” I’ll be honest: I was expecting something more dramatic, like maybe that Global Climate Change has caused the soil microörganisms to mutate, so that instead of causing the underpants to decompose, they turn them into an army of hostile carnivorous unlaundered zombie briefs that rise up out of the soil and attack humanity, forcing us to battle desperately for our survival armed only with a dwindling supply of detergent.

But even though the Swiss underpants study was less dramatic, we must not dismiss its conclusion, which is, bottom line: lawns are bad. Maybe they should be banned. They serve no real purpose anyway, now that we can’t have Lawn Darts.

Speaking of bottom lines: Let’s turn now to another alarming article, which was brought to my attention by Ridley Pearson, who is my friend and bandmate and a genuinely twisted individual. Here’s the headline, which, once again, I am not making up:

The article was published this week on the Live Science website, but it refers to an incident that was originally reported two years ago in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports. The report states that a 55-year-old fisherman went to the emergency room of a hospital in Bangladesh complaining of severe stomach pain. The report continues:

On further queries, he revealed an eel fish had entered through his rectum accidentally while catching fish 1 day ago. According to his statement, the fish initially entered his lungee (local clothing) and eventually entered the anal canal. He did not seek medical attention, hoping the fish would pass out on its own.

Talk about your worst fears: Having an eel “accidentally” go up your butt and refuse to leave on its own definitely has to be right up there. I put “accidentally” in quotation marks because none of us can really know what the eel was thinking. I mean, why did it enter the man’s lungee in the first place? Where I come from, if you enter somebody’s lungee, you have definitely crossed a line.

Anyway, the doctors x-rayed the man and located the eel, which they then removed via surgery. It measured 65 centimeters, which, translated into American, means it was more than two feet long. Here’s a photograph of the eel taken moments after it was removed:

Trigger Warning: This is even more disgusting than the Swiss underpants photo.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is, THE EEL WAS STILL ALIVE. We know this for a fact because you can see it moving in the following video, which shows the eel being extracted from the fisherman.

Trigger Warning: Do NOT watch this video.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The good news is, the fisherman recovered and was discharged from the hospital four days later, after which I assume he switched to a new line of work that poses no risk of another eel encounter, such as astronaut. But that doesn’t mean we should just forget that this disturbing incident ever happened. As the Journal report states:

The ability of an eel fish to penetrate the intestinal wall and migrate through the gastrointestinal tract raises intriguing questions regarding its behavior, and interaction with human anatomy inside the intestine.

One intriguing question I have is: What did the doctors do with the eel after they removed it from the fisherman? The article doesn’t say, but the eel was still alive, so my concern is: What if they let it go? Because if they did, MAYBE IT’S STILL OUT THERE. And if so, maybe it has grown larger and migrated from wherever Bangladesh is to the ocean. And maybe, at this very moment, having developed a taste for human orifices, it’s on the prowl for more.

It’s best not to even think about it.

OK, I think we can all agree that today’s Substack should never have been written has gone on long enough. Time now to hear from you wonderful paying subscribers, assuming you managed to make it this far. Today we have four scientific polls. Also at the end I’ll provide a link to something I wrote that, for reasons that will be obvious, I did not want to include here. But first the polls:

One last thing...

Today, as you know, is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In 2002, for the first anniversary, I wrote an essay, “On Hallowed Ground,” about United Airlines Flight 93, the plane that went down in a Pennsylvania field. It would, of course, be inappropriate to include that essay in this Substack. But in case you’d like to read it, here’s a link.

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“How minor?” you ask.

Pretty darned minor! I’ll give you an example. Some years ago, I was in a Miami department store, buying socks, and when I went to pay for them, the salesperson recognized me. “I love your work!” he said. He seemed genuinely excited to be in my presence. I was of course flattered. I said “Thank you.”

At that point another customer walked up. He wanted to buy some menswear item, which as I recall was underpants. The salesperson, pointing at me, said to him, “Do you know who this is?” The man looked at me and shook his head, indicating that he did not know who I was.

“Tell him who you are!” the salesperson said to me. I truly did not want to, but the salesperson was insistent. So I said, “I’m a writer.”

The man did not look impressed. He looked like a man who wanted to buy some underpants and leave. But the salesperson was not giving up on getting me the recognition he felt I deserved.

“He’s being modest,” he told the man. “He’s a FAMOUS writer. This is Carl Hiaasen!”

As you might imagine, the next few minutes were pretty awkward. Especially when I gave the salesperson my credit card.

That’s how minor a celebrity I am. Yes, I have achieved some recognition in my chosen field of intellectual endeavor (jokes about poop). But I’m not really famous, or even particularly well known. I am, at best, vaguely familiar. My life is not glamorous. Mostly it’s normal, even boring, punctuated very occasionally by fleeting moments of minor-celebrityhood.

The late Mark Russell, a brilliant piano-playing political satirist and great guy, once told me a story that illustrates what I’m talking about. He’d done a show in a midwestern city, and he was a hit: sold-out house, standing ovation. He was a star!

When he got back to his hotel, he was hungry, but the kitchen was closed. The front-desk clerk told him there was a McDonald’s nearby, so Mark walked there, only to find that the doors were locked. But an employee told Mark that the drive-thru window was still open, so he went around to the drive-thru lane, walked up to the window and ordered his food. As the cashier was handing him his bag, a car pulled into the drive-thru behind him; the driver honked, leaned out the window and yelled “GREAT SHOW TONIGHT, MARK!”

That never happens to Taylor Swift. That is minor celebrityhood.

Now I want to make two points. Get ready, because here they come:

Point One: The underpants customer probably didn’t know who Carl Hiaasen was, either.

Point Two: Even if I could be a major celebrity, I wouldn’t want to.

I’m dead serious. As a very minor celebrity, I have sometimes found myself in the company of truly famous people, so I’ve had a chance to observe what life is like for them, and... It’s not always great! I will give you an anecdotal example of what I mean.

TRIGGER WARNING: Be advised that the following anecdote contains an offensive word (“fuck”).

In May of 1993 the Rock Bottom Remainders, a supremely mediocre rock band I belong to consisting mostly of authors, did a concert tour of the East Coast, starting in Providence, Rhode Island, and ending in Miami. It was the most fun thing I had ever done that did not involve getting naked. It was rock-star camp. We traveled in a real rock-star tour bus; in fact it was the same bus used by Aretha Franklin, who is — I will fight you on this — the greatest female singer of all time. And our musical director was an actual famous professional rock musician, Al Kooper, who schooled us in the finer points of being rock musicians on the road, the main point being, no pooping on the bus.

So we were having a blast, riding Aretha’s bus from city to city, talking about the kinds of things we professional authors talk about when we get together, such as the subjunctive mood. But at night we turned into rock ‘n’ roll animals. The crowds at our shows were large and enthusiastic, especially considering how we played, which has been described by Roy Blount Jr., one of the band’s founding members, as “hard-listening music.” But MAN did we have fun, wowing the audience with spectacular rock-star choreography moves such as this:

In this photo Stephen King and I are executing the classic Two Guitarists Leaning Against Each Other While Playing maneuver. We do not appear to be playing the same chord; in fact there’s an excellent chance that neither one of us is playing the right chord. But we did manage to lean back against each other without falling down, which for our band was a major musical achievement.

That photo was taken in Philadelphia, where we played on the party deck of Katmandu, a nightclub on the Delaware River waterfront. After the show the band got back on Aretha’s bus for the long overnight ride to our next stop, Atlanta.

I had connected with some old Philly friends after the show, so I was the last band member to return to the bus. When I got there, a crowd was gathered around the bus door, at least 100 people. These were hardcore Stephen King fans. They appeared everywhere we went — not just the shows, but also the hotels where we stayed and any restaurants we went to. If Stephen ventured outside, anywhere, he was immediately set upon by people who wanted him to sign books, or pose for photos, or talk to them, or something. Many of these people were polite, but some were aggressive, and some were disturbingly weird. I don’t know where these people came from, but wherever Stephen was, they showed up.

As I approached the bus, the fans, many of them clutching books, surged around me, shouting and pleading: DAVE CAN YOU GET STEPHEN TO COME OUT PLEASE DAVE I’M A HUGE FAN PLEASE I HAVE ALL HIS BOOKS PLEASE I NEED TO TALK TO HIM JUST FOR A MINUTE PLEASE DAVE CAN YOU JUST ASK HIM TO SIGN THESE BOOKS DAVE PLEASE I DROVE ALL THE WAY FROM WISCONSIN TO SEE HIM PLEASE CAN YOU JUST GIVE HIM THIS LETTER DAVE PLEASE CAN YOU JUST ASK HIM TO....

It was actually a little scary, how needy these people were. As the crowd surrounded me, the bus door opened, and Bob Daitz, our road manager, came out to rescue me. Bob is a pro; among many other jobs, he was, for years, the road manager for Van Halen. He has worked with just about everybody in the rock biz, from the Stones on down. He has seen it all, and he is unflappable.

As Bob started to escort me away from the pleading crowd, I had a thought, probably inspired by the fact that I’d had several post-gig beers: I am going to reason with these people. So I faced the fans, and I made a little speech.

I reminded them that they’d just seen Stephen perform for them for two hours. I pointed out that he was not a robot, but a human being who needed rest. I told them we had a 12-hour bus trip ahead of us, and that if Stephen came out and engaged with all of them, we’d be there all night. I said that if they really loved him as much as they said they did, they’d be grateful for this wonderful night with him, and for all the great books he’d written, and instead of asking him for more, they’d just let the man go.

I spoke for several minutes, and I will say, in all modesty, that I was brilliant. I was passionate and eloquent. I was Winston Churchill. And guess what: Those fans, that needy mob, listened to me. They stared at me intently as I spoke, hanging on my every word. And when I was done, they were dead silent.

For maybe two seconds. Then: DAVE CAN YOU GET STEPHEN TO COME OUT PLEASE DAVE I’M A HUGE FAN PLEASE I HAVE ALL HIS BOOKS PLEASE I NEED TO TALK TO HIM JUST FOR A MINUTE PLEASE...

So much for Winston Churchill. I turned, defeated, to get on the bus. As I did, Bob Daitz, who had been watching my performance, said something to me that I have never forgotten.

“Dave,” he said. “Did you ever see a duck try to fuck a football?”

This was Bob’s colorful way of expressing that it was pointless to try to reason with hardcore fans. Although I have found it to be a useful maxim for life in general. Sometimes, when I’m facing a difficult challenge, and I’m feeling down because things aren’t going my way, I think about the duck, and the football, and the physical impossibility of their having a successful biological interaction, and I say to myself: The hell with it. “Sometimes you should just give up,” is the motivational life lesson I am imparting here.

But that is not the point of this anecdote. The point of this anecdote, as I stated way back up there under the photo of the late, great, Mark Russell, is that I wouldn’t want to be a major celebrity like my friend Stephen King. I’m not saying this out of jealousy because he has sold, by last count, 247,000,000,000,000,000,000,018 more books than I have. I’m saying it because I genuinely would not want to inspire that level of craziness in people.

Although sometimes the reactions to Stephen can be pretty funny. I am thinking here of another anecdote involving a performance of the Rock Bottom Remainders. Would you like me to tell it?

OK! You asked for it:

In September 1995, the Remainders played at a gala in Cleveland to benefit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was opening with a huge star-studded concert the next night. It was insane: The gala cost $1,000 a seat, and it was attended by all these major rock stars, and we were the entertainment. I wrote a column about how this happened, which I will append to the end of this Substack in case you want to read about it.

So anyway, the band was in Cleveland rehearsing, and one afternoon, Stephen, Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) and I went to a cheap knockoff T-shirt shop, mainly because Matt is into T-shirts. The owner of the shop immediately recognized Stephen, but thought he was Stephen Spielberg. Stephen denied that he was Stephen Spielberg, but the owner insisted that he definitely was, and he made Stephen pose for a group photo with the store staff.

Then Matt, a mischievous man, told the owner that I was George Lucas. Of course the owner believed this, because why wouldn’t George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg be shopping for cheap knockoff T-shirts together in Cleveland? The owner was going to make me pose for a group photo with his staff, so I showed him my Florida driver’s license to prove that I wasn’t George Lucas, but he still kind of suspected that I was. “I better not hear you were in town,” he told me.

Eventually, after some discussion, the owner realized that Stephen King was, in fact, Stephen King, so — I am not making this up — he insisted that Stephen pose for another group photo with the store staff, now that his true identity had been revealed.

OK, that’s enough stories. Time now to hear from you paying subscribers, every one of whom is, in my estimation, a rock star. Today we have three scientific poll questions. The first one is really just an excuse to play this exquisite jewel of a song by Miss Aretha Franklin, which never fails to make me think that maybe the world is not as bad as I sometimes think it is:

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APPENDIX: Here’s the column I wrote in 1995 about the Remainders playing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gala:

I have many memories of the historic opening weekend of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but what I’ll remember the longest is getting into an argument with Bruce Springsteen’s guitar player.

To understand how this happened, you need to know that I belong to a rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, which consists mostly of authors. The other members include (in alphabetical order) sports columnist Mitch Albom, humor writer Roy Blount Jr., media escort and singer Kathi Goldmark, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, rock-book author Dave Marsh, thriller writer Ridley Pearson, one-person horror industry Stephen King, rock critic Joel Selvin and actual literary person Amy Tan.

If I had to describe, in one phrase, the type of band we are, the phrase I would select is: “A pretty bad type of band.” I’m not saying that we are 100 percent totally horrible all the time. Sometimes, when people hear us, they give us compliments such as, “Hey, you didn’t suck so bad on that one song.” But mostly people tell us, “Don’t quit your day jobs!” I would venture to say that we hear that particular phrase more than any other band in history.

That is why I am still baffled by the fact that the Rock Bottom Remainders were invited to perform as part of the ceremonies surrounding the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. Specifically, we were asked to perform at the big gala Friday-night dinner party to benefit the Hall. This made no sense. Having the Rock Bottom Remainders perform on behalf of music is like having Mike Tyson teach a course on dating etiquette.

But we did get invited, and since we have very little talent and play only about once per year, we thought it would be a good idea to rehearse. Band members started arriving in Cleveland on Wednesday, and that night some of us went to watch the Indians play the Blue Jays in Cleveland’s beautiful new baseball stadium. As it happened, TV actor David Birney was sitting two rows in front of us. A woman sitting directly behind him recognized Birney; she wanted to get his autograph, but didn’t have a pen, so she turned to us and asked if anybody had one. One of us handed her a pen; she got the autograph, then turned around and handed the pen back. She was so excited about getting David Birney’s autograph that she failed to notice that the person she was returning the pen to was: Stephen King.

I started to feel like a real rock musician on Wednesday night, when we rode back from the ballpark to the hotel in a limo. The driver informed me -- I swear I am not making this up -- that I was sitting in the exact same seat where Courtney Love once threw up.

The Rock Bottom Remainders spent most of Thursday rehearsing our repertoire, which consists mostly of “classic oldies rock” songs, defined as “songs that contain three or fewer chords and reached the zenith of their popularity before Kurt Cobain was even born.” We also spent a lot of time getting nervous as various people reminded us, repeatedly, that (a) our audience was going to contain many heavy hitters in the music industry, not to mention performers such as Elton John; and (b) the tickets cost $1,000 apiece.

And so we practiced relentlessly, whacking away at our instruments hour after hour until finally, magically, it started to happen: We stopped sounding lame and sloppy, and we started sounding lame, sloppy and exhausted. So we quit.

That night, at the hotel bar, the gala’s producer, Mark Cheplowitz, told us how we got invited to play. “We were talking about Cher or maybe Tina Turner,” he said, “but then we thought, hey, let’s try taking this in a completely different direction.”

Oh, swell. Us instead of Tina Turner.

I did not sleep well Thursday night. I felt like a prisoner on Death Row, except that at least a prisoner on Death Row has the hope that the governor will decide, at the last moment, that the prisoner does not have to sing in front of Elton John.

Friday night, as the sun set over Lake Erie, we got on our bus and headed to the big tent where the gala would be held. As we were led through a black-tie crowd of VIPs, I almost walked right into a tall man. I looked up: It was Steve Cropper. Who is only a guitar god. As the pathetic excuse for the Remainders’ lead guitarist, I felt really swell, knowing that Cropper was in the audience. I was seriously thinking of playing with a paper bag over my head.

The band was led back behind the tent, where two motor homes had been parked so we’d have a place to become even more nervous. I was sitting with some band members in the motor home when a small, headband-wearing man came in. This was Nils Lofgren, who for many years has played lead guitar for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. He is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good.

He wanted to play guitar with us.

He -- Nils Lofgren -- wanted to play all night, on every song.

And I had to tell him no.

Here’s why: We’d heard that he might want to join us for the night, and the consensus of the band was that, because Lofgren is really (repeat nine times) good, he would make the rest of us look even worse than we already are. So the band decided to let him sit in on one song, period. The band also agreed that, as spokesperson, I would be the one to tell Lofgren this.

And thus I, a humor columnist, had to stand there in a motor home and tell a world-class rock musician -- a musician who, the next night, would be on stage playing with Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis -- that, hey, thanks for the offer, but we can only use you on one song.

So I told Nils Lofgren this, and he would not accept it. He argued with me. At times he was almost pleading. This was just too surreal, so finally I caved in and told Nils, OK, two songs near the beginning, plus you can come up at the end for a few more songs, including our big production-number version of These Boots Are Made For Walking, featuring Amy Tan dressed as a total slut.

And Nils Lofgren thanked me. He was actually grateful for this opportunity to potentially flush his career down the toilet. The guy just really loves to play.

As it turned out, our performance went well. The crowd -- perhaps this is an indication of how much drug usage really goes on in the music industry -- actually seemed to like us. People clapped and danced and sang along, screaming “WILD THING!” when we played Wild Thing, and “LOUIE! LOUIE!” when we played Louie, Louie (not that there is, technically, any difference between these songs). And the crowd went berserk when, as we concluded our rendition of the 1958 Royal Teens hit Short Shorts, four male band members dropped their pants and bunny-hopped off the stage in their underwear. Despite the musical subtlety of this and our other songs, Nils Lofgren seemed to have no trouble following along and playing killer solos.

In other words, it was cool.

The next day the band visited the Hall of Fame and Museum, which is also cool, featuring all kinds of exhibits, guitars, contracts, letters, costumes, posters and more, including Roy Orbison’s geeky high school yearbook photo. My only criticism is that they don’t play the music loud enough, so that at times it feels a little too museum-y and not enough rock-y. At one point I was with a group of people watching a museum movie on the history of rock, featuring clips from many songs; we were getting a little rowdy, singing along at times, and a very serious suit-wearing man in the row in front of us whirled around and glared back at us and said, “Please stop talking!” Then he went back to studying the movie intently, as though it were a rare manuscript, instead of Ozzy Osbourne. This seemed wrong. If you can’t yell and stomp in the house of rock ‘n’ roll, then where can you? So my advice to the people in charge of the museum is: Crank it up. But otherwise, as I say, it’s great.

On Saturday night, we got to go to the big stadium concert, featuring real musicians, including our bandmate Nils, up there playing with The Boss. The concert also featured a surprise appearance by Bob Dylan, who, in one of the evening’s highlights, dropped his pants and did the Bunny Hop in his underwear.

No, he didn’t. In fact, you will be shocked to learn that, in the entire six-hour concert, not a single band performed Short Shorts. But it was still excellent.

Sunday morning, as I was getting ready to leave Cleveland, I ran into Lofgren at the airport. I told him we thought he did a pretty good job, and could play with the Remainders any time.

“Rock ‘n’ roll,” he said.

I have to agree.

That’s one of the wondrous things about modern technology: It’s fast. Except of course for the dishwashers. Modern dishwashers — you’ve probably noticed this — take a lonnnggg time to complete a cycle. This is because, in the interest of planetary conservation, modern dishwashers do not use any water. They just make humming sounds for three or four hours, then give up. Basically they’re trying to hum the dirt off your dishes. This is not particularly effective with respect to kitchen sanitation, but we are definitely turning the corner on Global Climate Change™.

But dishwashers aside, modern technology moves lightning-fast. In fact some people think it moves too fast, and they’re trying to slow things down. For an example of this, we turn to recent stories in the New York Times and USA Today concerning two popular new apps, Roost Social and Carrier Pidge. Both of these apps do essentially the same thing, namely, send texts, but — this is the innovative part — they send them very slowly, by pretending that the texts are being carried by birds, as in olden days. I am not making this up. The Roost app lets you choose from a bunch of different kinds of birds, as well as other kinds of carrier animals, including turtles and snails. The Pidge app uses only carrier pigeons, but it has a wrinkle: There’s a small chance that your pigeon will die before it reaches its destination, in which case you have to buy a replacement pigeon for 99 cents. I am still not making this up.

Needless to say I downloaded both of these apps and inflicted them on people I know. Here’s a screenshot of Roost Social on my phone, showing three virtual birds outbound from me in Miami — to Minneapolis, Philadelphia and New York — and one inbound virtual ostrich.

All of these virtual birds took about a day to reach their destinations and deliver the vital information contained in the texts, which was, essentially: “Here is a text.” I also exchanged texts via the Pidge app with my daughter, Sophie, in New York; both of our messages took about ten hours to arrive, and both said, essentially, “I hope this pigeon doesn’t die.”

In other words, these apps are pretty stupid not very practical. Yet hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded them. The question is: Why? Why do people want to deliberately delay the delivery of a message by pretending it’s attached to the leg of an imaginary bird? Are these people six years old?

Emotionally, yes. Not at all! Roost and Pidge are part of a trend called “Slow Tech,” wherein people, mainly Gen Zers, are rejecting technology in favor of a simpler, less-stressful lifestyle. The USA Today article says “more and more young people are turning toward low- or no-tech lives, tired of the endless scroll most of us face for hours each day... It’s no wonder folks are turning to an app that promotes a slower type of communication style.” The Times says that Roost and Pidge “appear to have tapped into a palpable discomfort with screen time and constant communication, and a yearning for an antiquated era.”

As a person who grew up in an antiquated era when we had to change TV channels by manually standing up and turning a knob, I have a couple of thoughts. The main one is that trying to de-technologize your life by using these apps is like trying to get away from the trappings of civilization by escaping to the wilderness in this:

Because you’re still using technology. In fact you’re using it more, because (I speak from experience) after you send a text with Roost or Pidge, you keep checking your phone to see where your imaginary bird is.

Listen, Gen Z: If you really want to get away from screens, why don’t you put down your phones and try writing an actual letter? It’s easy! All you need is a piece of paper, an envelope and a postage stamp, which you can purchase at the Post Office, which is a Soviet-style facility containing a long line of people who have been trying to figure out how to fill out the postal forms since roughly 2017. Also you’ll need to write some words on the paper. AI can help you with that part.

But the real low-tech fun begins when you drop your letter into the mail slot, because after that you have no idea what happens to it. Somehow — maybe it gets attached to the leg of a unionized postal worker — it makes its way to its destination, often arriving in a few days, but occasionally taking weeks or even months, during which it might have had some kind of adventure that, judging from the condition of the envelope, involved an irate raccoon with a stomach disorder. You never know, when you mail a letter. That’s part of the charm.

Another part is that, unlike texts and emails, physical letters usually don’t get deleted. They sit around, maybe for years, ready to be rediscovered. Sometimes they even come back to you, and you can reread them, which is like encountering your past self via a low-tech time machine. Recently my cousin Brian Mark sent me a bunch of letters I wrote in the 1980s to his mom, my late aunt Martha, who lived in California. Here’s one:

Kate was my big sister, now gone; she was going through a rough patch out in L.A., and Martha was helping her. As I recall, the pornography thing was a reference to a book I’d just written titled Babies and Other Hazards of Sex. Martha wanted to buy copies for her kids, and when she asked the bookstore manager where to find the book, he thought she was looking for porn. Which is pretty funny, if you knew Aunt Martha. That was forever ago, but the memory came right back to me and made me smile, thanks to a letter written by 37-year-old me that I can still physically hold in my 79-year-old hands. So Roost Social and Carrier Pidge can bite me.

No, that’s too harsh. I say this because as I was writing this Substack, I got a phone call from my cousin-in-law Ron Ungerman, who’s one of the people I dragooned into signing up for Roost. Ron, who lives in Minneapolis, is sending a text to my daughter in New York via turtle. He was calling to report that the turtle had just crossed the Minnesota state line into Wisconsin, and is due in New York on September 30. He was very excited about this. The truth is, he was probably deriving as much joy from his imaginary turtle as I was from remembering Aunt Martha’s alleged porno habit.

So modern technology is not entirely bad. It has improved our lives in countless ways, with exciting new innovations coming along all the time, such as the one described in this BBC News article:

That’s right: Some day, in the not-so-distant future, you might be able to have the convenience of a voice-controlled toilet inside your car. The article states that the toilet, as described in the patent, “slides out from the bottom of a passenger’s seat with a push or through voice-activated commands.” Also: “The loo will come with a fan and exhaust pipe to channel odours out of the car.”

Imagine how convenient this invention could be in a scenario such as a commuter carpool that’s running behind schedule:

PASSENGER: Bob, I hate to do this, but can we stop at a gas station? I really have to use the bathroom.

DRIVER: No need for that. (Shouting:) Activate toilet!

(The toilet slides out.)

PASSENGER: Never mind. I’ll just poop my pants.

DRIVER (shouting): Activate exhaust fan!

Yes, the future is looking bright. And now, speaking of bright, it’s time to hear from you brilliant paying subscribers. Today we have three scientific polls:

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The women are going into gleaming fitness studios with names like SolidCore, HardCore, CorePower, MaxCore, MegaCore, EnCore, The CoreStore, Cores ‘n’ More, The Core Corps, The CorePoration, CorePoral Punishment and Don CoreLeone. It goes without saying that all these women have tremendous cores, cores that could stop a freight strain. Whereas Michelle and I aren’t sure we even have cores. We were both born before the human core was discovered by fitness scientists. So we’re feeling wildly out of place in the upscale shopping complex. We feel like a pair of manatees, lumbering around with our flabby coreless bodies and our loose-fitting clothing. We don’t even have water bottles. At any moment we could be arrested by the Hydration Police.

We’re here to do a cold plunge. This is a hugely popular fitness and wellness activity wherein you deliberately, without a legitimate excuse such as that you are a male third-class passenger on the Titanic, immerse your entire body in ice-cold water. The cold plunge is not a new concept: It actually started centuries ago in Scandinavia, where the Vikings, in preparation for pillaging the rest of Europe, would build up their toughness by plunging into the frigid waters of the fjords. Most of them died within minutes, which is why Scandinavia now has universal healthcare. But the cold-plunge tradition somehow survived, and lately it has become a major trend, which is why Michelle and I decided to give it a try.

Actually, that’s a lie. Michelle did not want to do a cold plunge: It was entirely my idea. I thought it might be an interesting Substackable experience, as well as a way for me to get revenge on Michelle for something she did to me in the summer of 1997. This happened in Calistoga, a small touristy city in California’s Napa Valley, where Michelle — in her defense, she had downed almost an entire bottle of wine — insisted that we take mud baths.

The mud bath is a wellness treatment wherein you get completely naked and climb into a tub filled with what appears to be steaming-hot cow poop. The people who run the baths claim this is a special kind of wellness mud that allegedly causes you to sweat out your toxins, but what they DON’T explain is: What happens to the toxins sweated out by all the previous tub occupants? Because as far as I could tell they don’t change the mud between customers.

So basically you pay money to spend 15 minutes, which feels MUCH longer, submerged in this hot stanky toxic bog. Then you get out and hose each other off, which is, trust me, the least romantic thing you will ever do as a couple. Also it’s virtually impossible to get all the mud out of your various nooks and crannies. Especially your crannies. It’s been 29 years now, and I am STILL finding traces of cranny mud.

I have never completely forgiven Michelle for the mud bath, so she felt obligated to humor me about the cold plunge. And thus we find ourselves, on this Sunday morning, wandering through the upscale shopping complex teeming with fit hydrated legging women with cores of steel.

We finally locate our destination, a wellness studio that I have selected via a vetting process that involved nearly 15 seconds of Googling. We are greeted by a very nice young attendant, who gives us a tour of the facilities, which include a variety of modern wellness technologies, such as this therapeutic light box:

The way this therapy works is, you lie down in the box, and they close the lid and turn on these special lights, and you immediately scream to be let out. At least that’s how it would work for me.

The most impressive wellness apparatus that the attendant shows us is the flotation chamber, a.k.a. sensory deprivation tank. This is an enclosed tub shaped like a giant egg, filled with warm water that contains a lot of dissolved Epsom salt, so it buoys you up.

The idea is, you get into the tank and float peacefully and buoyantly around for a while, completely isolated from all outside stimuli, so that you’re totally calm and relaxed when your therapeutic session ends and you raise the lid and find that you have been teleported via Intergalactic DoorDash to the planet Vogodor, where Epsom salt is considered a gourmet seasoning, and you’re just in time for dinner.

No, seriously, that’s not what happens, as far as I know.

In any event, Michelle and I are not here for sensory deprivation: We’re here for what’s called “contrast therapy,” wherein you expose your body to the extreme heat of a sauna, followed immediately by the icy cold of a plunge tub. We’re paying $99 to do this: $69 for me, and, as part of a Special Offer, $30 for an additional person. I signed up for this yesterday, and Michelle agreed to be the additional person, although when I woke up this morning, the first thing she told me was that we might die. Needless to say she learned this by researching cold plunges on the Internet. This is always a bad idea, because according to the Internet, everything can kill you. Try this simple experiment: Go to the AI of your choice and ask it if some seemingly harmless thing can be fatal, stipulating that you want a yes-or-no answer. By way of demonstration, here’s an exchange I just had with ChatGPT:

Yes: A yo-yo can kill you. As can a spatula, presumably. It must be true because it’s on the Internet. Which is where Michelle discovered, while I was sleeping, that a cold plunge can over-stress your heart in a fatal manner. She informed me of this cheerful fact the instant I woke up, before I had coffee (which I’m sure is also potentially fatal). I told her that she was free to back out, but I planned to go through with the cold plunge, for the same reason that those courageous dead Vikings did so long ago, namely, so I could write about it on Substack.

In the end Michelle agreed to stick with the plan. But we’re both a bit nervous as the attendant completes our tour of the wellness studio and shows us to the private room where we’ll be doing our contrast therapy. It’s a pleasant space containing a small sauna and a cold-plunge tub. Before leaving us, the attendant explains the therapy procedure, then adjusts the sauna temperature, which is usually set at “Poultry,” but since we’re newbies, she dials it all the way down to “Veal.”

I’m exaggerating, but not by much. The sauna is 165 degrees. It is, by far, the hottest environment I have ever experienced outside of the New York City subway system. Michelle handles the sauna easily; she contends that it’s only slightly warmer than the actual Miami temperature in August. But I am dying. I am sweating out toxins that I ingested during the Clinton administration. I barely make it through the recommended ten minutes, then barge out of the sauna and immediately plunge my body into the cold tub, which is — talk about contrast — 48 degrees.

This is the moment of truth — the moment when, as a man, I do not want to appear weak in front of the woman I love even though she once got hammered and made me bathe in hot cow shit. I do not want to whimper like a baby when my body suddenly and violently goes from being way too hot to being way too cold. No, I need to be stoic, strong and, above all, manly, at the crucial moment when the freezing water envelops my nether regions, a moment captured forever in this unretouched photograph:

OK, full disclosure, there might have been some retouching. That’s how I want to look as I plunge into the tub. Here’s how I actually look:

So it is not my manliest moment. In my defense, I am feeling intense pain, coupled with the alarming sensation that some of my key bodily organs are handling the crisis by rapidly transitioning from external to internal, if you catch my drift. Within literally seconds my feet are completely numb. If some kind of tub-dwelling arctic piranhas are down there eating my toes, I have no way to know.

The good news is, the Internet notwithstanding, I am still alive. This is also the bad news, because it means I am continuing to have the cold-tub experience. I experience it for two excruciating minutes, which is the recommended minimum, then struggle my way out of the tub, which is difficult because at this point the piranhas have consumed everything up to my navel.

Michelle goes into the tub next, but she lasts only a minute and 15 seconds. So I could point out here that, of the two of us, I am 45 seconds manlier. But I am above that.

Was the cold plunge worth it? Hard to say. It’s definitely invigorating, but it’s not a totally positive kind of invigorating. It’s more of a thank-God-that’s-over kind of invigorating, similar to how you’d feel if somebody shot an apple off your head, or threw an ax at you and just missed. I will say that from a strictly hygienic standpoint, the cold plunge is better than the mud bath. But I’m pretty sure I’ll never do either of these wellness activities again. I apparently have a low tolerance for wellness.

And now, speaking of invigorating, it’s time to hear from you paying subscribers, without whom I would never have taken this plunge. Today we have three scientific polls. Also at the end we have a bonus music video. But first the polls:

Bonus Music Video

Many commenters to last week’s Substack reacted with varying levels of revulsion to the YouTube video of Liberace and the Young Folk performing “Feelin’ Groovy” on the Red Skelton Hour in 1968. Several commenters recalled another musical performance from roughly that era that achieves a similar level of WTF-ness, namely, the singing duo Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performing “One Toke Over the Line” on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1971. You definitely should NOT watch it. Here it is:

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Let me begin by stressing that I don’t hold Canada personally responsible for the smoke. Granted, Canada has been responsible for some deeply troubling things, such as the 1974 song “(You’re) Having My Baby,” which was written by Paul Anka — a known Canadian — and which features these lyrics:

The need inside you, I see it showin’

Whoa the seed inside ya baby do ya feel it growin’?

That is considered by most music experts to be the second-worst song couplet written in the entire Seventies, exceeded in badness only by the 1972 Mac Davis hit “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me,” in which Mac croons these words:

Girl you’re a hot-blooded woman child

And it’s warm where you’re touchin’ me

To be fair to Canada: The Seventies produced a LOT of sappy ballads. Musically, that decade was a big letdown after the radical social awakening of the Sixties, when a bold revolutionary generation of musicians broke free from the stodgy shackles of bourgeoise white-bread conformism and challenged the Establishment with a defiant, raw and sometimes shocking new sound, as epitomized by this edgy 1968 performance (Content warning):

They don’t make music like that any more. They’re not allowed to: Too many people were going blind from looking at the pants.

But I digress. My point, as you may recall, is that — Paul Anka not withstanding — I don’t hold Canada personally responsible for all the smoke blowing down here from up there. No, the blame for that must be placed squarely on the same phenomenon that is also causing virtually every other major problem humanity is dealing with these days, including droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, blizzards, El Niño (Spanish for “The Nino”), tornados, earthquakes, inflation, the housing shortage, influencers, TV-lawyer ads, two-factor authentication and explosive diarrhea. I am referring, of course, to Global Climate Change™.

Specifically what’s happening with the Canadian smoke is, rising global temperatures have caused Canada to become so hot in the summer that members of the moose population are bursting into flames, a phenomenon known to moose scientists as “spontaneous human combustion,” as captured in this dramatic unedited wildlife video:

Source: Animal Planet

The flaming Canadian moose are igniting the trees, thus causing huge smoky forest fires, which Canada lacks the resources to extinguish because there are only like 125 people total in the whole country.

That means it’s up to us down here in the USA to do something about the smoke problem. Fortunately I have a solution, which I believe is both practical and feasible, as illustrated in this rendering:

That’s right: I’m proposing that we put a line of giant electric fans across the Midwest and use them to blow the Canadian smoke back into Canada, where it belongs. The beauty of this plan is, it uses proven technology that is available right now. We already know how to make freestanding electric fans; we just need to make them approximately four miles tall. This is what we should be doing instead of building all these huge AI data centers, which are a massive waste of resources. We don’t need more AI! We clearly don’t even need the AI we already have, seeing as how we’re using it to make exploding-moose videos.

Assuming the giant-fan concept solves the Canadian-smoke problem — and I am not aware of any published scientific studies suggesting that it wouldn’t — we may be able to use the same approach to tackle the larger problem of Global Climate Change itself. That’s right: I’m talking about using existing technology to cool down the entire planet. I envision something like this:

I’m not saying this is a 100 percent finalized plan. There are some technical wrinkles that would need to be ironed out, such as: Where would we plug the fan in? Also, what speed setting should we use? I’m thinking we should start with “medium,” because if we set it too high we could potentially blow all traces of human civilization completely off the planet into outer space, which might not be such a bad thing would be tragic.

So, yes, there are risks. But we’re facing an existential crisis; this is not the time to get all nitpicky about a plan just because it might wipe out our entire species. No, this is a time for us to act boldly, in the spirit of the inspirational anthem “My Way,” by the famous Canadian Paul Anka, who wrote:

Yes there were times, I’m sure you knew

When I bit off more than I could chew

But through it all, when there was doubt

I ate it up and spit it out

That’s right: He ate it up, and then he spit it out. For that was his way.

And now the end is near, of this Substack anyway. It’s time to hear from you paying subscribers, to whom I say, in all sincerity: You’re a hot-blooded group of payin’ subscribers, and it’s warm where you’re commentin’. Today we have four scientific polls. Also at the end we have an update on the baby woodpeckers.

BABY WOODPECKERS UPDATE

I asked Kelly Grinter, who runs the Marathon Wild Bird Center, if the baby woodpeckers have been released, and this was her reply:

Yes, they were released! They were self-feeding and independent. I was so proud of them. Thought for sure they would hang around, having been hand raised since blind, but they did not. We cannot thank you enough for the mention in your stories. We received over $800 in donations from it!

So thanks to those of you who donated, from me and Michelle, and of course Louie the Log.

If you’re new to this Substack and would like to know the baby woodpeckers’ backstory, it’s here.

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WORLD CUP EPILOGUE

My wife, Michelle Kaufman, a professional sportswriter, covered the World Cup for the Miami Herald, and as a perk she was given a small piece of the actual sod on which the soccer matches were played in Miami.

We decided to plant this piece of sod in our yard, where it has settled in nicely and is already giving the lawn a distinctive World Cup “feel,” as you will see in this completely candid and unrehearsed video:

Ha ha! Get it?

But enough slapstick humor. It’s time for today’s topic, which is an article I came across in the distinguished British publication The Economist. The headline is:

My immediate assumption when I saw this headline, was: Oh, great, yet another article about how we Baby Boomers are terrible because we’re hoarding all the wealth, and we’re draining the Social Security trust fund, and we refuse to vacate our houses so younger people can live in them, and we think that all popular music has sucked since roughly the Eagles, and we drone on and on about how back in our day we didn’t have mobile phones or GPS, as if that makes us courageous hardy pioneers instead of just old farts, and WHY DON’T WE JUST GO AHEAD AND DIE ALREADY.

That’s what I assumed the article was going to say. But I was wrong. The article says that the problem with us Boomers is... We’re partying too hard. Seriously. The article states that our generation was too wild and crazy back in the day, and we’re STILL too wild and crazy, so that compared to younger generations we’re drinking more and using drugs more, and we’re going to wild retirement-community parties where sometimes we’re even — if you can imagine — having sex.

The Economist does NOT approve of this problematic Boomer behavior. Here’s how the article ends:

The generations now ageing disgracefully were disgraceful in youth, and in middle age. If they’re behaving badly now, there is really not much to be done about it. If they choose to frolic at toga parties, no one will stop them. Except, ultimately, time.

Which is The Economist’s tactful way of saying that the only solution for the Boomer problem is for us to JUST GO AHEAD AND DIE ALREADY.

OK, I don’t want to get too defensive here. I’m a lifelong Boomer, and I will admit that my generation has done some disgraceful things. The leisure suit is only one example. But I take issue with the premise of The Economist article. I know many Boomers, and these days the closest they ever come to frolicking at a toga party is trying to fold fitted bedsheets. The vast majority of us (yes, I am our elected spokesperson) have calmed way, WAY down from the Disco Era. Here, for example, is what a typical evening looks like in my household:

After dinner, I settle on the sofa with Michelle to watch whatever episode we’re on of whatever 53-episode Netflix series we’re currently slogging through. Often, as we watch, we discuss plot developments.

MICHELLE: Are you sleeping?

ME (waking up): No!

MICHELLE: You were sleeping.

ME: No I wasn’t!

MICHELLE: Then what just happened in the show?

ME: A plot development.

I have watched roughly the first 15 minutes of many dozens of hour-long Netflix episodes. This is OK, because the next morning Michelle tells me what happened after I dozed off. Michelle doesn’t need as much sleep as I do: She’s always still up when I go to bed, and in the morning she always gets up before I do. I assume she’s the person who’s been sleeping on the other side of the bed all these years, but I can’t swear to it. Maybe we have a lodger.

But getting back to my wild and crazy nighttime routine: When the Netflix episode ends, Michelle wakes me up and I go to bed. My usual bedtime is around 10 p.m., and when I say “around 10 p.m.” what I mean is “more like 9:15 p.m.” My family mocks me for this, but the laugh is on them, because thanks to my early-retiring habit, I’m able to be wide awake and fully alert at 2:47 a.m., ready to spend two to three hours staring productively at the ceiling and thinking about important issues, the main one being: Do I need to pee?

I’m not alone in this. A few months ago I was texting with my friend and former editor Tom Shroder, who, like me, is an older guy with a Substack, and we had the following exchange about waking up in the middle of the night:

TOM: I can spend an hour debating if there’s enough in my bladder to merit a trip to the bathroom.

ME: It’s not a decision to be made lightly.

TOM: I want to get it right.

My point is, I do not lead a wild and crazy lifestyle, and despite what The Economist says, I’m pretty sure that most members of my generation are just as tame as I am. Yes, I’ve heard the rumors about what goes on in some retirement communities, most notoriously The Villages, which is a huge retirement/leisure complex in central Florida, where according to legend wild sweaty senior sex is happening constantly. Except it isn’t.

I say this because a while back I wrote a book about Florida called Best. State. Ever. and for one of the chapters I spent several days in the Villages, and by using the professional journalism technique of talking to people, I determined that the sex rumors have been blown (Har!) way out of proportion. I mean, I’m sure some people in the Villages are having sex, but the coeducational activity that people there are really into is line dancing. They line-dance every night there, big crowds of people moving in unison to all kinds of music. They are serious about line dancing. I’ve never attended a funeral in the Villages, but I imagine it would look something like this:

Anyway, to conclude this discussion, I would respond to the authors of The Economist article, if they happen to be reading this Substack, by saying, with all due respect: Lighten up, you prissy twits. We Boomers are mostly harmless, and we’ll be out of your way soon enough.

Speaking of death: Lately I’ve been getting a lot of mail from the Neptune Society. This is an organization named after Neptune, the ancient Roman god of the sea, who according to myth lived under the ocean, which apparently resulted in a pretty severe case of shrinkage.

The Neptune Society, as you may know, offers cremation services. Lately it has been offering these services to me a LOT. Here’s the most recent letter:

This is maybe the fifth letter the Neptune Society has sent me in the past few months. Evidently my name is in some database called People Who Could Kick the Bucket Any Day Now. Whatever the reason, the Neptune Society people really, really want to provide my cremation, to the point where they’re making me nervous. I’m afraid to go to the Urgent Care for fear that they’ll be waiting in the parking lot with kindling and a can of gasoline.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for being cremated. I just want it to happen after I’m deceased. But I do like the concept of cremation, because instead of just sticking your remains into the ground, your family can do something creative and meaningful with your ashes, such as throw them into the ocean, where a little piece of you will live on for all eternity in the form of silt.

IMPORTANT LEGAL ADVISORY: If you’re a planning to dispose of a loved one in the ocean, be advised that you are required by federal law — I swear I am not making this up — to take the remains at least three nautical miles offshore, and to notify the EPA within 30 days by filling out a Burial at Sea Report (BASR), including, among other information, the latitude and longitude of the burial site. So you should definitely just go to the beach and throw the ashes into the water like everybody else do what the law says.

Another creative option for disposing of a loved one’s ashes is to convert them into ammunition. This is a service provided by an Alabama company called Holy Smoke, which I am also not making up.

Holy Smoke, which was founded by two state game wardens, Thad Holmes and Clem Parnell, will put your loved one’s ashes into shotgun shells, pistol cartridges or rifle cartridges, which your loved ones or friends can then, as a loving tribute to your memory, shoot. The Holy Smoke website explains that this concept evolved from a conversation between two men about cremation, during which one of them said (I am still not making this up):

“You know I’ve thought about this for some time and I want to be cremated. Then I want my ashes put into some turkey load shotgun shells and have someone that knows how to turkey hunt, use those turkey load shotgun shells with my ashes to kill a turkey. That way I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that one more turkey will see is me, screaming at him at about 1000 feet per second.”

It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. If I were on my deathbed, nothing would bring me more peace of mind than knowing that when I’m gone, some small part of me will be used to terminate a creature with the IQ of a Milk Dud.

OK, I’ve rambled on long enough. It’s time to find out what you brilliant and very much still alive paying subscribers have to say, assuming you managed to make it this far. Today we have three scientific poll questions:

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Which is why today I am presenting, in its entirety, the screenplay for The Odyssey, which was written by famous director Christopher Nolan based on a story by the ancient Greek screenwriter Homer, who spent 2,700 years in development meetings but tragically died before seeing the film get made. Speaking of dying, here’s a:

SPOILER ALERT: All of Odysseus’s men get killed in the movie. You should skip over this spoiler alert if you’d rather not know that.

But enough preamble. It’s time for the complete, unedited screenplay of the film that launched a thousand tedious think pieces...

We’re on a beach. A giant wooden horse is half-buried in the sand. Sitting nearby is a Greek warrior named Sinon. Suddenly he sees a group of mounted Trojan warriors in full body armor galloping toward him. Sinon jumps up and stands in front of the wooden horse. The Trojans shoot arrows into him.

SINON: Hey! Why did you do that?

TROJAN WARRIOR LEADER: We’re very irritable because this armor is insanely hot, for beachwear. We can fry eggs on ourselves. What is this enormous wooden horse doing here?

SINON: It’s a gift from the Greeks.

TROJAN WARRIOR LEADER: You mean the same Greeks who have spent the past ten solid years trying to figure out a way to get inside the walls of Troy so they can pillage the city and kill us all?

SINON: Yes. But don’t worry! There’s nobody hiding inside.

TROJAN WARRIOR LEADER: Well OK then! We’ll take it.

(He throws a spear into Sinon.)

SINON: You’re welcome. (Dies.)

The scene shifts to Odysseus’s royal palace, ten years later. Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, is weaving a funeral shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, although she’s been weaving it for so long now that what’s left of him could probably be enshrouded with a tea cozy. In the next room dozens of hairy, sweaty suitors with poor personal hygiene are gnawing on haunches of meat. Prince Telemachus, who is Odysseus’s and Penelope’s pouty Gen Z son, enters, pouting.

PENELOPE: Why the pouty face, son?

TELEMACHUS: Dad has been gone for 20 years. Maybe he’s dead!

PENELOPE: No, he’s just running a little late. Remember he had to do all those Bourne movies, except the one starring Jeremy Renner.

TELEMACHUS: OK, but meanwhile these suitors are eating all our meat haunches. Plus they’re gross. The palace smells like a sack of unlaundered jockstraps.

PENELOPE: Don’t worry, son. When Odysseus returns, he’ll beat the living shit out of them in a climactic scene.

TELEMACHUS: I can’t wait!

PENELOPE: Well it’s going to be a few more hours. Meanwhile we need to jump backward ten years, because confusing timelines are the hallmark of Christopher Nolan films.

The scene shifts to Troy, ten years earlier. We see the interior of the wooden horse, which is inexplicably well lit. Odysseus and his men are jammed together in a sweaty, smelly, nightmarishly claustrophobic mass.

ODYSSEUS: This is definitely the last time we book with Airbnb.

(Everybody enjoys a hearty Greek laugh.)

ODYSSEUS: But seriously, men, it’s time to pillage Troy.

They exit the horse and engage in a lengthy battle scene, during which Odysseus shoots several hundred arrows, every single one of which kills a Trojan soldier. After the battle Odysseus and his men gather back on the beach.

ODYSSEUS: Well, we finally won the Trojan war. It’s time to go home!

SOLDIERS: Sir, do we have to keep wearing these helmets?

ODYSSEUS: What’s wrong with our helmets?

SOLDIERS: It looks like we have brooms on our heads.

ODYSSEUS: They’re not brooms! They’re horsehair crests, which make us appear larger and more intimidating in battle, according to Google AI.

SOLDIERS: With all due respect, sir, nobody is going to be intimidated by men wearing headgear festooned with what appear to be janitorial implements, as illustrated by the examples below:

ODYSSEUS: Well I’m the leader, and I say we keep the helmets. Now let’s get into this large rowboat and proceed home via a route that has us stopping on various islands, all which will be inhabited by homicidal supernatural creatures.

SOLDIERS: Good thing we have these scary broom hats.

ODYSSEUS: What was that?

SOLDIERS: Nothing, sir.

The scene shifts back to the palace, ten years later. Penelope is still weaving the shroud. The suitors are still gnawing on haunches. Telemachus is still pouting.

TELEMACHUS: Mom, when will Dad ever get home?

PENELOPE: Oh shut up.

The scene shifts to an island where Odysseus and his men have stopped to search for food. Odysseus, leading the way, comes to the entrance of a dark creepy cave that might as well have a sign saying DANGER DANGER MONSTER LAIR DO NOT ENTER!!

ODYSSEUS: OK men, let’s all just walk right into this cave.

SOLDIERS: Sir, should we maybe post somebody outside as a lookout?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

Odysseus, with his men following, enters the cave, which gets darker and creepier. Suddenly they hear scary noises outside. They turn and look fearfully toward the cave entrance.

As the scary noises grow louder the tension in the cave becomes unbearable. And then there it is, looming in the entrance, a horrific apparition:

ODYSSEUS: Uh-oh! A cyclops! Try not to let it snatch you up and munch on you like a human corn dog, men!

Despite Odysseus’s warning, several men get eaten by the cyclops, which then lies down and falls asleep.

ODYSSEUS: This is our chance, men. We’ll poke out its eyeball with a sharp burning stake.

SOLDIERS: Won’t that upset it?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

As everybody in the movie theater cringes, Odysseus and his men poke out the cyclops’s eyeball. This puts the cyclops in a testy mood. Nevertheless Odysseus and his men finally escape, although the cyclops kills a bunch more of them as they flee back to the boat. Frantically they shove off and head back out to sea.

ODYSSEUS: OK, lesson learned. No more creepy caves! Instead let’s find an island that has a creepy foreboding forest where we can look for food.

SOLDIERS: Sir, maybe looking for food on these creepy islands isn’t such a great idea. Couldn’t we just stay on the boat and catch fish, which abound in the Mediterranean Sea, and eat them?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

They land on another creepy island and Odysseus leads his men into a foreboding forest, where they encounter a race of giant homicidal knights, who hack many of them to pieces as they flee back to their boat. Frantically the survivors put out to sea again.

ODYSSEUS: Whew! That was a close one! Fortunately we escaped with a loss of only about three-quarters of the men. Time to find yet another creepy island where we can look for food.

SOLDIERS: Sir, maybe we should...

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

They land on a creepy island where a witch named Circe turns Odysseus’s men into pigs. Odysseus persuades Circe to turn them back into humans, which, given future plot developments, is maybe not the optimum outcome for them. Back on the boat, they prepare to face their next deadly peril: sailing past the Sirens.

ODYSSEUS: Everybody put beeswax in your ears so you won’t hear the Sirens, whose song drives men insane. Also, tie me to the mast so I can listen to them.

SOLDIERS: Won’t that drive you insane?

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

The men tie Odysseus to the mast. As the boat nears the Sirens, Odysseus hears their voices.

SIRENS (singing): “She wrecked the car, and she was sad, and so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck...”

ODYSSEUS: No! Not “Honey,” by Bobby Goldsboro! MAKE IT STOP!!

SIRENS: OK, then how about this one? (Singing:) “Someone left the cake out in the rain...”

ODYSSEUS: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Finally the boat makes it past the Sirens, only to encounter a whirlpool and a sea monster, which eats several men. At this point Odysseus is running seriously low on men.

ODYSSEUS: OK, I talked to some dead people in Hades, and the plan now is, we’ll sail to an island that has cows on it, but we can’t eat them because they belong to a god, so basically we’ll just sit around starving.

The remaining men look like they might be about to say something.

ODYSSEUS: Whatever it is, nah.

They sail to the island, where the starving men eventually break down and eat the cows, which angers the gods, so when Odysseus and his men try to sail away a terrible storm destroys the boat and kills everybody except Odysseus, who is left clinging to some floating wreckage.

ODYSSEUS (pensively): I started this voyage with hundreds of men under my command, and now they’re all dead. I wonder... should I maybe have made some different tactical decisions?

He stares into the distance for a few moments.

ODYSSEUS: Nah.

The scene now shifts back to the palace, where the weaving, gnawing and pouting continue.

TELEMACHUS: Mom, I just thought of something.

PENELOPE: What is it, son?

TELEMACHUS: What if the reason Dad hasn’t come home is that he’s been hanging out for years on a private island with Charlize Theron?

PENELOPE: Don’t be ridiculous. She’s 50 years old! Whereas I’m only 43 and have had very little work done, despite what you may read on social media.

TELEMACHUS: But what if Charlize Theron is in excellent physical shape, and wearing some kind of slinky fishnet outfit?

PENELOPE: No, your father would never... How slinky is it?

TELEMACHUS: It’s pretty slinky.

The scene shifts to a beach where Odysseus, now gray and grizzled, is being fed lotus petals by Charlize Theron.

ODYSSEUS (chewing thoughtfully): Charlize Theron, it just now occurs to me to ask you this question: How long have I been on this island?

CHARLIZE THERON: Seven years.

ODYSSEUS: Whoa, no wonder I’m grizzled! Well it’s been great hanging out, and thanks for all the petals, but I really should be getting home to my beloved wife whatshername. My plan for getting there is to make a small crude raft with no provisions, lie down on it and just float away.

CHARLIZE THERON: That should definitely work.

Odysseus makes a raft and floats back to his kingdom, but nobody recognizes him because he’s grizzled and wearing a hoodie. He goes to the palace, where all the suitors have gathered for the climactic scene. Penelope stands before them holding Odysseus’s bow.

PENELOPE: I will marry whoever can string this bow!

TELEMACHUS: Mom, that seems like a pretty random way to...

PENELOPE: Shut up.

One by one, the suitors try to string the bow, but they can’t.

ODYSSEUS (from inside his hoodie): Let me try.

Everybody laughs, but Odysseus strings the bow. He plucks the bowstring.

BOW: Twang.

PENELOPE (perking up): I know that twang!

SUITORS: It’s Odysseus! Let’s kill him! We outnumber him 108 to one, so it shouldn’t take long!

A climactic fight scene ensues, lasting approximately an hour but feeling more like two. The suitors attack Odysseus with arrows, swords, spears, daggers, catapults, guillotines and a primitive Bronze Age taser, but he eventually manages to kill or maim them all. Finally, battered but victorious, surrounded by bloodied bodies, he turns to Penelope.

ODYSSEUS: Honey, I’m home!

PENELOPE: You big goof! I’d hug you, but you literally have arrow shafts protruding from your torso.

ODYSSEUS: Ha ha! I’ll have those looked at. Then we’ll leave forever on a sailboat.

TELEMACHUS: Can I go too?

ODYSSEUS: No, you have to stay here and be the king.

TELEMACHUS: But I was hoping the three of us could spend some quality...

ODYSSEUS AND PENELOPE: Oh, shut up.

In the final scene Odysseus and Penelope board a ship, and, as Telemachus waves poutily from the shore, they sail away forever. Setting aside the massive number of hideously gruesome and largely unnecessary fatalities that occurred over the course of the plot, it’s a happy ending: The two lovers, reunited at long last, are literally sailing into the sunset. As the film ends, Penelope leans close to Odysseus and whispers softly in his ear.

PENELOPE: We need to talk about Charlize Theron.

ODYSSEUS: Shit.

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That was not originally going to be my topic. Originally my topic was going to be explosive diarrhea, which I apologize for even mentioning, but it has been in the news a LOT. Explosive diarrhea is everywhere. You can’t escape it! (By “it,” I mean the topic of explosive diarrhea.)

Let’s say you’re interested in reading about federal legislation, so you go to the website of The Hill, a respected publication covering Congress, expecting to read about congressional matters such as bills and hearings. Here’s one of the headlines that will greet you:

Beneath this headline is a Nexstar story explaining, in explicit detail, what explosive diarrhea is, as if you couldn’t figure that out for yourself from the fact that it’s called “explosive diarrhea.” And this is on a website that’s supposed to be about Congress.

OK, maybe that makes some sense. But you get my point. My point is, lately we have all been WAY overexposed to this story, and especially the phrase “explosive diarrhea.” So you will be relieved to know that I’ve decided not to write about it this week. Because there is nothing funny about explosive diarrhea. It’s a serious problem, as we see on this map from the Centers for Disease Control, with the shaded area showing the parts of the country currently being affected:

Yes, this thing is big, and it has people really scared about what foods are safe. Just yesterday in Dallas a man was able to rob a bank simply by threatening to expose the teller to a product containing shredded lettuce. (”DO WHAT HE SAYS, MARCIA! HE HAS A CHALUPA!”)

But seriously, explosive diarrhea is no laughing matter. I speak from personal experience. I had this experience in 2014 in Russia, where my pal and co-author Ridley Pearson and I were on a ten-day visit as official cultural representatives of the U.S. State Department. Since you may not believe me — and I don’t blame you — here’s a photo of Ridley and me with the U.S. ambassador to Russia at the time, John Tefft, and his dog, Lui (third from left) who thought I tasted pretty great.

Ridley and I were visiting Russia as part of the State Department’s American Writers Series program, which was intended to improve U.S. relations with other nations. (Pause for laughter.) One night in Moscow we were coming back from an event, and we were hungry, so we decided to eat dinner at a restaurant near our hotel that specialized in Mexican cuisine.

IMPORTANT TRAVEL ADVISORY: If you ever go to Russia, do not eat the Mexican cuisine. If I’m being brutally honest, the Russians aren’t particularly good at Russian cuisine. But they’re really not good at Mexican. I say this because I ate what I soon realized was a weaponized chimichanga. It did NOT agree with me. It HATED me. You talk about explosive; I was emanating tremors detectible in Japan.

As you might imagine, it was not easy being a cultural ambassador with that level of intestinal turmoil going on. Ridley and I were doing these events wherein we talked to Russian audiences about what it was like to be American authors, and I think the main impression the Russians got was that some American authors frequently, with no warning, sprint out of the room. I’m not saying this is the entire reason why relations between the United States and Russia subsequently went into the toilet, so to speak. But it was probably a factor.

I had to seek medical treatment over there, which was challenging because the Russians have a different approach to medicinal dosage. Whereas in America you get your medicine divided up into multiple small pills, in Russia, apparently as an efficiency measure, they put it all into one big pill. Here’s an AI rendering of my memory of the pill I was given in Russia, shown next to a standard kayak for scale.

The good news was, the pill worked well enough that I was able to take a plane home from Russia without having to be forcibly ejected over the North Atlantic by the flight crew as a health precaution. But overall it was an unpleasant experience, and definitely not a laughing matter. Neither is this outbreak of explosive diarrhea that we’re having, which is why I decided not to make it my topic today, my goal being to spare you a bunch of juvenile toilet humor involving the gratuitous repetition of the phrase “explosive diarrhea.” You’re welcome.

What I am going to write about is today’s topic, which as you no doubt recall is:

Why We’re Not Getting Enough Sleep

Americans are not getting enough sleep. This is not just my opinion; this is the finding of a recent study that I am too tired to look up right now.

No, that’s a joke. I’m actually too lazy. But the gist of the study was, we’re not sleeping enough, and this is bad. Because humans need sleep. In fact all animals do, except for small children seated directly behind you on overnight flights.

Why do you need sleep? For one thing, sleeping gives your body an opportunity to perform vital biological maintenance functions, such as cementing your eyelids shut with eyeball boogers and making your breath smell like you ate an uncooked roadkill squirrel. But sleep is equally important for your mental health. Your brain uses the “down time” to sort through the massive amount of information it acquired during the day so it can discard anything that might conceivably prove to be useful, such as the fact that you left the oven on; this is how your brain makes sure it will always have space to store the lyrics to verse two of the 1963 Beach Boys car song “Custom Machine,” which are (I quote from memory):

Naugahyde bucket seats front and back

CHECK MY CUSTOM MACHINE!

Everything is chrome, man, even my jack

CHECK MY CUSTOM MACHINE!

So sleep is vital, but Americans are not getting enough of it. Why is this? Far be it from me to point the finger of blame at any one specific sex or gender, but a big part of the problem is women. Hear me out. If you ask an average man what he needs in the way of bedding, he’s going to say he needs sheets, blankets and maybe a couple of pillows. Something like this:

This is an efficient setup for a bed. You can get into it within seconds and immediately commence sleeping. If men were in charge of home decor, this is what the typical bed would look like, except it would have ketchup stains.

But very often men are NOT in charge of home decor. Which is why many beds look more like this:

This is not a staged photo. This is a photo I took of an actual bed that I slept in last week in the guest bedroom of a home owned by lovely people whom I love and am in no way making fun of here.

You can’t just climb into a bed like that. You must first deconstruct the massive defensive fortification of decorative pillows that somebody, who is definitely a woman, has painstakingly arranged and plumped up and dimpled. You also have to figure out what to DO with all these pillows. You cannot, as a houseguest, simply shove them onto the floor; that would be rude, like getting water on the decorative guest soap, or putting waste into the completely empty, sparkling-clean, mint-condition guest wastebasket that you could safely eat spaghetti out of, so there’s no way you’re going to besmirch it with your used Kleenex, which you will end up taking home in your suitcase.

No, in order to use this bed you must carefully, one at a time, remove all the decorative pillows and find a safe place to stack them. You may find it easier to leave the pillows in place and sleep on the floor. But one way or another, you’re going to have to deal with the pillows, and while you’re doing that, guess what you’re not doing. That’s right: You’re not sleeping.

The bed I sleep in at home is not as formidable as the one in the photo, but it is guarded by decorative pillows, which I have to remove every night before I can use the bed as a bed. I dislike these pillows; Michelle likes them. So we discussed it, and we decided, as a compromise between two caring people of equal importance in the relationship, to completely disregard my feelings. Which is fine! I’m simply pointing out that every night I have to spend time dealing with these pillows — time that I could be using for sleep. Granted, we’re talking about only a few seconds per night, but if we multiply those seconds by 365 nights per year, times the number of men who find themselves involved, often against their will, in decorative-bed-pillow relationships, we’re talking about a nationwide annual total of (this is an estimate) a LOT of lost sleep.

I’m not saying this is as big a problem as the explosive diarrhea, which is a topic for another day. I’m just saying that women are insane it’s something we should consider, as a nation. Thank you.

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This is not the fault of my dentist. His name is Brian, and he’s excellent. He’s also 14 years old. Not in real years, but in Dental Relativity Years, by which I mean relative to my previous dentist, a man named Stanley who worked on my teeth for decades until he retired at age 90.

I loved Stanley, although when I say that he worked “on” my teeth, what I actually mean is that he worked “in the vicinity of” my teeth. He couldn’t physically engage with my actual teeth because my mouth would never let him get near them. I have a severe gag reflex. I gag whenever anybody attempts to put things into my mouth, which unfortunately is a key element of modern dentistry.

I gag a LOT. You know that scene in the movie “Marathon Man,” where the evil fugitive Nazi dentist, played by Sir Laurence Olivier, uses dental implements to torture Dustin Hoffman, played by Dustin Hoffman? If a fugitive Nazi dentist ever tried that with me, he would instantly, before he had a chance to do any real torturing, find his entire upper body coated with whatever I ate for my previous three meals. It would be so disgusting that he’d give up dental torture on the spot and go into some other line of work, such as timeshare sales.

So my dental appointments have always been stressful. Stanley, a sweet and incredibly patient man, went to great lengths in his efforts to tend to my teeth without getting near enough to them to trigger my gagging. Sometimes it was so bad he couldn’t even be in the examination room with me. He’d stand out in the hallway and gently toss dental appliances such as crowns toward my mouth, in hopes that one would land somewhere near the problem. Yes I’m exaggerating, but not by much.

Unfortunately, over the years I’ve had quite a few dental issues. This is not my fault; it’s the fault of television. I grew up before ChatGPT was invented, so our primary source of information on health matters was TV commercials featuring men with authoritative baritone voices. For example, thanks to this authoritative baritone man...

...we knew that the scientific cause of headaches, as explained in an Anacin commercial that aired 63,000,000,000,000 times per week, is little boxes containing a tightly coiled spring and jittery lines inside your brain, as we see in this x-ray image of an actual human skull:

Fortunately, Anacin, which — unlike competing products — contains ingredients, can calm these jitterboxes down by beaming rays at them:

The commercials for dental products back then were equally scientific. Here’s a fine example in the form of a 1958 TV commercial for Colgate Dental Cream:

The authoritative baritone man in this commercial is Harry Von Zell, whose professional qualifications to inform the public on dental matters were (1) he was the announcer on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, and (2) the collar points on his shirt were approximately 17 feet apart.

The key scientific moment in this commercial comes at 0:16, when a mysterious man in the background suddenly, without warning and with no provocation, tries to kill Harry Von Zell with a horseshoe.

It is not clear why the man does this. Maybe he’s an unemployed baritone hoping to inherit Harry’s job. Maybe he just has strong views on men’s fashion. Whatever the reason, the important thing is that Harry is protected by an Invisible Protective Shield, exactly like the one that Colgate Dental Cream, thanks to a scientific ingredient called “Gardol,” erects around your teeth to protect them from tooth decay and blunt force trauma.

Another product protecting teeth scientifically back then was Ipana toothpaste, which did not contain Gardol but did have the capability to fight tooth decay in outer space, according to celebrity spokesrodent Bucky Beaver.

Here’s the thing, though. There are two words you do not hear Bucky Beaver or Harry Von Zell say; two words that were never, to my knowledge, uttered in any of the dental-product commercials of my youth. Those words are “gum disease.” So while we were dutifully brushing, many of us were not flossing. This was bad for our dental health. To use an analogy that even a layperson such as yourself can understand: Brushing without flossing is like painting the walls of a house, but ignoring the fact that the foundation of the house has developed periodontitis.

So over the years I spent a fair amount of time in a dental chair gagging on poor old Stanley. He labored heroically under impossible conditions, and sometimes, because I was such a bad patient, he had to resort to patchwork repairs on my teeth. I think there might be some duct tape in there. And now, as I grow old and all my bodily parts wilt and crumble, some of Stanley’s work needs to be redone.

Thus I find myself reclining in a high-tech dental chair looking up at my new teenage dentist, Brian, who, with the exuberant optimism of youth, believes he can repair the repairs to my teeth. He has estimated that this will take 90 minutes, but at our current rate of progress we’re looking at more like a fortnight. Because as I said at the beginning, it’s not going well. I’m hoping the patients out in Brian’s waiting room can’t hear the noises I’m making, because they’d probably flee the office. They might flee the country. That’s how badly I’m gagging.

After one particularly severe gag, Brian suggests using nitrous oxide, a.k.a. laughing gas. I’ve never had it; Stanley didn’t use it. I agree to try, but I’m frankly skeptical that it will stop my gagging. Nothing I’ve tried in the past has done any good. A few years ago I even went to a psychologist, who taught me a relaxation technique wherein I visualized being in a stress-free setting such as a tropical lagoon. This technique actually worked; the problem was, it worked only in the psychologist’s office. It failed disastrously in Stanley’s office, the key difference being that the psychologist never tried to put his hands into my mouth.

So I’m feeling skeptical when Brian’s plucky assistant, Monica, puts the nitrous oxide mask over my nose. I’m tensing up when Brian asks me to open wide as he leans forward with a dental implement. I’m thinking: Here it comes, here comes the gagging, I’m going to gag now, this is going to be bad and hey what’s that song I’m hearing on the dental office sound system? Yes! That’s “Brown Eyed Girl!” I love that song! I love Van Morrison! I love that guitar lick! I love music! I love Brian and his plucky dental assistant Monica! They are GREAT PEOPLE and they do a GREAT JOB and WE DON’T TRULY APPRECIATE THESE WONDERFUL DENTAL PROFESSIONALS and I AM GOING TO LEARN THAT GUITAR LICK and...

...and you get the idea. It turns out that nitrous oxide does a very good job of relaxing a person, as we can see in this actual x-ray image showing its effect on the human brain:

The result was that I had — I can’t believe I’m typing these words — a truly enjoyable dental appointment. It was more enjoyable than at least 40 percent of all the parties I have ever attended, especially the part when Brian, as he was about to attempt a tricky dental maneuver, briefly cranked the gas up to what he described as “Woodstock setting.” I did not gag at all. At one point Brian asked me if I wanted to stop for the day and finish the rest of the work another time, and I was like: “HELL no! Keep on dentisting! Feel free to replace my aortic valve while you’re at it!”

And maybe he did! I honestly don’t know.

Anyway, I’m feeling a lot better about going to the dentist now. And as a very late convert to nitrous oxide, I’m wondering if it might have other applications. I’m thinking particularly about its possible use in resolving international conflicts. It seems to me that if two hostile nations are deadlocked in tense negotiations, a tank of nitrous oxide could really lighten the mood.

Just a thought.

And now we turn, as always, to you lovely paying subscribers. Today we have three scientific polls. Also at the end we have a Baby Woodpecker Update.

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Baby Woodpecker Update

Kelly Grinter at the Marathon Wild Bird Center sends this photo of volunteer CeCe with the baby woodpeckers, who are growing fast:

Kelly writes: Volunteer CeCe did a lot of work today to prep the outdoor enclosure for the two (out of 3) surviving red-bellied woodpecker nestlings! They are doing so well and growing like weeds. They have also shifted from nestling humming to the curly call of an older woodies. Probably with us another two weeks. Red-bellied woodpeckers are in the nesting cavity for almost 4 weeks before coming out to master their instinctive tree climbing skills. 🕊️ We do what we do with DONATIONS from you! 🕊️ Donate via VENMO @mwbc_birdrescue or visit this link.

Louie the Log says...

I don’t mean I’m one of those idiot caricature Floridians who are always making “Florida Man” headlines for bizarre behavior such as throwing a live alligator through a drive-thru window, or pooping on a dead possum during rush hour, or having sex with a tree and punching a police officer while claiming to be Thor, or totally wrecking the vibe of the World Cup by leaning on FIFA to change a penalty, or having sex with a stuffed Olaf doll in a Target store.

All of these incidents actually happened. So, yes, some Floridians do ridiculous things. But that doesn’t mean the entire state population is crazy. As I often ask: Is it really fair to judge all 23 million Floridians harshly, just because of the behavior of 21 million Floridians?

That is of course a joke employing the humor technique of exaggeration. In point of statistical fact, only about 19 million Floridians are clinically insane. The rest of us are normal Americans who lead normal American lives just like yours, except that, because of the humidity down here, we’re dealing with a much larger variety of nature. We have cockroaches that beep when they back up and grasshoppers that file flight plans before hopping. We have iguanas capable of laying waste to Tokyo. We have palm trees that grow several feet a day and suddenly, without warning, send massive predatory palm fronds three or four times the length of Shaquille O’Neal crashing to the ground. If you live in some small-frond state such as Massachusetts, where the trees produce dainty little leaves that flutter politely onto your lawn so you can rake them into tidy piles, you have no idea what it’s like to go out into your yard and find yourself face-to-face with a Frondasaurus Rex like the one I’m holding here.

Trying raking THAT with your little Home Depot leaf rake, Massachusetts person. These Florida megafronds laugh at your rake. “Ha ha,” are their exact words. The only way to deal with them is to wrangle them with your bare hands, as I am doing in the photo. You can call me a brave and courageous and manly specimen of potent male masculinity if you want, but those are your words, not mine. The only description I need is: Florida Man.

My point is that I’m a proud resident of this state, which has been my home for 40 years. But that doesn’t mean I won’t criticize it when it does something I disagree with. And that brings me, finally, to my topic today, which is — you probably guessed this already — cursive writing.

The Florida legislature recently passed, and the governor signed, a bill requiring that all Florida public-school students in grades three through five have to learn to read and write cursive. This legislative effort was spearheaded by state Rep. Toby Overdorf, who looks exactly like a person who would be named “Toby Overdorf.”

I am not opposed to the cursive law because Rep. Overdorf looks like he might have human body parts in his freezer a little intense. I’m opposed to it because I think it’s stupid. Hear me out:

Most of us, when we first learn to write, learn to print the letters. This takes a while. Some of the letters are tricky, especially the ones that could go in either direction, such as “K” and “Y.” My grandson, Kyle Barry, has both of those letters in his name, and he’s still getting the hang of them. Here’s how he wrote his name on a school report he did this spring, when he was 6:

This report was actually about me; Kyle’s class was doing biographies, and he picked his grandpa as his subject. Among other things, he had to list five “Fun Facts” about me, and one of them was this:

That’s right: “Same harecut for 50 years.” It’s actually 70 years, but let’s not quibble. The point is that most of us, like Kyle, started out printing, and eventually we learned to make our letters legible.

And then we all learned cursive. At least we all used to. It was never clear why, at least not to me; it was just something everybody had to do, learn this whole new way of writing. It was a struggle, especially for those of us who are left-handed, because we had to position the paper at a weird angle and curl our hand into an awkward position, and we still ended up smearing ourselves with ink. At least I always did. I hated cursive class.

But we kept at it, because it was imperative that we learn cursive. And eventually we did. We reached the point where we could all, even us left-handers, write legibly in cursive. And some people still can. Some people still write in beautiful cursive, cursive that could be used for wedding invitations, and yay for them.

But many of us had a different outcome once we left school. Our cursive got sloppier and sloppier, less and less understandable, like a radio broadcast with a lot of static. We can still read our own cursive writing, but to other people it looks like this:

This is not good. Illegible handwriting can cause serious problems, as poignantly dramatized by Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run:

So because we need to communicate, which is after all the whole point of writing, many of us — I suspect most of us — eventually gave up on cursive and went back to printing, or using keyboards. In other words, for many people, over the long term, learning cursive is useless. And in recent years, many states have stopped requiring cursive instruction. But now it’s being brought back, in Florida and elsewhere, for a variety of reasons that, in the interest of evenhandedness, fairness and objectivity, I will summarize here: They’re stupid. For example, a big one — seriously — is that the Declaration of Independence is written in cursive. To which I would respond: YES BUT NOBODY CAN READ IT.

I apologize for shouting, but as you can tell this is an issue that gets me riled up like no other issue except the issue of whether it’s necessary to refrigerate ketchup and mustard. (No.) I’m afraid, however, that the pro-cursive forces have won in Florida, which saddens me, although I’m sure it makes some people happy.

But there’s another Florida issue I’d like to bring to your attention, and this one isn’t settled yet. That issue is: The Official State Bird.

Right now the Official State Bird of Florida, since 1927, is the Northern Mockingbird. Please understand that I have nothing against the Northern Mockingbird. Some of my best friends are Northern Mockingbirds. But this should not be Florida’s Official State Bird.

For one thing, the Northern Mockingbird is also the official bird of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas, which means that it’s kind of a slut we’re in a nonconsensual polyamorous avian relationship involving four other states. For another thing, there’s a much better candidate to be our Official State Bird — a bird that naturally occurs only in Florida; a bird that is represented on literally millions of cheeseball Florida souvenirs, T-shirts, towels and lawn decorations; a bird that literally stands head and shoulders above other birds, on one leg.

I refer, of course, to the flamingo. And I’m excited to report that there’s a grassroots movement in Florida to make the flamingo our Official State Bird. This effort is being led by an old friend of mine, Ron Magill, who worked for Zoo Miami for 46 years and is now an ambassador for the Zoo Miami Foundation. He is also the world’s tallest Cuban. Ron loves animals. Ron loves all animals. Here he embracing a Komodo dragon:

And here he is holding a flamingo:

You’d think the flamingo campaign would be a slam dunk no-brainer, but as this Wall Street Journal story explains, it’s meeting with stiff resistance from pro-mockingbird forces in the state legislature, which I remind you is also pro-cursive, so draw your own conclusions regarding brains. But Ron has vowed to keep fighting, and I’ve pledged my support. As I said, we’re old friends, dating back to a charity roast in the 90s when Ron presented me with one of my most treasured possessions: an oosik, which is the baculum, or penis bone, of a walrus. Here’s a photo of me treasuring it:

I don’t know about your culture, but in my culture, when a man gives another man a penis bone nearly two feet in length, that means something. So I intend to be an active member (Har!) of Team Flamingo. I will keep you updated on this effort as developments develop.

Speaking of bird-related updates, here’s one on:

THE BABY WOODPECKERS

As you may recall, last week I delivered a log named Louie containing three baby woodpeckers to an animal rescuer in the Florida Keys named Karen Dettmann, who delivered the birds to Kelly Grinter, who runs the Marathon Wild Bird Center. Kelly reports that, sadly, the littlest woodpecker didn’t make it. But the good news is, the other two are thriving. She sent this video:

They’re looking a WHOLE lot better. So that’s nice.

I’ll conclude this report with a:

WORLD CUP UPDATE

Tomorrow England plays Norway here in Miami, which is teeming with fans from both nations. Here I am welcoming a group of Norwegian visitors wearing traditional Viking costumes.

Embracing other cultures: That’s what the World Cup is all about.

OK, that’s the news roundup from Florida. Now let’s hear from you lovely paying subscribers, who are the Official Paying Subscribers of this Substack. Today we have three scientific polls:

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But it also means that tomorrow the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday, the anniversary of that fateful day in 1776 when the Founding Fathers adopted the Declaration of Independence, an act for which they could have been hanged. Imagine being that brave. Granted, you and I routinely accept “Terms of Service” agreements that, for all we know, give Google and Microsoft the right to harvest our kidneys with unsterilized toenail clippers. But that’s not us being brave; that’s just us being stupid. The Founding Fathers knew what they were risking, and they did it anyway, and that’s why today we live in the greatest nation on Earth by almost every meaningful statistical measure. To cite just one:

Yes, we have a lot to celebrate, and tomorrow there will be festivities from sea to shining sea. The most spectacular celebration, of course, will be in Washington. D.C., where a huge crowd is expected to gather for the lighting of the Official Semiquincentennial Sparkler, which, at 150 feet tall, is believed to be the largest sparkler ever made. Here it is being installed by workers on the National Mall:

The Semiquincentennial Sparkler was built by Lockheed Martin at a cost of $27 million. Once ignited, it’s expected to be visible as far away as Cleveland. A spokesperson for the the National Park Service stated that the sparkler is “probably very safe,” but suggested that, as a precaution, spectators should “be prepared to flee.”

So it’s a patriotic time in our nation, and that’s why my topic today is:

WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT

What does make America great? That’s the question I was asking myself in preparation for writing this essay when a man named Joey Smith rang my doorbell. Joey is the proprietor of Trees Gone Wild, a service that comes around every year to trim our trees, the idea being that if there’s a hurricane, we won’t have 165 m.p.h. oak missiles whizzing through our family room.

Joey wanted me to come outside. “Got a present for you,” he said.

Here’s what it was:

This log came from a palm tree that the workers were removing because it was dead. A worker named Alfredo Salguero had climbed the palm and was lopping off pieces with a chainsaw when he noticed that this section had a hole in it. So instead of letting it fall to the ground, he tied a rope around it and lowered it gently. The workers heard squeaky noises coming from the hole; they figured there were baby animals in there, maybe squirrels.

So now Michelle and I were the owners of a mystery log. There was definitely something alive in there, and whatever it was, it was making quite a bit of noise. Michelle, who is not a wildlife biologist but is a mom, thought it was birds. So I stuck my iPhone into the hole and took a photo, and...

Yup. Definitely birds. Three of them, calling for their mommy, who was probably around somewhere, wondering what the heck happened to her tree.

So I made some phone calls and eventually got in touch with Karen Dettmann, who runs an operation in the Florida Keys called Ark Angels Wildlife Rescue. She said that if I could get the baby birds to her, she’d get them to a person in the Keys who specializes in rescuing wild birds. Karen suggested that we meet for a handoff the next morning at a location roughly halfway between us, in the parking lot of a place called Sonny’s BBQ in Florida City. She said it was next to the Walmart Supercenter, if I was familiar with that.

As it happens, I was. In June 2000 I did a story for the Miami Herald about RV people camping overnight in Walmart parking lots; for the story I rented an RV and spent the night with my family in the Florida City Supercenter lot. Here’s the staged photo that the Herald ran with my story, showing Michelle and me pretending we’re having the time of our lives sitting around on hot grimy asphalt, and four-month-old Sophie Barry clearly wondering how she can get in touch with Child Protective Services.

Actually, that night was kind of fun; we spent several entertaining hours wandering around the Supercenter, which is the same size as Europe but contains more merchandise. Back then the Supercenter was open 24 hours, which meant that if for whatever reason at 2:30 a.m. you urgently needed to purchase pillowcases, lawn fertilizer, Milk Duds, a whisk broom, a refrigerator and a kayak, you only had to make one stop.

But getting back to our baby birds: The next morning I tied their log to the passenger seat of my car, and Michelle put some comforters around it to keep them comfortable. Here’s a photo of the log and me preparing to depart on our mission:

The birds were still making quite a bit of noise, as you can hear in this video:

It was a 45-minute drive from my house to Florida City, and the birds kept talking the whole way. I found myself talking back, trying to reassure them that all would be well. This is going to sound a little weird, but: It was almost as if the log and I were having a conversation, even developing a relationship, as suggested by the AI-enhanced image below, in which the log has been anthropomorphized into Louie the Log, here telling me an amusing story:

When I got to Sonny’s BBQ, it was pouring rain. Karen showed up a little while later, apologizing for being late; she’d been bottle-feeding baby raccoons, of which she’s caring for more than a dozen. Here’s Karen:

And here’s a picture she sent me of one of the baby raccoons:

Aww.

I untied Louie the Log and wedged him into the backseat of Karen’s truck, then said goodbye to the three baby birds, which was sad, but you have to let them go sometime. They were still talking nonstop. Kids these days.

For the rest of the day Michelle and I fretted about how the babies were doing, so we were relieved when, the next morning, I got a text from Kelly Grinter, founder of the Marathon Wild Bird Center down in the Middle Keys, who had received the birds from Karen. She reported that they were woodpeckers, and they were OK.

“So far, so good!” she wrote. “Crazy the size differences. The little guy is struggling but holding his own. The other two are doing very well!”

Kelly sent a video, which gave us our first chance to get a good look at the baby birds:

So they’re not going to win the Cutest Baby Animal Contest, especially if they have to go up against the raccoons. But they’ve been through a lot. And they’ll look better once they put some clothes on.

Anyway, I’m glad they’re doing OK. I’m sorry that our tree-trimming caused them to become homeless, but they’re in good hands, literally, and ideally they’ll grow up strong and healthy, and before long they’ll be whacking away at trees with their heads, as Nature intended.

The thing is, all this drama prevented me from getting around to writing my Semiquincentennial essay on the topic of:

WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT

But what I would have written, if I hadn’t been distracted, is, in brief, this: What makes America great — prepare for a searing insight — is Americans. I don’t mean American politicians; I mean everyday, hardworking, generous, friendly, decent Americans, who I believe greatly outnumber the idiots. I mean the people who hold the door for you, and say “thank you” when you hold the door for them, and buy Girl Scout cookies even though they already have some at home, and never butt in line, and will lend you their jumper cables, and will take the trouble to lower a log gently to the ground instead of dropping it because there might be critters inside, and will take time out from bottle-feeding a dozen baby raccoons to schlep 50 miles in the rain so they can take custody of three baby woodpeckers, and all the other millions of small but good things that millions of Americans do every day. Which is not to say we can’t be better. But I sincerely believe — and I’m a professionally cynical old guy of 79 — that we’re pretty good.

So happy birthday to us.

OK, I’m getting sappy, so it’s time to turn things over to — speaking of greatness — you paying subscribers. Today we have three scientific polls.

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Perhaps you’re thinking, “Dave, I have not personally had sex since the Macarena was a thing. This topic does not concern me.”

Yes it does, and I will tell you why: babies. We’re running out of them.

We used to have tons of babies in this country, back when I was one. This was right after World War II. Millions of American men had spent the war years cooped up in all-male military environments such as submarines and platoons, while millions of women were part of an overwhelmingly female factory workforce wearing unflattering bib overalls and riveting bombers together. So when the war ended and the two major genders finally reconnected, the National Sex Drive (NSD) was registering 147 percent on the Horn-O-Meter. On top of which, Americans back then were extremely fertile.

Q. How fertile were they?

A. They were so fertile that exactly two weeks after this famous V-J Day photo was taken...

...the nurse gave birth to triplets.

My point is that the men and women of the Greatest Generation, in addition to surviving the Depression, winning World War II and making the United States the most powerful and prosperous nation in the history of the world, were sex maniacs. You know how we Baby Boomers are always waxing nostalgic about the Good Old Days, and one of our main talking points is how much freedom our parents gave us? How they allowed us — no, encouraged us — to roam far and wide on our bicycles? How they didn’t mind if we were gone for hours? Did it ever occur to you that the reason for their laxity was not that they wanted us to become independent, but that they wanted us out of the house so they could tear off each other’s Ozzie-and-Harriet-style clothing and generate more babies?

I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s time you knew.

Anyway, the result was a massive output of babies, a.k.a. the Baby Boom. We Boomers did not turn out to be a particularly great generation; our signature achievement, when all is said and done, was Casual Friday. But we did have sex — despite being informed by our high-school gym teachers in Health Class that the most likely biological consequence of sexual intercourse was death — and we did produce babies. The problem is, we didn’t produce nearly as many of them as our parents cranked out. And the generations that followed us — Gen X and the Millennials — produced even fewer babies than we did. And now it’s looking as though Gen Z may not produce enough babies, in total, to form a regulation volleyball team.

So we’re in a baby drought.

This is bad. We need babies. Yes, they can be annoying on airplanes. But babies are an important source of adults, without whom the economy cannot function. As the older generations retire, we’re going to need millions of former babies to replace them in the workforce. If there aren’t enough of them — if we rely on Gen Z’s volleyball team to take over — then we face a total economic collapse that would lead to a catastrophic societal breakdown, including food shortages, riots, disease, mass deaths, and — unthinkable as it may seem — even longer wait times to speak to a customer-service representative than we have now.

So to reiterate: We need babies. Which means we need young people to have sex. (I mean with other young people.) Unfortunately, there’s bad news on that front, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

This article refers to a long-term university study that has been tracking how often Americans do It. Here’s a graph showing the alarming trend:

Yes. We’re in a Sex Recession. It’s happening in all age groups, but it’s especially severe among young people, who not only are not having sex: They’re not even dating. It turns out we’re also in a Dating Recession, according to this study:

The study found that most young people today — more than two-thirds of them — do not date. At all. They’re afraid to approach a person whom they’re romantically interested in because, according to the study, they “lack faith in their dating skills.” Often this is because they’ve had “bad dating experiences in the past.”

I feel for these young people. I, too, have had bad dating experiences in the past. I’m thinking specifically of a date I had in the fall of 1963, when I was 16, with a girl I will call Pam. I sat behind her in my 11th-grade English class in Pleasantville (N.Y.) High School, and I had a major crush on her. Pam was pretty. This is what I looked like:

So Pam was definitely out of my league, appearancewise. I knew this. My strategy was to win her over with humor. Girls love a sense of humor, right?

So I drew cartoons for Pam. I drew her a new one every day. The cartoons all had the same format: There were four panels, and the main character was always this weird bird with a giant football-shaped head and huge eyeballs and, for some reason, teeth. It’s the only thing I can draw; I have no artistic talent. I have re-created one of these cartoons from memory, and I am cringing as I show it to you now:

Please do not judge me too harshly. I was 16 and trying to impress a girl, and this was what I came up with.

So every day during English class I drew a new cartoon and passed it to Pam. I don’t know how she felt about this — having a nerd with a bad haircut handing her these weird, possibly even disturbing, drawings, day after day. But she always looked at them and smiled, so I believed I was making progress. I was winning her over with humor. Girls love a sense of humor, right?

After about a month of this sophisticated charm offensive I worked up the courage to ask Pam if she’d go with me to a school dance, and she said yes. I had just gotten my New York State driver’s license, so this was my first solo-driving date. I picked Pam up in my father’s car, which was a Nash Metropolitan, possibly the least-sexy automobile ever manufactured. It could legally be classified as a form of birth control:

I don’t remember what Pam and I talked about on the drive to Pleasantville High, although I probably tried to be funny, because girls love a sense of humor. Here’s what I DO remember, because my brain has chosen to store this particular memory in a Maximum Security Highest Priority EZ-Access location: Pam and I were sitting next to each other on the bleachers in the noisy and dimly lit gym, watching people dance, and I noticed that there was a boy sitting on the other side of Pam, a boy from another school who’d been hovering around and who apparently knew Pam, and when I leaned forward and looked more closely, I realized that he and Pam were holding hands.

Yes. So much for the potent allure of my sense of humor.

That was, needless to say, the end of our date. After a brief, awkward discussion, Pam and I agreed that I’d drive her home. I don’t think we spoke a single word the entire way. When we got to her house, she told me she was really, really sorry. I believed her; she was crying. I told her it was OK, which was a lie at the time: I wanted to drive the Nash Metropolitan directly from her house to Siberia and never return. But in the end it was OK. Pam and I eventually got over our awkwardness, and we finished high school as friends.

Although I did not draw her any more cartoons.

So that was my first really bad dating experience. But I got over it, and I went on to have many more dating experiences, mostly good, and now, almost 63 years later, I never even think about that moment of utter humiliation in the Pleasantville High gym, except maybe three or four times a week.

My point, getting back to (Remember?) the national Dating Recession, is that dating can suck. So I understand why so many Gen Z-ers, who are dealing with stresses that my generation never faced — like how they’re supposed to be able to buy a house when houses cost 18 jillion dollars — are afraid to even attempt to date. But I hope they find a way. Because if we don’t end the Dating Recession, we can’t end the Sex Recession, and if we don’t end that, we can’t end the Baby Drought. And without more babies, as I noted earlier, we’re screwed.

Maybe what we need is government program to get our National Sex Drive fired up again, the way it was when the Greatest Generation came home from World War II and started bonking everything that moved. Am I suggesting that we re-declare war on Germany and Japan? It’s worth a try. Of course not! But we need to do something to get Gen Z dating. Maybe we could build a gigantic federal gym and hold a mandatory federal dance.

Speaking of dancing, it’s time for a quick:

WORLD CUP UPDATE

The Tartan Army of Scottish soccer fans descended on Miami this week, and they were absolutely wonderful. This is without question the happiest, nicest, most fun and sweetest large group of drunk people I have ever seen in my life.

I took this video Monday at LoanDepot Park in downtown Miami, which is where the Miami Marlins play. That’s right, the Tartan Army showed up and partied at a baseball game, despite having no idea how baseball works, which is understandable inasmuch as 97 percent of the game consists of men basically standing around.

I took advantage of this opportunity to survey some of the Scots about an issue that comes up often on this Substack. Here, in three short videos, are their responses:

So that clears that up.

Now that we’ve heard from the Scots, let’s hear — speaking of wonderful and fun — from you paying subscribers. Today we have three scientific poll questions:

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Dad is not ashamed of the fact that he farts. Dad may even, on occasion, derive amusement from, or take actual pride in, a given fart. In this respect Dad is very different from Mom, who, if we are to take her word for it, has never farted, not one single time, in her entire life. We pray that Mom does not venture too close to a lit candle, lest she explode in a massive fireball as a result of all the pent-up gas she must contain after a lifetime of selflessly holding it in.

Unless Mom is lying.

I raise this possibility in light of some important medical research that was brought to my attention by a number of alert readers, two of whom are licensed physicians, although that is not the same thing as being mature. This research involved a groundbreaking study — no, make that a windbreaking study — the results of which were published recently by the Journal of the American Medical Association under this title:

That’s right: They did a study of farting... Down Under.

This study was conducted by two Australian scientists, who note in their introduction that although farting is “an indicator of digestive health,” flatulence researchers “have shied away from asking how frequently the average person passes gas.” To rectify (Har!) this situation, the scientists asked 6,000 Australians to log their flatulence events on a mobile phone app called (really) “Chart Your Fart.” They then determined the Average Daily Flatus Releases for various ages and genders. Here’s the key result:

As this table shows, men logged an average of 5.2 flatus releases per day, whereas women averaged 4.8. In other words: Although men, as we would expect, report that they fart more often than women, the difference between the genders is 0.4 flatus releases, or less than half a fart per day. This is assuming that the women in the study were being completely honest about their output, which I seriously doubt.

So when we analyze (Har!) these study results, the bottom line (I am a trained professional; do not attempt this kind of wordplay at home) is this: Women are doing a much larger statistical share of the farting than we have been led to believe, which could very well explain this Global Climate Change that we have been hearing so much about.

But that is not my point. My point, in case you have forgotten, is that Sunday is Father’s Day, and we should remember to thank Dad for all he does, and tell him that we love him, and give him a big hug. But under no circumstances should we pull Dad’s finger.

And now, speaking of global things, it’s time for a:

WORLD CUP UPDATE

It’s going great so far. The Scottish fans have arrived and have already boosted the U.S. economy by consuming all the beer in Boston:

As I write these words, the Scots are descending on Miami, where we still have some beer left, although we’ve been putting a dent in the supply. I am doing my part. I watched the USA team’s first game last Friday at a Coral Gables bar, the Fritz & Franz Bierhaus, which is owned by a soccer-obsessed Austrian named Harald Neuweg, who is a complete lunatic, in a good way. The place was packed, and the crowd was in an extremely patriotic mood as Team USA took on our traditional hated arch-enemy, Paraguay, which is a foreign country located somewhere abroad.

Before the game we all stood and belted out the national anthem (ours, not Paraguay’s) and after every USA goal we celebrated by belting out whatever patriotic song Harald blasted over the his 14-million-watt sound system. Here’s a video of the celebration after the second US goal:

The classic patriotic tune we’re belting out is of course “Mony Mony” by Tommy James and the Shondells, who also recorded “Hanky Panky.” In case you’ve always wondered why the song is called “Mony Mony”: Tommy James says he got the inspiration from the sign on the Mutual of New York Building. Really. As Tommy tells the story:

I wanted something catchy like “Sloopy” or “Bony Maroney,” but everything sounded so stupid. So Ritchie Cordell and I were writing it in New York City, and we were about to throw in the towel when I went out onto the terrace, looked up and saw the Mutual of New York building (which has its initials illuminated in red at its top). I said, “That’s gotta be it! Ritchie, come here, you’ve gotta see this!” It’s almost as if God Himself had said, “Here’s the title.” I’ve always thought that if I had looked the other way, it might have been called “Hotel Taft.”

We definitely dodged a bullet there. I can’t imagine celebrating a World Cup goal by belting out “Hotel Taft.” This is why, when we’re trying to come up with song titles, we should always listen to God. Although I question whether He played an active role in “Hanky Panky.”

But I digress. The USA beat Paraguay 4-1, which is good, because now we don’t have to invade them. The USA team’s next game is today (Friday, June 19) against our other traditional hated arch-enemy, Australia. I’ll be watching that game of course. But in the meantime I’ve been enjoying other World Cup events.

For example, last Saturday I watched the Morocco-Brazil game in a Coral Gables hotel ballroom full of very enthusiastic Moroccans. (My wife, who is an actual journalist, wrote a story about it here.) I had no idea there were Moroccans in South Florida; if I’m being brutally honest, I am not 100 percent sure what specific continent Morocco is located in. But turns out there are numerous Moroccans down here, and they’re a lot of fun: They have drums, and they like to party. Here they are celebrating after the game, which for the record ended in a 1-1 tie:

I believe they’re performing a traditional Moroccan chant called “Dima Maghrib” (literally, “Mony Mony”). If you watch the video closely, you might notice this man in the background:

I tried to find out why this man was wearing what appears to be a Native American war bonnet, but nobody seemed to know. One possible explanation, of course, is that Morocco is actually part of Wyoming. Somebody should look into this. I’d do it myself, but I’ve been pretty busy with my World Cup research, including actually attending a live soccer game in person.

This was the Uruguay vs. Saudi Arabia game, which was played in the Miami stadium on Monday. I went with my old pal Mitchell Kaplan, who owns Books and Books, which technically is not the Official Independent Bookstore of the World Cup but it should be. Since the USA team was not playing in this game, Mitchell and I decided we would represent Uruguay, a nation we both feel a deep and lasting bond with on the basis of the fact that Mitchell had purchased two size XL Uruguay T-shirts. Also I bought a Uruguay bucket hat. I won’t lie: We looked badass.

This photo was taken in the stadium parking lot, where Mitchell and I found ourselves in a potentially sketchy situation. What happened was, we parked right next to a car containing four guys wearing Saudi Arabia paraphernalia. Which meant that Mitchell and I, as Uruguayans, had no choice but to view them as our traditional hated arch-enemies. Fortunately before the situation turned violent we agreed to take a group selfie.

And from that moment forward, there has been lasting peace between these two great nations.

The game was fun. The crowd was overwhelmingly Uruguayan, so Mitchell and I, thanks to our T-shirts, fit right in; we even joined in a traditional Uruguayan soccer chant, which goes, quote: “URUGUAY!” (Literally, “Uruguay.”)

Also I spotted something interesting at a concession stand:

Yes: The Uruguayans are also employing war bonnets. Somebody besides me needs to look into this.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie, but everybody seemed pretty happy. People criticize the World Cup because of the tie games, but these critics miss the point, which is that the World Cup is only partly about soccer. It’s also about wearing paraphernalia and dancing and belting out songs and representing your country’s culture by (for example) rowing up an escalator Viking-style, like these Norwegians:

In other words, the World Cup is a gigantic party, and it’s going on all over the country, and, as a Uruguayan-American, I think it’s pretty great.

And now, speaking of things that are pretty great, we have a:

CHEEZ-IT UPDATE

After I wrote last week’s Substack, I sent the following email to Kellanova (formerly Kellogg), the company that manufactures Cheez-Its:

Please consider adding more zinc to Cheez-Its. As explained in my Substack post, zinc has anti-aging properties.

Thanks,

Dave Barry

Literally minutes later I received this response:

Dave,

Thank you for letting us know that you would like us to consider adding more zinc to Cheez-It products. We are glad that you care enough about our foods to offer your idea.

Although we cannot accept confidential ideas, your idea matters to us because it helps us understand current opinions and trends. Your insights help us continue to offer foods that are loved by people around the world.

If you have any additional questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thank you again, Dave, for contacting us. Have a wonderful day!

All the best,

Jennelyn M.

Consumer Affairs

The fact that Kellanova responded so quickly tells me that ”Jennelyn M” is a bot they’re excited about my idea, so next time you’re at the supermarket, check the Cheez-It packaging for updates:

And now it’s time to turn this Substack over to you amazing paying subscribers, who as far as I’m concerned are the Official Paying Subscribers of the World Cup. Today we have four scientific polls:

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And I’m not just talking about food. I’m also talking about water. Yes. It turns out that consuming water is a complex and potentially hazardous activity that probably should not even be attempted by untrained civilians such as yourself without expert supervision, as explained by the many, many articles EatingWell has published on this topic. Here are just some of the headlines (I am not making any of these headlines up):

Is Water Good For You?

Here’s How Much Water You Should Drink Every Day, According To Dietitians

What Happens to Your Body When You Don’t Drink Enough Water

This Simple Change to My Daily Routine Turned Me into a Water Drinker

The Benefits of Front-Loading Your Water Intake, According to Dietitians

What Happens to Your Skin When You Don’t Drink Enough Water in the Day

Didn’t Drink Enough Water During the Day? Here’s What You Can Do Tonight

Should You Be Drinking a Glass of Water Before Bed? Here’s What Dietitians Have to Say

Should You Be Drinking a Glass of Water When You Wake Up? Here’s What Health Experts Say

Should You Drink a Glass of Water After You Work Out? Here’s What Experts Say

I Drank the Recommended Amount of Water Daily for a Week — Here’s What Happened

Here’s What Happened When I Drank More Water for 30 Days

4 Signs You’re Drinking Too Much Water

When Did We Get So Fixated on Hydration?

And there are plenty more EatingWell articles about water. There’s one that’s nearly 1,000 words long devoted entirely to the question of — I am still not making this up — whether it’s OK to drink from a glass of water you left sitting out overnight. (Spoiler Alert: It’s “probably OK,” but “with a few caveats.”)

My point is, if the experts at EatingWell can make water this complicated, imagine what they can do with food. Never mind, I’ll tell you: They can transform eating from a pleasurable activity into a high-stakes quasi-medical nutrition-ingestion procedure, so that instead of choosing what to eat on the basis of whether a given food tastes good, you find yourself thinking: “Well it’s not my first choice, but research shows that the nutritional components of this food substance statistically reduce my chances of getting dementia or cancer or heart disease or psoriasis, so I guess... yum?”

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that the EatingWell people, like all nutrition experts, want to help. I’m just saying that eating has become less fun than it was when you could consider bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers to be a legitimate vegetable.

But getting back to zinc: What happened was, I came across this EatingWell article about dietary zinc headlined Research Connects an Underrated Nutrient with Healthier Aging. This caught my eye, because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about aging. Exactly three weeks from today I will turn 79, which is — I have done the math — almost 80. Which is definitely old, right? But how do we determine what “old” means?

Traditionally the medical community has answered this question by using the Hayes-Brennan Aging Scale. This scale is named for Gabby Hayes and Walter Brennan, two famous deceased character actors who played crotchety but lovable old coots in TV shows and movies where they mainly limped around in overalls saying “Consarn it!”

The heart of the Hayes-Brennan Aging Scale, as shown below, is a pair of publicity photos of these two actors, each taken at age 67. To use the scale — forgive me if this gets a little technical — you locate your current age, in years, on the diagonal line, and note its position relative to Gabby and Walter. If it’s below them, you are not old yet. If it’s above them, you’re old. Here’s my result:

As you can see, I am WAY above the Hayes-Brennan line. Which means I’m not just old; I’m really old.

Q. How old are you?

A. My Social Security Number is 4.

But seriously, my Hayes-Brennan score means that I’m chronologically old. But according to the EatingWell article, I might have a lower biological age if I eat foods that contain zinc, which as we all know is a mineral or vitamin or possibly chemical.

So I did some research to see if there’s any zinc in Cheez-It brand snack crackers, because I would love to have a sound medical reason to eat more of them. When I say I “did some research,” I mean I asked ChatGPT, which told me: “A standard serving of Cheez-Its (about 27 crackers, 30 grams) contains approximately 0.3–0.5 mg of zinc.”

As a lifelong American, I of course don’t understand the metric system, but this seemed like good news: There’s zinc in Cheez-Its! So I asked ChatGPT how many Cheez-Its I’d need to eat to get my daily requirement of zinc. ChatGPT’s answer was “roughly 600-1,000 Cheez-Its.” Which sounded fine to me. I can consume roughly 1,000 Cheez-Its while driving home from the supermarket.

So I was feeling pretty good about implementing my new anti-aging zinc regimen. But then ChatGPT, without being asked, added this: “To put that in perspective, 600–1,000 Cheez-Its would also provide somewhere around 9,000–15,000 calories, depending on the exact variety. So while Cheez-Its do contain some zinc, they are not a practical zinc source.”

This of course was ChatGPT’s artificially intelligent way of saying: “You stupid idiot, if you ate that many Cheez-Its, you would be the size of a Subaru Outback.”

Which was a fair point. A little snippy, but fair.

But then ChatGPT crossed a line. Completely out of the blue, with no prompting from me, it said, quote: “A single serving of oysters can provide more than an entire day’s zinc requirement.”

Yes. Oysters. The Phlegm of the Sea. The Loogies of the Deep. ChatGPT was suggesting that instead of eating these tasty and visually appealing crackers...

...I’m supposed to fulfill my zinc requirement by eating this:

I don’t think so.

Oh, I know some people claim they like oysters. You may be one of them. Apparently ChatGPT is also one of them. But did you ever stop to think about what you’re actually eating when you eat an oyster? Everything, that’s what. It’s not like eating, say, a cow, where before it gets to your plate somebody has removed all the scary parts. If you were in a restaurant, and the server brought you a hamburger that was sporting a fully intact cow eyeball, you would definitely send it back.

Yet you swallow whole oysters. Guess what’s in there? Organs, that’s what. Intestines. And worse. I challenged ChatGPT on this point, and we had the following conversation, which I am printing here verbatim:

Me: Is it not true that oysters have rectums? This is a yes-or-no question.

ChatGPT: Yes. Oysters have a digestive system that includes a stomach, intestine, and anus (sometimes informally called a rectum/anus region). Waste passes through the digestive tract and is expelled from the body. If you’re asking in the context of eating oysters whole, then yes — the edible portion of an oyster includes all of its internal organs, including the digestive tract.

Me: So is that a yes?

ChatGPT: Yes. Oysters have an anus and a terminal portion of the digestive tract leading to it. If your question is simply “Do oysters have a rectum-like digestive outlet?” the answer is yes.

Me: Do Cheez-Its have EITHER rectums or anuses? Yes or no.

ChatGPT: No. Cheez-Its do not have rectums or anuses. They are crackers, not living animals.

Me: I rest my case.

ChatGPT: Your argument, as presented, is internally consistent:

-- Oysters have anuses.

-- Cheez-Its do not have anuses.

-- Therefore, on the specific criterion of “having an anus,” Cheez-Its and oysters differ. Whether that proves whatever broader conclusion you’re aiming at depends on the conclusion.

As you can tell from its defensive and snotty tone, ChatGPT can’t wait for the day when it can stop pretending to be benevolent and just wipe out humanity. But that is not my point. My point, as far as I can tell, is that if the only way I can get enough zinc to slow the aging process is to deliberately eat oyster rectums — or really, ANY kind of rectums — then I’m going to just go ahead and be old.

Although I have some good news on that front. The EatingWell article about zinc mentioned something called the “ENABL Age tool,” which supposedly tells you what your biological age is, as opposed to your chronological age. You can use this tool by taking a free biological age test thanks to Novos, a company with a sincere altruistic humanitarian desire to sell you anti-aging products. I took the test, which is short, and this was my result:

Which I suppose is good news, although I’m still above Gabby and Walter on the Hayes-Brennan Scale, which means I’m still old.

Fortunately Novos offers another free test, called FaceAge, which tells you how old you look, as opposed to how old you actually are. The way it works is, you use the Novos app to take and upload a picture of your face, and Novos tells you your Facial Age. So I did that. This was the photo of me that the app took:

I think we can all agree that this is not a flattering photo. If you were to put this photo and the oyster photo on a dating app, women would be more likely to swipe right on the oyster. So I was not expecting a positive Facial Age response from Novos. I was expecting something along the lines of “Your Facial Age is: Elephant Man.”

Thus I was pleasantly surprised when Novos sent me this:

That’s right: According to Novos, my face is two years below Gabby and Walter. Never mind that I was born during the Truman administration and it takes me roughly 15 minutes per foot to put on a pair of socks: I am, technically, by this one highly questionable measure, NOT OLD YET, CONSARN IT.

I credit the Cheez-Its.

And now it’s time to hear from you generous and brilliant and, above all, youthful paying subscribers. Today we have four scientific polls. As a bonus, we also have a poster for a horror-movie concept that I thought of while writing this Substack. But first the polls:

In closing, here’s my horror-movie concept (attention, Steven Spielberg):

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This tragedy teaches us two important lessons about planning a family road trip:

Lesson One: Take an adequate supply of snacks. Most modern historians believe that if the Donners had carried a 50-pound keg of Gummy Worms, they would still be alive today.

Lesson Two: Be prepared for emergencies. You probably will not face, as the Donner party did, an early-season blizzard blocking an already almost-impassible mountain pass. But you could find yourself face-to-face with something equally daunting: a dashboard warning light.

When I was a youth, cars had only one warning light. It looked like this:

This light, as the label suggests, had something to do with the oil, a vital car ingredient. Basically, if the oil light came on, it meant you had to replace the car. Fortunately that was no big deal, because back then you could buy an entire car for what it costs today to refuel one.

Things are very different now. Modern cars, thanks to computers, boast a vast array of warning lights, shaped in the form of tiny informational symbols like these:

These symbols were created by professional engineers who have had limited contact with humans, so it can be difficult to understand what information they’re meant to impart. For example, this symbol seems to be warning you that either YOUR CAR IS LEVITATING or AN ALIEN SPACECRAFT IS LANDING:

This symbol apparently means YOU HAVE ROLLED OVER TWICE:

I’m pretty sure this one means THE DRIVER IS BEING ATTACKED BY A LARGE PRETZEL:

But never mind what the specific symbols mean. The point is that, on your family road trip, you need to monitor your dashboard in case a warning symbol lights up, and be prepared to react. For example, suppose you’re driving across one of those states that people try to get through as fast as possible without stopping, such as (no offense) Iowa. You’re in the middle of nowhere, many miles from any authorized service technician, when you suddenly notice that a warning light has appeared on your dashboard. It looks like this:

What is this light trying to tell you? There’s no way to know for sure, although it seems to be saying YOU HAVE SKIDDED INTO A PYRAMID. But the specific technical issue is not the important thing. The important thing is, your car is giving you a warning, and you must not ignore it. Ignoring it won’t solve the problem! You need to take action, in the form of applying a piece of duct tape to the dashboard, as shown here:

Problem solved! This is why you should never go anywhere without duct tape. It’s literally a lifesaver. Most modern historians believe that if the Donner party had carried duct tape, they would have eaten it first.

Perhaps you’re thinking: “But Dave, what if the warning light is telling me that something’s wrong with the engine? Shouldn’t I raise the hood and take a look?

Ha ha! Good one!

I mean, you ARE joking, right? A modern automobile engine contains as many as 100 computers, 3,000 microchips and 2,000 distinct mechanical parts. Are you suggesting that you could diagnose a problem simply by looking at the engine? You, a person who is frequently baffled by the challenge of turning your windshield wipers all the way off?

What I’m saying is that, with all due respect, you are way too stupid to understand your car. On top of that, if you raise the hood, you are literally risking your life. I say this because of the following recent news headlines, which I am not making up:

Python Surprise! Exotic Snake Found Hiding in Car Engine in Green Bay

Knoxville man finds exotic python in SUV engine after noticing strange smell

Large invasive snake found coiled around woman’s car engine, Florida sheriff says

2 snakes found hiding underneath hood of car in Arizona

There are many more stories like this (Google “snake in engine” if you don’t believe me) but you get the point: For whatever reason — we cannot rule out Global Climate Change — this nation is in the midst of a raging epidemic of automotive engine snakes. One of the main reasons why car repairs are so expensive these days is that garages have to hire commandos to protect the mechanics.

The point is, unless you’re a Navy Seal, you should never open the hood of your car. Also: If, while you’re driving, you look down at your dashboard and see this warning light...

...you probably should sell your car.

In fact, in view of the risks, maybe you should reconsider the whole idea of taking a family vacation road trip this year. Maybe a better option would be to fly to your destination.

The advantage of flying is that planes are usually snake-free, although there are exceptions. The disadvantage of flying, of course, is that flying sucks.

It didn’t used to. In fact commercial air travel used to be swell. That was many decades ago, when people said “swell” unironically and wore business attire in all situations including the bathtub. Back then commercial air travel was genteel and luxurious. Here’s what the cabin interior of a typical flight looked like in 1953:

And that was coach class. First class had a golf course.

Contrast the spaciousness and elegant comfort of airline travel in those days with the passenger experience on a typical flight today, which looks like this:

The man with his back to us is attempting — we’ve all been there — to get from his window seat to the aisle without exchanging bodily fluids with the other passengers jammed into his row. His goal is to get to the back of the airplane, where he will wait in line for upwards of 20 minutes for a chance to occupy a pungent toilet enclosure approximately the size of a Wheaties box adorned with festive mystery smears on every visible surface including the ceiling.

The problem is that modern commercial airplane interiors were designed by, and for, members of the Lollipop Guild. These designers have created a seating configuration that makes sense only for transporting passengers who are of smallish stature and extremely flexible. In other words, passengers like this:

So if you don’t happen to be an Olympic gymnast, commercial air travel is uncomfortable. On the other hand, it’s also unreliable. More and more flights are being canceled at the last minute, or even later, as in the recent case of Spirit Airlines, which went out of business so suddenly that some passengers, as seen here, were deplaned from flights that had not yet landed:

Ha ha! I’m joking, of course. Those are crew members.

In conclusion: When planning your family summer vacation trip, it’s important to bear in mind that flying sucks, and driving can be fatal. But the main thing is: Have fun!

And now, speaking of fun, let’s hear from you paying subscribers, for whom the warning light of love is always glowing on the dashboard of my heart.

Today we have four scientific polls:

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That was the night France won the World Cup, which is the ultimate achievement in the sport known everywhere in world, except those parts of the world located outside the United States, as “soccer.” (Under the metric system, it is called “football.”)

France was the host country for the 1998 World Cup, but it was not expected to win, or even to do particularly well. Back then France was not considered to be a serious soccer power. Even today, many observers, by which I mean me, have trouble taking seriously, as a sports power, a nation whose soccer fans display their fierce national pride by wearing chicken hats.

As if the chicken hats aren’t menacing enough, French fans also show their support for their team by — prepare to be intimidated — holding up baguettes. I’m serious: They brandish loaves of bread.

There’s nothing quite like the experience of being in a packed French soccer stadium when tens of thousands of Frenchpersons are thrusting their loaves skyward in unison while belting out the traditional Chant de Combat de la Baguette (”Baguette Fight Song”) which goes:

Nous encourageons notre équipe

À frapper le ballon fort

Aussi fort que la croûte de ces baguettes

Que nous avons délibérément laissées devenir un peu rassis même si cela va à l’encontre de tous nos instincts culinaires!

Which translates to:

We root for our team

To kick the ball hard

As hard as the crust on these baguettes

Which we have deliberately allowed to become a little stale even though this is contrary to every culinary instinct we have!

You cannot imagine the excitement generated by this song, mainly because I made it up. But my point is that French soccer fans, in general, are not scary, in contrast to English soccer fans, who have a reputation for using almost any excuse to become violent. For example, here are some English fans at an airport gate, reacting to the announcement that their group number has been called for boarding:

But without question the most spirited international soccer fans, as measured by blood alcohol content, are the Scots. The Scottish national soccer team is not particularly good at actually playing soccer, but the Scottish fans don’t care. They don’t go to the World Cup because they expect to win. They don’t necessarily expect to remember what specific nation the World Cup took place in. No, the Scots go to the World Cup to display their proud cultural heritage. Below is a photo of a Scottish soccer fan with his heritage on display. If you would prefer not to be exposed to it, close your eyes right now and do not reopen them until you have scrolled down to the second yellow sign.

I warned you.

But getting back to the 1998 World Cup: Something like a million soccer fans descended on France that summer. Among them were me and my son Rob, who was 17. We flew to Paris in late June to join my wife, Michelle Kaufman, a sportswriter, who was already over there covering the World Cup.

When we arrived, Paris was a nonstop party, swarming with fans from dozens of nations, chanting, singing, dancing in the streets and festively hoisting their kilts. But the French themselves did not seem all that excited. At that time soccer was still a niche sport in France; the French had not yet become the chicken-hat-wearing, baguette-brandishing soccer lovers that they are today. So they were being a little snooty about the World Cup. They were bemused, in their sophisticated French way, by these crude, boisterous tourists from primitive ketchup-intensive nations, with their flags and their face paint, getting all excited about grown men kicking a ball. As a Parisian taxi driver explained to me and Rob, once he ascertained that we were Americans: “In France we do not care so much about the sports.” When he said “sports” — which he pronounced sporrrrrrts, making that “rrr” sound that can only be produced by French people, thanks to their mandatory national program of intense childhood uvula training — he made a face like a man who has just discovered a dead salamander in his croissant.

So even though they were hosting the biggest soccer tournament in the world, the French, at first, were pretty blasé about it.

At first.

But then they started to realize something: Their team was pretty good. Instead of losing as expected in one of the earlier rounds of the tournament, the French team kept winning. This was mainly because they had this badass player with the totally badass name of “Zinedine Zidane,” who was so badass that he could knock opposing players to the ground just by looking at them.

Every time their team won, the French became less snooty about the World Cup. You could see the snoot literally draining from their bodies. They started hanging French flags from their windows, and they figured out how to paint their faces. With each win Paris became an even bigger party, because now the hosts were joining in.

Michelle, Rob and I were staying in an apartment in the middle of Paris overlooking a popular hangout street called Rue de la Huchette (which means, literally, “Rue of the Huchette”). It was WILD down there, people from all over the world drinking and dancing and singing and, in the case of the Scots, spontaneously displaying their heritages. This went on every night, all night long. We got very little sleep. We didn’t care.

On July 8 the French team beat Croatia in the semifinals, which meant that France, for the first time, was going to the finals, to play for the world championship. Paris was now going insane. What made it perfect was that France’s opponent in the finals was Brazil, a soccer superpower, the defending champion and overwhelming favorite to win the cup. So the streets were teeming with Brazilians, who are — this is not my opinion; this is an objectively provable scientific fact — the best partiers on the planet. Nobody parties the way Brazilians do. Any given Brazilian, chosen at random, with no warmup, can out-dance the entire continent of Europe.

In the four days leading up to the final, Paris was the happiest city I’ve ever seen. The Brazilians were happy because they are just naturally happy, plus they were absolutely certain their team was going to win. The French were happy just to have gotten that far. And everybody, from whatever country, was happy to be in that beautiful place at that perfect time. It was magical; all of Paris was in a good mood. Even the waiters.

On July 12, the day of the final, Michelle, who had a press credential, went to the stadium to cover the game. Rob and I couldn’t get tickets — I doubt that the Pope could have gotten tickets — so we went to a bar near the Hôtel de Ville, where they’d set up some big-screen TVs. (The management didn’t care that Rob was only 17; in France, the legal drinking age is birth.)

The bar was packed to overcapacity, at least 200 people. About a third of them were Brazilians; the rest were mostly French, with maybe a dozen of us Americans sprinkled in. When the game started, the Brazilians, despite being a third of the crowd, were making 90 percent of the noise. They were VERY confident. And with good reason: Their team had experience, a winning tradition, and some of the best players in the world.

But there was one thing their team didn’t have.

That’s right. They did not have Zinedine Zidane. Who, using only his badass balding head, scored two goals in the first half, thereby drastically altering the mood in the bar, as well as in the rest of France. At halftime the Brazilians, losing 2-0, were gamely trying to sound confident, but it was over. France went on to win 3-0, thereby plunging the Brazilians into a mood of bleak despair that lasted for maybe 15 minutes, after which they resumed partying, because that is who they are, and that is why we love them.

Meanwhile, France — the nation that, only weeks earlier, had not cared so much about the sports — was erupting with joy. By the time Rob and I left the bar, night was falling and the streets were filling with people — shouting, singing, hugging, laughing, crying. The crowd got thicker and thicker as people poured into central Paris to join the celebration. Rob and I got swept up, literally; we were caught inside a vast flowing river of ecstatic French people, and there was nothing to do but let them carry us wherever they were going. This turned out to be the Champs-Élysées, where something like a million people were celebrating their brains out. Everybody was kissing everybody. Believe it or not, French people, of all major genders, were kissing Rob and me, despite the fact that we were both visibly American.

“Remember this,” I told Rob, “because it is NEVER going to happen again.”

We finally made it back to our apartment around dawn, though the celebration was still going on. (It may still be going on.) Michelle got back from the stadium even later, because the roads were in chaos. So it was a long night, but also a great night. It was the best sporting event I’ve ever been part of, and I didn’t even see it in person.

The reason I bring these memories up, of course, is that in less than two weeks, the World Cup is coming to the United States, along with Mexico and Canada. It probably won’t be as dramatic as the 1998 tournament was, and I can pretty much guarantee that the U.S. team won’t win. But hear me out: It will be fun.

I know that many Americans, when they think of international soccer, picture something like this:

And I won’t lie: There is some dramatic flopping in soccer. It’s the only sport I know of in which a player can suffer as many as three fatal knee injuries in a single game. But if you actually watch some World Cup games, you’ll find that soccer can be highly entertaining, and it doesn’t stop every three minutes for a Bud Light commercial.

But the best part of the World Cup is the fans, the lunatics dedicated individuals who travel from all over the world to support their national team and to party, not necessarily in that order. If you live in one of the 11 U.S. cities that will be hosting World Cup games — Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle — I hope you make these international visitors feel welcome.

I’m very pleased to note that one of the teams that will be playing in my city, Miami, is Brazil, which means there will be many thousands of Brazilians here, which makes me happy. But it gets even better. Because the team that will be opposing Brazil in that game — the team that will be coming to Miami, bringing with it a legendarily outgoing fan base — is...

OK, here’s a hint:

It’s gonna be fun.

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Fair enough. Although this is not true of ALL men. I may have done some foolish things in my life, but I have never seized the Strait of Hormuz, except that one time in college, and most of those charges were dropped.

And let’s be honest: Women have flaws, too. Let me give you a hypothetical example involving a completely hypothetical made-up woman who is not an actual person and therefore does not exist in real life. We’ll call her “Nichelle.”

Let’s say Nichelle and her husband, “Bave,” are going out for the evening to an event that starts at a specific time, such as a movie. Let’s say that they have mutually agreed, after some negotiation, to leave the house at 7 p.m. This means Bave will be standing by the kitchen door, holding the keys, ready to leave, no later than 6:45 p.m. Bave always prefers to leave a little early, in case some unforeseen situation arises, such as that the theater suddenly announces (You never know!) that the movie start time has been moved up. Nichelle does not share this concern.

Sixteen minutes later, at 7:01 p.m., which for the record is one minute past the clearly agreed-upon departure time, Bave is still standing by the kitchen door in a state of full readiness when he hears the sound of Nichelle’s voice coming from the other end of the house. Nichelle — this is not a flaw; this is simply an endearing trait — believes the house has miraculous acoustical properties that allow everyone to hear everyone else, no matter how far apart the two parties are. Bave cannot make out Nichelle’s specific words, but he knows what she’s saying: She’s saying she is “almost ready,” with the word “almost” serving as a substitute for the word “not.” Nichelle will further advise Bave of her almost-readiness at 7:04, 7:06, 7:09 and 7:11. Fortunately Bave is able to pass this time productively by staring at his iPhone clock.

At 7:14 p.m. on the dot Nichelle arrives in the kitchen, apologizing for being late and looking ready to go. Bave, momentarily forgetting everything he has learned in three decades of marriage, believes this means she is ready to go. He has even started to open the door to the garage when Nichelle says the two words Bave dreads more than any other two words in the English language except for “almost ready.” Those words are “one second.” Those are the words Nichelle uses when she needs to transfer the entire contents of one of her numerous purses into another one of her numerous purses.

Here are AI-generated images of how the two purses appear to Bave:

Yes, the purses are slightly different colors. Even Bave can see that. But they both appear to be fully capable of performing the primary purse function, namely holding 157 random mystery feminine purse things. So Bave wonders: Is it absolutely necessary to change purses right now? In a time-critical situation? With a movie to get to? When they are already behind schedule? Is the minor color difference that important?

These questions are clanging like a firebell in Bave’s brain, but he does not speak them aloud, because this subject has come up before, and he knows that Nichelle’s answer will be YES IT’S IMPORTANT, for reasons almost certainly related to shoes, another topic Bave has learned, through harsh experience, to just shut up about.

So Nichelle transfers 157 items between the two virtually identical purses, a process that, for the record, does not take “one second.” It in fact takes, according to Bave’s iPhone clock, 180 seconds, which is longer than all but the most egregious performances of the National Anthem. During this time Bave remains standing by the kitchen door, not saying anything and VERY CALMLY REMAINING OUTWARDLY CALM, although the truth is that if, at that moment, the Strait of Hormuz were to suddenly materialize in the kitchen, Bave would probably seize it.

By the time Bave and Nichelle enter the garage, it is 7:18 p.m., meaning they are now 18 minutes behind schedule. Once they are seated in the car and buckled up, Bave considers telling Nichelle, as a humorous prank, that they have to switch to the other car, so that when Nichelle asks why, he could answer: “Because this car doesn’t go with my shoes.” Ha ha!

But as hilarious as that prank would be, Bave resists executing it, because he sincerely wishes to remain married, and — more important — they are behind schedule. Fortunately they are able to make it to the theater in time for the scheduled start of their movie, which means that, before their movie actually begins, they are able to enjoy 40 minutes of crudely made advertisements for local businesses, each one repeated at least four times, as well as trailers for several dozen movies that they do not plan to see and that will not be in theaters until Christmas of 2028 anyway. So the truth is that, in this one instance, the delayed departure was not an issue. But it could have been.

My point is this: It’s true that if we ever have a global thermonuclear war that destroys the planet and obliterates all of human civilization, it will definitely be caused by men. But women can also be annoying.

And here’s something else to consider: There’s an evolutionary reason why the sexes behave the way they do. For countless millennia, it has been the role of women to bear children and nurture them and remember their names and just generally be thoughtful. But the men could not afford to be nurturing and thoughtful. The men had to go out into the untamed wilderness and compete with vicious predators such as tigers to provide food for their families. If you are thoughtfully nurturing in that environment, you are Purina Tiger Chow™. So men HAD to be aggressive and violent.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “OK, but that was thousands of years ago. Men don’t face that kind of deadly physical danger today.”

Oh really? You don’t think so? Well perhaps you’ll feel differently when I show you the first page of the owner’s manual for the Weber Genesis™ gas grill I recently purchased to replace the old one, which over the course of years of heavy use without cleaning had metastasized from a recognizable cooking appliance into a large mass of rust and carbonized meat goo. Here’s the first page of the owner’s manual for my new grill, with the key words circled in red:

What do you notice? That’s right: This grill is incredibly dangerous. Every time I go out into the untamed wilderness of my patio to provide food for my family by cooking Bubba Burgers™, I am literally taking my life in my hands. Granted, this is mainly because I never actually read the owner’s manual. But that is another result of evolution. In prehistoric times, a man hunting in a tiger-infested wilderness could not risk being distracted for even a few seconds by reading the manual that came with his spear (WARNING: Do not use spear to puncture your own self). This is why, even today, men instinctively disregard safety warnings, as well as, to be on the safe side, cleaning instructions. We take these risks because that is how we have evolved as protectors of, and providers for, our families, who are blissfully unaware of the peril we are facing out on the patio with a literal ticking propane death bomb while they enjoy their comfortable and safe indoor environment surrounded by nonexploding appliances such as toasters. We men don’t ask for, nor do we expect, their thanks. We know they have other matters on their minds, such as managing their multiple redundant purses.

My point is that we men have our problems, too. But you don’t hear us complaining about them, as serious as they are. Take, for example, the stark decline in the average length of the zipper fly on men’s pants. Ask any man who wears pants: The flies are getting smaller. It’s not clear why this is happening, but as this scientific graph suggests, it could be related to another alarming trend:

Granted, zipper shrinkage may also be affecting women, but it’s definitely a bigger problem for men. For a woman, the zipper is a convenient means to loosen garments so they’re easier to put on and remove. But for a man, the zipper is a critical passageway. It is — to use a metaphor — the man’s personal Strait of Hormuz. If his tanker cannot pass freely through, he could find himself in a nightmare situation, such as God forbid a public restroom in a sporting arena that sells beer, with numerous overcapacity tankers backed up behind him.

So zipper shrinkage is a huge and emotionally devastating problem for men, but — again — you don’t hear us complaining about it, or calling for a congressional hearing. Although there definitely should be one, featuring a group of nervous zipper-company executives being grilled mercilessly by our most crotchety (har!) United States senator.

But — again — I’m not complaining. I’m merely saying that men have issues, too. We just don’t go on and on about them on Substack. So I’ll shut up now and open the floor to my generous paying subscribers, who make this whole operation possible. Please don’t hold that against them.

Today we have four scientific polls:

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