Chapter 10. A Lawn Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

   Up to this point we have been concentrating on the inside of your house, because that’s where you actually live, unless you are even dumber than we thought. But the outside of your house—the grounds and how they are landscaped—is also important, especially in terms of property values. To illustrate this point, let’s consider two homeowners, whom we’ll call “Smith” and “Jones.”
   (These are not their real names. Their real names are “Smith” and
   “Brown.”) Let’s say these two people bought identical homes in the same neighborhood on the same day for the same price, fifty thousand dollars.
   “Smith,” a very hard worker, takes excellent care of his yard. Every weekend he’s out there mowing his lawn, pruning his shrubs, and crouching in the dirt working on his flower beds. Meanwhile
   “Jones” is a lazy lout who never does anything to his property except occasionally empty his car ashtray on it on his way to the convenience store to buy more beer.
   Now, let’s say that at the end of five years, both properties are placed on the market. “Jones,” who failed to maintain his yard, gets $72,500 for his property. This price, when adjusted for inflation, works out to be a profit of just 7.2 percent for our lazy homeowner. But “Smith,” the hard worker, would have received
   $86,300 for his property, if he had not been attacked by fire ants one afternoon while he was weeding the pachysandra patch and stung an estimated five-hundred-thousand times before his body was found by the water softener man, who later married “Smith’s” widow, who was able to use the life insurance money to buy them a luxury condominium where the closest they ever come to yard work is sometimes they fling the ice from their gin and tonic off their balcony onto the golf course. So there should be no question in your mind about the value of properly maintaining your property.
   The key area, of course, is the lawn. This is the centerpiece of the yard, and it has been for hundreds of years, ever since the invention of ...

The Very First Lawn

   Like so many other good ideas, such as eating snails, the lawn was invented by a French person, Jean-Harold Discotheque, in 1732. He called his invention “Lawn” (French for “the lawn”). His prototype lawn was very primitive, consisting of only one humongous blade of grass about 30 feet in diameter and 120 feet high; so, as you can imagine, it was not ideal for such purposes as croquet, and it was hell to mow. But in the following years there were a number of spectacular technical breakthroughs—the two-blades-of-grass lawn; the six-blades-of-grass lawn; etc.—until finally we reached the modern lawn consisting of many millions of tiny blades, each one of them diseased. This is where we stand today.

The Future: Lawns In Space

   Currently there are no lawns in space, although the U.S. Defense Department Office of Massive Stupid Wasteful Projects has a crash program to put one there before the Russians do. As you can imagine, this is an exceedingly difficult task, for space is a very hostile environment almost totally devoid of mulch.

Lawn Care In America

   We Americans can make the proud boast that no other nation cares for its lawns as much as we do. Lawn care has made America what it is today.
   As a patriotic noncommunist homeowner, you are responsible for maintaining the American tradition of lawn care and learning as much as you can about this important subject from books other than this one. You definitely won’t find anything useful here. I care for my lawn about as well as Godzilla cared for Tokyo. When I die, I will go to Lawn Hell, where homeowners like myself are forced to lie outside with no food or water and have dogs pee on them while their lawns relax inside on Barcaloungers, eating barbecue chips and watching football on TV.
   Nevertheless, I have, over the years, learned a few basic facts about lawn care, the two major ones being:
   If you fail to feed, fertilize, and water your lawn, it will die. If you feed, fertilize, and water your lawn, it will die.
   Fortunately this is not a problem, because you can always get a new lawn, in the form of “sod.” The way sod works is, you pay a large sum of money, and sweaty men arrive at your house driving a filthy truck, on the back of which is stacked an actual living, breathing, feeling lawn, Some Assembly Required. God only knows where the sweaty men get this lawn. My theory is that they simply go and steal somebody else’s lawn, so that over the course of several decades, the same lawn could make its way, house by house, through an entire subdivision.

Proper Lawnmower Care

   It’s important to take good care of your lawnmower, because as the old yard care saying goes: “A lawnmower that is running right is
   a lawnmower that is capable of slicing through your foot like a machete through Wonder Bread.” This is why manufacturers recommend that you perform the following routine maintenance procedure on your lawnmower every two weeks or ten-thousand miles, whichever comes first.
   1. Lubricate the linkage connecting the abatement disk to the invective moderator, taking care not to masticate the tropism extractor.
   2. Remove the parameter valve from the heliotrope converter and examine the reversion unit for signs of fatigue or drowsiness.
   3. Let’s not kid ourselves. You’re not really going to follow this maintenance procedure, right? I bet you never engage in any of the Goody-Two-Shoes consumer activities that manufacturers are always recommending. Me either. Like, whenever I buy an electronic product, the first thing I do is remove the safety information sheet that says, “URGENT EMERGENCY ALERT: BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT TO USE THIS PRODUCT, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FOR GOD’S SAKE IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE READ THIS SAFETY INFORMATION SHEET,” and I toss that baby right into the trash compactor. I would no more perform routine maintenance procedures on my lawnmower than I would clean my barbecue grill, or inspect my air conditioner filter, or save my original appliance cartons, or wipe my telephone answering machine with a damp cloth, or any of the other 1,536,862 idiotic things that various manufacturers, in an effort to turn me into a mindless consumer geek, have recommended that I do. Because this is America. This is the land of rugged, independent, self-reliant freedom fighters like Davy Crockett, who stood tall at the Alamo and fought on bravely even though he and his small band of men were badly outnumbered by thousands of manufacturers, coming over the walls in waves, armed to the teeth with Limited Warranties. And I am proud to say that the same spirit still exists today, that people like yourself and myself deal with lawnmower maintenance the way Americans have dealt with it since the Revolutionary War, namely: We leave our lawnmowers unattended in the garage all winter, and then we drag them out, brush off the spiders and yank fruitlessly on the cord until we are about two yanks shy of cardiac arrest; then we remove the spark plug and peer into the little hole, hoping that maybe the Spark Plug Fairy will appear in there and wave her tiny wand and make everything okay, but of course she doesn’t, so we hurl the lawnmower into our car and drive down to the lawnmower repair place, where they tell us that it will be two to three months before they can even give us an estimate, because of the large backlog caused by other rugged and self-reliant homeowners like ourselves.

Shrubs

   Shrubs are pathetic little mutant trees that you purchase to replace the nice big trees that were probably on your property before the developer came in and knocked them over with bulldozers. The way you plant a shrub is, you and your spouse lug it around your yard, setting it here and there and then standing back to see how it looks, until you settle on a spot directly over the largest buried boulder on your property, which is where you start digging. Shrub-lugging homeowners are so effective at locating buried objects that they are now routinely employed by archaeological expeditions. The archaeologist will get a couple from, say, Milwaukee, take them over to Egypt, hand them a juniper bush, and ask them where they think it should be planted. Then, using a helicopter, they’ll follow them as they wander around the endless, undifferentiated desert for days, plopping their shrub here and there, looking at it, shaking their heads, and moving on. When, finally, they’re satisfied that they’ve found the right spot, the archaeologist will swoop down, stick his shovel into the sand, and—CLUNK—there will be the sound of metal striking an ancient tomb that has lain undisturbed for four-thousand years. It saves a lot of time.

Gardening

   Americans have never been as fond of gardening as, for example, the British, who have, through centuries of puttering, managed to transform their little island into one of the world’s fourth-rate powers. Of course you cannot hope to achieve this kind of result in your own yard, but you will definitely find that for every hour you spend tilling the soil in the early spring, you will be richly rewarded with many more hours of fertilizing the soil in the late spring and weeding the soil all summer.
   There are many different types of gardens to choose from, such as the flower garden, which consists of flowers; the vegetable garden, which consists of vegetables; and the Japanese garden, which consists of Japanese. But I myself have found that the best type, in terms of ease of maintenance, is the “garden consisting of ugly plaster statuettes.” Of course the type of ugly statuette you should choose depends on the climate in your particular area.

Chapter 11. Getting Some Fool To Buy Your House

   No matter how perfect your new home seems when you first move in, you’ll gradually discover various shortcomings about it that get on your nerves, and ultimately you’ll come to hate it. This usually takes about two weeks. From that point on, you’ll be thinking about Trading Up.
   Trading Up is the basic maneuver in real estate, dating back several million years to the prehistoric Catalytic Era. In those days, a typical couple would have to start out living in a small cave, but each day they’d go out and hunt for pretty stones, which they’d put in a pile, called Equity, in the center of their cave. When the Equity was big enough, they’d move to a larger cave, where they’d repeat the process and move to a still larger one, and so on until they moved into their Dream Cave, which was occupied by a saber-toothed tiger, or carnivorous humongous (literally, “huge payments”), which ate them. This is essentially the system we use today.
   Before you can buy a new house, of course, you need to sell the one you’re in now.

The Best Way To Sell A House

   The best way to sell a house is to walk down a city street and have a construction worker who is eating a sandwich fifty-five stories above you accidentally drop his lunch box so that it lands on your head in such a way that you are not seriously injured, but you do lapse into a coma, and you wake up four months later and the nurse says: “While you were in a coma, your house was sold.” This is also the best way to move, have a baby, and attend the opera. But things are rarely this easy. Usually you have to put quite a bit of effort into selling your house, starting with asking yourself the question ...

Do You Need A Real Estate Broker?

   I touched upon this subject back in an earlier chapter, but I am quite frankly too lazy to go back and read what I said. Probably
   I said that there are pros and cons, because there almost always are, unless you’re talking about hemorrhoidal tissue.
   On the one hand, if you sell your home yourself, you avoid paying a large commission; but on the other hand, you have to deal with people calling you up and coming around to your house all hours of the day and night, pestering you and giving you no peace. I’m not talking about potential buyers. I’m talking about real estate brokers, trying to get your listing. The only way to get them to go away is to sign a contract with them. Then you’ll never see them again.
   Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. In the interest of fairness and decency and, above all, not receiving thousands of concerned letter bombs from the large and powerful real estate industry, let me state that, I am sure that virtually all brokers out there are honest and highly competent professionals of the type regularly shown on TV wearing geek-style blazers. And even if it turns out that they’re not, I strongly advise you to use a broker, for the same reason that I’d advise you to pay somebody else to repair your automobile transmission, namely: No matter how incompetent or overpaid this person is, he or she can’t possibly screw things up as badly as you would if you did it yourself.
   Before you sign a listing contract, you should talk to several brokers, to find out what they think your house is worth. What you want to be on the alert for here is a practice called “high-balling,” which is when an unscrupulous broker deliberately overestimates the value of your house, just to get the listing:
   BROKER: Mr. and Mrs. Jones, based on thoroughly walking around your living room here, I would estimate that the market value of your house is a hillion gazillion dollars.
   YOU (suspiciously): Wait a minute. Our name isn’t Jones.
   BROKER: Don’t worry about that. This is just a pretend dialogue in a humor book.
   Once you’ve selected a broker, you’ll be asked to sign a standard contract, which will read as follows:
   STANDARD REAL ESTATE LISTING AGREEMENT
   1. The BROKER gets FIVE PERCENT.
   2. Even if the BROKER doesn’t do SQUAT.
   3. Even if the BROKER is off somewhere like MAUI, drinking EXOTIC TROPICAL DRINKS with names like KAMIKAZE KAHLUA when a WILLING BUYER, acting totally on his OWN, appears on the SELLER’S doorstep carrying a SUITCASE full of CASH MONEY, the BROKER still gets FIVE PERCENT.
   4. In return, the SELLER gets to bitch about the BROKER at social occasions.
   5. “My damned BROKER couldn’t sell mascara to TAMMY FAYE BAKKER,” is the kind of snide comment the SELLER is allowed to make.
   6. But the BROKER still gets FIVE PERCENT.

How Much Should You Ask For Your House?

   This is a very difficult question, but top real estate experts from all over the world agree that you should ask $127,500 and ultimately settle for $119,250. Also you should throw in the outdoor gas barbecue system with the charcoal-roasted spiders permanently bonded to the grill.

Getting Your House Ready To Show

   Once you’re signed up with a broker and have decided on an asking price, you need to fix your house up so it looks as though clean and tasteful grownups live there, instead of yourselves. Take
   a hard look at your house and furnishings, and ask yourself how they’ll appear to prospective buyers. Chances are that with a minimum of time and effort, you can make a number of dramatically superficial improvements. For example, suppose you have an ugly old sofa in the living room with a leg missing from one corner, which you’ve propped up with a copy of The Sex Lusters, by Harold Robbins. You’ll make a far better impression with an acknowledged classic such as Moby Dick, by Jackie Collins. You can also make a big improvement in the appearance of dirty, crayon-marked walls by buying a can of flat white latex paint and using it to stand on while you install a lower-wattage light bulb. And of course it’s always a smart idea to nail all your bathroom doors shut.
   The overall effect you’re trying to create with these “homey” little touches is that YOUR HOUSE is a warm, welcoming, and—ABOVE ALL—real kind of place, similar to the set of a 1962 situation comedy. You might want to create the impression that, at any moment, Ricky Ricardo might come bursting through the front door and get a great big welcome-home kiss from Mary Tyler Moore.
   But the most important ingredient in the home-selling equation is you, the homeowner, because only you have a really intimate, detailed knowledge of the house; only you, who have lived there, know all the interesting little idiosyncrasies it has—all the special features and hidden “secrets” that make you want to DUMP it like a grocery bag full of armpit hair. Your job is to help your broker make sure that prospective buyers view these things in the proper light.
   Unfortunately, brokers don’t always appreciate receiving help from sellers. In fact, most brokers won’t even want you hanging around when they show the house. They’ll let you know this by dropping little hints such as: “Please don’t hang around while I show the house,” and: “If you hang around while I show the house, I will kill you.” The broker is concerned that if you are always hovering in the background like some kind of desperate street person, the prospective buyers won’t feel free to speak their minds.
   There is some basis for the broker’s concern. The last time we sold a house, whenever I was in the room, the prospective buyers would always describe everything as “interesting.”
   “Hmmmm,” they say, looking at one of my Home Improvement Projects. “How interesting!” Meaning: “I can’t wait to tell the people in my office about this.”
   So on the one hand, you don’t want to make the buyers feel uncomfortable, but on the other hand, you want to be available to explain features of the home that the broker might not be familiar with. The solution to this dilemma is to hide in closets when prospective buyers come around. By ducking from room to room just ahead of them, you’ll be invisible, yet still available in case a question comes up that the broker can’t answer.
   PROSPECTIVE BUYERS: What is this greenish slime dripping from the ceiling everywhere and eating holes in the floor?
   BROKER: Well, it’s, umm, errr, it’s, ah ...
   VOICE FROM CLOSET: It’s nothing to worry about!
   PROSPECTIVE BUYERS (vastly relieved): Whew! Because for a moment there, we were concerned.
   One major problem you’ll have to be on the alert for is when prospective buyers get really interested in your house and start to bring around ...

Horrible Relatives

   Virtually all prospective buyers have horrible relatives with names like Uncle Roger who believe themselves to be experts in the field of home construction on the basis of their vast experience as thirty-year subscribers to Popular Mechanics. The prospective buyers will bring Uncle Roger around, and unless he is stopped, he will go into a testosterone-induced nitpicking frenzy wherein he finds hundreds of thousands of things wrong with your house. This is why it’s always a good idea, when you’re darting from closet to closet, to carry a garrote:
   REAL ESTATE BROKER: And this is the master bedroom.
   UNCLE ROGER: Well, this here is no good. These windows are only double-glazed. You want triple-glazed, plus you don’t want this kind of hinge. Plus you want more electrical outlets than this. Plus you want AAAAACCCCCCCCCKKKKKK!
   REAL ESTATE BROKER: What on earth was that?
   PROSPECTIVE BUYERS: Somebody just jumped out of that closet over there and garroted Uncle Roger.
   AUNT LOUISE: Good.
   Sooner or later, if you continue to engage in savvy sales techniques such as these, a buyer will become interested enough to make an offer on your house. The important thing, during these negotiations, is to First remain calm. Do not become emotionally involved. Remember that even though you and the buyers are on
   “opposite sides of the fence,” the odds are that they are just regular everyday human beings like yourself, the only difference being that they’re trying to screw you out of all your worldly goods. So while on the one hand you want to be reasonable, in the sense of frowning thoughtfully at the buyers’ opening offer, you also want to be firm, in the sense of hurling it disdainfully to the floor and inviting friends and neighbors to help you spit on it.
   Price is not the key issue in these negotiations. As I noted in an earlier chapter, the price you will ultimately settle on is the same one everybody always settles on, namely about five percent less than what you originally asked. Both sides know this, deep in their souls, but nobody really wants to just come out and admit it, for fear of appearing to be a wimp. So what you’ll do—everybody does this—is get into serious, heavy-duty negotiations over which side gets to keep various home accessories such as:
   Ugly light fixtures Dingy draperies, and above all Minor grease-encrusted kitchen appliances that nobody really wants
   These are the areas in which you want to be as petty as is humanly possible, in an effort to establish that you are a Tough Customer Who Will Not Be Taken Advantage Of. You want to stride in a forceful manner around your family room, cigar in hand, shouting instructions to your broker, such as:
   “All right, they can have the Veg-O-Matic, but the sons of bitches are not gonna get the optional grape-peeling attachment!”
   And:
   “They want the ice cube trays?! Over MY DEAD BODY!!”
   Using this aggressive approach, you should be able to retain possession of many of your prized home accessories, which will fetch you a handsome $1.85 when you hold your garage sale.

How You Will Feel After You Finally Sign The Agreement Of Sale

   You’ll experience a feeling of almost unbelievable elation, even better than the way you felt the time Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on national TV and it was empty. This feeling will last for as long as seven tenths of a second, at which point you’ll remember the clause in the sale agreement, put there by some writhing little insect of a lawyer, that states:
   The SELLER agrees that if, at ANY TIME prior to the actual sale of the house, SOMETHING BAD happens, like for example let’s say that on THE VERY MORNING OF THE SETTLEMENT, through NO FAULT OF THE SELLER, a TREE ROOT that for 127 years has been totally benign, suddenly, as if guided by DESTINY, decides to block the MAIN MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER LINE in front of the seller’s house, causing a veritable VOLCANO OF RAW SEWAGE to erupt right in the SELLER’S GUEST BATHROOM and quickly flow “THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE” while the SELLER is out at the SUPERMARKET picking up a bottle of WINDEX so as to put the last few finishing touches on the HOUSE so that it will be neat as a PIN for the NEW OWNERS, then HA HA the SELLER has to give the BUYER all his DEPOSIT MONEY back and the SELLER can kiss the whole deal GOOD-BYE.
   So for the two months, or whatever, between the time you sign the contract and the time you actually close the deal, you’ll experience a condition that famed psychologist Sigmund Freud identified as Agreement of Sale Paranoia. You’ll be afraid to use the heating or air-conditioning systems; afraid to use the water faucets, turn on lights, or close doors firmly; afraid even to speak too loudly, for fear that you might set off some kind of sympathetic vibration that will cause the whole house to fall down. In short, you will become a crazy person. “YOU FOOL!” you’ll shriek, leaping out from behind your hedge and tackling the UPS man just as he’s about to ring your doorbell. “Are you trying to KILL US ALL?”
   This is a natural reaction, but the truth is, you probably have nothing to worry about. The odds are that nothing bad will happen, and when you finally get to the Ritual Closing Ceremony, when you realize that the whole thing is going to work out after all, you’ll experience a feeling of relief, a feeling that will grow stronger and stronger until, moments before the sale is legally finalized, you are knocked to the floor by the shock wave from the gas main exploding directly under your house.
   But you’re not going to let a little thing like the total destruction of your house, seconds before you were about to sell it, get you down. No, you are made of sterner Stuff than that: you are a Homeowner. You’re not a particularly bright one, given the fact that You bought this book, but nevertheless you are going to pick up the pieces of your life, as soon as they come down out of the sky, and get on with your life. Because you know that you’ll have plenty more homes to own before you finally shuffle off what we in the real estate profession call “this mortal coil” and go up to that Great Subdivision in the Sky. I’m willing to bet there will be nothing in your price range.

Stay Fit And Healthy Until You’re Dead

Dave Barry

Foreword
Inspirational Opening Anecdote Explaining the Author’s Lifelong Personal Commitment To Health and Fitness
Introduction
Four Reasons Why You Must Get Fit Immediately
How Insects Stay Fit
So the Bottom Line Is ...
How Fit Are You?
Calculating Your Final “Fitness Quotient”
Important Medical Note
Chapter 1. How Your Body Works
The Skin
The Muscle System
The Skeletal System
The Digestive System
The Central Nervous System
Your Respiratory System
The Circulatory System
Chapter 2. Getting Ready To Get Started
The Basic Fitness Fashion Look for Women
Fitness Fashion for Men
Fitness with Computers
Choosing the Right Place to Get Fit
Saunas
When to Actually Start Your Fitness Program
Chapter 3. Women’s Total Complete Aerobic Fitness Workout
Warming Up
The Actual Workout
Cooling Down
Chapter 4. Running
An Important Safety Note about Running
What Kind of Person Should Take Up Running, and What Will Happen to This Person’s Knees
Choosing the Right Running Shoe
Choosing the Left Running Shoe
What to Wear on the Rest of Your Body
Where to Run
Chapter 5. Popular Sports
Ski Jumping
Peewee Football
Racquetball
Professional Ice Hockey
Golf
Swimming
Pig Lifting
Fitness for the Business Traveler
Center-City Jogging
Chapter 6. Bodybuilding
Weights: A Stupid Idea
How Nautilus Equipment Works
The Trouble with Nautilus Equipment
Announcing a Totally New Amazing Scientific Affordable Bodybuilding Device That You Can Use in Your Own Home
Chapter 7. Nutrition
Why You Should Watch What You Eat
How Your Digestive System Works
Eating a “Balanced Diet”
What You Can Learn from Reading the Labels on Foods
About Vitamins
Vitamins in Food
Minerals in Food
What about Fiber?
A Thoughtful Philosophical Discussion of Vegetarianism
Chapter 8. Dieting And Weight Control
Do You Weigh the Proper Amount?
The Simple, Basic, Obvious Truth about Losing Weight
The Handsome Sincere Random Doctor Medical Diet Poop Yourself Thin The Elvis Presley Memorial Diet The Total Tapeworm Diet How to Lose Weight in the Coming Depression Shed Unwanted Ounces the Orson Welles Way The Dead Preppy Cat Microcomputer Diet Book The All-Goat-Products Diet The Frequent Casual Motel Sex Diet The Amazing Mother Theresa Weight Loss Plan
Common Questions Often Asked about Losing Weight
Announcing the Dave Barry Guaranteed, Surefire, Safe, Proven, Medically Unusual Weight Loss Device For Human Beings Belonging to the General Public
What the Experts Say about the Dave Barry Weight Loss Device
Chapter 9. Women’s Beauty And Grooming
The First Step toward a More Beautiful You
What You, Personally, Need to Do about Your Appearance
GUIDELINE 1: YOUR FACE IS MUCH TOO FAT.
GUIDELINE 2: I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO YOUR HAIR.
GUIDELINE 3: I WOULD SAY YOUR EYES ARE YOUR BEST FEATURE.
Personal Hygiene
TEETH
GUMS AND ARMPITS
HAIR
FEET
FEMININE HYGIENE
Chapter 10. Men’s Beauty And Grooming
Hair
A Sincere Discussion of Baldness
Skin
Makeup
Chapter 11. When You Get Sick
How You Can Tell When There Is Something Wrong with You
Dealing with Doctors
Paying for Your Hospital Treatment
Chapter 12. Fitness Q And A
Fitness and the Expectant Mother
Fitness and the Afterlife
Fitness and Sex
Fitness and the Third World
Postwar Fitness
Office Fitness

Dave Barry.
Stay Fit And Healthy Until You’re Dead

Foreword

Inspirational Opening Anecdote Explaining the Author’s Lifelong Personal Commitment To Health and Fitness

   Thirty-one years ago, when I was a mere boy of seven, my mother fell very, very sick. She called me to her side and, in a voice weakened by pain, said, “Bob, whatever happens to me, I want you to remember that ...
   “David,” I corrected. “My name is David.”
   “I know that, you little snot,” she said. “I’m your mother.”
   I have always remembered those words, despite the fact that my mother recovered completely and is fine today.
   Hi, Mom.

Introduction

Four Reasons Why You Must Get Fit Immediately

   1. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR COUNTRY. You can bet that the enemies of your country are fit. People in Communist nations are on a strict fitness program of waiting in line a lot and darting their eyes about nervously. We, too, must be fit, in case these Communists invade us. We must be ready to fight them in the streets and the alleys. The problem is that many of you have eaten so many Enormous Economy Size bags of corn chips and so much bean dip that you probably couldn’t fit into the alleys without the aid of powerful hydraulic devices. So you’d have to fight them in the streets, where you’d be easy prey for their blimp-seeking missiles.
   2. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR CAREER. In the old days, your successful business executive was generally a spectacular tub of lard who had to be transported from business deal to business deal via private railroad car. But today’s top executives are lean, sleek, and fit. They eat nutritionally balanced meals, run ten miles every day, play tennis and racquetball, and work out regularly on Nautilus machines. Consequently, they have no time whatsoever for their work. Many of them don’t even know where their offices are. This is why the entire U.S. economy is now manufactured in Japan.
   3. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR SELF-ESTEEM. There is no feeling in the world quite as wonderful as the feeling of being physically fit, except the feeling of eating pepperoni pizza. No! Wait! Disregard that last remark! What I’m trying to say is, when you become fit, everything about you changes. You have to buy new pants, for example. And you develop a whole new attitude about yourself. Instead of constantly thinking, “I am pasty and flabby and disgusting and nobody likes me,” you think, “People like me now, but only as long as I can keep from becoming pasty and flabby and disgusting again. I wish I had a pepperoni pizza.”
   4. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR FUTURE. There’s nothing like regular, vigorous exercise to prepare you for the pain you’ll inevitably have to endure when you get older. Let’s say you’re in your mid-20s to mid-30s. Most of the time you feel pretty good, right? The only time you feel lousy is when you ingest huge quantities of alcohol and wake up the next day in an unfamiliar city naked with unexplained chest wounds. But as you grow older, you’re going to start feeling more aches and pains caused by the inevitable afflictions of age, such as the Social Security Administration, condescending denture adhesive commercials, and your children.
   People who exercise regularly are prepared for this pain. Take joggers: you see them plodding along, clearly hating every minute of it, and you think, “What’s the point?” But years from now, when you’re struggling to adjust to the pains of the aging process, the joggers, who have been in constant agony for 20 years, will be able to make the transition smoothly, unless they’re already dead (see Chapter 12, under “Fitness and the Afterlife”).

How Insects Stay Fit

   We can learn a great deal about fitness from observing insects. You have probably noticed, for example, that most ants are in excellent shape. You almost never see a fat ant. What makes this especially interesting is that ants are always lugging around disgusting junk food, such as discarded Cracker Jacks many times the ants’ own size.
   So how do ants stay so fit? The answer is surprisingly simple: they have no mouths. And this is a good thing, really, because it means they can’t scream when you spray them with Raid, although they do their best to writhe around in a piteous manner.
   So anyway, what we have, in the ant, is a creature that engages in strenuous physical exercise all day long and never eats any thing. This is Nature’s Way to fitness, and we should emulate it if we wish to have the kind of taut, firm bodies that make ants the envy of the insect kingdom. Of course, we must always weigh this against the fact that they have a life span of maybe six weeks and are subject to attack by vicious beetles.

So the Bottom Line Is ...

   ... now is the time to start that fitness program! Fitness is more than just another new “craze,” like flavored popcorn or parenthood. Fitness is a philosophy of life, a revolutionary new concept in personhood, and, ultimately, a way for people like me to become wealthy via the sales of fitness-related items such as this book.
   But people like me can do only so much. We can take your money. After that, it’s up to you. If you don’t follow the diet and exercise program outlined in this book, it won’t do you a bit of good. Even if you do follow it, it may not do you any good. Nobody really knows what will happen. You’ll be the first person who ever actually tried this particular program. I meant to try it myself, before the book got published, but I had to buy snow tires. So maybe it would be a good idea to have a friend try it first, as a sort of test, and watch to see whether he actually does become fit, or starts lapsing into lengthy comas or something.
   Well, that’s enough of a pep talk. Let’s square our shoulders and take that first step toward Becoming a Fitter You. Those of you who are unable to simultaneously square your shoulders and take a step may do them one at a time.

How Fit Are You?

   The first step in your new fitness program is to take the three simple tests below so we can find out how fit you are right now. Be sure to write down the results as you go along, so the police will be able to figure out what happened.
   1. BODY FAT TEST
   You’ll need:
   A swimming pool
   A dozen concrete blocks
   Some stout rope
   A knife
   A primitive denizen of some remote fungal island in the South Pacific
   Directions: Fat tends to make you float, so the idea here is to determine how many concrete blocks have to be lashed to your body to make you stay on the bottom of the pool for at least a minute without bobbing to the surface. Have your denizen perch by the side of the pool with the knife clenched in his teeth so he can dive down to cut you loose after the minute elapses.
   (Caution: Some of your more primitive denizens have no understanding whatsoever of time, so their concept of a minute may in fact be closer to what we in Western Civilization think of as a fortnight. Also, whatever you do, don’t give your denizen one of those Swiss army knives with all the various confusing attachments. You don’t want him swimming down there and sawing at your rope with the spoon.)
   How to score: Count the number of blocks required to keep you submerged. More than eight is very bad.
   2. HEART TEST
   You’ll need:
   A friend
   A job at an office building with elevators
   A scorpion
   Directions: Give the scorpion to your friend, and instruct him or her to wait a couple of weeks, until you’ve completely forgotten about it, then sneak up behind you at work and hurl it into the elevator with you just as the doors close. What we’re looking to determine here is whether your heart is strong enough to handle the rigors of an exercise program.
   How to score: Give yourself a 5 if your heart continues to beat unassisted. If you score any lower than that, you probably shouldn’t do this particular test.
   3. AEROBICS TEST
   You’ll need:
   A stopwatch
   Gerald Ford
   Directions: The word “aerobics” comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning “ability to,” and bics, meaning “withstand tremendous boredom.” This is the difference between a world-class marathon runner and a normal person: a world-class marathon runner has undergone sufficient aerobic conditioning that he can run for nearly three hours without falling asleep, whereas a normal person will quit after a few minutes and look for something interesting to do.
   What you want to do in this test is start your stopwatch, then see how long you can listen to Gerald Ford discuss the federal deficit before you doze off. If Gerald Ford is unavailable, you can use televised golf.
   How to score: 15 seconds is excellent. More than 30 seconds indicates some kind of brain damage.

Calculating Your Final “Fitness Quotient”

   Divide your age by the number of blocks it took to hold you on the bottom of the pool, then add the number of seconds it took for Gerald Ford to sedate you multiplied by your scorpion score, unless you are claiming two or more exemptions. This will give you your “fitness quotient”; store it wherever you keep the instructions for operating your various digital watches.

Important Medical Note

   Before you begin any fitness program, you should, of course, have your doctor give you a thorough physical examination in which he shoves cold steel implements into your various bodily orifices and sticks needles directly into your skin and makes you put on a flimsy garment apparently made from a cocktail napkin and parade through the waiting room carrying a transparent container filled with your own urine past several people you hope to someday ask for jobs. Or, if you’d prefer not to undergo this procedure, you may simply send your doctor some money.

Chapter 1. How Your Body Works

   Your body is like a superbly engineered luxury automobile: if you use it wisely an maintain it properly, it will eventually break down, most likely in a bad neighborhood. To understand why this is, let’s take a look inside this fascinating “machine” we call the human body.
   Your body is actually made up of billions and billions of tiny cells, called “cells,” which are so small that you cannot see them. Neither can I. The only people who can see them are white-coated geeks called “biologists.” These are the people who wrote your high-school biology textbooks, in which they claimed to have found all these organs inside the Frog, the Worm, and the Perch. Remember? And remember how, in Biology Lab, you were supposed to take an actual dead frog apart and locate the heart, the liver, etc., as depicted in the elaborate color diagrams in the textbook?
   Of course, when you cut it open, all you ever found was frog glop, because that is what frogs contain, as has been proven in countless experiments performed by small boys with sticks. So you did what biology students have always done: you pretended you were finding all these organs in there, and you copied the diagram out of the book, knowing full well that in real life a frog would have no use whatsoever for a liver.
   Anyway, biologists tell us that the human body consists of billions of these tiny cells, which combine to form organs such as the heart, the kidney, the eyeball, the funny bone, the clavichord, the pustule, and the hernia, which in turn combine to form the body, which in turn combines with other bodies to form the squadron. Now let’s take a closer look at the various fitness-related organs and see if we can’t think of things to say about them.

The Skin

   Your skin performs several vital functions. For example, it keeps people from seeing the inside of your body, which is repulsive, and it prevents your organs from falling out onto the ground; where careless pedestrians might step on them. Also, without skin, your body would have no place to form large facial zits on the morning before your wedding.
   But for fitness-oriented persons like yourself, the important thing about skin is that it acts as your Body’s Cooling System. Whenever you exercise or get on an elevator, sweat oozes out of millions of tiny skin holes so it can evaporate and cool the area. Unfortunately, virtually all of these holes are located in your armpits, which is stupid. I mean, you hardly ever hear people complaining about having hot armpits. So what we seem to have here is one of those cases where Mother Nature really screwed up, like when she developed the concept of nasal hair.

The Muscle System

   Your muscles are what enable you to perform all of your basic movements, such as bowling, sniping, pandering, carping, and contacting your attorney. Basically, there are two kinds of muscle tissue: the kind that people in advertisements for fitness centers have, which forms units that look like sleek and powerful pythons writhing just beneath the surface of the skin, and the kind you have, which looks more like deceased baby rabbits.
   The beauty of muscle tissue, however, is that it responds to exercise. In a later chapter, we’ll talk about how, using modern exercise equipment, such as the Nautilus machine, in a scientific workout program, you can stretch those pudgy little muscle tissues of yours to the point where you won’t even be able to scream for help without the aid of powerful painkilling drugs.

The Skeletal System

   How many bones do you think your skeletal system has? Would you say 50? 150? 250? 300? More than 300?
   If you guessed 50, you’re a real jerk. I would say it’s around 250, but I don’t really see why it’s all that important. The only important part of your skeleton, for fitness purposes, is your knees.
   Knees are God’s way of telling mankind that He doesn’t want us to do anything really strenuous. When we do, our knees punish us by becoming injured, as you know if you’ve ever watched professional football on television:
   ANNOUNCER: The handoff goes to Burger; he’s tackled at the six. ... Uh oh! He’s hurt!
   COLOR COMMENTATOR: Looks like a knee injury, Bob, from the way that bone there is sticking out of his knee.
   ANNOUNCER: Burger’s teammates are bending over him. ... Uh oh! Now they’re down on the field!
   COLOR COMMENTATOR: Looks like they’ve all injured their knees, too, Bob.
   ANNOUNCER: Here comes the team physician, who is. ... Uh oh! Now he’s down on the ...
   So one of the things we’re going to stress in our fitness program is knee safety. We’re going to get you so aware of this important topic that you won’t even discuss racquetball over the telephone without first putting on knee braces the size of industrial turbines.

The Digestive System

   Your digestive system is your body’s Fun House, whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter. You must be careful about what you eat, unless you want your body making heart valves out of things like bean dip.

The Central Nervous System

   The central nervous system is your body’s Messenger, always letting your brain know what’s going on elsewhere in your body. “Your nose itches!” it tells your brain. Or, “Your foot is falling asleep!!” Or, “You’re hungry!!!” All day long, your brain hears messages like these, thousands of them, hour after hour, until finally it deliberately rests your hand on a red-hot stove just for the pleasure of hearing your nervous system scream in pain.

Your Respiratory System

   Your respiratory system takes in oxygen and gives off carbon monoxide, a deadly gas, by a process called “photosynthesis.” This takes place in your lungs, yam-shaped organs in your chest containing millions of tiny little air sacs, called “Bernice.” In a normal person, these sacs are healthy and pink, whereas in smokers they have the wretched, soot-stained, anguished look of the people fleeing Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. This has led many noted medical researchers to conclude that smoking is unhealthy, but we must weigh this against the fact that most of the people in cigarette advertisements are generally horse-riding, helicopter-flying hunks of major-league manhood, whereas your noted medical researchers tend to be pasty little wimps of the variety that you routinely held upside down over the toilet in junior high school.

The Circulatory System

   This is, of course, your heart, a fist-sized muscle in your chest with a two-inch-thick layer of greasy fat clinging to it consisting of every Milky Way you ever ate. Your heart’s job is to pump your blood, which appears to be nothing more than a red liquid but which, according to biologists (this should come as no surprise), is actually teeming with millions of organisms, some of them with tentacles so they can teem more efficiently.
   The only organisms that actually belong in your blood are the red cells and the white cells. The red cells are your body’s Room Service, carrying tiny particles of food and oxygen to the other organs, which snork them up without so much as a “thank you.” The only reward the red cells get is iron in the form of prunes, which the other cells don’t want anyway. If you don’t eat enough prunes, your red cells get tired—a condition doctors call “tired blood”—and you have to lie down and watch “All My Children.”
   The white cells are your body’s House Detectives. Most of the time they lounge around the bloodstream, telling jokes and forming the occasional cyst. But they swing into action the instant your body is invaded by one of the many enemy organisms that can get into your bloodstream, these being bacteria, viruses, rotifers, conifers, parameciums, cholesterol, tiny little lockjaw germs that dwell on the ends of all sharp objects, antacids, riboflavin, and the plague. As soon as the white cells spot one of these, they drop whatever they’re doing and pursue it on a wild and often hilarious chase through your various organs, which sometimes results in damage to innocent tissue. Eventually they catch the invader and tie its tentacles behind its back with antibodies, which are the body’s Handcuffs, and deport it via the bowel.
   Of course this is just a brief rundown on your various organs and systems; in the short space I have here, it’s very difficult for me to explain all of your body’s complexities and subtleties in any detail, or even get any facts right. For more information, I suggest you attend Harvard Medical School, which I believe is in Wisconsin.
   Meanwhile, let’s turn the page and really get started on our fitness program! Or at least limber up.

Chapter 2. Getting Ready To Get Started

   One of the most exciting aspects of getting into fitness is that you get to wear modern fitness-oriented clothing, clothing that makes a statement to the world around you. “Look,” it states, “I have purchased some fitness-oriented clothing.”
   Up until about 15 years ago, the only fitness clothing available for men was the plain grey sweat suit, which we fitness experts now recognize as totally inadequate in terms of retail markup. Fitness wear for females consisted of those high-school gym outfits colored Digestive Enzyme Green; there was no fitness clothing available at all for adult women, because the only forms of exercise deemed appropriate for them were labor and driving station wagons.
   As the fitness craze developed, however, all kinds of “active sportswear” became available from famous designers who think nothing of putting their names on your clothing, but who would have the servants set the dogs on you if you ever tried to put your name on their clothing. Today it’s not uncommon for people to wear their active sportswear to the shopping mall, to work, to the opera, to state funerals, etc. Recently, an attorney argued a major case before the U.S. Supreme Court while wearing a puce jogging outfit! The justices didn’t seem to mind at all, although this could also have been partly because they had fallen asleep.
   The point is, you want to choose your fitness-program clothing carefully because chances are you’ll be wearing it to do much more than just exercise. In fact, you’ll probably be wearing it to do everything but exercise, since there is growing medical evidence that exercise can make you tired and sweaty, as we’ll see in later chapters.

The Basic Fitness Fashion Look for Women

   This is, of course, the leotard and tights, which is the preferred outfit because it shows every bodily flaw a woman has, no matter how minute, so that a woman who, disguised in her street clothes, looks like Victoria Principal will, when she puts on her leotard, transform herself into Bertha the Amazing Land Whale. This encourages her to exercise vigorously and watch what she eats. She cannot, of course, drink anything, as there is no way to go to the bathroom in a leotard and tights.
   Many a woman who suffers an exercise-related injury during an aerobic workout is forced to lie in great pain for hours on her exercise mat, trapped, while frustrated rescue personnel wait for the helicopter to bring the various specialized torches, saws, and other equipment they need to free her from her tights and leotard so they can render medical treatment.
   Extremely Important Advice Concerning Danskin Brand Thermal Calf Protection Devices
   Several years ago, a crack team of medical fashion experts determined that cold air tends to form pockets around the calves of fashionable, fitness-oriented women. This breakthrough discovery explained the sudden upsurge in calf-related hospitalizations that occurred at the onset of the fitness craze and soon reached epidemic proportions. As one nationally reknowned physician, whose name is available upon request, put it, “Never in my 600 years of practicing medicine had I seen so many deaths directly attributable to calf coldness. If only we had known then the importance of wearing Danskin brand thermal calf protection devices!”
   So the bottom line is: Do not view these devices as just another semiretarded fashion trend. View them as essential medical protection, every bit as important as lip gloss.

Fitness Fashion for Men

   What you want, men, is a fashion look that gives you freedom of movement but at the same time displays, in large letters, the names of at least three major manufacturers of sporting equipment. Also you want to wear a headband and wristbands to absorb the tremendous outpouring of sweat that we males emit when we are engaged in strenuous masculine physical activity. (If you are one of those unfortunate males who does not emit tremendous outpourings of sweat, you should purchase, from the Nike Corporation, a container of “Pro-spiration” spray-on sweat droplets, which you apply discreetly in the locker room before you begin your workout.)
   Ideally, of course, you will also sport some evidence of a semicrippling football injury. The best kind is a medical knee contraption of such enormous size and complexity that your racquetball opponent will feel like absolute pond scum if he hits the ball anywhere other than directly to you. Or you might want to look into a new product from the Adidas Corporation called “The All-Scars,” which are large, realistic, and extremely repulsive synthetic removable knee scars patterned after those belonging to famous battered sports legends such as Joe Namath.

Fitness with Computers

   Can you use a personal home computer in your fitness program? You bet! Computers are incredibly versatile machines that can do everything from screw up your airplane reservation to cause an income tax blunder that gets you sentenced to a life term in a slimy walled federal prison so utterly desolate that the inmates pay rodents for sex! So they’re a “natural” for the fitness movement!
   One obvious way to use a computer, of course, is to record your daily fitness statistics such as weight, height, age, etc., on it, using a felt-tipped marker. But the best way to really unleash the power of a computer is to lift it up and set it down repeatedly, thus building muscle mass and definition. As you become stronger, you can gradually add weight, in the form of “disk drives,” until eventually you move up to a heavier computer—and perhaps someday even reach the point where you can hoist what computer bodybuilding enthusiasts call a “mainframe” computer!
   For the average person who does not have a background in data processing, I generally recommend starting out with a 35-pound computer. Unfortunately, computer weights are measured not in pounds, but in “K’s” (as in 512K), which stands for “kilograms.” There is a way to convert kilograms to pounds, but it is almost always fatal, so I recommend, as a wise consumer tip, that you go through your entire planned computer-lifting routine right at the store with several reputable computers, checking each for heft, balance, and tendency to break into 600,000 tiny pieces when you lift it over your head and drop it, before you actually purchase anything.
   Of course, some of you, and here I am talking about the technically oriented ones, the ones with a thin layer of mechanical pencil dust on your clothing—in a word, the geeks—may even want to plug your computer directly into the wall, thus allowing electricity to flow through it. In this case, you’ll also need to purchase a “program,” or “software,” which comes on a “floppy disk,” an object the size of a 45 RPM record such as “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” which we used to dance to at “record hops” back when Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower was president.
   Fortunately for you and the entire fitness movement in general, I have developed a special piece of fitness-oriented software called the “Dave Barry Total Diskette Workout Program.” The way it works is, you put it in the computer, which asks you to type in your name. Then you type in your name, and the computer forgets it immediately because the truth is that the computer really doesn’t give a damn what your name is. It was just trying to be polite.
   Next, the computer holds an Interactive Fitness Dialogue with you, wherein it elicits certain facts from you regarding your specific fitness situation, then it evaluates the facts and reports its findings, as follows:
   COMPUTER: ENTER THE LAST TIME YOU ENGAGED IN A WORKOUT.
   YOU: (Enter the last time you engaged in a workout, such as “just before Thanksgiving” or “World War II.”)
   COMPUTER (thinks for a minute, and proceeds): SOUNDS TO ME LIKE YOU’VE DONE ALL THE WORKING OUT YOU NEED TO DO FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE. ALL WORKING OUT MAKES JACK A DULL BOY! HA HA! PLEASE ENTER A LIST OF THE FOODS YOU WOULD LIKE TO EAT TODAY.
   YOU: (Enter a list consisting of no more than 100 foods which you would like to eat on that particular day.)
   COMPUTER: I DON’T SEE ANY PROBLEM WITH THE FOODS YOU HAVE LISTED. HAVE A NICE DAY.
   That’s all there is to it! In less than five minutes, you have accomplished, using a computer, a data-processing feat that would take 60,000 trained mathematicians 1.3 billion years to accomplish, and even longer if you let them go to the bathroom! And you will be pleased to learn that this program will also do your income taxes (“YES! YOU CAN DEDUCT THAT! I’M SURE OF IT!”).

Choosing the Right Place to Get Fit

   Basically you have two options: your living room, or a fitness club. The advantage of getting fit in your living room is that it’s free and you can scratch yourself openly. The disadvantage is that your living room is where you keep your little dish of M&Ms for guests, which means you’ll actually gain roughly a pound of ugly fat for each week of your home fitness program.
   So you should probably join a fitness club such as you see advertised in the newspapers by photographs of attractive models wearing leotards fashioned from a maximum of eight leotard molecules. Before you join such a club, you should take a tour conducted by one of the fit and muscular staff persons. This person will show you the various rooms and pieces of equipment, then hold your head under the whirlpool until you agree to buy a membership.
   Here’s a useful checklist of the features a good fitness club should have:
   A powerful odor of disinfectant Various species of hairs in the sinks Signs all over the place reminding you that the management is not responsible A loudspeaker system playing soothing musical numbers as performed by the Dentist’s Office Singers A door that says “WEIGHT ROOM” that you never venture through because large sweating men go in there and emit noises like oxen with severe intestinal disorders Two women in the sauna who are always there, no matter what hour of the day or night, talking loudly about growths in their pelvic regions

Saunas

   The word “sauna” is Finnish for “very hot little room with strangers in it breathing funny,” and people who’ve tried it agree that it’s a very invigorating experience, provided you get out in time. If the door sticks or anything, you have about as much chance of survival as the unfortunate corals who happened to be residing on that reef where we detonated the original hydrogen bomb, because the usual temperature inside a sauna is 180 degrees, which you may recognize as the recommended final temperature for cooked turkeys, very few of which live to tell about it.
   This high temperature is, of course, very good for you because your body contains traces of toxic minerals such as lead, which get in there when you get drunk and eat paint, and the heat helps you sweat them out. Really, I’m not making this up. Here’s a direct quote from Shape magazine, an authoritative journal:
   “Sweating is now a significant route for eliminating trace elements from the body.”
   So that’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that these trace elements have to go somewhere, presumably onto the sauna seat, which means if you use a spa sauna, you’re lounging around on a lot of other people’s trace elements.
   So what I recommend is that you build your own sauna at home, which is a lot easier than you might think. All you need is a few simple hand tools. (No! I’m not going to tell you which ones! I’m sick of making all the decisions!)
   Using your hand tools, construct a handcrafted little wooden room that has a bench inside it and a sign on the door that says “WARNING! REMOVE ALL CLOTHING AND JEWELRY AND DENTAL FILLINGS AND PACEMAKERS!” Now all you need is a way to raise the internal temperature to 180 degrees. You could always set fire to the sauna, of course, but then you’d have to handcraft a new one every time you wanted to use it, which would leave you with very little time in which to eliminate your elements. So I suggest that you take the more practical route, which is to plug in 40 toasters set to “medium brown.” They’ll give you all the heat you need, plus you’ll get a healthy aerobic workout clambering around in there trying to keep all the little levers pushed down. Keep the number of the Burn Unit handy.
   Okay! Now you’ve bought your fitness outfits, you’ve found a place to do your workout, and you’ve built your own sauna. The only remaining question is ...

When to Actually Start Your Fitness Program

   Not today, certainly. You’ve done enough today! I would rule tomorrow out, also, seeing as how it comes so soon after today. You rush into these things, and the next thing you know, you’ve strained a ligament or something. So I would say the best time to begin would be first thing after Easter, although not the one coming up.

Chapter 3. Women’s Total Complete Aerobic Fitness Workout

Warming Up

   To understand the importance of warming up, let’s take a look inside a typical human muscle. As we can see, it’s very dark inside a typical human muscle. This means that most of the time the individual muscle cells are fast asleep. The purpose of your warm-up routine is to allow these cells to wake up gradually—to stretch, to scratch, to go to the bathroom, etc. If you just start jerking them around, they’re going to be very cranky, and they may develop a condition that professional medical doctors call a “Charley horse,” which is usually fatal.
   WARM-UP NUMBER ONE:
   CLEARING YOUR MIND OF WORRISOME THOUGHTS
   You can’t loosen up effectively if you’re worried about nuclear war, or the likelihood that somebody might steal your wallet while you’re doing your exercise routine. So your initial warm-up step should be to lie down on your back with your knees bent and your feet planted 17 inches apart, then, with your left hand overlapping your right, clasp your wallet to your chest, raise your head to an angle of about 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and watch “Happy Days” or a similar television situation comedy rerun where they never talk about the likelihood of nuclear war. Hold this position until about a minute and a half before your neck develops a “crick,” which is usually fatal.
   WARM-UP NUMBER TWO:
   LETTING YOUR MUSCLES KNOW
   YOU’RE ABOUT TO START MOVING
   Lie facedown on your wallet with your legs together and your arms away from your body at an angle of about 7 degrees, then have a friend or hired servant place his or her face about an inch from your various major muscle groupings and say, in a pleasant, musical voice, “Everybody up! Time to start warming up for a Fitness Workout!” Then have your friend listen closely to your muscle groupings for the sound of good-natured cellular grumbling. If necessary, he or she should prod them very gently with the eraser of a number 2 pencil, such as you used on your college boards.
   WARM-UP NUMBER THREE:
   PUTTING A TAPE OF LOUD ROCK ‘N’ ROLL-TYPE
   WORK-OUT MUSIC ON A GHETTO BLASTER-TYPE
   STEREOPHONIC LISTENING DEVICE
   One thing you have probably wondered about for many years is why musicians who sing rock ‘n’ roll tend to be extremely thin, if not actually dead, whereas those who sing, say, opera, tend to be humongous wads of cellulite. The reason for this phenomenon, scientists now believe, is that fat cells are actually destroyed by stupid lyrics. In one recent experiment, scientists at the University of Iowa reduced a live 450-pound hog to an object the size of a harmonica in less than six hours by repeatedly playing the chorus to “Shake Your Groove Thing” at it. Other songs with proven fat-reduction lyrics that you’ll want to have on your workout tape are:
   “My Baby Does the Hanky Panky”
   “Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love in My Tummy”
   The verse of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” that refers to “figgy pudding”
   Everything Barry Manilow ever wrote
   “Ballad of the Green Berets”
   “Da Doo Ron Ron”
   “My Way”
   To put your tape on your ghetto blaster, lie on your back with your legs about 14 inches apart and your wallet clamped in your left armpit, raise your right arm gradually until you can insert the workout tape into the ghetto blaster device, press the “play” button, then gradually return your arm to the floor and just lie there for a while, spent.

The Actual Workout

   All warmed up? Great! Let’s start getting fit! Do each of the exercises below twice on the first day, 4 times the second day, 8 times the third day, and so on, each day doubling the previous day’s number until, after just two weeks, you’re doing each exercise over 1,000 times! And hemorrhaging internally!
   So let’s get started!
   EXERCISE NUMBER ONE:
   LEG HEFT
   Lie on your back, legs slightly spread, arms resting on the floor, palms down. Have an accomplice grasp you by your ankles and lift your legs about 18 inches then attempt to guess their combined weight.
   EXERCISE NUMBER TWO:
   THIGH GRASP
   Lie on your stomach with your face resting on a New York Times “Fall Fashion Supplement” opened to a photograph of a model who consumes fewer calories in an entire year than you do at a single wedding reception. Slowly reach your hands down and grasp yourself by the left thigh, then the right, and then close your eyes and moan quietly in despair for a count of about eight seconds.
   EXERCISE NUMBER THREE:
   SINCERE ANNOUNCEMENT OF INTENTION
   TO CHANGE DIETARY HABITS
   You and a partner stand facing each other about three feet apart, legs comfortably spread, knees slightly bent, eating from individual one-pound bags of Wise brand potato chips. You say, “First thing tomorrow I swear to God I am definitely going to go on a diet, I really mean it.” Your partner responds, “Yes, me too. I definitely will go on a diet also. I believe there is a vat of Lipton brand California-style onion dip in the refrigerator.” Then you exchange places and repeat the exercise.
   EXERCISE NUMBER FOUR:
   BREAST DEVELOPMENT
   Originally, I was going to use this space to describe an amazing new Scientific Discovery exercise that enables any woman to develop, within minutes, two large, firm breasts such as are regularly featured on television star Loni Anderson. But then I said to myself, “Hey, isn’t it time that we, as a liberated society, got over this juvenile and demeaning fixation with breasts?” So I have decided to omit this particular amazing, risk-free, 100
   percent effective exercise, although of course if you wish to obtain a copy for the purpose of scientific research, I’d be happy to send it to you just for the asking, plus $29.95 for postage and handling. If you act right now, I’ll also send several grainy before-and-after photographs of women who used to look like Olive Oyl but now, thanks to this Amazing Breast Exercise Discovery, cannot walk erect unless preceded by native bearers.

Cooling Down

   As we discussed in Chapter 1, when you exercise, your muscle cells take in molecules of oxygen and give off molecules of sweat, which work their way to your armpits. For your cooling-down phase, lie on your back with your arms laced behind your head and your elbows on the floor, thus exposing a maximum of armpit area and allowing the sweat molecules to escape into the atmosphere as harmless BO vapors. This would be an excellent time to start worrying about nuclear war again.

Chapter 4. Running

An Important Safety Note about Running

   In this chapter, I can give you only a cursory overview of running, which is without question the most difficult and complex form of exercise, as is evidenced by the fact that it is the subject of numerous lengthy books costing upward of $14.95. Unfortunately, many members of the general public still labor under the dangerous misconception that running is simply a matter of getting out and running. So before you attempt to do any actual running, I strongly urge you to read a minimum of several books on the subject and to take lessons from a trained running instructor. I also cannot overemphasize the importance of spending large sums of money.

What Kind of Person Should Take Up Running, and What Will Happen to This Person’s Knees

   Running is the ideal form of exercise for people who sincerely wish to become middle-class urban professionals. Whereas the lower classes don’t run except when their kerosene heaters explode, today’s upwardly mobile urban professionals feel that running keeps them in the peak form they must be in if they are to handle the responsibilities of their chosen urban professions, which include reading things, signing things, talking on the telephone, and in cases of extreme upward mobility, going to lunch.
   That’s why at the end of the working day, when the lower classes have passed out facedown in the Cheez Whiz, you can drive down the streets of any middle-class neighborhood in America and see dozens of professionals out running with determined facial grimaces, burning off calories, improving the efficiency of their cardiovascular systems, increasing their muscle flexibility, and ultimately staggering off into the bushes to die. Even as you read these words, thousands of designer-sportswear-clad bodies are rotting in the bushes of suburban America, and the only reason you don’t hear more about it is that the next of kin generally don’t report the disappearances, because they are quite frankly pleased that they no longer have to listen to the runner blather on and on about his or her cardiovascular development.
   Of course, not all runners die in the bushes. Many fail to make it that far, because of knee injuries. To understand why, let’s look at the interior of the human knee.
   What we can learn from this is that, although from the outside your knee feels like a croquet ball inserted in the middle of your leg, it is in fact a complex organ consisting of bone, muscle, thong, and mucilage, bounded on the west by Spain. The knee provides adequate support for everyday activities, such as renewing magazine subscriptions or gesturing at cretins in traffic, but it is not designed to withstand the strain placed on it by running, where each time the runner’s foot hits the pavement, the knee is subjected to 650,000 kilocycles of torque, and even more if the runner has been dropped from a helicopter. This is why it is so very important to choose the right running shoe.

Choosing the Right Running Shoe

   Time was, of course, when there were no running shoes, only “sneakers,” which were bulky objects that cost $12 and said “U.S. Keds” on the side and had essentially the same size, weight, and styling characteristics as snow tires. But today’s topflight running shoe is a triumph of sophisticated, computer-designed, laser-augmented, fully integrated, infrared, user-friendly technology and space-age materials, packed with dozens of medically proven health and safety features, and all combined into a small and lightweight unit that, surprisingly, costs no more than a black-market infant.

Choosing the Left Running Shoe

   Most running experts and bankers recommend that you wait until you’ve completely paid for the right running shoe, including insurance, before you plunge in and buy the left. When you do, I urge you to shop around for a shoe that is as similar as possible to the other one, except in so far as which foot it goes on. This is assuming that you intend to wear both shoes simultaneously.

What to Wear on the Rest of Your Body

   You should, of course, wear a specially designed $200 Running Garment made from a synthetic material that has a name like the leader of a hostile reptilian alien invasion force in a space movie, such as “Gore-Tex.” The beauty of these materials is that they actually “breathe.” Really. At night, if you listen very carefully to your closet, you’ll hear your garment in there, breathing and occasionally chuckling softly at some synthetic joke it heard from your dress slacks.

Where to Run

   One good place to run is in the Olympic marathon, because (a) you have to do it only once every four years, and (b) you have an armed motorcycle escort, so if people try to thrust liquids and fruits at you, which is a common problem in marathons, you can order your escort to fire a few warning rounds into their chests. The big drawback with running in the marathon, however, is that you have to consort with a bunch of sunken-eyed running wimps, some of whom are not even United States citizens.
   This is why many people prefer to run, unescorted, on the streets of their own neighborhoods. The big problem here is dogs, which will view you as an intruder and may attack you, especially if they can smell fear on your body. This is why the wise runner carries a small spray can of a chemical originally designed for use by mail carriers. If a dog attacks, you simply spray this chemical into your nose, and within seconds you don’t feel any fear of any damn dog. Be careful that you don’t stare directly into the sun.

Chapter 5. Popular Sports

   Mankind’s need to compete in sports goes back to that fateful prehistoric day, hundreds of thousands of years ago, when a primitive man first picked up a club and a primitive ball fashioned from animal hide, tossed the ball aloft, then whomped the club into the sloping forehead of a primitive umpire. Since then, there has never been a civilization that did not engage in sports. Archeologists digging in what was once ancient Sumeria recently found the remains of a primitive stone jockstrap. This goes a long way toward explaining why you see so few Sumerians around.
   In ancient Greece, the Olympic games were considered so important that when it was time to hold them, the Greeks would lay down their arms and invite their enemies to do the same. Then the Greeks would snatch up their arms again, whack their enemies into pieces the size of candy corn, and celebrate by having the Olympic games.
   Back then, of course, the only events were running naked, jumping naked, throwing things naked, and ice dancing. Today, we have hundreds of sports to choose from. In this chapter we’re going to look at some of the more popular modern sports, so you can choose the ones you wish to incorporate into your overall fitness program. As I have stressed repeatedly throughout this book, before you embark upon any new form of physical activity, you should notify your doctor’s answering service.

Ski Jumping

   Ski jumping as a form of exercise has grown immensely in popularity in recent years, especially among people who, because of knee problems, cannot jog. This exciting sport got its start as a symptom of mental illness in northern climes such as Norway and Sweden, where it is cold and dark and there is very little to do except pay taxes. Life is depressing in these countries. Watch any movie by the famous Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, and you’ll notice that all that ever happens in the entire two hours is depressed people sit around talking Swedish, which sounds like Fats Domino records being played backward, only a little too slow. This is what life in Sweden is actually like, except that it often lasts longer than two hours. After a while, the strain gets to people, and they suddenly leap up, barge out, don skis, and launch themselves off giant chutes.
   Americans did very little ski jumping until the television program “Wide World of Sports” began showing a promotional film snippet in which a ski jumper hurtles off the edge of the chute, completely out of control, with various important organs flying out of his body (for a discussion of the various important organs and their functions, see Chapter 1). Fitness buffs saw this and realized that any activity with such great potential for being fatal must be very good for you, so the sport began to catch on. Today, most major hotels offer ski jumping facilities for the convenience of business travelers. Also, thanks to a new, innovative portable device, you can even engage in “simulated” ski jumping indoors! So there’s really no excuse not to get into this popular sport, except a will to live.

Peewee Football

   Although most people think of Peewee Football as a “kid’s game,” more and more fitness-oriented urban professionals with a love of physical contact and a sincere desire to lie about their ages have discovered that there’s no better way to get rid of frustrations than to lean down, take a handoff (by force, if necessary) from a 48-pound quarterback, and plow through an entire team of 8-year-old boys on the way to a 97-yard touchdown run. Not only is it fun, but nutritionists (never mind which ones) tell us that the average 40-year-old male burns off ten extra calories for each child clinging to his ankles!
   One word of caution here: If any other urban professionals have discovered your particular Peewee Football league, you want to make sure they play on your team. This is also a good practice to follow with any unusually large eight-year-old boys.

Racquetball

   This is a popular sport wherein you and another person go into a white room, close the door, and attempt to injure each other in the eye. Originally, this was done by whacking a ball against a wall in such a way that it would bounce back and strike the other person, but your highly competitive modern player tends to ignore the ball and lunge straight for his opponent. This is why you first should determine the playing style of your potential opponent and then decide whether you need a “traditional” or a “competitive” racquet.

Professional Ice Hockey

   Professional ice hockey is an ideal way for the entire family to keep fit. There’s something for everyone: the kids will love participating in a loose, freewheeling sport where everybody makes the play-offs and the only activity that is specifically prohibited is selling narcotics to your opponents on the ice; Dad will appreciate the fact that he’s improving his cardiovascular efficiency while at the same time fleeing large vicious toothless stick-wielding men whose frontal lobes have been battered into prune-sized masses of scar tissue; and Mom will be pleased to learn that many of the players come from Canada, so she’ll have a chance to “brush up” on such French phrases as Arretez vous! Je suis une femme! Cest ma balle d’oeil! (“Stop! I am a woman! That is my eyeball!”)

Golf

   Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing. The basic idea is to stand on top of a hummock, squinting into the distance, wager, then saunter over to another hummock, and so on until it’s time to drink. That may not sound like much exercise to you, but in fact every one of these activities except drinking consumes calories, as shown by this scientific chart.
   GOLF ACTIVITY CALORIES CONSUMED
   Ascending hummock 2.04959
   Squinting 0.00035
   Wagering 0.00102
   Descending hummock 1.84958
   Sauntering to next hummock 4.02013
   Saying things like “You certainly did bogey that par-six eagle nine-iron wedge, Ted! Ha ha!” 0.00076
   Tipping wiry youth who carries equipment 0.00007
   Thus we see that in the course of a typical “round” of golf, lasting just four hours, you could burn off enough calories that you could then go out and eat the better part of a slice of Wonder bread with only a minor weight gain.

Swimming

   Swimming is one of the best forms of exercise, provided you remember to follow these simple safety rules:
   1. NEVER SWIM IN A LAKE OR RIVER. These contain snapping turtles, which have no natural enemies and therefore grow to the size of motel units, plus they tend to be irritable because they mate for life. Lakes also contain giant lake-dwelling carp, which will watch you from the loomy depths with their buggy eyes, wondering with their tiny carp brains whether you would fit into their mouths.
   2. NEVER SWIM IN THE OCEAN. The ocean contains creatures that make the giant lake-dwelling carp look like Bambi.
   3. NEVER SWIM IN A SWIMMING POOL. People pee in swimming pools. Oh, I know you don’t pee in swimming pools, and I certainly don’t, but somebody does, which promotes the growth of bacteria, which is why swimming pool owners are always dumping in toxic chemicals, to the point where there is virtually no actual water in the pool, just toxic chemicals and dead bacteria and old pee. This is why, as you may have noticed, the actual owner never gets into the pool. He’s always off pretending he has to do something important involving the filter.

Pig Lifting

   This is probably the quintessential fitness activity for today’s upscale young urban professional, who more often than not will forsake the old-fashioned “three-martini lunch” in favor of going to his posh downtown club, sometimes with an important client, for a hard 45 minutes of pig lifting, followed by a soothing hose-down. More than one major business deal has been forged this way, and the cry “Anyone want to hoist some pork?” is likely to echo down the corridors of power for many years to come.

Fitness for the Business Traveler

   Anyone who travels a lot on business will tell you that it isn’t easy: eating at a different restaurant every night, having the maid leave little chocolate mints on your pillow, ordering a late-night hors d’oeuvre platter from Room Service while you watch in-room movies such as Nubile Olympic Gymnasts Visit the Petting Zoo, and all the other little hassles and inconveniences that go with life “on the road.” But for the businessperson who’s into physical fitness, there’s yet another problem: finding a way to work out. Here are some suggestions.
   Without question, the best way to work out in your hotel room is to turn on the television at the crack of dawn and watch one of the morning workout shows featuring the Obscenely Cheerful Leotard Women. Believe me, there’s no more invigorating way to start the day than to lie in a darkened hotel room and listen to these women leap around and shout encouragement at you until you work up the energy to hurl your hors d’oeuvre tray at the TV screen and order Room Service to send up several orders of pancakes immediately.

Center-City Jogging

   Although a few forward-looking hotels now offer a service whereby a staff person from a third-world nation will do your running for you while you are in meetings, in most cases you must still attend to this tiresome chore yourself. This isn’t so bad if your hotel is located in, say, Nebraska, where the only danger you face on the street is that you might trip over a pig. But it can be a real problem if you’re in a large urban area such as New York City, where the vast majority of the people on the street are drug addicts, pickpockets, muggers, rapists, murderers, or partners in advertising agencies.
   This doesn’t mean you can’t run: it means you must take steps to protect yourself. A gun will do you no good. It would just be stolen. No, what you need is a safety device I designed especially to solve this problem—the Urban Runner’s Simulated Gaping Chest Wound, which operates on the proven scientific principle that no urban resident will go anywhere near a person who is clearly in desperate need of help.
   With your Simulated Gaping Chest Wound strapped on, you can jog anywhere you want in New York City, and you’ll attract no more attention than the apparently deceased persons sprawled on the sidewalks, or the random street lunatics holding lengthy debates with individual oxygen atoms. For extra privacy, you can purchase the optional 3,500 Simulated Maggots Eating Your Body accessory.
   These devices, incidentally, are part of an entire Dave Barry line of Traveling Executive Fitness Products, which also includes the Heavy Briefcase. This appears from the outside to be a normal leather briefcase, but hidden inside is a 350-pound weight!
   (There’s also a roomy compartment capable of holding your cigarette, or part of your pen.) Executives who regularly carry the Heavy Briefcase report a dramatic improvement in arm length.
   The In-Flight Workout Device is a portable device that, when folded up, fits inside a handy steamer trunk that can be carried on board a commercial aircraft, provided you purchase two adjacent first-class seats for it, yet unfolds after takeoff to form a complete “airborne gymnasium.” It features a sophisticated electronic digital computer “brain” that not only monitors your pulse rate, but also has a new and improved electronic circuitry design which we sincerely believe and hope will correct the unfortunate problem whereby it was somehow seizing control of the automatic pilot and steering planes into various mountains, which is, of course, a violation of federal regulations.

Chapter 6. Bodybuilding

   Most of us males, at one time or another, have felt like Joe, the scrawny little wimp in the old Charles Atlas advertisement who was humiliated in front of his girlfriend on the beach when the muscular bully kicked sand in his face. As you’ll recall, Joe sent away for the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course, then came back to the beach with large, bulging, rippling muscles. When the bully returned, he was extremely impressed and suggested that Joe should also apply oil to his body so that it would have a satiny gleam, and perhaps shave his armpits. Before long, they were very close friends and often helped each other select posing outfits.
   You may feel that this is the kind of story that “only happens in comic books,” but in fact it can happen to you, too—provided you have the discipline, drive, endurance, and just plain old-fashioned guts required to procure the necessary steroids.
   Ha ha! Just a little fitness humor there. You don’t need to ingest pharmaceutical substances to develop a major body; you simply have to follow the simple-to-follow instructions in this chapter. But first, let’s answer some commonly asked questions about bodybuilding.
   Q. I’m a man. How large should I let my muscles get?
   A. This depends on the size of your head. See, your body has only a certain number (21,796,349,582) of cells. Each of these cells can be either part of your body or part of your head. This means if you make your body bigger, your head has to get smaller. So you should cease your muscle development as soon as you start noticing the warning signs of severe head reduction, such as:
   Buying lawn ornaments
   Having trouble following the plot on “Dukes of Hazzard”
   Answering to the name “Vinnie”
   If you already meet any of these criteria, you probably shouldn’t do any bodybuilding at all. Of course, if you already meet any of these criteria, you’re probably still trying to figure out how to get this book open.
   Q. Can a woman such as myself engage in bodybuilding?
   A. Of course! Although experts have discovered that a woman can never achieve the large muscle mass and definition of a Mister Universe, she can still, with patience, dedication, and hard work, make herself look grotesque. Or she can simply have large, realistic depictions of centipedes tattooed on her face.
   Q. Once I become huge and muscular, will I still be able to operate a telephone?
   A. Push-button, or rotary dial?
   Q. Push-button.
   A. Probably.
   Now that we’ve answered your commonly asked questions, let’s take stock of your current body. Take off all your clothes and stand in front of a mirror, and let’s make an objective, professional, scientific assessment. Go ahead! Don’t be shy! We can’t help you if we can’t see what we’re working with!
   (PAUSE)
   So! That’s your body, eh? Hahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha! Excuse me. I’m not (choke, gasp) laughing at you, really. I just, ummmmm, I just thought of something funny somebody said to me in 1967. Anyway, looking at your body, I would hahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha haha hahahahahaha! Excuse me. I would say that you hahahahahahahahahahahaha! Whew! Put your clothes back on, okay?
   Using this scientific assessment of your current bodily needs as a guide, let’s look at the various kinds of bodybuilding equipment.

Weights: A Stupid Idea

   Forget about weights. For one thing, they’re very heavy, and for another thing, they wreck your body. Look at what they do to your big-time weight lifters, who have turned into 400-pound hairy sweaty shapeless grunting masses of tissue. And the men are even worse. No, you want to take the new, high-tech, scientific route to a better body, with Nautilus equipment.

How Nautilus Equipment Works

   Originally designed as a way to keep professional football players from having sex before a game, Nautilus equipment has become an extremely popular bodybuilding aid that not only is costly but also takes up a lot of room. This is because it’s actually a series of machines, each specifically designed to develop one of the major muscle groupings (the abductors, the transponders, the trapezoids, the isobars, the quatrains, the bivalves, the Social Democrats, and the gerunds). The idea is that you work a grouping until it can no longer respond to signals from your brain, then you move on to the next machine, and so on until you’ve worked all your muscle groupings, at which time you signal the attendant, by blinking in a prearranged code, that you wish to be bathed.
   I can’t go into great detail here about how the various Nautilus machines work, because it would soon become obvious that I don’t know.

The Trouble with Nautilus Equipment

   The trouble with Nautilus equipment is that to use it, you have to join either a spa or a professional football team, which means you’re going to spend a lot of time enveloped in other people’s bodily aromas. So what would be ideal, if only such a thing were possible, would be if somebody would develop a totally new amazing scientific affordable bodybuilding device that you could use in your own home.

Announcing a Totally New Amazing Scientific Affordable Bodybuilding Device That You Can Use in Your Own Home

   I am very pleased to be able to announce at this time a major breakthrough in the field of home body devices: the Dave Barry Total Person Workout Device. I’d tell you how good it is, but I’d be violating numerous federal statutes, plus I think you’ll be even more convinced by these actual testimonials from imaginary satisfied customers:
   “Your Total Person Workout Device has completely changed my life! For example, I can no longer discern colors!”—A.B., Detroit, Michigan
   “I was being constantly hassled by vicious youths in my urban neighborhood. I sent away for your device, and within a week they had stolen it!”—C.D., Toledo, Ohio
   “What have you done with my wife!”—L.M.N.O.P., Eau Claire, Wisconsin
   What’s the cause of all this excitement? It’s a device that actually costs less than a new home yet yields results.
   Both models come in an attractive designer cardboard box telling you which end is supposed to be up and whether or not you should drop it (no). The price is just $799 for the Basic Model and $1,099 for the Really Nice Model, the main difference being that we check the Really Nice Model for vermin. Of course, if you are in any way the least bit dissatisfied with your Device, you simply have to write an angry letter to the employees at your state Bureau of Helping the Consumer, who probably won’t be there because they get just about every other day off for cretin holidays like Arbor Day.