American Spectator American Spectator

...You're going to have to give that Pulitzer Prize back to Roxanne Pulitzer now, and you're probably going to have to give her the van, too...

...And this serious flaw is that it's impossible to write a book review of Dave Barry Slept Here which is more amusing than the book...

...That's Dave all over the place, chronicling the American chronicle from salad to Sanka in a narrative worthy of the name narration...

...For example, he might notice that the nation is not observing a sufficient quantity of idiot official days and weeks, such as National Tractor Mechanic Awareness Week, and so he introduces a bill to correct this problem...

...When to wear hats: "A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life...

...We bet Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...And, although that's not what they spell at all, this just goes to show that we Americans are not the type to let some little thing like com'Really...

...it isn't true...

...9. The Supreme Court declares the bill to be unconstitutional...

...You'll probably get out of the mental hospital in five or six years, and when you do there'll be a fat book contract waiting...

...drives a Volvo that doesn't even have a nude babe on a Harley-Davidson painted on the side...

...6. Everybody goes on vacation for a couple of weeks...

...In short, this is a highly authoritative, extremely useful book, and it would be very rude of you not to buy it...

...doesn't ride around in something with an "If it's rockin!---Don't come knockin' " bumper sticker...

...Why, the whole point of book reviewing is to write a book review which is more amusing than the book...

...In short, this is a highly authoritative, extremely useful book, and it would be very rude of you not to buy it...

...This thing, starting with how you can is etiquette for the real world, develop an entirely new and interesting the world in which one is considered persona for yourself, complete with ancestors, to replace the boring and Dave Barry, author of Dave Barry Slept socially incorrect persona that you Here: A Short History of the United probably have now...

...How to flatter your sex partner: "Restrict quantitative compliments to men...

...We're not making this up...

...You can tell it's important by the way it begins: 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 string of pearls...

...So he did, and he thought it looked pretty good, so he decided to keep it...

...The Horrible Wedding —Things to Say When Dying Mr...

...They would swoop down upon saloons and smash all the whiskey bottles, then go back to their headquarters, fire up reefers as big as Roman candles, and laugh until dawn...

...Group dancing: "The purpose of the bunny hop, like the purpose of many group activities, is to do extensive damage that cannot be attributed to any one person...

...the Temperance Movement, led by Carrie Nation, who headed an organization called Scary-Looking Women with Hatchets...

...So he did, and he thought it looked pretty good, so he decided to keep it...

...4. Needed amendments are attached to the bill, for example an amendment designed to protect the American consumer from the potential dangers of aspirin bottles manufactured by unfair foreign competitors...

...If Mr...

...A guy like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...You're going to have to give that Pulitzer Prize back to Roxanne Pulitzer now, and you're probably going to have to give her the van, too...

...But Dave's an American and the last four letters of the word "American" spell "eat me...

...This thing, starting with how you can is etiquette for the real world, develop an entirely new and interesting the world in which one is considered persona for yourself, complete with ancestors, to replace the boring and Dave Barry, author of Dave Barry Slept socially incorrect persona that you Here: A Short History of the United probably have now...

...S ome of the other topics that are addressed by Mr...

...because it's impossible to forget what we don't know beans about, therefore we retain everything Dave tells us...

...When Dave Barry doesn't use male hair mousse all his hair just falls straight forward the way the Beatles' hair used to before they got old and, in one case, dead...

...But Dave obviously spent his eighth-grade American history class drawing radically lowered '52 Mercury coupes and surreptitiously eating Pez and keeping a pet mouse in his desk and reading articles about Nazi girls in their underwear in copies of True magazine hidden inside his textbook...

...Also he is discreet...

...O'Rourke happens to be a personal friend of mine, and I know for a fact that at the core of his being is a large natural wad of graciousness...

...The only possible thing you can do with a family like this," he writes, thoughtfully, "is kill them...

...To aid), then by God you can count on him understand the rules of etiquette in not to mention this fact when he reviews such a world takes a rare individual, a book that you have written...

...He drives a big van with custom windows with Levelor blinds in them and captain's chair-type swivel seats and a doubleloud heavy metal tape cassette system with reverb...

...O'Rourke and no other etiquette expert in the known universe are: —Being Insane —The Proper Use of Self-Destruction —Food Fights —Regurgitation Courtesy —Heroin —When Should a Man Get an Erection...

...Finally, after years and years and years of effort, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...O'Rourke happens to be a personal friend of mine, and I know for a fact that at the core of his being is a large natural wad of graciousness...

...Wilson's eighth-grade American history class drawing radically lowered '52 Mercury coupes in our three-ring binders...

...These are the words that begin the Declaration of Independence...

...This time the Republicans, determined to show the nation that they liked a joke as much as the next person, nominated George Bush, who selected as his running mate young "Dan" Quayle, a Vietnam-era veteran who had received the coveted Round Smiley Face decoration in recognition of the time he accidentally stapled his sleeve to the desk and was trapped for nearly two hours...

...15.95 P. J. O'Rourke 0 pen a copy of Dave Barry Slept Here and Dave Barry's writing grabs you in the very first sentences of the introduction and if it grabs you like that again, when you hardly even know it, we think you should slap the stuff with a sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace lawsuit...

...Then we book reviewers sit down at the old Remington portable and, in three minutes flat, type out a book review reading, "Aw, get out of here, your mother's calling you...

...George Bush hair and the pseudo-colonial ranch in Dayton Acres with a Chevrolet Celebrity in the attached garage...

...publishes a great big book called something like The American Circus Bear on the Unicycle of History...

...This time the Republicans, determined to show the nation that they liked a joke as much as the next person, nominated George Bush, who selected as his running mate young "Dan" Quayle, a Vietnam-era veteran who had received the coveted Round Smiley Face decoration in recognition of the time he accidentally stapled his sleeve to the desk and was trapped for nearly two hours...

...He is the kind of man who, when it's time to settle the bar tab, is quick to say: "Here...

...Then he spends more years wearing his pinkies to a nub on large, complicated word processor keyboards and more years yet compiling a huge, long index with all his friends' names in it...

...Fortunately, just then the Civil War broke out...

...Dave Barry Slept Here is more highly informative than ordinary history books because ordinary history books are filled with facts which we immediately forget so we might as well not have read the ordinary history books, which most of us didn't...

...This is not some what he has given us, in Modern Man-namby-pamby tome about irrelevant ners, is a set of "rules to live by in a issues such as which knife you're sup- world with no rules...

...4. Needed amendments are attached to the bill, for example an amendment designed to protect the American consumer from the potential dangers of aspirin bottles manufactured by unfair foreign competitors...

...Sportsmanship: "A good winner always praises the efforts of his opponents...

...To aid), then by God you can count on him understand the rules of etiquette in not to mention this fact when he reviews such a world takes a rare individual, a book that you have written...

...because it's impossible to forget what we don't know beans about, therefore we retain everything Dave tells us...

...Group dancing: "The purpose of the bunny hop, like the purpose of many group activities, is to do extensive damage that cannot be attributed to any one person...

...Or maybe we are thinking of the Gettysburg Address...

...What does Mr...

...He even has some States, is a nationally syndicated colum- thoughtful suggestions as to what you nist for the Miami Herald...

...Which is why I strongly recommend Such a person is P. J. O'Rourke, and Modern Manners...

...He also includes, as a bonus, a whole section on how to speak French without really learning anything about it, with many useful phrases such as "Vouz faire de hell out of here...

...This was the last straw: The American public simply would not tolerate a president who would fritter away eighteen minutes humming during a crucial juncture...

...We're not kidding...

...Meanwhile we book reviewers have been kicking back around the house watching Emmanuelle III on the VCR, drinking blue margaritas and betting the Pistons over the Lakers...

...You sure have a big ass' is not considered flattery by most women...

...The point is, these words are written on an extremely historic yellowed document that we, as a nation, keep in a special vault in Washington, D.C., where, each working day, it is cherished by employees of the Document Cherishing Division of the Federal Bureau of Historic Yellowed Objects...

...This resulted in so much social turmoil that in 1918 Congress decided to have a total prohibition on alcohol, which was approved early on a Saturday morning by a vote of 9-2, with 416 members unable to attend because of severe headaches...

...P. J. O'Rourke, investigative humorist for Rolling Stone, is author of Republican Party Reptile, Holidays in Hell, and, most recently, Modern Manners...

...plete ignorance of spelling and our entire national history stand in the way of telling everybody what's what...

...Dave Barry Slept Here is more highly informative than ordinary history books because ordinary history books are filled with facts which we immediately forget so we might as well not have read the ordinary history books, which most of us didn't...

...But Dave Barry Slept Here is already pretty short, only 192 pages in big print with drawings...

...Let my publisher pay for this...

...7. The bill is reported back to committee...

...And Dave is so annoyingly and consistently more amusing than a book review that we book reviewers are reduced to the pathetic expedient of just quoting passages of his book verbatim—a technique which, when used anywhere except a book review, is called plagiarism: When Lincoln assumed the presidency, he was clean-shaven, but one day he got a letter from a little girl suggesting that he grow a beard...

...O'Rourke recommend...

...2. The bill is referred to a committee, which forms a subcommittee for the purpose of going to Geneva, Switzerland, to see if there are any facts there that might be useful...

...drives a Volvo that doesn't even have a nude babe on a Harley-Davidson painted on the side...

...That's Dave all over the place, chronicling the American chronicle from salad to Sanka in a narrative worthy of the name narration...

...Or maybe we are thinking of the Gettysburg Address...

...No matter...

...Note this analysis of the contribution of women and minority groups during the colonial era: Another important fact that we just now remembered is that during the colonial era women and minority groups were making many contributions, which we are certain that they will continue to do at regularly spaced intervals throughout the course of this book...

...Naturally by the time we book reviewers have selected and retyped a bunch of quotations such as these we have worked ourselves into an immense jealous snit, and this is the point at which we turn our heretofore remarkably fair and impartial review of Dave Barry Slept Here into a bitter, vicious ad hominem attack on Dave Barry...

...Nothing looks more stupid than a hat...

...The era immediately after World War I came to be known as the "Roaring Twenties," and with good reason: Each of the years had a "twenty" in it, as in 1923, 1925, and so forth...

...We're not kidding...

...These are the words that begin the Declaration of Independence...

...Although it doesn't make us vote again, thank God, or we'd punch it...

...He covers every-posed to use to butter your scone...

...doesn't ride around in something with an "If it's rockin!---Don't come knockin' " bumper sticker...

...ing family---ˆ`tiresome Dad with his mailman shoes and his job selling wholesale something, and out-of-it Mom with her Mrs...

...Nothing looks more stupid than a hat...

...When Dave Barry writes something of this type. . . heavy industry started to rise, thanks to the work of heavy industrialists such as Andrew "Dale" Carnegie, who made a fortune going around the country holding seminars in which he taught people how to win friends by making steel...

...the Temperance Movement, led by Carrie Nation, who headed an organization called Scary-Looking Women with Hatchets...

...But Dave's an American and the last four letters of the word "American" spell "eat me...

...or your publisher...

...T o wit: Did you know that Dave 1 Barry actually won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988 but still cannot keep a part in his hair...

...What's important here is that we have, at last, found a historian who actually knows less about American history than we do...

...That is one who combines the acute social the kind of etiquette sensibility we are awareness of Miss Manners with the talking about here...

...carries us right up to the 1988 presidential election, and it can just put us down this minute...

...Also he is discreet...

...8. The bill is reported to the police...

...Or maybe we are thinking of the Gettysburg Address...

...And Dave is so annoyingly and consistently more amusing than a book review that we book reviewers are reduced to the pathetic expedient of just quoting passages of his book verbatim—a technique which, when used anywhere except a book review, is called plagiarism: When Lincoln assumed the presidency, he was clean-shaven, but one day he got a letter from a little girl suggesting that he grow a beard...

...5. The bill is reported out of committee...

...broad moral outlook of Darth Vader...

...carries us right up to the 1988 presidential election, and it can just put us down this minute...

...So there, Dave Barry...

...As damaging as the revelations were, matters got even worse for Nixon when one of the tapes was found to contain, at a crucial juncture, an eighteen-minute gap where nothing could be heard except a hum...

...book and shorter, too...

...What does Mr...

...16.95 Dave Barry T can't think of a person who's better qualified to write a book about manners than P. J. O'Rourke...

...He makes it all up...

...He drives a big van with custom windows with Levelor blinds in them and captain's chair-type swivel seats and a doubleloud heavy metal tape cassette system with reverb...

...spends years shuffling index cards in musty JFK memorial libraries...

...Naturally by the time we book reviewers have selected and retyped a bunch of quotations such as these we have worked ourselves into an immense jealous snit, and this is the point at which we turn our heretofore remarkably fair and impartial review of Dave Barry Slept Here into a bitter, vicious ad hominem attack on Dave Barry...

...But Dave obviously spent his eighth-grade American history class drawing radically lowered '52 Mercury coupes and surreptitiously eating Pez and keeping a pet mouse in his desk and reading articles about Nazi girls in their underwear in copies of True magazine hidden inside his textbook...

...A short while later, he got another letter from the little girl, this time suggesting that he wear mascara and rouge and maybe a simple DAVE BARRY SLEPT HERE Dave Barry/Random House/192 pp...

...You can tell it's important by the way it begins: 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 string of pearls...

...Let's start over...

...And D.B.S.H...

...For example, he might notice that the nation is not observing a sufficient quantity of idiot official days and weeks, such as National Tractor Mechanic Awareness Week, and so he introduces a bill to correct this problem...

...publishes a great big book called something like The American Circus Bear on the Unicycle of History...

...He'd be making a speech, and he'd start to raise his voice, and it would look like there might be some actual emotion going on inside him, but then suddenly his tongue would flick out to snare a passing insect, and the whole effect would be ruined...

...They will be out in space, states the miraculous Mayan calendar...

...broad moral outlook of Darth Vader...

...For instance, we defy you to find a more highly informative description of how a bill becomes a law than this aptly titled section of Chapter Seven: How a Bill Becomes a Law 1. A Member of Congress notices that there is some problem afflicting the nation...

...spends years shuffling index cards in musty JFK memorial libraries...

...This is not some what he has given us, in Modern Man-namby-pamby tome about irrelevant ners, is a set of "rules to live by in a issues such as which knife you're sup- world with no rules...

...And this serious flaw is that it's impossible to write a book review of Dave Barry Slept Here which is more amusing than the book...

...Not only that but Dave Barry drives a van...

...A guy like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...Meanwhile we book reviewers have been kicking back around the house watching Emmanuelle III on the VCR, drinking blue margaritas and betting the Pistons over the Lakers...

...15.95 P. J. O'Rourke 0 pen a copy of Dave Barry Slept Here and Dave Barry's writing grabs you in the very first sentences of the introduction and if it grabs you like that again, when you hardly even know it, we think you should slap the stuff with a sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace lawsuit...

...ing family---ˆ`tiresome Dad with his mailman shoes and his job selling wholesale something, and out-of-it Mom with her Mrs...

...Not so with D.B.S.H...

...They would swoop down upon saloons and smash all the whiskey bottles, then go back to their headquarters, fire up reefers as big as Roman candles, and laugh until dawn...

...Wilson's eighth-grade American history class drawing radically lowered '52 Mercury coupes in our three-ring binders...

...MODERN MANNERS: AN ETIQUETTE BOOK FOR RUDE PEOPLE P. J. O'Rourke/Atlantic Monthly Press/300 pp...

...O'Rourke provides many fascinating and possibly even true facts, such as that "the Weather Underground is now a softball team with games scheduled against the FBI and several grand juries...

...3. The bill is reported back to the committee, which holds hearings and receives testimony from interested parties such as the American Aspirin Bottle Manufacturers Association...

...Sportsmanship: "A good winner always praises the efforts of his opponents...

...2. The bill is referred to a committee, which forms a subcommittee for the purpose of going to Geneva, Switzerland, to see if there are any facts there that might be useful...

...When Dave Barry writes something of this type. . . heavy industry started to rise, thanks to the work of heavy industrialists such as Andrew "Dale" Carnegie, who made a fortune going around the country holding seminars in which he taught people how to win friends by making steel...

...If Mr...

...Dave Barry Slept Here begins with that early epoch known as "The Dawn of Time/Life Books": . . . the Mayans were constructing a culture down in Mexico featuring a calendar so advanced that it can still, to this very day, tell you where various celestial bodies such as Venus and the Moon will be at any given moment...

...S ome of the other topics that are addressed by Mr...

...O'Rourke provides many fascinating and possibly even true facts, such as that "the Weather Underground is now a softball team with games scheduled against the FBI and several grand juries...

...Fortunately, just then the Civil War broke out...

...He'd be making a speech, and he'd start to raise his voice, and it would look like there might be some actual emotion going on inside him, but then suddenly his tongue would flick out to snare a passing insect, and the whole effect would be ruined...

...Not only that but Dave Barry drives a van...

...What's important here is that we have, at last, found a historian who actually knows less about American history than we do...

...So there, Dave Barry...

...or your publisher...

...They will be out in space, states the miraculous Mayan calendar...

...For instance, we defy you to find a more highly informative description of how a bill becomes a law than this aptly titled section of Chapter Seven: How a Bill Becomes a Law 1. A Member of Congress notices that there is some problem afflicting the nation...

...No matter...

...Let my publisher pay for this...

...No matter...

...Not only is Dave Barry Slept Here highly informative, it's also brimful of critical exegesis, whatever the word "exegesis" may mean...

...O'Rourke offers just tons of sensitive advice on these and other topics, including: • The social advantages of claiming that you have at least one black ancestor: "Up North, confess your bloodline freely...

...And D.B.S.H...

...He covers every-posed to use to butter your scone...

...The Cheese stands alone...

...Pulitzer Prize-winning' Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry has written an important new history of the United States called Dave Barry Slept Here...

...As damaging as the revelations were, matters got even worse for Nixon when one of the tapes was found to contain, at a crucial juncture, an eighteen-minute gap where nothing could be heard except a hum...

...Furthermore, if Dave Barry doesn't quit writing important, amusing, and short books which fail to make book reviewers look important, amusing, andtall by comparison, we are going to tell the Pulitzer Prize Committee the truth about Dave's "commentary...

...Then he spends more years wearing his pinkies to a nub on large, complicated word processor keyboards and more years yet compiling a huge, long index with all his friends' names in it...

...He is the kind of man who, when it's time to settle the bar tab, is quick to say: "Here...

...There's nothing a northerner likes better than a black person who is completely white...

...We bet Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...Tell your ghostwriter, 'I did it because of the pole lamps.' Every sensitive person will understand...

...Pulitzer Prize-winning' Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry has written an important new history of the United States called Dave Barry Slept Here...

...O'Rourke happens to be in your hotel bathroom because you have graciously allowed him to use your toilet after graciously allowing him to consume the vast majority of the little scotch bottles from your mini-bar, and he happens to a selfless public servant if one resigns notice, amongst your private and per- from one's government post before one sonal toiletry items, a small container is indicted, and in which a typical of hair mousse that is certainly no Hollywood couple has to have at least business of his (although he could cer- four children together before they are tainly use some kind of hair-grooming considered to be seriously dating...

...Why, the whole point of book reviewing is to write a book review which is more amusing than the book...

...Then we book reviewers sit down at the old Remington portable and, in three minutes flat, type out a book review reading, "Aw, get out of here, your mother's calling you...

...plete ignorance of spelling and our entire national history stand in the way of telling everybody what's what...

...That is one who combines the acute social the kind of etiquette sensibility we are awareness of Miss Manners with the talking about here...

...Some of us, personally, didn't think this was possible because some of us spent our whole year in Mrs...

...Finally, after years and years and years of effort, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...Not so with D.B.S.H...

...You see, here's how the book-reviewing racket works...

...He also includes, as a bonus, a whole section on how to speak French without really learning anything about it, with many useful phrases such as "Vouz faire de hell out of here...

...6. Everybody goes on vacation for a couple of weeks...

...There's nothing a northerner likes better than a black person who is completely white...

...Not only is Dave Barry Slept Here highly informative, it's also brimful of critical exegesis, whatever the word "exegesis" may mean...

...O'Rourke offers just tons of sensitive advice on these and other topics, including: • The social advantages of claiming that you have at least one black ancestor: "Up North, confess your bloodline freely...

...The Cheese stands alone...

...Clearly this was a ticket that even the Democrats would have a difficult time losing to, but they worked at it and managed to come up with the ideal candidate in the form of "Mike" Dukakis, a man who, because of a tragic genetic defect, was limited to the same basic range of expressions as an iguana...

...That's right, just like Janet Cooke at the Washington Post...

...8. The bill is reported to the police...

...There is only one serious flaw to Dave Barry Slept Here, although it is a very serious flaw indeed...

...You sure have a big ass' is not considered flattery by most women...

...book and shorter, too...

...Note this analysis of the contribution of women and minority groups during the colonial era: Another important fact that we just now remembered is that during the colonial era women and minority groups were making many contributions, which we are certain that they will continue to do at regularly spaced intervals throughout the course of this book...

...He even has some States, is a nationally syndicated colum- thoughtful suggestions as to what you nist for the Miami Herald...

...True, that's not a very amusing book review but it's more amusing than an Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...The point is, these words are written on an extremely historic yellowed document that we, as a nation, keep in a special vault in Washington, D.C., where, each working day, it is cherished by employees of the Document Cherishing Division of the Federal Bureau of Historic Yellowed Objects...

...George Bush hair and the pseudo-colonial ranch in Dayton Acres with a Chevrolet Celebrity in the attached garage...

...The point is, these words are written on an extremely historic yellowed document that we, as a nation, keep in a special vault in Washington, D.C., where, each working day, it is cherished by...

...The only possible thing you can do with a family like this," he writes, thoughtfully, "is kill them...

...He makes it all up...

...it isn't true...

...We bet Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...O'Rourke recommend...

...P. J. O'Rourke, investigative humorist for Rolling Stone, is author of Republican Party Reptile, Holidays in Hell, and, most recently, Modern Manners...

...These are the words that begin the Declaration of Independence...

...Dave Barry Slept Here begins with that early epoch known as "The Dawn of Time/Life Books": . . . the Mayans were constructing a culture down in Mexico featuring a calendar so advanced that it can still, to this very day, tell you where various celestial bodies such as Venus and the Moon will be at any given moment...

...can do about your current, embarrassTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 23 LITERARY LOGROLLING P. J. O'Rourke reviews his pal Dave Barry's new book...

...Tell your ghostwriter, 'I did it because of the pole lamps.' Every sensitive person will understand...

...True, that's not a very amusing book review but it's more amusing than an Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...Furthermore, if Dave Barry doesn't quit writing important, amusing, and short books which fail to make book reviewers look important, amusing, andtall by comparison, we are going to tell the Pulitzer Prize Committee the truth about Dave's "commentary...

...Although it doesn't make us vote again, thank God, or we'd punch it...

...This was the last straw: The American public simply would not tolerate a president who would fritter away eighteen minutes humming during a crucial juncture...

...When Dave Barry doesn't use male hair mousse all his hair just falls straight forward the way the Beatles' hair used to before they got old and, in one case, dead...

...Boy, is Dave going to be sorry when he finds an ad of bitter, vicious hominems clawing their way through the jalousie windows of his Florida room...

...We visited Dave Barry at his hotel room in New Orleans during last year's Republican party convention and personally caught him having a can of male hair mousse in his bathroom...