Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus by Dave Barry Page A

always looking for new ways to get paid for being motionless, so I said sure.
    Eugene is located in southwest Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything. To get there, you have to take a series of “commuter” airplanes, each one smaller than the last, until finally there isn’t room for both you and the pilot, and you have to fly yourself. “Eugene is that way!” the airline personnel tell you, gesturing vaguely. “Just look for the rain cloud!”
    But Eugene Opera turned out to be a very professional outfit featuring baritones, sopranos, bassoons, tremors, mezzanines, etc. I attended a brief rehearsal, during which the professional opera singers practiced shoving me off the bed and gave me invaluable dramatic tips on playing dead (“Don’t move”). They also filled me in on the plot of
Gianni Schicchi
, which involves a wealthy thirteenth-century Florentine named Buoso Donati, who is pursued by a seemingly indestructible android from the future.
    No, wait, that’s the plot of
Terminator II
. The plot of
Gianni Schicchi
is that Buoso is dead, and a bunch of people sing very loudly about this in Italian for 45 minutes of opera time, which, for a normal human, works out to roughly a month. I spent most of this time lying still on the bed with my mouth open. This turns out to be very difficult. When you have to hold perfectly still in front of hundreds of people, you become a seething mass of primitive bodily needs. You develop overpowering urges to swallow, twitch, scratch, burp, emit vapors, and—above all—lick your lips. “YOU NEED TO LICK YOUR LIPS RIGHT NOW!” is the urgent message your brain repeatedly sends to your tongue. You find yourself abandoning all concerns about personal hygiene and praying that Puccini was thoughtful enough to include a part in
Gianni Schicchi
where the singers decide, for whatever reason, to lick the corpse’s lips.
    But this is not what happens. What happens is that the singers, while searching for Buoso’s will, shove the corpse off the bed, the result being that I had to hold perfectly still while upside down, with my face smushed into a low footstool and my legs in the air, through several arias (“aria” is Italian for “song that will not end in your lifetime”). Fortunately, under my nightgown I was wearing tights, so theaudience was never directly exposed to my butt, which could have triggered a potentially deadly stampede for the exits.
    Finally the singers put the corpse back up on the bed, so for the rest of the opera I could just lie there thinking explicit bodily thoughts. At times I also listened to the music, and I have to say that, although I am by no means an opera aficionado (literally, “guy”), I was deeply moved by one part, which was when a stagehand, Doug Beebe, crept up behind my bed, unseen by the audience, and whispered, “Dolphins 21, Chargers 8.” He was updating me on an important NFL playoff game in which I had a strong artistic interest. And although the Dolphins ultimately lost, I definitely enjoyed performing in
Gianni Schicchi
and did not find the experience to be the least bit fatal, so I sincerely apologize to all the opera fans I offended.
    Except for the gas poles who wrote the nasty letters.

BORRRINNNG!

    I was at an airport, reading a newspaper, when the World’s Three Most Boring People sat down next to me and started talking as loud as they could without amplifiers. They were so boring I took notes on their conversation. Here’s an actual excerpt:
    First Person (pointing to a big bag):
That’s a big bag
.
    Second Person:
That
is
a big bag
.
    First Person:
You can hold a lot in a bag like that
.
    Third Person:
Francine has a big bag like that
.
    First Person:
Francine does? Like that?
    Third Person:
Yes. It holds everything. She puts everything
in that bag
.
    Second Person:
It’s a big bag
.
    Third Person:
She says whatever she has, she just puts it in
that bag and just boom, closes it up
.
    First Person: