I'll Mature When I'm Dead by Dave Barry Read Free Book Online Page B

there is no need.)
    I’m not saying that I’m as big a celebrity as Brad Pitt, although when you look at the following side-by-side comparison of Brad and me in chart form, you’ll see that there’s not really such a huge difference: 11
    Over the years, my celebrity status has provided me with certain “perks” that are not available to the public. For example, I was once a Grand Marshal in the Main Street Parade at Walt Disney World. This is a great honor, and if you ever get offered a chance to do it, you should definitely refuse. Number one, you have to wear mouse ears, so if you’re over six years old, you look like an idiot. Number two, despite the fact that you are the Grand Marshal of the parade, you aren’t really in the parade . At least I wasn’t.
    What happened was, they put me and my co-marshal, author Ridley Pearson, into an antique fire truck along with Daisy Duck and Clarabelle the Cow. I have nothing against either of these veteran Disney characters, but let’s be honest, their careers are not currently sizzling, especially in the case of Clarabelle, who hasn’t had a hit cartoon since roughly the Civil War. (Also, not to be catty, but she has had a lot of work done on her udder.)
    So anyway, Ridley and I and our families got into this fire truck with Daisy and Clarabelle, and then they sent us out into the Magic Kingdom, where literally fifty thousand people had been waiting restlessly in the heat to see the legendary Main Street Parade with all its spectacular floats. The problem was that the parade did not follow us . I don’t know if it was a prank or what, but for some reason the parade floats remained back in the staging area for at least ten more minutes. This meant that we were out there basically naked, with no float cover, two idiots in rodent ears sitting next to a B-list duck and cow in a fire truck creeping through this vast sea of restless expectant tourists at the speed of a tectonic plate. It was horrible. We had been instructed to wave, so we grimly waved for the whole parade route (roughly eighty-two miles) but hardly anybody waved back. You could see the puzzlement on their faces as they put down their video cameras and asked each other: “Who are these dorks?” And: “Where’s the actual parade?” And: “Is that Carl Hiaasen next to Clarabelle? ”
    Another “perk” that comes with being a minor celebrity is that I occasionally have the opportunity to interact with celebrities who are actually famous. For example, I once shared a microphone with Bruce Springsteen. This happened because I belong to a rock band called The Rock Bottom Remainders, which consists mostly of authors. Our biggest celebrity author is Stephen King, although he keeps a fairly low profile. For example, once I went to a baseball game with him, and he wore a ball cap, so most people didn’t recognize him. Just before the game started, the actor David Birney arrived and sat two rows in front of us. The woman sitting behind him wanted to get his autograph, but she didn’t have a pen. So she turned around, all excited, and asked if anybody had a pen. She borrowed one, used it to get David Birney’s autograph, then handed the pen back to: Stephen King.
    Anyway, The Rock Bottom Remainders get together once a year to play benefit concerts on behalf of literacy. You may have noticed that for some time now, literacy has been in a steep decline. I’m not saying the Remainders are totally responsible for this, but we’re probably a factor, because as a band, we suck. We routinely play entire songs without ever reaching full agreement on the question of what specific key we are in. So when people hear us perform, their reaction often is: “Maybe literacy isn’t such a great idea.”
    Anyway, one time the Remainders were performing at an event in Los Angeles, and Bruce Springsteen was there, and he joined us onstage for one song. As it happened, he and I shared a microphone, just a couple of celebrities