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Potato Bazooka Humor from Dave Barry
One Potato, Two Potato...
By DAVE BARRY
(NOTE FROM THE MIAMI HERALD LEGAL DEPARTMENT: The activities
described in this column are dangerous and stupid and possibly
illegal and should be performed only by trained humor
professionals who are good at sneaking around. This newspaper
assumes no responsibility or liability for any injuries, deaths,
maiming, cripplings, eyes getting poked out, pregnancies, fires,
riots, ointments or suppositories that may or may not occur as a
result of some moron attempting any of these activities or any
other actions, forfeitures, debentures, indemnifications, and
such other big scary legal words as we may or may not think up at
some future point in time. Thank you.
For more than a year now, alert readers have been sending me
alarming newspaper articles about the "potato gun," a bazooka-
sized device that can shoot a potato several hundred yards at
speeds up to 1,000 feet per second. To give you an idea of how
fast that is, and ordinary potato, on its own will rarely travel
more than four feet per day, even during the height of mating
season.
Potato guns-which have already been banned in some
municipalities-can be easily made from plastic pipe available in
any plumbing-supply store; the explosive force comes from
ordinary hair spray, which is ignited by an electrical spark.
Needless to say I will not provide any specific details
concerning how to construct these devices, because a great many
young people read this column, and they already know how to
construct these devices.
Anyway, I recently got a fax from an individual whom I will
identify here only as "Buzz Fleischman, 810 Pinecrest Dr., Miami
Springs, Fla, 33166, telephone (305) 885-4817." Buzz, who makes
his living performing humor at corporate meetings and other
functions, and who by the way currently has some openings on his
calendar, informed me that he had constructed a potato gun, and
was willing to demonstrate it for the purpose of helping me, as a
responsible adult, better understand just how alarming this
menace is.
We decided to fire the potato gun from the roof of my place
of employment, The Miami Herald (motto: "We Are Still Keeping An
Eye On Gary Hart"). Let me stress that The Miami Herald is a
responsible institution that does NOT ordinarily allow people to
shoot potatoes from its premises. We were able to do it only
because we met the very strict requirement of not asking for
permission. It was a Covert Operation, during which we addressed
each other only by code names except when we forgot. (For ease of
memorization, we both used the code name "Eagle One.")
Once we got up on the Herald roof, we decided to fire the
potato gun toward Biscayne Bay. Our other option was to fire it
toward the city of Miami, which would have been a serious mistake
because hundreds of local residents would undoubtedly have fired
back (and not with potatoes, either).
To load the gun, Buzz stuffed a potato into the barrel and
shoved it down with a pole, then sprayed some Aqua Net Super Hold
hair spray into the detonation chamber. He then aimed the gun at
the bay and pressed the ignition device, and FWOOM, the potato
came blasting out of the gun and went way way WAAAAY out over the
water and landed approximately in Portugal.
As responsible adults, Buzz and I were very alarmed by this
demonstration. We shot off a bunch more potatoes to see if we
would continue to be alarmed, and we were. We also got excellent
result with an onion.
But as any reputable scientist will tell you, the "acid
test" of the alarmingness of this type of device is what happens
when you shoot a Barbie doll out of it. We used the "Gymnast
Barbie" model, which comes with a little gold medal. First we
loaded a potato into the gun, then we put Gymnast Barbie into the
end of the barrel, with just her head and hairstyle sticking out.
Then we pointed the potato gun straight up and FWOOOM up went
Barbie, high in the sky, smiling perkily, waving her arms and
legs gymnastically around inside a cloud of potato atoms before
finally landing in a really unladylike pose.
Needless to say these results were extremely alarming.
Because if the potato gun can be used to shoot Barbie dolls, then
it is only a matter of time before some fiendish criminal mind
thinks of using one to shoot a Kellogg's strawberry Pop-Tart.
So we tried that, too. It was pretty disappointing. The
gun made a noise like "phoo" and spat Pop - Tart fragments a
short, non-alarming distance.
Nevertheless as concerned adults we all need to become
wrought up about this menace.
People should form organizations and write angry letters.
Congress should hold hearings. The Clinton administration
should announce a definite policy and then change it.
Maybe the Warren Commission should get back together.
Also the Defense Department should probably go on Red Alert,
because any day now Portugal is going to start shooting back.
-Dave Barry is a humor
columnist for the Miami
Herald
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