The rancho mirage, even though lets behunt kind of a shithole. [laughter] no. Im just excited that in the new climate its okay to say shithole. Last week it was like the front page of the new york times, cnn was like all shithole all the time. So, its a bright new era and im rancho is a wonderful place. I always feel obligated opinion to the book anymore a little bit obligated to defend my city. I live in miami, moved there in 1986 from the united states. And it has miami us has a bad reputation, i know that. Every year the organization does a poll and asks people what they think of various major meant areas and every year miami some things people like at bit it always cart cart gorized as a dangerous and violent place which hearts those who live there we want to track those people down and kill them because [laughter] its really pretty great. Except during hurricane season, which runs from june through the following june. We just went through i know you have had your natural disasters out here in california women had a rough hurricane season. We had irma, Hurricane Irma, which i dont know if any of you have been through its a different kind of natural disaster, earthquakes happen. With hurricanes the news media have an opportunity to make you crazy, and it starts usually a couple of weeks before the hurricane bees there, shovel you the blob on the radar, and they are basically giving you two messages. They cover the in south floridayou wouldnt believe how intense the coverage is. Basically two messages one is dont panic, two youre probably going to die. Theyre telling you, do things, take in all the objects out of your yard. We bring in disgusting objects out of or yard because they tell you that the hurricane winds can turn any object in your yard into a deadly missile. Ive always wondered what would happen if you left a deadly miss until your yard. Would the turk turn it into a harmless object . Somebody should conduct an experiment to find that out. Anyway, the real craziness gets going a few days before, maybe a week or less before, when after you have been watching these people on the tv, tell you how you dont have to worry because youre going to die, over and over again, and everybody gets crazy and you go to the supermarket and you buy things youll never in a million years use. People come home with many nine volt batteries and your spouse says we dont have anything that uses nine volt bat rid. Well, thats all they had. Just panicked buying and you buy a lot of food. They say you need seven days worth of food. Everybody buys tons and tons of food. We already all have seven days worth of food on bodies most of us. But you buy it and my wife came home with lentils. We have never and as long as ive never said you know what would be great tonight . Lentil. Its like a bag of gravel. Im not even sure what lentils are. You can maybe use it to hit looterred. I dont know. Then thing in is, you have all your food and three days the hurricane gets there, its not there yet, so what you do is eat all the food. And at least your body is saying it wants you to be so heavy that even the winds cant turn you into a deadly missile. I may have told the story before but the worst Hurricane Irma was a few day is without power, not terrible. The worse hurricane was andrew, 92. Went right over what was my house and that was unpleasant for quite a while after that except for one element which is my dogs. At the time of hurricane andrew i had two dogs, a large main dog named ernest and a small emergency backup dog named zippy. Now, you fool californians dont know. You need two dogs in case your main dog goes down in a hurricane. Prior to hurricane andrew, i let earnest and zippy out every morning by a twostage procedure. Going out in the morning is a big deal to the dog. Very excited. Cant believe you thought of it. You do it every single day. Thats a great out. We go out. And ernest and zip where whereas pa twostage procedure. Open the back door and they would run across the patio, which had a screen enclosure around it. Which you need in south florida to keep the mosquitoes from stealing your patio furniture. I open the back door, run contracts the padow to the screen door and wait very agitated, very excited, and i go over and open the screen door and then theyre out any yard. We did it every day for years, back door, screen do yard, and they learned that the way dogs learn a procedure. Comes hurricane andrew and the screen closure is orbiting the earth. It is gone. But the screen door was still there. So some of you are dog owner, you know where im going with this. About a twoweek learning curve. Absolutely true. Open the back dispore they would run to the screen door which had nothing around it but yard because that was the procedure. Why i think the least realistic Television Program ever made was lassie. And it was a good thing because if you recall, lassie whenever anybody did go out with getting lifethreatening danger, especially the little boy, little jeff who later became little timmy and they didnt even notice that. That is how stupid these people were. You fall into the quicksand, every episode is who buys a farm with that much quicksand on it . So a typical episode, timmy in the quicksand, goes racing back to the farmhouse, lassie barking on the screen door, this is the plot in every single lassie. A family of even minimal intelligence would at some point figure out what is going on. Little moron is in the quicksand again, isnt he . The lassie family we go what is wrong, girl . Are you hungry . A real dog would go yes. I am hungry, im always hungry, she would eat, spend the rest of the evening licking herself, forget all about jeff timmy. Then next week they get a new little boy named billy. But lassie would make them go rescue him and they come back to the farmhouse and everybody would be happy, filling out the agricultural subsidy corn. The point i am making, miami is a wonderful city. A new attitude down there, new tourism promotion, come back to miami, we werent shooting at you. If you think about it, miami and ranchoh have a lot in common. Miami is warm and sunny. Ranchoh, miami is hip [laughter] rancho is hip replacement. Miami has a diverse population. Ranchoh is warm and sunny. The list goes on and on. I actually really do love it here. A wonderful audience here. I rely on you year after year to forget the jokes i told the previous year. For example, i told that joke here last year but also i can relate, i am getting old, i turned 70 in july. Im not 70 years old. That makes me a septuagenarian, meaning everything hurts. [laughter] i am 70 or as we say in ranchoh, jailbait. [laughter] it is a big milestone. There are certain milestones you reach in your life as you age. When you start to feel old, you turn 50, those who you remember that, you turn 50 and it is like a horrible thing that happens, it happens to everybody, you get a letter from aarp, the last sound you make before you die. Aarp. Hurry, doctor, he is aarping. It is an abbreviation for the American Association of american persons, asking for it discount on everything. I have nothing against aarp, it is a fine organization. It would hard me to be asked to join it because i am a baby boomer, the key is the baby boomer demographic, no matter how old, wretched, senile and drooling and incontinence we get, we think we are cool. It is hard to be asked to join an organization whose members i see it all the time, waste around their armpit. Apparently in case they need opens the heart surgery, just unzip the fly. But the other thing, when you are 70, all the stereotypes about being 70 are true. Every joke people make about old people is true, the way old people drive. In miami i dont know if you have this year, i call it the seeing eye white system. You know what i am talking about . Where a couple drives, they are always together, but the man drive, always. Why . Because the man drives. The problem is the man can no longer see. So he is out, his wife not that way. One area in my life as a writer where i can see the generational difference most clearly, when you do a book signing and at the end of the book signing, to get their books signed, they want their pictures taken, everyone as a phone, they want a picture with the author and this can happen dozens and dozens of times so over the course of a year i have the same thing repeated maybe thousands of times. Here is how young people do it, they hold up the phone and take a picture. Here is how old people do it. They hold up the phone, frowned at the screen for about 30 seconds, Say Something like i think it is on google. Then they stab at the screen for a while with a forefinger, then hold up the phone again and say smile, they frown and say i think it is making a video. Then they hold up the phone again and say i think i took a picture of me. Then they give the phone to a young person who takes the picture. I have seen that many many times. There are good things about being older. I am a grandparent. I dont know why it has been very cool watching. My son, rob, i have all these vivid memories, one of them involves the day i won a Pulitzer Prize, a big day for me but kind of an odd day for my son who was 7 years old. I was getting ready to go to key west with robert. He was very excited because when we go to key west we would rent a motor scooter and he would ride in the back, love that, one of his favorite things. We are getting ready to go to key west and get called by my editor saying you need to come in right now for a meeting. I said i cant, i am going to key west, janet once you, once you hear now, it is mandatory. Are we going to go there and go to key west . Turns out that was all a setup. They had already been informed about the Pulitzer Prize, two people at the herald, it is a big deal together everybody in the newsroom but they wanted to keep it a secret from me. I get there with rob and all these people gathered in the newsroom and they are about to announce, this is very cool, the miami herald is going to win Pulitzer Prize which i had 0 idea, anything to do with me but just about to make the announcement, and editor who was not in on this shook my hand and said congratulations. At that moment i realized two things, one is that i was going to win a Pulitzer Prize. The other was we werent going to go to key west. There is all this stuff you have to do, ceremonies and parties and stuff. I said rob, bad news, not going to go to key west today. The face fell and i will buy you a nintendo. He had been bugging me and bugging me, i would say no, yes. At that moment two things happened, one is rob jumped into my arms, big smile, janet says we are the editor of the herald and won a Pulitzer Prize, and he took my picture. The next day, the front page of the miami herald, pictures of the two pulitzer winners, my picture was me with my arms around, do gigantic smile on his face and everybody says the same thing, so great, how excited your son was. And he had no idea. To complete the arc of that story, rob is a reporter of the wall street journal. Two years ago he was part of a team who did a story on fraud and won a Pulitzer Prize. [laughter] that was pretty cool. He is a dad, he has a 3yearold. As the grandfather, the honor of my wife, my sons wife is jewish as is my wife. That is what they call him. They didnt come unwrapped, they are did the caribbean. Anyway, my son also married a jewish woman and they had for their son, my grandson, a brisk. For those not familiar with the breasts it is a weird thing. Where a male jewish child circumcised in front of friends and family and there is a deli platter. [laughter] right there in the old testament. There will be pastrami. Sometimes on the same surface. I was chosen to be the guy who holds the baby, not an easy thing to do. Great being a grandparent, some of you are grandparents. Everyone talks about how wonderful grandparenting is, theres nothing like it. From the moment the grandkids come into your home to the moment eight minutes later when you wish to god, please take them away. They have so much energy, we just dont anymore. Works for me is the floor. You have to be a certain age you are not been involved with the floor anymore, just walk around on it, you dont view it as any kind of entertainment, but they want to be on the floor all the time. If you are going to be a grandparent and stuck with taking care of it you will get on the floor. To me it is a lot like north korea, a hostile environment, you go down and dont know how you will get back. Somebody is going to make a fortune inventing a little vests that bring them up to you, explode around and the other thing is how many times did you read the freaking cat in the freaking hat . Anyway, i feel like i want to talk a little bit about the political situation because i want to bring you down. It is a crazy time. How did you do in the Government Shutdown . Pretty brutal . For three days Nothing Happened in washington. Nothing got done. What . I dont know why they do that as a threat. In washington it is usually a serious thing, the rest, shut it down. But i think the current political motive is summed up by the following, for a little while there, oprah was being seriously talked about as a candidate for president of the united states. I read today or yesterday she said she doesnt want to be president , good for her. I have oprah experience i wanted to share with you. When i was on a book tour, backpack, oprah had her daytime show. If you were an author that was the holy grail, oprah could get her people to do anything she wanted them to, to buy your book, by your book. I dont remember what the book was that i was on tour for. I was in st. Louis, my publicist called and said an oprah producer called and once you on the show tomorrow in chicago. We will set that up and you need to talk to her first and make sure this will work for what they want to do. I called oprahs producer and she said we are going the show is called things we do in secret and what you will do is come on the show, admit to some wrongdoing and then make it right, you have Something Like that, you want to be on the show, i tried to think of something bad i had done that i could talk about on television and what i came up with, i told the producer this story that a few years earlier i had been at a hyatt hotel and there was a sign that our towels are 100 coffin cotton. If you want to purchase this they are available in the bookstore, 75 charge will automatically be added to your bill. If you steal our towels we will charge you 75 so i stole the sign. I thought it was pretty funny and i put it in our guests bathroom. Guests enjoy it and so i told the oprah producer that and she said that is perfect. You come on the show, tell the story and we will give the sign back, have a little box you put the sign in and i am thinking know know because i am thinking im in st. Louis, the sign is back in my house in miami and i have to be in chicago tomorrow. We dont have the sign, cant make it happen. I am thinking it occurred to me, at a hyatt hotel in st. Louis. This is like no smoking. I have stolen two signs in the name of making things right on the other show. I always fear the hotel police will catch up with me and i will be sent to a hotel prison where every 30 minutes, housekeeping pounds on my door, do anything to get on tv to sell a book. Offers are that way, different is lying, i once, the most humiliating thing i ever did to get on tv i started with a column i wrote, i used to write a lot of columns based on articles people send me and i got a letter from a woman who is reading a consumer q a column in the jackson, mississippi and i gave my two daughters barbie dolls, and they said them on fire. That was a little vague what that was about. The entire air was we contacted mattel and they informed us they are no longer manufacturing rollerblade barbie. Now i am really curious what this is all about. I decided i would get a hold of rollerblade barbie which i was able to do even though they dont make them anymore. It is a barbie doll but instead of shoes she had rollerblades and the front wheel of the rollerblades was polyurethane wheel, but the weird wheel was a sparking from a flint, like a zippo lighter so sparks would shoot out of her rollerblades which is an idea dreamed up, syrian operations. Because the danger you dont give a child a sparking toy. They are spraying heads hairspray, no such thing. In journalism we like to check our fact. We conducted an expired experiment, went out one evening, and the rollerblade barbie and some hairspray. If you want to try this at home you will get your best results i sprayed a bunch of it on there and stood rollerblade barbie and the underpants did in fact burst dramatically into flames and then my neighbors looked out the window to see this fire and came running out and if you think it is easy to explain why you are squatting in your driveway over a pair of burning underpants hold a barbie doll, you dont know much about journalism. So i wrote that a column about that. Someone at the David Letterman show saw the column and called me and said would you come on davids show and set fire . This is how pathetic we are, authors. I said of course. So they fly me up to new york and wanted to have a rehearsal in that theater and it was flying up there, this is going to be a lot of fun, crazy, wacky thing, i will set fire to two pairs of underpants, sounds like fun but then you get there and 9 million stagehands and executive producers and there is a guy from the Fire Marshals Office so a lot of serious people and none have read the column. The only guy who knew anything about this was the second producer that called me up, the rest, i am just some guy showing up, they got a hold of a rollerblade barbie and rollerblade can and had a bunch of underpants, boxes and briefs and different kinds of hairspray on this table and all these serious new york people gather around and it is not a fun mood. The fire marshal is watching. Im trying to liven it up because this should be fun, sounds like it should be fun. It is really cold which is a significant thing. And i spray thing of the rollerblade, nothing happens and i hear this muttering, what is this about again . Does dave know about this . I am trying to liven this up. Setting fire with a barbie doll and underpants and cant do it and they are not laughing, is to be a segment on the show, getting less and less funny but the highlight came when the fire marshal guy came over to me, very seriously and said we have been trying for a wild to get these underpants catch fire and he goes use can. You are getting more sparks from ken. [laughter] he is a professional. Finally i was able to set fire to a pair of underpants. And humiliating things i have done. I got an article once, and a story about the death of an animal denmark, and african antelope, keeled over and died. They concluded the cause of death, and outdoor opera rehearsal taking place 3 football fields away. And keeled over and died. The obvious, in denmark. Not the question. Gods question, i wrote a column about this, and imagine what could happen to human beings at close range, we should ban this dangerous activity and i have gotten a lot of hate mail over the years and you would think opera people are classy but the nastiest hate mail i have forgotten in my life, if you, the opener, the opener. It was really angry mail from opera people but i got one letter from eugene, oregon Opera Company saying they were putting on an opera which involved a corks. They wanted to know if i would be willing to come to eugene and play the corpse in the opera. Do anything for a column. I went to eugene from miami, a series of smaller and smaller airplanes. Last one, we cant fit you and a pilot in there. And look for a rain cloud. I got to eugene, oregon, a serious, professional opera. My job was to lie on this bed, people shrieked. Really, they are allowed, like nascar allowed human beings. It is hard to lie still. The corpse went on after a little while, i am waiting backstage, they are watching a playoff game, the San Diego Chargers versus the miami dolphins, and investment in this game, and the corpse is sitting there saying you got to go on, get in the bed with the scene. Get back and forth really close and it is right to the edge of the stage, we can keep you uptodate on this. I would be lying there, the voice from behind would go kick a field goal. Really hard if youre a corpse. We have two choices here. I can tell you one more story i might have told you before, i dont even know. Or i can take questions. All right. Over the years i have written many many columns as people have asked is there one that is your favorite, there is. It is not because of the way i wrote it but because what it was about and one of the more amazing examples of human beings solving a problem, sort of an inspirational, overcoming an obstacle but absolutely true story. The beauty of it is the day it happened, there was a tv news crew there to film it. This has been preserved forever on the internet blues people sometimes dont believe this really happened but it did, happened as i described it. If you dont believe me you can go on the internet and see a video of it. The story involves there was a storm off the coast of oregon. When the storm cleared, a whale, a dead whale had washed up on the beach, washed up on the beach, surge didnt take it back was there was a 40 foot long, 8 ton whale. And it was dead and started to rot and stink. I wrote about it and talked to a lot of people who were involved in it but the stench was horrendous and they needed to get rid of this whale and didnt know what to do so they decided to call in the oregon highway department, the oregon state Highway Division. The thinking was a whale is a big thing and a highway is also a big thing, so they should know how to handle that. The news broadcast begins, you can see this on the internet, with a guy named Paul Lindeman who was a young tv reporter, now a radio guy, paul is standing in front of this whale a huge whale. You might say they had a whale of a problem here. He then introduces the head of the oregon state Highway Division crew, serious looking man with a hardhat who is going to talk about how they are going to deal with the whale. He doesnt come out and say they never disposed of a dead whale before but you begin to suspect that might be the case when he reveals that the solution they have arrived at is to use dynamite. [laughter] and sure enough behind him they are digging a hole under the whale putting big boxes of dynamite under the whale. I dont know if they follow the whole procedure and put the orange cones, the guy with the flag in case another whale comes along. And the guy explains the plan, the hardhat and explains, here is the plan. We are going to blow up the whale with dynamite, the whale will then be in little pieces, this these pieces will be eaten by seagulls and other green scavengers and their you will have it, textbook whale disposal. The next scene, backed the camera up behind a sand dune a quarter of a mile from the whale, looking over a dude in. They also backed up the spectators. And quite a large crowd of people showed up for this event because lets be honest with ourselves, if you knew they were blowing up a dead whale anywhere there today . You would not be at this writers festival. So looking over the dune, at the whale, a peaceful scene, seagulls walking around, then you hear a countdown, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, one, then an explosion, big smoke envelops the whale come you cant see the whale at this point at all. Then you hear people cheering. Then you hear one lone voice go oh my god. And then a sphere appears on the camera lens. And then it goes black. What is happening now is gravity. Gravity, which apparently no one had informed the oregon state highway organization about. Gravity is causing, i talked to people who are there that day, the most disgusting thing you ever saw, the rotting inside of the dead whale are now coming down out of the sky, all over the place, all over the beach, all over the spectators, well beyond, some of these are fairly large pieces, we know this because next thing we see is the parking lot where the camera man has run, finally gets his camera cleaned up enough to get running again and you see a car, the entire roof has been caved in by what appears to be a booger the size of a refrigerator. [laughter] when you like to listen to the phone call with that insurance agent. Your car was struck in the parking lot by a whale . A whale from the from the sky. The cameraman goes back to the beach and they run beach where the whale has been, is the whale. It is a different shape now but there is still a huge amount of whale on the beach but there is no longer any seagulls. Maybe some seagull molecules but any intact seagulls are on their way to alaska at this point. What life lessons can we learn from this story . I close with words that if you face a problem in your life, and obstacle in your life and cant figure out what to do about it, forget about your problem and cast your mind back to that whale on the beach in oregon. Whatever you do do not ask the Florida State Highway Division to help
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