Copyright The HUMOR Project, Inc 1991 -- All rights reserved
This first appeared in Laughing Matters Volume 8, Number 1

Dave Barry materialized in Armonk, New York in 1947. He attended public schools, where he distinguished himself by not getting in nearly as much trouble as he would have if the authorities had been aware of everything. He is proud to have been elected Class Clown by the Pleasantville High School class of 1965.

Dave went to Haverford College, where he was an English major and wrote lengthy scholarly papers filled with sentences that even he did not understand. This is probably the genesis of his popular saying, "Longevity is the soul of wit." He graduated in 1969 and eventually got a job with the West Chester, Pennsylvania newspaper, where he covered a series of incredibly dull municipal meetings-- some of which are still going on today.

In 1975 Dave joined Burger Associates, a consulting firm that teaches effective writing to businesspersons. He spent nearly eight years trying to get various businesspersons to for God's sake stop writing things like "Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosure," but he eventually realized that it was hopeless. So in 1983 he took a job at The Miami Herald, and he has been there ever since, although he never answers the phone. In 1988 he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, pending a recount. His column (syndicated by Tribune Media Services) appears in several hundred newspapers, yet another indication of the worsening drug crisis.

Dave has written a number of best-selling books, including: Babies and Other Hazards of Sex... Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead... Claw Your Way to the Top: How to Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week... Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States... Dave Barry's Guide to Marriage and/or Sex... Dave Barry's Greatest Hits... Dave Barry Turns 40, etc.

Dave lives in Miami with his wife, Beth; their son, Robert; a large main dog, Earnest; and a small auxiliary dog, Zippy. Make him an offer.

Laughing is allowed and aloud when people read Dave's columns and books. His labor has induced laughter in countless "Alert Readers" (as he calls them). Dave is arguably (if you really wanna fight!) one of the funniest people on earth-- or on any of the other eight planets! He can be outrageous... down-to-earth and up-to-mirth at the same time. In fact, Dave was described in The New York Times Book Review as "the funniest man in America," a claim he has been quick to disavow, except for the plaque on the front door.

Let's now open the door to Dave's office where this unbelievable interview took place (actually 43% of it is believable-- including the fact that he signed one of his books for my parents-- whom he's never met: "To Paula and Al, my very closest personal friends.").

Joel Goodman: In each issue of the magazine we feature an interview with somebody famous in the world of humor or comedy... or someone who lives in Miami.

Dave Barry: Oh, you went through all of them, so now you're with me.

JG: Well, you live in Miami, so you definitely qualify! My mother and I are big fans of yours-- it must be genetic! Actually, one of the strongest parts of our relationship is that she faxes me your column which appears in The Washington Post each week.

DB: Across state lines?

JG: Yes, it's illegal, I know, but we do it surreptitiously, so it works out all right. Rumor has it that you started-- or at least you were created-- by a computer program designed by Gary Larson's father. Is this anywhere close to the truth?

DB: Yes, that's true. There weren't any computers then, but that didn't stop him. He was that kind of man. He was that kind of genius.

JG: Incredible.

DB: Gary Larson and I are brothers; a lot of people don't realize that. We're also sisters, which is really... the key thing here would be to get a lot more people to write letters to Gary and stress to him the financial obligation he has to me as a result of that.

JG: I'm sure Gary would love to respond to that.

DB: He's not recognized at all. Not only are we brothers; he's the father of my child. We're very close.

JG: In your early years, other than your relationship with Gary, did your mom and dad have anything to do with your present crazy career path?

DB: I don't think I'd be here without my mom and dad. It's always hard to believe. My parents were funny. My mother in particular was funny. It really is my mother whose life view I absorbed. She had exactly the same sense of humor that I have. She was not capable of taking things seriously, which isn't to say she was like a carefree person. She really wasn't; she had a lot of troubles. But she had an enormously developed sense of absurdity. She used to say to me, "Son, it's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick." Things that you're supposed to take seriously like funerals she had trouble with.

JG: I've always noticed that the first three letters in the word funeral... are fun.

DB: Maybe the funeral industry could use that.

JG: What influence did your dad have on your writing career?

DB: My dad loved Robert Benchley and had his books, and when I was a kid I started reading them. I just thought they were wonderful. I couldn't believe that a grown-up could write that way. A lot of his pieces-- and I guess this is the inevitable destiny of all humor columnists-- seem dated now. I don't think there's any way around it. If you're going to appeal to people topically then you're going to ultimately look old to their kids. He was wonderful, and his style was wonderful.

I think I learned more about writing-- humor writing-- from reading him than anything else, because of what he didn't do-- he didn't obey any of the restrictions and he didn't copy anybody else. I deal with a lot of humor writers. Inevitably, give them a little while and they try to sound like somebody or they sound like all other humor writers. Benchley was really different. He died, you know. So that's that.

JG: There's no way out.

DB: He died anyway, but then the first three letters in funeral are fun.

JG: Was he reborn through your son? I don't know if your son Robby was named for him.

DB: No, but I should probably tell people that. My son, Robby, is named for about... we have about 90 friends named Robert, so we tell them all Robby was named after them... in order to generate an inheritance or two. It hasn't worked out yet, though.

JG: Oh, you've got to wait until they die.

DB: Actually, he's a girl, but we still named him Robby just for the financial interest.

JG: Well, I don't think he'll mind once he turns 21.

DB: I was thinking of naming him Donald Trump, but no.

JG: You started playing your humor trump card at Haverford College, which was the mispronunciation of Harvard. How did you hone your skills there?

DB: We had to slur it a lot-- "I'm going to Haaaaarvard." If you were cool people didn't know. I wrote a couple of humor pieces for the Haverford newspaper, and I wrote a couple for my high school newspaper. I liked to write, but I wasn't the humor columnist or anything like that. When I got out of college, it never occurred to me I could make a living as a humor writer.

JG: I had read that you'd started in the West Chester paper as a sort of humor bootcamp-- writing about sewage and zoning.

DB: I was a reporter. It really was funny, but you weren't allowed to say it. The really funny thing about journalism-- most of the stories we cover are ridiculous, but we're never allowed to say that. In covering the state legislature, it's at least 93% bozo. You have to write down the bozo quote and the bozo counter-quote, as if these were really rational intelligent human beings, as opposed to somewhere below like fenceposts.

JG: Will Rogers used to say he had the entire government working for him as a speech writer. He never had to make it up. In fact, you and I first had our paths cross at the Gerald Ford Symposium on Humor in the Presidency (see Volume 4,

DB: There have been ups and downs. During the Nixon-Agnew era, it was a golden era, and then, well they've all been pretty funny. Since I've been doing this, all the presidents have managed to come through with their

JG: There would be a lot of unemployment among cartoonists and humorists otherwise.

DB: Instead of talking about leadership, say "Let's elect Edward Kennedy. He's easy to caricature." It would be a whole new industry. Or Dan Quayle - "Mr. Quayle, what are you looking at all the time?" You know he's got that fish-like stare? "What do you see?"

JG: Maybe he got it just because he's in shock from reading that dedication in your book, Dave Barry Turns 40: "For Dan Quayle, who proved to my generation that, frankly, anybody can make it." Now, after you "graduated" from the paper in West Chester, when did you know that you "had it" or could "make it?"

DB: Yeah, I got shots for it, but it never really goes away.

JG: When did you get the shot for writing humor?

DB: It was very gradual. I get all these letters from kids who are still in college who want to be humor writers. It's funny because they seem to feel that there's a way to do it-- that there's a career path you follow, someplace you go and apply. "Humor Columnist Wanted. We're looking for..." And that's, of course, not true.

It's like any other kind of writing. Either you slowly become it or you don't, but it's almost completely unrelated to where you are, what courses you've taken, who you know or anything else. All that matters is: Do you sit down and write or don't you? If you do it, it really doesn't matter what you are. You could be a research biologist; you will still become a writer. If you don't, you could go to every seminar in the world and talk about writing all the time and subscribe to Writer's Digest, but if you don't sit down and write a lot, then you won't be a writer.

So, I never thought of myself as a writer, but I was. I had a series of jobs during which I kept writing all the time. I began doing it more and more, and I began to be compulsive about it. Then I got my column syndicated in a small way.

JG: Did you knock on the doors of the syndicate yourself?

DB: I mailed my column to a couple of syndicates, and they returned it with bottle stains. Actually, they would mail back..."Please pour this on your manuscript.... We want it fresh." I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I never set out to be a humor columnist; I just gradually realized I was one. But even then I didn't think I would make a living at it. I just thought, "Well this is something I really want to do and I'll just keep doing it, but I'll have a job, too." The

By the time The Miami Herald asked me to come work for them by offering to pay me an actual full-time salary to write humor, then I thought, "Gee, now I'm a humor columnist." I was in my 30's before I said, "Hey, this is what I do now. This is my job." And it's a great job; I love it.

People sort of see you as something besides what you are. I'm a writer. I basically sit in a room alone and write. To get attention... there are two ways to do that... you withdraw or you make people laugh and get them to like you that way. So I've always done that. I can't help myself. I look at the world and it's funny.

JG: You take issues that people don't have control over or just minor toe-stubbings of the day, and help people maintain internal control by at least being able to laugh about them.

DB: I don't really think that I'm helping them. I think that I'm more likely reflecting what they think. I'm convinced that most people inside think: (a)they're crazy and (b)they're weird and really different from anyone else. It's very important that they maintain a serious Walter Cronkite-style exterior, because if people knew how weird they really were then everyone would laugh at them and make fun of them.

All that humor people do, either stand-up comics or writers, is say, "Nah, everyone's that way. I'm that way." And people love that. When they see someone else saying, "God, I'm really afraid to get on an airplane, because I do not see how they can fly," I don't see how they do it either. It really bothers me, you know? Like the pilot's going, "How the heck does this work?"

People ask, "Where do you get your ideas?" I really think that that's the most overrated part of any kind of humor. If you listen to good stand-up comics or read humor writers, you see they're always talking about things that people already know. They're always identifying what you think more than they're saying, "You never would have thought of this in a billion years." They may use vivid imagery or timing or various other comic devices to make you suddenly see clearly what you think instead of what you say, but that's the great skill in humor-- to be able to tell people what they already think. They love it, and then the tension just flows out in the form of laughter.

Half the time we're talking about death and horrible things. People, when they finally have those things honestly discussed, though, feel an enormous release. It's beginning to sound like humor's an important thing. Maybe we should be federally subsidized.

JG: Humor could be the federal fun-ding for our social insecurities. In short, it seems that humorists are people who plagiarize reality.

DB: That's a good way of putting it. Or they very directly identify what people think about people's perception of reality.

JG: What are some of the devices or tricks-of-the-trade you use?

DB: There's a lot of mechanics involved in any kind of humor. Stand-up comics don't tell jokes. What they do is they use timing. Anyone can tell a joke, but only a skilled stand-up comic can present a whole situation in such a way that you are drawn into it. It's the same with humor writers. You can take the same idea and present it any number of ways, and some will be funny and some won't.

Judo-- that's a name I've given for a kind of writing where you-- and I rely on it a lot-- constantly are making readers think they know where you're going with anything. Even the whole attitude of the piece-- you appear to be strongly in favor of something and then somehow it becomes suddenly clear to readers that everything you're saying about this thing is horrible. You get the readers to lean, and then you just push them over. I think that's funny!

I also use exaggeration, metaphor, and run-on sentences a lot. There are many things I do that work that are just mechanics which are almost unrelated to the actual joke that I'm trying to get across. As I say, that's sort of an overlooked part of it. I think people want to believe that when you write humor you just sit down and it comes right at you.

JG: As Red Smith once said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

DB: For me, by the time I've actually written a sentence for the 45th time so it's the way I want it, it doesn't strike me as funny at all. I hate this sentence. I ought to put it on the ground and spray insecticide on it.

JG: Maybe the funeral director ought to pick it up and bury it.

DB: You know, the last six letters in funeral director are rector.

JG: The first four letters of director are "dire". What are some of the dire consequences of writing? Perchance you could have a title like "Books and Other Hazards of Writing." Are there any things other than deadlines that might lead you to need the services of a funeral director in this business?

DB: Book tours. You can only eat so much minibar food, and I've eaten it all. Just whizzing from town to town, no trying to whiz in any of these towns. "Do you have to go the bathroom? Sorry, that ought to be Tuesday. We have a spot in Toledo where you might be able to."

Another is "celebrity". I want to stress that I am low-level celebrity. I am below the TV weatherperson. In Miami I have a certain amount of celebrity because my picture appears in the paper and people recognize me. I've decided I really like success. I like people to read my column, buy my books, know who I am, like what I do. But I really hate celebrity. I don't like people coming up to me, wanting to talk to me. It's not that I don't like talking to people. I love to talk to people, but I like them to talk to me, Dave Barry-- the guy they know.

JG: As opposed to this thing or symbol.

DB: I really don't like when they treat me, either as this wonderful person which I'm not or this humor machine, which I'm not or just this sort of freak, which I am, but I don't want them to treat me that way.

If they would just mail me money in a shoe box, that would be so much better really. The thing is that the people mean well, they really mean well, but I've always been an on-the-side observer making wisecracks, and I don't like being on center-stage. That's a drawback.

JG: Given all that, I really appreciate your giving me permission to write your unauthorized biography.

DB: With the naked pictures and everything.

JG: So, tell me more about your little shops of humor. Do you write at home?

DB: Yeah, I came into the office today because my desk is piled up deep, and I have many calls to answer. This is no place to write. You can't write with people around.

JG: Your mailbag-- you mentioned getting letters. Aside from people sending you money, do you take MasterCard and VISA, too, by the way?

DB: I prefer large bills. Federal Express them.

JG: Do you get a mailbag of any size? I know you have many Alert Readers-- as you call them-- writing to you.

DB: I get a lot of mail. My mail is actually pretty funny. I enjoy reading it. A lot of people are just weird and they're sharing their weirdness. Some people are furious, but those are in a way the funniest letters you get. They just can't believe that I can write this kind of stuff.

JG: What is it that they're ticked off about?

DB: Well one I just read... I wrote a column awhile ago about how women are biologically incapable of watching more than one television show at a time. Men can watch as many as 60, which is true. This woman wrote me this furious letter about the sexist scum that I am. She wrote that "Soon we're going to be able to reproduce ourselves and we won't need guys anymore." It's the level of rage always astounds me, the people who don't have any "lighten-up" mode apparently.

JG: Ah, one of the occupational ha-ha-hazards of the humor writer.

DB: More people have read my book, Babies and Other Hazards of Sex. Actually, what I've concluded about the book industry-- the key thing is not to write books that people read. The key thing is to write books that people will give to other people. I don't think anyone has ever read one of my books. They give them to people. I'm writing a book that's called "Dave Barry's Gift Book." There are no words in it; it might not even open. It would just be a gift. It would be like a gift soap that no one ever uses, a fruitcake that no one ever eats.

JG: Now for some other food for thought... one area of explosion in this funny and not so funny field are the health implications.

DB: I get a lot of letters like that-- "I was in a hospital having an operation, and I read your column..."

JG: And I died...laughing.

DB: "And my stitches broke and here's the bill." People say that. So, if people say it, it must be true. I think it can't be good to be real serious, because I think you'd go crazy. You can't live in this world and take it seriously without having something bad happen to your stomach at some point. Whatever it does for your health, I would rather live 45 years laughing much of the time than 80 years and never laugh.

JG: Til laughter do us part... Where did you and Beth first meet each other?

DB: We met at The Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania in '71 or '72.

JG: I was just with cartoonist Mike Peters who sends his regards to you. (See Volume 8,

DB: I think that's true of my wife too. If she had ever known how famous Mike Peters was going to become, she never would have married him either. Beth does not care for the celebrity part, even more than me. She hates being Mrs. Dave Barry. She hates being asked, "Is he funny at home? What's he like? He must be a riot." She just can't stand that. She's a very independent person, and she's a very private person.

JG: So she'd rather be Mrs. Mike Peters?

DB: Yes. She is Mrs. Mike Peters, actually. Mike and I are married to several women in several different cities, and that's one of the benefits of being a syndicated columnist or cartoonist. That's what we mean by syndication.

JG: Oh sindication. I see. I hear also that you're the funniest man in your family. Is this true? Of course, you are the only man in your family.

DB: I would say that I am by far the most successful in my family at making a living without actually doing anything useful. So in that sense you could argue that I am the funniest one. I'm definitely funnier than my wife, Beth. Robby, I mean he's only a kid, so he's funnier than me all the time. So are my dogs.

JG: Now, Robby's birthday is coming up. In addition to your books, are there any that are "required reading" for him?

DB: I was really happy when he read Winnie the Pooh, just 'cause those are still funny books. I always try to push him towards The Hobbit and other books I enjoyed when I was little. He likes to read books about how much coins are worth. Once every five minutes Robby discovers a coin that's worth at least $112,000. "Robby, I really don't think..." "Yeah, look at this!" I don't know who puts these books out.

JG: That's his college education right there. Now, does he collect baseball cards? I'm on a mission. My son, Adam, as you know is a baseball cards tradesman.

DB: No, he trades his baseball cards with other kids for coins. Robby thinks coins are a better investment. But again, to the extent that he's interested in baseball cards, it's only because they're worth money, which is really the tragedy what happened to baseball cards.

Grownups go buy these cards and put them into these plastic sleeves and put them into vaults. I think there should be a new rule that the card is not worth anything unless it's been flipped against a men's room wall... and it had to be a certified boys' bathroom in a junior high school that it was flipped against.

JG: One final question: Aside from creating the flip side of times people are up against the wall, what are you going to be when you grow up?

DB: Mostly I just get older, without ever actually reaching maturity. That is my current plan.

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