dave barry
I threatened to write a post about Dave Barry and the writing gods apparently thought that was a very very bad idea. They have tried to prevent me from carrying out this idle threat by attacking my computer with gremlins. Now my WordPress page is shrinking practically out of sight. I can barely see what I am typing. You don’t believe me? Here’s what it looks like at the moment;
They obviously tricked me into pressing the secret shrink button on my computer, and I have no idea where to find the un-shrink features. Not only that, but my Facebook page is automatically translating everything it can into French. They really don’t want me to tell you about Dave Barry. And why do you suppose that is?
Well, Dave Barry may actually be me from a parallel dimension. He started writing for The Miami Herald in the early 80’s, at about the same time I started teaching. He retired from that in 2004 after winning a Pulitzer Prize and started writing humorous novels…. the same thing I started doing when I left the job I loved and was good at. Okay, so I am stretching the analogy to the point that all the buttons are popping off its shirt… but the point is, we are alike in some ways and I admire his work and I steal things from it whenever I possibly can. Like this post. I deeply admire the way he can say witty and pithy things. Like some of these quotes;
So, you see, he is very good at doing what I want to be good at. He is a humor columnist and all-around imitation Mark Twain. And I have read and loved his novels. Especially the Peter Pan things he writes with a partner.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
So, I will leave this post here even though I could talk for hours about how Dave Barry makes me laugh. I have to stop. the words on the screen keep getting smaller and smaller, and my old eyes are about to fall out of my head.
Catch a Falling Star 
Love Dave Barry. The first quote sums him up nicely.
😀 I was tempted to use twenty quotes or more to sum him up. I’m glad one did so well.
Read Dave in my Miami Herald for years. He did a reading at the Miami Book Fair in 1985 and I met him. Garrison Keillor was there too. However, Mark Twain could not be there.
Wow! Did you ever get lucky! I love Garrison Keillor too. But even though he is from neighboring Minnesota, I have never gotten to see him in person.
When I was a GP in Northern Ontario, in the early 90’s, I avidly read Dave’s stuff in The Winnipeg Free Press. I think he’s hilarious. I unapologetically continue to use some (well lots) of his techniques in the columns I write at http://www.lateralthinkingdepartment.com. Hail to all fellow Dave Barry fans. I too met Dave a couple of months ago, at a book-signing event in Miami. Neither Garrison Keillor nor Mark Twain was there.
Reblogged this on Catch a Falling Star and commented:
Here’s an old post about an old humorist who isn’t me, but who I wish was me… or I wish I was him… or him is good and me is good but him as me would be good-er… or something like that.