Dave Barry

From Includipedia, the inclusionist encyclopedia

David Barry, Jr.
Born	Template:Birth date and age Armonk, New York
Occupation	Humorist Author
Nationality	Template:Country data United States American
Spouse	Beth Barry (1976-1993), Michelle Kaufman (1996-)
Website	http://www.davebarry.com

For the English musician, see Dave Berry (musician).

David Barry, Jr. (born July 3, 1947) is a bestselling American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist who wrote a nationally syndicated column for the The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005.

1 Biography
2 Journalism career
3 Style
4 Works
5 See also
6 Notes
7 External links

[edit] Biography

Barry was born in Armonk, New York, where his father, David Barry, Sr., was a Presbyterian minister. He was educated at Pleasantville High School where he was elected class clown in 1965. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Haverford College in 1969.

As the son of a minister and an alumnus of a Quaker-affiliated college, Barry avoided military service during the Vietnam War by registering as a religious conscientious objector.

Barry married his second wife Beth in 1976 and they had one child, Robert, in 1980. The Barrys divorced in 1993. In 1996, Barry married Miami Herald sportswriter Michelle Kaufman; they had a daughter, Sophie, in 2000. All are mentioned regularly in Barry's columns, though his divorce was notably not discussed.

[edit] Journalism career

His journalism career began as a reporter with the Daily Local News, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he "covered a series of incredibly dull municipal meetings, some of which are still going on."^[1]

In 1975, Barry joined Burger Associates, a consulting firm. He taught effective writing to business people. In his own words, he "spent nearly eight years trying to get various businesspersons to ... stop writing things like 'Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosures,' but ... eventually realized that it was hopeless."^[1] In 1983, Barry was hired by Gene Weingarten as a humor columnist for the Miami Herald. Barry won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988, "for his consistently effective use of humor as a device for presenting fresh insights into serious concerns."^[2]

For a 1992 American Booksellers Association convention, several authors including Barry formed a band for charity: The Rock Bottom Remainders ("remainder" is a publishing term for a book that doesn't sell). The members of the band, which has at various times included Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson, Mitch Albom, Kathi Goldmark, Roy Blount Jr., Barbara Kingsolver and Matt Groening, "are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud," according to Barry. Several high-profile musicians including Al Kooper, Warren Zevon and Roger McGuinn have performed with the band, and Bruce Springsteen sat in at least once. The band's road tour resulted in the book Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude, which is now out of print.

CBS broadcast the situation comedy Dave's World for four seasons, from 1993 to 1997, based on the books Dave Barry Turns 40 and Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, starring Harry Anderson as Barry, and DeLane Matthews as his wife, Beth. In an early episode, Barry was cast in a cameo role. The program was canceled shortly after being moved from Monday to the Friday night death slot.

Barry's first novel, Big Trouble, was made into a motion picture; directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, it starred Tim Allen, Rene Russo and Dave's World alumnus Patrick Warburton, with a cameo by Barry. The movie was originally due for release in September 2001, but was postponed shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks because the story involved smuggling a nuclear weapon onto an airplane.

Articles written by Barry have appeared in publications such as Boating, Home Office Computing and Reader's Digest, in addition to the Chicken Soup for the Soul inspirational book series. Two of his articles have been included in the Best American Sportswriting series. One of his columns was used as the introduction to the book Pirattitude!: So You Wanna Be a Pirate? Here's How! (ISBN 0-451-21649-0), a follow-up of Barry's hand in creating International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Barry helps organize the Herald Hunt, formerly the Tropic Hunt, an annual puzzlehunt in Miami.

He has run several mock campaigns to be elected president of the U.S.

On October 20, 2004, Dave Barry announced that he would be taking an indefinite leave of absence of at least a year from his weekly humor column with the Herald in order to spend more time with his family. He said that he would continue writing humor and children's books and working on filming the screen adaptation of his book, Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, which was released in 2005; it premiered at several film festivals, to mediocre reviews, and is available on DVD, though a theatrical release seems unlikely. On December 28, 2005, Barry said in an interview with Editor and Publisher that he will not resume his weekly column, although he would continue such features such as his yearly gift guide, year in review, his weblog, as well as an occasional article or column.

[edit] Style

Barry has defined a sense of humor as "a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge."^[3]

When distinguishing fact from hyperbole, Barry frequently asserts: "I am not making this up". Among his favorite topics are exploding or flaming items (cows, whales, vacuum cleaners, toilets, Pop-Tarts, Barbie dolls, etc.), dogs lacking intelligence, live blogging the television series 24 and amusing government studies.^{[citation needed]} He recently led the charge to save the Wikipedia exploding cow page, but other members of the Wikipedia community had that entry deleted. Barry also has libertarian political leanings.^[4] He labels various posts on his blog with long acronyms, such as OIYDWYMTTY(NY)G ("or if you don't want your mom to think you're (not your) gay") and WBAGNFARB ("would be a good name for a rock band"), no doubt poking fun at unnecessarily long internet acronyms.

The phrase "would be a good name for a rock band" is an observation Barry often applies to phrases that pop up in his writing, such as "The Moos of Derision" ^[5], "Decomposing Tubers" ^[6] and "Hearty Polyp Chuckles" ^[7]. In keeping with this, Barry's website contains a fairly sizeable list of phrases that would be a good name for a rock band.^[8]

In his humor books, Barry often cites a humorous phrase or image, which he then mercilessly repeats throughout. Notable examples include the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States and giant prehistoric zucchini in Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway. He continues to reference these things, occasionally with fake subtlety (e.g., "The H*****-S**** T*****") long after he believes the reader no longer finds them funny.