or, he turned 40. about 20 years ago! jeesh, I didn’t realize it had been so long.
as usual, Dave Barry had me laughing out loud on and off throughout the book:
on marriage
“Because all of the grand claims your husband made, back when you were dating, about how you two were going to be Equal Housework Partners, turned out to mean in actual practice that he occasionally, with great fanfare, refills the ice-cube tray.” (p. 37)
on politics
“But the biggest problem I have with both major political parties is that they seem to be competing in some kind of giant national scavenger hunt every four years to see who can find the biggest goober to run for President.” (p. 124)
on memory
“If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Right? Even as you read these words, your brain, which cannot remember more than two words of your wedding vows, is cheerfully singing:
Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed…” (p.165)
and on the aging body. etc.
Yet.
and yet. I don’t read the paper anymore, and I hardly ever read Barry’s column online (though sometimes gems are sent my way), so it had been a while. and I realized reading through it now that his humor works because he is, in his own words, his own description of his humor here, “irresponsible and vicious”. and it was funny but it was way too true sometimes to be really funny, you know? so I had mixed feelings all the way through.
Barry is not always just making jokes, and there is a short section of the book in which he is deadly serious, and makes a brutal point, and I’m glad he did that; what he said was important. but it lead me even further into this strange melancholy.
what a strange creature I am if I get depressed reading Dave Barry. I think it is a sign of how detached I’ve become from my “own” culture…
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