I Am Not Making This Up

Dave Barry, beloved humorist and social commentator, retired from his weekly column last week. I, for one, will sorely miss him. Slate has a nice send off piece, very befitting of someone whose 22 year career was riddle with booger jokes. When I was growing up I used to read his column religiously as well as all his books. He certainly helped define my sense of humor. When I was in high school, I had a brief stint writing a humor column for the newspaper. To say that I borrowed Dave Barry's style would be an understatement. Of course, I was leagues behind him. I do think that some of him has bled into my more satirical writing, such as my intense love-affair with parenthetical comments, as well as his qualifying statements declaring the veracity of his too-funny-to-be-false stories. He's one of the few writers who could consistently make me laugh out loud. Of course, I haven't read him much recently, but I do go back every now and then and pick up one of his books from the eighties or early nineties. Back when he used to be funnier.