May 4, 2004 (Tuesday) 8:00 p.m. Reading Page Hall 135 Western Avenue UAlbany, Downtown Campus "the funniest man in America" - New York Times

Pulitzer Prize winning humor columnist Dave Barry has earned renown for his outrageous observations about work, parenting, home ownership, recreation, consumer fads, and other aspects of day-to-day American life. Currently syndicated in more than 500 newspapers nationwide, Barry is also the author of 25 humor collections and two novels. Almost all of them have landed on bestseller lists.

Though he makes his home in Florida, where he has written for the Miami Herald since 1983, Barry is a New Yorker, born and bred. The best-selling columnist spent his boyhood in Armonk, New York, where he "distinguished himself by not getting in nearly as much trouble as he would have if the authorities had been aware of everything."

"What makes Mr. Barry funny?" mused New York Times Book Review contributor Alison Teal, "Easy. He grew up in an all-WASP upper-middle-class neighborhood, played Little League baseball, mowed his parents’ lawn and attended the Episcopal Church…. He gets his humor from the blandest slice of American pie."

After graduating from Haverford College with a B.A. in English in 1969, Barry worked for four years at a small town newspaper, the West Chester, Pennsylvania Daily Local News. He also worked briefly for the Associated Press in Philadelphia. Finding journalism both dull and restrictive, he left the profession and spent eight years as a writing instructor with a business consulting firm. On the side, he contributed a regular humor column to the Daily Local News. A few other small town newspapers picked up the column. Finally, in 1983, Barry’s work caught the attention of the Miami Herald.

"[They] offered me a job and didn’t even ask me to move to Miami," Barry recalled in a Contemporary Authors interview, "[they] just said they would hire me. So I accepted and finally did move to Miami, possibly because of brain damage."

Barry also began publishing book-length collections of his humor columns, averaging more than one per year. His earliest books usually sported titles that parodied mass-market self-help guides and do-it-yourself manuals. The books included The Taming of the Screw: Several Million Homeowners’ Problems Sidestepped (1983), Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only Nine Months, with Tools You Probably Have Around the Home (1984), and Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead (1985). More recent bestsellers have included Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), Dave Barry Turns Forty (1990), Dave Barry’s Guide to Life (1991), Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up (1994), The World According to Dave Barry (1994), Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus (1997), Dave Barry Turns Fifty (1998) and Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down! (2000).

Barry’s most recent humor collection is Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies But Some Actual Journalism (2003). The book deals with such subjects as presidential elections, cheating by athletes, outwitting "smart" kitchen appliances, Humvees, and the stupidity of Floridians. The book also features two serious meditations on the tragedies of 9/11.

In recent years, Barry has published two best-selling novels. A comic thriller set in South Florida, Big Trouble (1999) features a quirky cast of criminals and law enforcement officials in pursuit of a nuclear "suitcase bomb." Publishers Weekly said, "The zany plot has more twists than the I-95 Miami airport interchange and more pratfalls than a Three Stooges comedy…. Barry is indisputably one of the funniest humorists writing today, and his fiction debut will not disappoint a legion of fans." The Boston Globe called it, "the funniest book on nuclear terrorism ever written."

Barry’s second novel, Tricky Business (2002), features an odd collection of Floridian retirees, Cuban exiles, pothead rockers, and drug-running bad guys on an ill-fated gambling boat excursion. Writing for Knight-Ridder News Service, Charles Matthews wrote, "[the novel] speeds along the way a well-made comic thriller should…. And best of all, he gives us some great characters. He has an almost Dickensian gift for creating both comic characters and real people, and letting them interact."

Dave Barry is also a guitarist for the literary rock group, The Rock Bottom Remainders. The group’s line-up for the 2003 tour also included Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Mitch Albom, and Scott Turow, among others.