Alert Reader Points Out that Dave Barry Is Back

'A MATTER OF LAUGH OR DEATH' -- The second jolliest man in America (right behind Mel Gibson) is writing essays again!

One of my all-time favorite heroes is Dave Barry. (He’s number 3 on my list, right behind Jesus and Carl Yastrzemski.) In January, Dave announced that he created a Substack account. The reason he’s now posting essays on Substack is, as he explained, “...because everybody’s on Substack.”

I think we all know he really means: “...because Bill Dunn started writing on Substack last year, and now I want to steal some of his ideas rather than him stealing mine, as he’s been doing for the past 35 years.”

In my defense, I never knowingly stole any ideas from Dave Barry. Oh wait, is that what the word “knowingly” means? Well, in that case, I never stole any ideas from Dave and then reprinted them word-for-word. That would be wrong. Instead, I channeled my inner 7th grader, the anxious kid who had a report due the next morning and was frantically using a Bic Cristal pen to paraphrase each sentence from the Encyclopedia Britannica’s volume “G” article about the Galapagos Islands, to make it look like his own original thoughts.

Now, of course, I’m kidding. I never knowingly stole anything from Dave, either word-for-word or paraphrase. However, I may have once or twice “unknowingly” borrowed an idea from The Master. For example, here’s a portion of a column I wrote about 15 years ago:

I recently discussed my inability to wrap Christmas gifts. I wrote, “When people see a gift that I have wrapped, they immediately assume it was wrapped by a one-armed, nearsighted chimpanzee on crack. If I am wrapping something the size of, say, a shoe box, and use a piece of wrapping paper the size of a bed sheet, I still somehow end up not quite covering the entire gift. During Christmas season my family does not let me get anywhere near scissors and Scotch tape. It’s just too dangerous.”

After that column appeared in the newspaper, an Alert Reader sent me an email and pointed out that many years earlier Dave Barry had written about wrapping Christmas gifts. He wrote, “I also wrap gifts, but because of some defect in my motor skills, I can never COMPLETELY wrap them. I can take a gift the size of a deck of cards and put it in the exact center of a piece of wrapping paper the size of a regulation volleyball court, but when I am done folding and taping, you can still see a sector of the gift peeking out.”

In that column I sheepishly acknowledged: I’m a really big Dave fan who owns all his books, and sometimes when I write something I sincerely think is an original thought, it actually was planted in my head a decade earlier from reading one of his books.

Then I added: Here is surefire proof that I have not stolen Dave Barry’s work: my way of writing about those particular subjects was infinitely less funny than Dave’s. If I were going to consciously steal his stuff, I would’ve used his much more clever way of phrasing things. So, to all you Alert Readers out there, I can honestly say I have never swiped anything from Mr. Barry. (Especially the idea of referring to you as Alert Readers. I thought that one up this morning.)

Anyway, I am very excited that Dave Barry is once again writing humorous essays and posting them on Substack. Make sure you sign up to be one of his subscribers; it’s only five bucks per month. No one wins a Pulitzer Prize and has a TV sitcom made about his life if he isn’t really talented. (I mean, look at Walter Duranty and “Joanie Loves Chachi” for proof.) And if you haven’t already done so, sign up to be one of my subscribers, too. It’s only zero bucks per month, since the law of supply and demand dictates that an anonymous schlep from Connecticut has somewhat less financial leverage than a famous guy with an army of 10 million loyal fans.

(Notice he is left-handed, like all literary geniuses)

I’m hoping that Dave will see this enthusiastic endorsement of his new Substack page, where I am basically encouraging my 392 unpaid subscribers to give him money, and in return encourage his 10 million followers to check out my Substack page (still free). I think there’s a good chance that will happen — about the same chance that I’ll be named the next Pope.

(The column “A Matter of Laugh or Death” appears each week in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, CT.)

Peruse the archives at MerryCatholic.substack.com and MerryCatholic.blogspot.com