I absolutely swear I'm not making this up...
ALISON ROTH'S DAVE BARRY TRIBUTE PAGE
Dave Barry is the funniest man alive. If you don't know who he is, you should be beaten repeatedly with a paperback copy of Curious George Can Bite Me. However, since I used my last Curious George book to prop the broken leg of my computer desk, I guess I'll have to tell you. Dave is a syndicated humor columnist based at the Miami Herald and Tropic magazine. He won the Pulitzer prize in 1988 for commentary on gravely serious matters like the digestive systems of Supreme Court Justices and exploding toilets.
Dave Barry is my greatest inspiration as a writer, and I'm his biggest fan. That's the reason I created this page...to pay homage to the man who I idolize. Okay, that was a big, fat lie. The actual reason I created this page was to shamelessly promote my homepage, no page for you! Ever since my homepage's creation, I've been trying to get it indexed on this certain search engine which will remain nameless but begins in Y, ends in hoo and is often punctuated by the phrase "worthless dirty [expletive]." This search engine, which I am quite ashamed to admit is the best search engine on the internet, refuses to list my page. So I thought maybe if I created a tribute page to some famous person and linked it back to my page, I could get the tribute page indexed and, in turn, get more hits on no page for you! I thought long and hard about a good person to make a tribute to. I mentally perused my options: the Backside Boys, the artist formerly known as Baby Spice, Leonardo DiCaprio, Leonardo DaVinci, Oliver North, Richard Jewell and the guy who invented those little radios that go on the wall of your shower. After six days of ongoing headaches caused by mental strain, four bottles of advil, three orders of Chinese takeout and a partridge in a pear tree, I decided I would make a tribute web page to the guy who invented moo-shoo pork. Then I changed my mind and decided on Dave Barry.
I started my Dave Barry tribute page by doing what any logical, responsible web-author should do. I attempted to steal information from other sites and claim it as my own. However, I was quite surprised at how little information about Dave exists on the internet. I only found a few Dave Barry sites, and the ones I did find were either 404's (the police code for "this page is wasting valuable space on the internet which could be taken by no page for you!") or pages of illegally published Dave Barry columns. At first this made me feel sorry for Dave. I thought to myself, this poor guy has no fans! Then I realized that I should be thinking just the opposite, and Dave should be thanking his lucky boxers that few of his fans are dedicated enough to make a website for him. Because, in this day and age, we can assume that "dedicated enough to make a website" is a synonym for "completely psychotic." Dave's fans are not the type of people he'd find standing by his bedside at 3 a.m. trying to get a clipping of his nose hair to use a centerpiece for their dining room table. Au contraire (French for "don't you think my nose hair is nice enough to use as a centerpiece?")...Dave has perfect fans, the extent of whose dedication is reading his weekly column, grunting in approval and flushing the toilet. And trust me, when your bathroom ritual begins revolving around someone's writing, it must be pretty darn good. The writing, that is.
You may be wondering why the heck I've written three whole paragraphs and not yet mentioned one actual fact about Dave Barry, except for the fact that I enjoy beating people severely with paperback literary classics. But I assume that the general population already knew that. Well, hold your horses, the facts are coming!
So, therefore, I have come to the solid conclusion that I am completely unqualified to make an informational website about Dave Barry. I have also come to the solid conclusion that if you read this far actually expecting any actual fact-containing facts, you should be bound, gagged and forced to listen to "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" by Tiny Tim, on repeat, for the next 47 years. One one of those little shower radios.
Dave Barry's literary rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders
last updated 9/13/99