Dave Barry
speaker
175 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Dave Barry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The trick of humor, it's like magic. When the guy pulls the coin out of your ear and it looks like he really pulled the coin out of your ear, you don't see that the guy spent 16 hours practicing that one particular movement with his finger. Writing humor is the same way. It's supposed to look like it was just coming out of you, but it doesn't just come out of you.
When you read somebody who thinks they're funny, And I've read a lot of people who think they're funny, but they're not really putting the time, they're putting the effort. It's really obvious with humor more than any other kind of writing. So yeah, I'm gonna agree with you that even though that's what I did, writing humor is hard. When did you realize that you were good at it?
When did you stop having doubt? Well, I thought I was funny a lot sooner than the rest of the world did. Because you were a class clown, right? I was literally elected class clown at Pleasantville High School, class of 1965. And I'm... I'm darn proud of that.
Well, I was a little puberty impaired guy. And, you know, what I really wanted to do was be like a football star or something and like have girls really be interested in me just because I was – but I wasn't any of that. So what I could do was make people laugh. I was good at that. So that's what I – It definitely was insecurity that made me want to entertain people. It probably still is.
I think most people who do humor for a living Usually they're insecure. And the other thing is we're kind of deflectors. We don't want people to know too much about us because then they won't like us. So what we do is make them like us by making them laugh, which is kind of a good way to keep people friendly with you but not let them get too close.
It's just asking people about themselves. I know. I notice that any time I say anything about your personal life, you immediately turn it back down.
If you're listening, it wasn't you. It was Nan, Miss Venezuela. Was it Miss Venezuela?
um when you say that uh insecurities in childhood what were they what well i couldn't you know like i wasn't good at sports um and you know that was what you wanted i mean i i did i played little league because that's what you did and a way to be popular yeah the easy access shortcut to however it is you get to popular sports is easier than laughter and i wasn't like one of the the boys that the girls all just seemed looking at him in some ways cute you know wasn't that guy you know so
And like I said, I didn't reach puberty until I was in my early 30s. And I was just really a late bloomer. You were a child. Yeah. I still have no hair on my arms. Look. Look. Look at my arms. You still look. I'm hairless. People will not believe your age. I'm hairless.
But I'm now really old. How old are you right now? I'm 77 years old.
nobody would believe that well but it's true and you ask me anything about what happened in 1953 and i was there man but anyway the the point is i wasn't you know i wasn't like good at anything except being funny so that really was a you know a logical thing for me to do and i always did it and i kept on doing it and i got told many times that you can't be just funny for the rest of your life but whoever said that's wrong
You know what?
I was able to. I want to go. Yeah, I really want to go back. Mrs. Bassage. I want to go find her. She's dead a long time. But I'd dig her up. Dig her up just to tell her. Oh, you can't joke your way through life, huh, Mrs. Passage? Take a look. You're just yelling at her. Want to see my house, Mrs. Passage?
I'm kind of hoping they didn't cremate her because then there'll be an accident. Because she was pretty skeletal when she was alive, and I don't think she would look all that different as a dead person.
Oh, no, but the time, okay.
Right from Mrs. Bassett.
No, it was traumatic, but I was like in my 40s. My... I mean, I had become a successful humor columnist at this point. My dad died, and my mom just was not dealing with it well.
And we went through this phase, and like if you have older parents, then a lot of people know what this phase is, where the dynamic starts to shift from they're your parent to like you're both neutral sort of, then you become sort of their... So my mom had this house in Armonk, New York that my dad built with his hands and that I grew up in.
And we all told her, you can't keep the house because it's in the middle of the woods and it's too big. And you need to sell your house and move on with your life. And so she sold the house. And then she didn't know where to go. And she would come to Florida, live with me for a while. Then she would go out to California, where both my brothers lived, and live with one, live with another.
Just couldn't. And so I vividly remember the last time I saw her, she called me up and said she wanted to go to Connecticut and look at this community in Connecticut that some friends of hers had lived in. You know, so I said, OK, you know, your mom's your mom. So I fly up and meet her in Hartford, Connecticut, rent a car. We drive to this place and all the way there.
Showing 21–40 of 175 · page 2 of 9
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