n X-NEWS: spcvxb alt.fan.dave_barry: 221Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0 10/3/90 VAX/VMS V5.3; site spcvxb.spc.eduk Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!njin!rutgers!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!abcfd20.larc.nasa.gov!ames!uhccux!virtue!ccc_simon  Newsgroups: alt.fan.dave_barry Subject: Erica Zorn's Review) Message-ID: <1528.26ed061e@waikato.ac.nz> / From: ccc_simon@waikato.ac.nz (Simon Travaglia)  Date: 11 Sep 90 03:43:25 GMT3 Organization: University of Waikato Computer Centre 
 Lines: 530  L I saw this, and thought it was worth reposting.  Note:  The article contains> small excerpts of Barry's work as the author thought necessary    * 		       The World According To Dave BarryH        (America's most outrageous columnist is dead serious about humor)    			     Article by Eric Zorn      M Every week, an informed cadre of East Coast residents who, the poor slobs, do M not live near a newspaper that carries syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry, M logs onto a private computer bulletin board to read Barry's latest assault on  journalistic conventions.    I Maybe this time he's suggested that Mark Goodson, the game-show producer, M should have his bowels ripped out by wolves or that Congress should free John ; Hinckley and pass a law requiring Jodie Foster to date him.    O Or maybe he's written that once an airplane takes off, the crew usually puts it L on automatic pilot and relaxes by trying on women's clothing, or that Mother( Nature is a vicious, irresponsible slut.    You just never know.     N Barry, easily America's most preposterous newspaper columnist, weaves a weeklyM tapestry of mangled facts, ludicrous propositions and penetrating if somewhat J warped observations is some 70 papers.  Those who dislike his work call itK tasteless and sophomoric - a judgment he embraces as though it were praise. O Those who like it say it's wonderfully bizarre.  Either way, most readers agree * they've never read anything quite like it.   N Here's Barry covering the Miss America pageant last year for the Miami Herald:L "After a day of smiling like insane persons and talking about how they wouldJ very much like to help handicapped animals, [the contestants] went back toM their hotel rooms and unwound by smoking enormous cigars and spitting out the ! window onto elderly pedestrians."    L Here's Barry on sports: "Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy,N overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing."   M And Barry on babies: "A child can go only so far in life without potty train- K ing.  It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were M potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators."    L Those who read and contribute to the Boston-area Barry bulletin board [thereJ are at least three others nationwide, each associated with large high-techK companies] send in analyses and critiques of these types of observations as K well as information on where he has published lately, entries to Dave Barry K Write-Alike contests and the poop on petitions and letter-writing campaigns H organized to get the Boston Globe to print his column regularly and make& unnecessary this underground nonsense.   L Barry himself is flattered but keeps out of the fray.  He's unconcerned thatI his column is not published by Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., or Los I Angeles newspapers and that he has yet to break into the more prestigious > periodicals, such as the New Yorker, Esquire and the Atlantic.   K "I'm just as happy not to part of the literary establishment," he says in a H voice lightly laced with East Coast vowels.  "I don't think of myself as; remotely literary or deep or even a little bit thoughtful."    
 So there.    L Dave Barry has other things to worry about.  Like on a recent Friday morningO when he pondered, over breakfast at Denny's near his home in the Delaware River J valley of Pennsylvania, whether he should spend an $800 paycheck he'd justB received from Ms. magazine on an electric guitar or on a new sofa.   M The family clearly could have used the sofa.  Barry says that he and his wife H "were both born without whatever brain part it is that enables people toM decorate their homes" and that the current sofa is "covered with a blanket to G guests from looking directly at it and being blinded or driven insane."    M But priorities are priorities.  "For 15 years I've been lamenting that when I O left college, I sold my guitar," he says, sounding eager rather than remorseful O and munching a bite of scrapple, a side-dish indigenous to western Pennsylvania E consisting of leftover pig parts fried up to look like Spam gone bad.    N "I had a Fender Jazzmaster.  Great guitar.  I would have sold my amp, too, butL the night before, a friend and I threw it out the dormitory window.  We were< really drunk, and all we could say was `The Who!  The Who!'"   M "We did, however take the time to measure it to make sure it would go through K the window.  It did.  A clean shot.  There were at least 30 people gathered  outside to watch it land."   J Choosing to buy a new guitar over a new sofa turned out, in the end, to beO easy, Barry, 38, has never really grown up and remains sort of a demented Peter O Pan in blue jeans, sneakers and golf shirts. For all that he is a middle-class, K suburban family man with professional responsibilities and furniture on his N mind, inside he's still the same devious kid who spent hours in high school inO Pleasantville, N.Y., plotting the best way to send a truck loaded with dynamite O through the front doors of the nearby headquarters of Reader's Digest magazine. I He never considered for a minute, of course, that 20 years later the same N Reader's Digest would propel him to international celebrity by reprinting part of one of his books.   J Such are the ironies that run thickly through the life of our most cynicalO natural resource, a man who rose slowly through the journalistic ranks and only M made it when he turned around and ran roughshod over all the sacred canons of  the Fourth Estate.   K "I am hostile, vicious, unsafe and reprehensible," he says, ticking off the N adjectives as though they indicated virtues.  "There are times when I'll writeO things I know are offensive just for the sheet thrill of seeing them in a news- N paper.  I discovered along time ago that you can get away with almost anything if you think it's funny."    N And get away with it he has.  Barry's full-time job is one of the most unusualO in journalism.  He is a staff writer for the Miami Herald, yet lives in bucolic L Glen Mills, Pa., 22 miles outside Philadelphia.  He writes one column a weekH and three or four longer pieces a year for the Herald's Sunday magazine,N Tropic, and sends the paper periodic, wry dispatches from major events such as? the Super Bowl, the Live Aid concert and political conventions.    O "Time was when the Democrats were no competition in terms of patriotism," filed M Barry from the Republican gathering in Dallas last summer.  "They were always M nominating their presidential candidates at 3 a.m. amidst clouds of marijuana O smoke, and it was always somebody like George McGovern, who would make a speech H where he'd call on Cuba to invade the United States, and for the closing7 ceremony they'd have Eldridge Cleaver spit on a Bible."    K He flies to Miami several times a year to meet with his editors and work on N stories, but the arrangement leaves him plenty of time to dabble in other pro-N jects, such as writing satirical self-help tracts for Rodale Press, a normallyO straitlaced publishing house in Emmaus, Pa.  The editors there noticed him when N he was still a struggling and little-known humorist and hired him to write do-L it-yourself projects to liven up "New Shelter," a magazine for geodesic-doneL types.  They then asked him to stretch it into an entire home repair manual,I which became his first book, "The Taming of the Screw," a 1983 paperback.    O "A common problem is that the lights flicker," he wrote.  "This sometimes means L that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means that yourF home is possessed by demons...If you're not sure whether your house isK possessed, see `The Amityville Horror,' a fine documentary film based on an! actual book.  .N He also finds time to write half a dozen snappy, smartypants essays a year forM magazines such as Glamour, Redbook, Ms. and Historic Preservation.  He has noaG designs whatsoever on serious prose, fiction, poetry, screenplays or TVp scripts.  GN "I don't have a novel percolating in me," he says.  "I don't have vision, likeM Garrison Keillor, nor do I have the patience to work on a slow build-up for aeJ big pay-off.  I like a lot of quick yuks.  Nothing I'm doing is immortal."  cN "I often describe myself as superficial.  People assume I'm being modest, thatL I really believe I'm a deep thinker with lots of important ideas I'm gettingE across through comedy.  But I really am superficial and I really am aa philistine."  tM Well, sort of.  It's quickly clear in talking to Barry that he's very seriousbK about being flip - his shallowness runs deep, in other words - and that his  iconoclasm is not idle pose.  dN "My motivation in writing is hostility," he says brightly.  "I honestly feel aJ great deal of contempt toward rude and stupid people.  I'm not the kind ofG person who can say, well, it doesn't matter.  To me it always matters."r  nO Politically, for example, Barry says he is an anarchist. He tosses off the factoM lightly at first, as though, well, of course, such a crazy writer would be an L anarchist.  But press him on the point over a few beers, and he'll say that,O yes, he really does believe that government is bad and there should be no laws. N His hatred for politicians - he compares them to "brain-damaged turnips" - andN his attitude toward organized religion - "a load of horse manure" are genuine.  gO This from the eldest son of a Presbyterian minister. He and three siblings grewmM up in Armonk, N.Y., under modest circumstances in a home where, as he writes,yL "every summer we had huge, brazen ants striding around the kitchen demandingM food and running up long-distance telephone charges.  My mother spent much ofiN her time whapping at them with brooms and spraying them with deadly chemicals.L Nothing worked.  The ants used to lie on their backs, laughing at the brooms( and the chemicals and calling for more."  rO He was not a particularly athletic youth, so he specialized in practical jokes, N minor vandalism and the gray area in between.  He became widely admired by hisO peers at school for flushing a cherry bomb down a toilet and helping carry a VWc up the steps into the lobby.  eO The guys used to get together to play loadball, a drunken, disorganized versiontK of tackle football, and Barry's lengthy, detailed and bogus accounts of theyL games would slip past the faculty advisor onto the pages of the school news- paper.  A star was born.  eI As an English major at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, Barry's primaryaL passion was playing guitar and piano.  He even cut a record with the FederalO Duck, a very minor rock band, but soon realized his true talents lay elsewhere. N He wanted to write for the student-run Haverford News but disliked the idea ofK trafficking in facts.  When the editors assigned him a feature story on therK local Nixon campaign headquarters, he stayed in his room and made the wholeW	 thing up.D  ,O "I loved to write funny," he remembers.  "It was great to see people passing myu+ stuff around the dining room and laughing."i  aM But the late 1960's were not a particularly amusing time to be a young man ineO America.  To avoid the draft and stay out of Vietnam, Barry got a deferral as afK conscientious objector, largely on the strength of his father's ministerial @ work and the fact that Haverford College was founded by Quakers.  aK "I would have told my draft board that Daffy Duck was the supreme being, ifh* that's what they wanted to hear," he says.  nO As a CO he had to work two year after graduation drawing up grant proposals foreN the Episcopal Church in New York City.  To amuse himself he fired off memos toO the area comptroller and various clergymen proposing that the church give moneya! to absurd, nonexistent charities.o  eN "All I wanted to do was write," he says.  "Ever since I was a kid, I wanted toJ be like Robert Benchley, who basically got paid for making up short, funnyN things.  I just didn't see any direct, clear way for that to happen.  Periodi-L cally I would think, `Time to get responsible,' and I'd apply to law school.E One time I was even accepted and put a deposit on an apartment in SanP Francisco."   sK But the voice of reason saved the day.  As a leftist and budding anarchist,dJ Barry realized at the last minute he would make a lousy lawyer.  So, usingK contacts from his school days and trading on his experience working collegeeN summers as a go-fer and intern on the Congressional Quarterly, he landed a jobL in 1971 as a reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., a short drive from where he now lives.  tN "I covered a lot of raw sewage," he says.  "The only thing suburban people car" more about than zoning is sewage."   L At the same time he contributed once a week to a staff-written column calledE "Ad Libs," always attempting to write funny and sometimes succeeding.l  aJ Beth Pyle, a reporter who had started at the paper a week after Barry, wasL appalled at first by his stinging humor and the way he openly insulted otherM members of the staff, though they didn't seem to mind because they thought hed was only kidding.h  nO "He was out of control, just a smartass," she says.  "But as I got to know him,aM I discovered I liked the way he thought.  He's one of the most serious peoplemO I've ever met.  He's got a lot of anger about and impatience with stupidity andtO ridiculousness in the world.  He's deadly serious about the things he lampoons,eA but it comes out funny in his writing.  And sometimes in person."g  hM Pyle and Barry became close friends and helped each other through the ends of J their disintegrating first marriages.  In July, 1975, after they were bothN divorced.  They married each other in an informal ceremony that concluded with a back-yard volleyball game.  eN By that time, Barry, who had risen to news editor at the Daily Local News, wasO working as a correspondent for the Philadelphia office of the Associated Press,a" a profoundly unfunny organization.  'O "It was all very rote," he says.  "I hated feeding information to semi-retarded L radio news people, which I did all the time.  I hated being polite when someO lame cretin who couldn't write a paragraph of his own would call the AP and askcM them to do it.  I hated dealing with guys calling up and saying, `Hi, this isgM the Shippensburg Gazette.  We got a guy in a yacht race in Monaco - wee don'ts- know his name - can you tell us how he did?'"d  lN The experience drove Barry out of journalism altogether.  After half a year atO the AP, he quit to become a business-writing instructor with Burger Associates,m8 a corporate consulting firm run by one of his neighbors.  dO The Barrys still live where they did then, in a green two-story house on a cou-eN ple of acres in a hilly, wooded area called Tanguy Homesteads.  The HomesteadsK were originally incorporated as a 40-family utopian commune before breakingp, into what Barry calls "a close-knit suburb."  iO For the next eight years, he was away from home almost half the time, travelingaG coast to coast extrolling the virtues of clear concise writing to eagert business executives.  oO "They all agreed it was worthwhile and a good thing to do, but they would neveroN dream of doing it themselves because of the pressure in great, illiterate cor-O porate America to be unclear," he says. "I became a sort of religious figure. IaN would tell them something they wanted to hear, and it cleansed their spirits."  N Beth, meanwhile had become features editor at the Daily Local News.  She hiredK her husband part-time to start writing weekly humor pieces again, this time  with a photo logo.  K "It was basically the same column I'm writing today, only less consistentlyrL good," says Barry, who is not at all bashful about admitting to being funny.J "Eventually I got a bunch of them stacked up to send around to the variousI syndication services.  All the big ones, like the Washington Post Writerss1 Group, sent them back with vomit stains on them."o  I One small California feature syndicate was interested, however, and began M selling the column to newspapers, though not very aggressively.  Barry conti- K nued to teach and freelance, scoring his first significant coup with a 1981oN article in the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine about Beth's ordeal giving birth to their son Robert.  tK "It was a vicious attack on natural childbirth that really hit a nerve," heeN says.  "All through the 1970's parents had been bombarded with smarmy nonsenseN about how beautiful childbirth is and how it doesn't hurt and how all you haveM to do is breathe right.  I just came along and pointed out that it hurts likeiM hell, breathing doesn't do a whole lot and most of what your hear in birthingr classes is stupid."r  -N The story was widely reprinted, passed around and tacked onto bulletin boards.O Big, distant newspapers such as The Tribune and Miami Herald expressed interestuN is seeing more of his work.  The Herald even flew him down to Miami, wined andO dined him and offered him a full-time staff job, but he didn't want to move, so  the deal fell through.  oN A year later, however, when he decided to quit Burger Associates to write fullO time, the Herald relaxed its residency rules and agreed to hire him and let himsN stay in Glen Mills.  He chose the Herald over the Philadelphia Inquirer, whichL also wanted to hire him, because the idea of having his boss more than 1,000 miles away appealed to him.w   M "He is the only humorist I know who makes people laugh out loud," says TropiclN editor Bene Weingarten.  "He writes these massive exaggerations of fundamentalL truths that are so familiar to people that they can't help but identify with them."  gL "Purely as a writer he is brilliant.  He uses words in thoroughly unexpectedH combinations, like the time he wrote the the four building blocks of the, universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl."   O Weingarten snorts.  "I can't tell you why that's funny, but it's funny as hell.  It's undefinable genius."n  aK Barry's columns are the single largest source of letters to Tropic, many ofiK them from outraged and incensed citizens who have taken him literally.  TheeK magazine prints without comment parts of these hostile letters, such as one O from a government information office in British Honduras calling Barry an "uglyoI American" and insisting that agricultural products are the country's main % export, not, as he had written, lice.    M His reputation for nutty journalism has reached the point in Miami that, whensL he's reporting on a story, normally serious sources such as Florida Gov. BobM Graham, U.S. Rep. Dante Fascell and Florida International University Environ-dA mental Studies director jack Parker supply him with wacky quotes:r   M "One way to reduce the traffic damage to I-95 would be to make the exit rampsrL very high, so the the cars would actually shoot off into space," said ParkerH when Barry interviewed him for an article on Miami's interstate highway.O "Perhaps the exit ramps could be located over Alice Wainwright Park so the carslL would go off into the bay, where they would form a reef, which would attract
 lobsters."  eK When he gets delicious actual quotations like this, Barry is forced to take I great pains to emphasize to his readers that, this time, he's telling theu) truth.  But mostly this is not a problem.o  iG Indeed his first book, "The Taming of the Screw," contains as nearly asoM possible no useful or verifiable information, despite the fact that it looks,vK at first glance, as though it might be just another how-to book from Rodale L Press.  It was published when Barry was virtually unknown and sold just overM 50,000 copies - a reasonably good showing but nothing compared to the 190,000 M copies of last year's "Babies and Other Hazards of Sex," an 88-page expansionm- of the popular article on natural childbirth.s  ,N "All a newborn baby really needs is food, warmth and love," he wrote.  "Pretty< much like a hamster, only with fewer signs of intelligence."  lL "Bad Habit," a hardback collection of columns published earlier this year byN Doubleday & Co. has sold fewer than 10,000 copies and is generally unavailableM in stores.  Barry refused to do a publicity tour because his former syndicated( stood to see most of the sales proceeds.   L But Rodale Press, undaunted, has already printed 100,000 copies of "Stay FitL and Healthy Until You're Dead," Barry's irreverent treatment of the exercise$ craze slated for release this month.  nO "Professional ice hockey is an ideal way for the entire family to keep fit," heeM maintains within.  "The kids will love participating in a loose, freewheelingeG sport where everybody makes the play-offs and the only activity that iscK specifically prohibited is selling narcotics to your opponents on the ice."o  aH On nutrition he advises: "Each morning you should take a vitamin A pill,J followed by a vitamin D, followed by an E, until you spelled the healthful5 mnemonic phrase, 'A DEAD CAD BAKED A BAD CAKE, ACE.'"r   L He is also branching into television, where he hosted four pilot episodes ofM "That's My Baby," a parental-help talk show produced by Minneapolis public TVuN station KTCA.  The station will produce and distribute the show as a series ifM it can find a corporate underwriter.  It hired him on the strength of his two J guest appearances on "The Tonight Show," which were riotous successes evenA though he did go on last, "after the pigs who knew how to weave."t  tJ Privately, though, Beth Barry says life with Dave is not a laugh a minute:O "He's just normal at home. He's very disciplined about his writing and takes itoN very seriously.  When we go to parties, people expect him to be a clown, which! I think is very demeaning to him.t  rK "We were at a party about a year ago with all the up and coming yuppie-typehO writers and editors in Philadelphia. He felt the pressure to be funny and ended O up just making an ass of himself. Later he was really embarrassed about it, ando
 so was I."  eM Beth, who quit the Daily Local News when 4-year-old Robert was born, recentlyfM started freelance business-writing and ghost-writing a newspaper column for arM butcher.  Nothing she composes is humorous.  She works all day in an upstairs K office, while her husband pecks away on his Radio Shack word processor in a M basement office decorated with cartoon drawings and littered with back copiespA of supermarket tabloids from which he claims to take inspiration.   aO "Beth buys them," he says. "We don't subscribe because if they were to get lostdO in the mail, we'd get behind on events.  Like last week - `COUPLE FLEES TALKING - BEAR.'  Big story.  We could have missed it."g  sO She is his toughest critic. Before any of his work is sent out for publication,eN Beth scrutinizes it for logic, grammar and recycled jokes.  She also checks to7 see if it's funny: only rarely does she laugh out loud.e  aN "Whenever I do, he runs up and says, `What, what, what?  You laughed.  I gotta5 know exactly what you laughed at and why,'" she says.a  oM "Beth has seen all the devices I use," he says.  "The jokes about goat waste,lN the tendency to introduce a subject by going back to the dawn of time, the wayI I compare stupid people's brains to coleslaw and prune pits, that kind ofi thing."g   N "Barry kills about one in five columns or budding ideas before they see print,M but he retains a strong, almost arrogant confidence that he can take any sub-bM ject and, just by thinking and working hard, massage it into something funny.h  ,O "Everything has humor potential except Auschwitz and Ethiopia," he says flatly. N "In general I don't worry about being offensive.  I never did think of `offen-M sive' as a criticism.  There's a long, glorious tradition of offending peoplee in American humor writing."l  eL It usually takes him three days working from 9 a.m. until early afternoon toL put together a 1,000-word column.  He writes seven days a week, and both hisN wife and editor say they are impressed with his dedication.  He takes time outL each day to chauffeur his son around and to play with the family's goofy newN dog, a female Labrador/shepherd named Earnest that several months ago took theG place of their old dog, who was run over and killed by a garbage truck.e   J His major hobby is making; and bottling; his own beer, by far his favoriteM ingestible.  He ends up jogging two miles every day up and down Twin Pine WaynJ so he can drink it and not get fat.  In the winter he goes to PhiladelphiaJ 76ers pro basketball games, where he has season seats at courtside and can holler at the referees.    J Everything in his milieu - the dog's stupidity, his son's ingenuous charm,N beer, jogging, basketball - are grist for his mill and show up in his columns.O He's never at a loss for ideas, which generally come from news events, ads, the J aforementioned supermarket tabloids or, frequently, mail from his readers.   L "Over and over and over people write, `I've finally found someone whose mindM works like mine,'" he says.  "My column jumps out at people because, histori-nL cally, newspapers have assumed that their readers are idiots.  I can't blameL them.  Most of the people who come to newspaper offices or write to them areJ the ones who are trying to prove that the Trilateral Commission is putting1 communist radio transmitters in everyone's teeth.    J "I write a hipper, less predictable, more offensive column than mainstreamO humor columnists, who I think are obvious and not particularly funny.  I aim at1O intelligent people. Readers love the idea that a newspaper thinks they're smart  enough to get the joke."  TH Though he has carved out a niche as America's least accurate columnist -O "Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is whey he never used it" - BarrytK does spend a good deal of time researching the subjects he wades into.  ThetM sole purpose, however, is to make sure that his distortions of fact have someg- sort of internal logic, no matter how screwy.l  dL Read enough from Barry's oeuvre in one sitting and you start to see a bit ofO method in his madness.  Aside from playing fast and loose with the facts, otherl& oft-used arrows in his quiver include:  iA *Exaggeration: "The New Right thinks George Bush is Che Guevara."a  O *Oversimplification: "The Army is a place where you get up early in the morning ? to be yelled at by people with short haircuts and tiny brains."l  K *Gleeful bad taste: "Have you ever stopped to think what life would be likeeM without flowers?  I mean, what would you send to dead people?  Grapes, maybe.r3 Then there would be something to eat at a viewing.",  O *And something he calls "judo," in which he attempts to make the reader stumblebL over his expectations: "...the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic."  K He says he wants his work to read as though he were "drunk, out of control"eL when he wrote it, though he remorselessly edits and re-edits each piece, andN depends very little on inspiration or mood to be funny.  He was, in fact, ableO to crank out a humor column on the day after his father died in April, 1984, anpO event that prompted the only serious writing he published in many years. It was L a rambling, revelatory essay for the Miami Herald, the ending of which read:  H      So I go in for my last words because I have to go back home, and myJ      mother and I agree I probably won't see him again.  I sit next to himI      on the bed, hoping he can't see that I'm crying.  I love you, Dad, Ii:      say.  He says, I love you too, I'd like some oatmeal.  E      So I go back out to the living room, where my mother and my wifeaC      and my son are sitting on the sofa, in a line, waiting for thesI      outcome, and I say, He wants some oatmeal.  I am laughing and crying0G      about this.  My mother thinks maybe I should go back in and try to03      have a more meaningful last talk, but I don't.f  xJ      Driving home, I'm glad I didn't.  I think: He and I have been talkingI      ever since I learned how.  A million words.  All of them final, now.rI      I don't need to make him give me any more, like souvenirs.  I think:dH      Let me not define his death on my terms.  Let him have his oatmeal.      I can hardly see the road.a  0M Readers' response to his public grief was positive and his editors encouragedl> him to write more in the same vein, an invitation he declined.  sL Asked why, he says, "I don't mind using the device of writing to make peopleO laugh, but I'm suspicious of those who use the device of writing to make peopleoN cry.  I just don't trust them intellectually.  How many different subjects can# anyone really say they care about?"i  tM Barry calls this his "cop out" and leaves it at that.  He doesn't see himselfsO as a crusader or righter of wrongs, and he remains content - more than content, M actually - to hang out in the country, drink a few beers, write a few columns L and, these days, sit in the living room on a nasty old sofa and play his new electric guitar.   M It's a Gibson Les Paul model.  Great guitar.  The amp he bought to go with it' "could destroy a greenhouse."E  r@ Beth didn't mind.  There's plenty of time in life to buy a sofa. -- e    L ----------------------------------------------------------------------------I      This signature has been thoroughly vetted by the Signature Police.  sL  Vetting procedure includes full signature body cavity searches and exposureL in infraviolent light.             Federal Signature Cleanliness Rating: X-33 	Not to be viewed with terminal at full brightness.gL spt@grace.waikato.ac.nz (or @truth.waikato..)  Voice: 064 71 384008 "Hello?"L ----------------------------------------------------------------------------O "White House carpenters have reworked the master bedroom, remodeling it so thateP  Ronnie can sleep with his head in the hall.  That way, by the time he wakes up,-  somebody will have already shined his hair."c