Name Dropping Featuring Dave Barry

Who is this "Dave Barry" character?Syndicated humor columnist, author, and inspiration for the absolutely phenomenal and amazing "Dave's World" sitcom Dave Barry sometimes links to Something Awful on his blog. I was told that he is a pretty famous author, and that this should be considered a fairly major event, but all I read are alternate history books in which the Native Americans win World War II. As far as I know, Mr. Barry has never written one of these books, so his body of work is pretty much outside of my sphere of awareness. Intent on educating myself about Dave Barry, I turned to my oldest friend Internet and read up on Mr. Barry. He seems like a reasonably nice guy, but I still didn't feel like I was getting the complete picture.

I called up my good buddy Matt Drudge to see if he could ferret out anything juicier about Dave Barry. Our phone conversation went a little something like this:

ME: Hey, Matt, how's it going?
Matt: Who is this? How did you get this number?
ME: It's Zack, from Something Awful.
Matt: THE Zack? Zack Parsons? That guy?
ME: Yes, calm down Matt Drudge. I was wondering if you could do me a favor and look up some information.
Matt: Anything for you! Who do you need the 411 on? Clinton? Bush? Kerry? I've got stacks of stuff on Kerry. Did you see that pen bullshit I posted? They're eating it up! They're calling it "Pocket Gate".
ME: Yeah, whatever Matt, I need you to look up some stuff on Dave Barry.
Matt: Who?
ME: I'd never heard of him either. Supposedly there's this famous author named Dave Barry who links to Something Awful sometimes. About all I know is that he didn't write "Rommel's Last Stand" or "The Iron March of Tears".
Matt: Alright, I'll get everyone on it. If I find out anything look for the flashing siren.

Drudge is a shifty character to deal with, always combing every conversation for a tidbit that he can stick into some article he makes up about Cheney licking whipped cream out of a stripper's bellybutton, but he gets results. Sort of like a leaf blower made out of scorpions. At least I didn't have to meet with him in person. The guy walks around with a huge jar of Vienna sausages and smells like a meat locker after a power outage.Something exciting happens!While I sat down for an interview with some douche from Entertainment Tonight about the affect of the blogosphere on the mainstream media Drudge raked his withered claws across the back of the world raising runnels of information. Normally I don't do interviews, especially with cotton candy outlets like ET, but I'm so sick of hearing about the blogosphere that I wanted them to swing by just so I could slap their spot director in the face. That didn't even get them to leave so I sat across from the interviewer with an American flag over my face with holes cut for my mouth and eyes and ate chocolate pudding. Whenever the interviewer started to ask a question I un-muted a gay porno called "Felcher: Buttock Ranger" that I had playing at maximum volume. Eventually they got the idea and left.

During my six o'clock shiatsu my phone started to chirp out Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum. I was so lost in thought that I was going to let my personal assistant get it, but by minute eighteen I remembered that I had Drudge turning over rocks for me. I picked up and Drudge was breathing heavily, as usual, like he'd just worked out his passive aggression on a beef shank covered with the photocopied faces of boys who'd broken his heart.

"This had better be worth it," I said, waving away the masseuse with a Franklin and a wink.

"Is it ever!" Drudge was gleeful. "I'll fax what I have over right away."

I was reluctant to give Drudge my fax number, but I was even more reluctant to go through life like Oscar Schindler thinking I could have done more to find out about Dave Barry. I could always get the fax number changed anyway.

I started reading the moment the first sheet was finished printing and didn't stop for six hours. It was such intense reading that I had my PA catching urine in World's Greatest Grandpa mugs and passing them along a bucket brigade of house workers to the toilet. I probably could have had her use something larger, it's just that I have so many of those mugs and I want to use them for something besides throwing at employees when they bring me bad news.

Dave Barry, you beautiful enigma, you Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, you little house on the prairie of the existential oversoul. Your life was like an onion made of shadows and mystery, but there it was, all laid out before me in neatly laser printed pages from Matt Drudge. What's to say about Dave Barry? There is so much that anything approaching comprehensive would require a work of encyclopedic proportions. Instead I will offer up to you a few facts that might just surprise you.

Dave Barry is a killer of men. He has slain at least five personally, using nebulous diplomatic immunity rights to avoid criminal prosecution, although at one point the federal government threatened to extradite him to Peru.

Barry is apparently attempting to reshape the whole world in his own image. He has sired some 294 children with 285 different women, and those are just the documented cases. Some of Drudge's anonymous sources put the number closer to 1,200. This doesn't even factor in the gallons of semen that Barry donates weekly to artificial insemination clinics. Rumors persist that it has even been used to create a centaur.

In 1982 Dave Barry founded a religion called Pneumianity, preached that he was the godhead, and formed a religious commune in the jungles of Nicaragua. In 1983 his group was visited by Nicaraguan authorities and members of the US government. The visit turned into an orgy of violence when Barry ordered his henchmen to attack the departing government officials at the airport, had the remainder of his followers commit mass suicide, and then "ascended to dwell with Pneumias for all eternity" in a helicopter that took him to Los Angeles.

Has been involved in multiple altercations with singer/songwriter Randy Newman, including a brawl that erupted in a Beverly Hills jazz club and sent Newman to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder.

Barry is in talks to have his book "God Bless the Jews and Their Nigger Friends" made into a three-part miniseries for CBS, but production has been delayed by insistence on receiving payment in authentic ducats.

Votes for Lyndon LaRouche in every election including local and state elections.

Had a section of his website devoted to an Al Qaeda message exchange until it was shut down by the FBI in 2003.

After reading about four hundred pages of this scandalous information I didn't know what to think. I knew Mr. Barry appreciated our work here at Something Awful from time to time, but I never bothered to find out who this big appreciation-throwing question mark really was. When I finally found out it felt strange. The whole situation reminded me of that Karl Marx quote "I would never belong to an anti-czarist revolutionary organization that would have me as a member". My peers are villains and scoundrels, travelers of the world with predilections for starting cults and impregnating every fertile womb they fall into.

The one thing Drudge hadn't managed to dig up was Barry's phone number, so I dialed Drudge up again.

Mystery solved, problems begin."Matt," he started to gush at the sound of my voice but I cut him off. "Matt! Listen to me! Don't ever call me. Don't ever mention me. We're not friends. I don't want friends like you."

"What the f-" I hung up before he could finish and hit speed dial. Drew Curtis from FARK answered the phone.

"Drew, baby, brunch is cancelled. I'm going on hiatus. No more social functions, no more black tie dinners where we rub elbows with the elites. I'm going back to nature, I need to find out more about myself. Yeah, sure, you can have your Gary Glitter albums back."

I have a buzzer on my wrist that signals my personal assistant Lorena no matter where she is in the house. It's wired into her central nervous system so that when I push the button it triggers her brain's fear center and makes her think that only I can protect her from the hungry dead that are pursuing her. She came running and screaming into the room.

"They're after me again! Do something! Do something!" I slapped her.

"Gone, baby, calm it down. You're safe." She held onto me like a female monkey carrying around its long dead baby. "Lorena, let go. Cancel all of my appointments. I'm going to Hyannis Port, tell Jeeves to set up the room, stock the bar, and get plenty of fresh citrus. Ribbons and paper for the Remington."

Lorena was breathless, but I pressed on, pulling up my underwear and draping an ermine robe over my shoulders.

"I'm going to get away from this…" I hesitated to give my life a title. "…this shit. Shit. I'm going to write the great American novel."

I headed towards the door, then paused to glance back over my shoulder at Lorena. She was still wiping tears from her black-rimmed eyes.

"It's about this guy named Johnny Two Feathers who helps the Sioux defeat Hitler. It's about America. The everyman."

I snagged a bottle of Blue Label firewater on my way, emptied the contents into a Jeff Gordon commemorative cup, and sunk into the Corinthian leather of the limousine as it whisked me off to my future free of Dave Barry.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)