Dave Who? : Celebrities: Humorist Dave Barry, who revels in his obscurity, is on the stump for his new book--and maybe greater glories.

Dave Barry would like to take this opportunity to introduce himself. You know, Dave Barry--the most famous Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist and best-selling author a whole heck of a lot of people have never heard of.

“Dave Barry? I’ve heard of J. J. Barry.”

That’s David Campagna, a beefy sort whose mission it is to distribute free tickets to, well, something else a lot of people have never heard of, a new late-night show called “Studio 59.” The Daves are squaring off in front of the ever-popular Mann’s Chinese Theatre because they have even more in common: Like Campagna, Barry is competing for his own slice of the tourism pie--his latest book is “Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need.”

“So what do you do, Dave?” Campagna asks amicably.

“I’m the lieutenant governor of Indiana,” says Barry, 44, looking every inch the Hoosier statesman in jeans and sneakers. “I’m thinking of running for President.”

(HE IS MAKING THIS UP. PART OF IT, ANYWAY.) That’s Davespeak.

“I am running for President, yeah,” Barry finally admits. “But then who isn’t?”

If Dave Barry is running for President, then he’d better get off his duff. The Chicago Tribune reported in May that a statewide poll, much beloved and believed by American newspapers, showed that Barry was even more obscure than Democratic presidential candidate Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts.

Barry’s comeuppance was inspired by a piece he’d written trashing the poor Democrat for his low profile. But even though about 300 newspapers carry Barry’s weekly column, four out of five respondents had no idea who Barry was and only 2% knew he was a humorist.

“My strategy is to be really obscure,” Barry says. “It’s the opposite of Michael (The Human Quaalude) Dukakis’ strategy in 1988, when he got nominated, but then by Election Day nobody had ever heard of him.

“So what I’m trying to do is remain really obscure in the early phases of the campaign and let the other 70 or 80 leading contenders keep emerging. Let them shoot their wads now, assuming they have wads, and I’ll be famous. I’ve sunk, and you can trust me because I’m saying this for the record, millions of dollars to keep my name out of the evening news, out of the papers, out of the public eye.”

It’s money well spent, judging from Barry’s random sampling of David Campagna on Hollywood Boulevard.

“I would say that was a pretty good cross-section of America there,” says Barry, who lives in Miami with his wife, Beth, and 11-year-old son, Robby. “The average American guy is wearing a tank top and giving away free game show tickets.”

Let’s just say Barry is well known in select circles--his own, to be specific, the fellowship of journalists who awarded him their highest honor, the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary.

His last three books have made the bestseller lists and he’s done Johnny, Letterman and Tupperware conventions. Not bad for a guy who has insulted to hilarious effect everything from Presidents, parenthood and American history to creaky middle age and, yes, even the Pulitzers, which turned out to be one of his winning entries.

Another column noted by the Pulitzer jury took on a highly critical and itself controversial New York Times Magazine article titled, “Can Miami Be Saved?”

Barry’s retort, “Can New York Be Saved?” criticized Miami’s New York critics, summing up the magazine’s balanced view of his adopted hometown thusly--”MINUSES: The area is rampant with violent crime and poverty and political extremism and drugs and corruption and ethnic hatred. PLUSES: Voodoo is legal.”

Or take Barry on the men’s movement: “Today’s man is making radical lifestyle changes such as sometimes remembering to remove the used tissue wads from his pockets before depositing his pants on the floor to be picked up by the Laundry Fairy.”

Elsewhere on the Distinguished Commentary front, Barry happily takes on such rarefied subjects as exploding cows and unseemly intestinal activities, a taste--or lack thereof--that has tarred him as sophomoric on his ironic way to a Pulitzer.

More recently, a Barry column suggested by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was deemed so offensive that the Portland Oregonian killed it. The subject was an anti-flatulence product called “Beano,” which Barry tested and recommended last month as an antidote to the “robes (that) billow” on the high court.

(Judson Randall, the Oregonian’s assistant to the editor, said it was the second column he had killed for fear of offending readers with Barry’s “childish toilet humor.”

(Counters Barry’s editor, Tom Shroder: “If a Supreme Court justice is concerned about the build-up of personal gas, I’m not going to be worried about it being too wild for the average reader.”)

If you call that sophomoric, then Barry’s answer is that he has some pretty good memories of sophomore year. Reliving your childhood is an odd route to take to prominent obscurity. And back on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Barry is finding himself right at home with such trod-upon, forgotten greats as Lupe Velez, Harry Langdon and the immortal Lefty Frizzell.

“I think what they did at some point,” says Barry, “is they ran out of stars and they got out the Los Angeles telephone directory.”

As Barry strolls down Hollywood Boulevard, he relives his own fond memories of being a tourist in Los Angeles, which include the requisite stint as an audience member for a game show he declined to identify, citing fear of retaliation.

“They don’t tell you that means sitting and applauding when they tell you to until your hands bleed,” Barry says. “I went to the place and they said, ‘Guess what? We’re not going to do three today. We’re going to do four today.’ And they were paying people money to stay in the audience, which was when I realized how bad it was going to be, and it was the most non-funny show I’ve ever seen.

“So I said I was going to the bathroom and they questioned me, and I just sprinted for the exit. And I was running down the studio in Burbank, it was like a prison with barbed wire and I figured any minute now the studio quiz show dogs would come chase me, barking only when a guy holds a sign that says, ‘Bark.’ ”

Barry turns from the dark underbelly of fun and glamour to the somewhat more colorful underbelly of fun and glamour--the Max Factor Museum of Beauty. As Barry wanders from the blue room dedicated to blondes to the peach for brunettes, he philosophizes about the Hollywood institution, declaring it “on par with some of the great museums of the world. When you think museums, pretty much you think the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume and the Max Factor makeup museum.

“But in a lot of ways, the Max Factor makeup museum has them all beat. They have a brunette room here, which you cannot say about any other. Like I believe in the Louvre, they put brunette and blonde together and to me,” Barry sniffs, heading for the Max Factor Beauty Calibrator, “that’s not the point.”