Time Is Always Right for Humor

Is it OK to laugh?

That’s what Bob Costas, subbing in as host of the “Today Show,” wanted to know of humorist Dave Barry, who was on the show early last week. It wasn’t exactly a surprising or original inquiry in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

“Pretty much every interview I do begins with ‘Dave, can we really laugh at anything?’” Barry told the audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, who came to hear him and author Sandra Tsing Loh on Friday night. He pointed out that his five-minute segment with Costas preceded a piece on historic bras.

As Barry, a nationally syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald and author of more than 20 books, including his latest, “Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway: A Vicious and Unprovoked Attack on Our Most Cherished Political Institutions” (Random House), tells it, he answered Costas just fine the first time: Sure, it’s OK. But the golden-voiced TV host wasn’t buying it and played hardball with the funny guy.

“Should we be laughing now?” Barry recalled the broadcaster asking. “Aren’t you scum?” Costas went on.

Well, if Barry is scum, so is Tsing Loh. She laughed mightily, as did the 400 or so audience members. Loh, no slouch in the humor department herself, hosted Barry’s visit as part of an ongoing author series sponsored by the nonprofit group Writers Bloc.

Usually, the “scum” bit would have been a solid enough punch line to end a riff. But one of Barry’s considerable talents is maximizing the yuks. He got two more booming laughs as he continued his Costas story.

“Should we be laughing now?” said Barry. “I was thinking, ‘Well, I didn’t book me on the ‘Today Show.’ It’s like booking a juggler and not asking him to juggle. Instead, they just ask him, ‘Is this a good time to juggle?’”

To her credit, Loh, who was filling in as host for former Mayor Richard Riordan (a considerable slouch in the humor department), did not try to interview Barry. No probing questions about “Who the real Dave is” or “What makes him tick.”

Instead, Loh stuck to politics and book publishing. Occasionally, she leavened exchanges with her own humorous insights but otherwise deftly let Barry roll. After identifying herself as a “west of the 405, Barbra Streisand Democrat,” Loh solicited Barry’s take on a host of political figures, campaigns, issues and television shows.

Jimmy Carter? Barry blames him for the poor cut of presidential timber these days. “This little dweeb man becomes president of the United States and convinces everybody below the level of lieutenant governor, ‘Hey, I could be president.’”

Michael Dukakis? A very smart man “with the same range of facial expressions as an iguana.”

Bob Dole? “The guy who lives next door to you who is sure you took his paper.”

The 2000 presidential election? “One candidate was incredibly annoying. The other was incredibly stupid. The voters, for once, were faced with a clear choice.”

The last election points up several key areas for improvement: Future presidential debates should be performed with sock puppets, Barry argued. The candidates’ voices should be heard, but the voters should just see the sock puppets.

Also, no voter should ever be confused again by what candidate they are casting a ballot for, as happened in Florida. From now on, the candidate’s face should be printed on the ballot and voters should poke out their candidate’s eyes.

The new system has already been tested in voter-challenged Palm Beach County, said Barry, but some voters poked out their own eyeball. Then, they complained they poked out the wrong one. And they wished they’d poked out Pat Buchanan’s eyeball.

Of course, these residents really aren’t too clear on the entire concept of arrows, as anyone who has ever driven there knows, said Barry. A car can be in the left-turn lane with an arrow the “size of a house” painted on the roadway, a million “left-turn only” signs and a light with a green arrow and your typical driver won’t know what to do, said Barry. “Very rare is the Palm Beach County resident who will act immediately.”

“Can we say how glad we were that it was Florida and not California [that screwed up the election]?” interjected Loh.

“Remember, you can’t spell Florida without ‘duh,’” responded Barry, who regularly runs for president on a platform that advocates war on Canada and death for the inventor of the low-flush toilet.

Do you watch “The West Wing”? “It’s a very well-written, clever show,” said Barry. “But no one sits down. They walk and talk. They never get to just sit down and talk about things. All they do is stride and chide.”

As the audience took over the questions, someone asked Barry how it was to write a “regular” book. That is, an actual novel rather than a humor book. “It was very hard,” said Barry. “What no one tells you when you sign the contract is that a novel is supposed to have a plot.”

But eventually he developed one, and it became the 1999 book “Big Trouble.” It was so good Hollywood came calling and decided to make a movie out of it. Tim Allen and Rene Russo star in the film, which was screened in Miami Sept. 10, prior to its planned September release.

It’s a comic novel actually, and it centers around a couple of moronic bad guys who smuggle a piece of luggage on board an airplane at Miami International Airport. The morons think their bag contains gold, but it’s actually a nuclear device. And when the morons pass through security, the good folks there accidentally turn it on. “That’s not so funny anymore,” Barry said.

But he is hoping it will be funny by April 5--the movie’s new release date. “I think Al Qaeda read the treatment,” he added to howls of scummy laughter.