Barry's Gone, So Now I'm Number One

Well, it's official. America's foremost poker humorist is now America's foremost humorist … period. I ascended to the throne by default after the abdication of Barry.

And, no, I'm not talking about Barry Shulman. Billionaires aren't funny. I mean Dave Barry, the columnist for the Miami Herald, who has been generally regarded as the funniest writer around. Right after New Year's, he announced that he will retire as a regular columnist – at least for the coming year, perhaps forever.

The problem, he said, is that people keep telling him he used to be funnier. I understand. Lots of people tell me that I used to be funnier. The rest tell me that I was never funny. OK, but with Barry gone, I ask you, who is funnier than me – Oklahoma Johnny Hale? (I mean intentionally funny.)

Barry wrote for the Miami Herald for 22 years. Four more years with Card Player and I'll match his record, providing I don't starve to death first on what they pay me. And I can certainly relate to the problem of finding new humor material after so many years at the typewriter and computer. Readers of my column should not be surprised by Barry's announcement, because a while back I wrote that he was getting so short of material that he took court action to take over the rights to Big Denny, Ralph the Rattler, Dirty Wally, Dr. Wolfgang Krock, and the rest of my leading characters.

As I read what was perhaps Barry's last column, I found a lot more that I could relate to. For example, his opening paragraph read, "There comes a time in the life of every writer when he asks himself – as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Hemingway all surely asked themselves – if he has any booger jokes left in him." Booger jokes? Hey, one of my stories not long ago was about "Booger boy," a poker acquaintance of mine who got thrown out of Binion's Horseshoe for continuously picking his nose and wiping his fingers under his seat (true story). While my ability as a humorist may be in question, my good taste certainly never has been.

Then, Barry describes how, after he made fun of North Dakota, the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, invited him up there and, in a deeply moving ceremony, the town's mayor dedicated a new sewage-lifting station in his honor. Well, after years of making fun of Barstow, they have "Wanted" posters of me in the post office. And if they ever catch me, they won't just name a sewage sump after me, they'll drop me in it.

Barry, reminiscing, goes on to say that whenever he wrote something inaccurate, such as Thomas Jefferson inventing the atomic bomb, he got dozens of irate letters correcting him. That happens to me, too, which sometimes makes me wonder about the collective IQ of my fans. For example, I once wrote a column called "The Ethics of Poker." I offered such "guidelines" as exactly how far you had to lean over to see your opponent's cards before it would be considered unethical. I got a letter from a reader blasting me for disseminating such unethical information. Another time, I did a story about the CIA sending Big Denny down Saddam Hussein's spider hole to interrogate him, and two people, in all seriousness, asked me if the story was true.

Another time, I wrote a piece called "My Last Column?" in which I pretended to be giving up my column to get more respect, and lots of readers thought I was being serious. I really should be more careful about what I write. The stock market fell 600 points the day that column came out.

While I can never hope to approach Dave Barry's comic genius, in all fairness to me, you must appreciate that he had a big advantage. He could write about anything under the sun, such as exploding cows and exploding toilets, while I am more or less restricted to writing about poker. I mean, how many times have you seen a cow explode in a cardroom? How many "Poker Pests" columns can I be expected to dream up, in which I wrote about things that players and dealers do and say that set me off? Actually, I found enough material for 10 "Poker Pests" columns, but that's only because I'm so easily set off.

Other times, I've been forced to search far and wide for material. For example, I sent myself to Nepal in two separate columns. The first time, I was on a quest to discover how Q-7 got to be known as the "computer hand." I climbed the Himalayas to seek out a legendary wise man in his cave. The answer he gave me was, "Because life is a fountain." Satisfied, I returned home. I later realized I didn't know what the hell the wise man was talking about, so I retraced my steps and asked him, "Why is life a fountain?"

"You mean it's not a fountain?" he replied.

All right, so maybe I'm not a comic genius like Barry.

Another time, and this is the truth, I discovered that a magazine called Casino Times, based in Nepal where they have several casinos, had been lifting my columns without my knowledge. In my story I went there with Big Denny to plead my case before the king, and was awarded several million rupees, which I later discovered was worth about $14. The magazine, by the way, went legit after it was sold, and is now reprinting my columns with my permission. I asked them to send me an elephant for payment, but settled for a free vacation should I ever travel there. (Anyone care to stage a tournament in Nepal?)

The other big advantage that Barry had over me was that he had a fan base of millions of readers who would send him all kinds of ideas – like newspaper clippings about exploding cows. How much help do I get from my fans? About the only input I get is from Dirty Wally, complaining that I haven't written about him for the past two issues. Action Al is always bombarding me with story ideas, but all of them are at kindergarten level. Once, to get him off my back, I wrote a column called "Action Al's Dealer Protection Plan," in which dealers would wear things like umpire vests and face plates to protect themselves from players throwing things and spitting at them. It was the worst column I ever wrote. Thanks, Al.

Well, now that I've crowned myself the top magazine humorist in America, I'll expect a generous raise from Mr. Shulman. If it isn't forthcoming, I'll have to increase the price of my autograph to 15 cents. Four more years to go. Of course, it wouldn't hurt if my readers would help me out with story ideas once in a while. No exploding cow stories, though.