Dave Barry Turns 50 - Hardcover

Dave Barry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609603272 ISBN 13: 9780609603277

Publisher: Crown, 1998

Synopsis

And no, he's not going to whine about it. In fact, he's not going to dwell on the negative aspects of turning 50 at all, like the weight gain that results from merely watching food commercials, or that you discover random hairs sprouting from unexpected sectors of your body.

Instead, Dave is going to make all of you out there under the half-century mark envious with a rundown of the advantages of turning 50. For instance, you know all those newspaper articles about Middle East turmoil you read because you think you should? Dave doesn't read 'em, because with his eyes he can't! And you know all that energy you expend trying to look and sound hip? Dave doesn't, because after 50 it's hopeless and he's through trying to be one of the Boyz N the Burbz.

And Dave writes not only about being 50, but also about 50 years of inventions (Oreos, Silly Putty), arts (Howdy Doody, TV commercials), politics (the Cold War, the Cold War, and more of the Cold War), and other baby boomer nostalgia.

So call Dave and let him know how much you're looking forward to reading Dave Barry Turns 50. But not right now--he's sleeping.

Ten Signs That You Might Be Losing It
1. You tend to forget things.
2. When you drive your car, you notice that people yell at you a lot. Often, these people are lying on your      hood.
3. On more than one occasion, while shaving, you have noticed that your razor seemed kind of dull. Upon closer examination, your razor turned out to be your toothbrush.
4. You're always searching for the right word or name. You'll be telling an anecdote, and you'll get stuck on a name, and you'll tell your listeners: "You know! That guy! With the thing! He has that thing! That guy!" And everybody will start trying to guess who you're talking about, as if you're playing charades, and finally, after ten minutes of this, it will turn out that the name you're trying to remember is: "The Pope." By this time, of course, you have no recollection of the original anecdote.  
5. You sometimes address your spouse as "General Eisenhower."
6. You tend to forget things.
7. You sometimes wear a bathrobe to the office.
8. And it isn't your office.
9. It isn't your bathrobe, either.
10. You tend to forget things.

About this title

About the Author

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist and the best-selling author of Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus, Dave Barry in Cyberspace, Dave Barry's Guide to Guys, and other books. He lives in Miami, Florida, of course.

From the Inside Flap

not going to whine about it. In fact, he's not going to dwell on the negative aspects of turning 50 at all, like the weight gain that results from merely watching food commercials, or that you discover random hairs sprouting from unexpected sectors of your body. <br><br>Instead, Dave is going to make all of you out there under the half-century mark envious with a rundown of the advantages of turning 50. For instance, you know all those newspaper articles about Middle East turmoil you read because you think you should? Dave doesn't read 'em, because with his eyes he can't! And you know all that energy you expend trying to look and sound hip? Dave doesn't, because after 50 it's hopeless and he's through trying to be one of the Boyz N the Burbz.<br><br>And Dave writes not only about being 50, but also about 50 years of inventions (Oreos, Silly Putty), arts (Howdy Doody, TV commercials), politics (the Cold War, the Cold War, and more of the Cold War), and other baby boomer nostalgia. <br>&

Reviews

Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Barry claims, "Many bad things happen when you turn 50. You can't see; you can't hear; you can read the entire Oxford English Dictionary in the time it takes you to go to the bathroom; and you keep meeting people your own age who look like Grandpa Walton." Even so, in this follow-up to his bestselling Dave Barry Turns 40, he decided not to dwell "on the negative aspects of turning 50" and instead offers a "celebration of the aging process" by examining significant baby-boomer accomplishments ("The New Age movement! Call waiting!"). Barry begins with boomer origins in the late 1940s, a time when record players "were closer in design and sound quality to washing machines." Each subsequent decade gets a full chapter as Barry waxes nostalgic while shuffling down pathways of the past to examine an assortment of arcane artifacts and "actual facts," largely gleaned from Rita Lang Kleinfelder's 750-page When We Were Young: A Baby-Boomer Yearbook. Barry ends each chapter with "Discussion Questions" ("Did you inhale? Explain."), and maintains mirth right to the closing pages (retirement plans, death options). However, it's the look back at TV commercials, politics, inventions and attitudes that really makes those who have seen it all (much of "it" through trifocals) chortle out loud. It's not unlike an archeological dig through an attic, choking from laughter rather than dust, as familiar and forgotten memories are refreshed and taken for a satirical synaptic spin by a master humorist. 13-city birthday tour. (Oct.) FYI: Appropriately enough, this title is also available as a Random House audio ($18 ISBN 0-375-40428-7) and in a large-print edition ($22
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It had to happen. Old Mister Barry (Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus, 1997; Dave Barry in Cyberspace, 1996; etc.), like many another humorist, has advanced in years and lived to tell about it. Baby Boomer comics are reaching the half-century mark in droves. It generally turns them solipsistic as well as silly, as they hearken to toots, creaks, squeaks, and other sounds of creeping senescence. Barry reports on his physical condition, too, and why not? But he also has another idea. A good part of his current effort presents a cultural history of the formative Boomer times and his part in them, starting with 1947 and going through 1974, when, it appears, the author gets tired of the exercise. If it's not quite Mark Sullivan's memorable six-volume Our Times covering the century's early decades, the survey is, indeed, our times (or Barry's times, anyway). And pretty foolish they seem, too, as Barry's time capsule recalls popular music, consumer products, TV shows, advertising, and, of course, the ever looming threat of godless communism and the scary Sputnik. Nixon, Johnson, Kissinger are recalled with pleasant contempt. Fearlessly, the author names names; and almost always the name is the late Buffalo Bob, so things weren't all bad. There was, after all, ``streaking,'' and Barry would like to see the fad of naked sprinting brought back, although in the case of Boomers, ``there should definitely be a weight limitation.'' In addition to the nostalgia, Dave presents obligatory lists (number 14 in ``25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years'': ``Nobody is normal), review questions, and footnotes (all citing ``Buffalo Bob''). And nowhere is the word ``prostate'' foundexcept on the cover. Barry's even longer in the tooth than he was when he wrote Dave Barry Turns 40, but despite his protestations of dotage, he is still clever enough to be his old funny self. There will probably be more laughs before Dave Barry Turns 60. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Baby-boomer Barry (Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus, LJ 9/1/97) waxes nostalgic about his life and times in this latest autobiographical work. Tracing the history of boomers, Barry measures some of the greatest achievements of our time, like the introduction of the first major TV jingle, for Ajax ("Use Ajax! The foaming cleanser!"). From this point on, Barry notes, thousands more jingles gradually filled baby boomers' minds with "brain sludge." He points out that as we turn 50, most of us cannot name the secretary of defense, but we can sing the Brylcreem jingle. Other topics include politics, highlighted by Watergate, and inventions of concern to baby boomers such as Oreos, Silly Putty, long-playing records, and espresso makers. At once funny and depressing, Barry reminds us of the cost of sending a child to college ("a bajillion dollars"), planning for retirement ("how to survive when you get old"), and the inevitability of death ("your life is mostly over"). Guess you'd better buy this book now while you can still read the print.
-?Joe Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Master exaggerator Barry returns to the book tour, pushing one of his annual "Dave Barry does something" things. Staring his semicentennial right in the face, he does what any self-respecting, self-absorbed boomer will do in such a crisis: he starts talkin' 'bout My Generation. His saving grace is the sarcastic ridicule with which he reviews the faddish sides of the boomer upbringing, where Silly Putty was king, McDonald's took its place alongside the nursing bottle, TV began its moronization of the world, and awful-to-tolerable pop singles stalked the AM-only airwaves. With mock-horror, Barry catalogs those things--the toys, the gloppy food, the TV shows, and sappy songs--year by year up to 1974; so Barry's fans must wade through his past (not that they mind) for three-fourths of the book to get to the point: his geriatric future. It begins with The Letter, an invitation to join AARP, which Barry notes is the defender of Social Security and "the constitutional right to drive without any clue where the actual road is." Rebel with a cause, he's instead starting up BARF (Boomers against Reaching Farthood). So runs the Barry style, delivering a bushel of chuckles for readers of his weekly humor column. Gilbert Taylor

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
It's Great to Be 50!
Right. And Herbert Hoover was a rap singer.

I am NOT going to whine.
Yes, I have turned 50.
Yes, this is an age that I used to consider old. Not middle-aged, like Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore in The Dick Van Dyke Show; but actually old, like Walter Brennan as Granpappy Amos in The Real McCoys, gimping around cluelessly in a pair of bib overalls and saying things like "Con-SARN it!"

But I do not choose to dwell on the negative. I choose to be an optimist, like the great explorer Christopher Columbus, who had a dream that he could sail a ship all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. People said he was crazy, but Columbus did not know the meaning of the word "discouragement." (He also did not know the meaning of "nostril" or "weasel," because he spoke Italian.)

And so Columbus boldly set out and discovered the New World, and then he went back to Europe, where he died in obscurity at age 55, which is only five years older than I am right now! OH GOD! MY LIFE IS OVER!!!

No, scratch that. I really am going to be positive in this book, instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of turning 50, such as that you get wrinkled and forgetful and achy, and you gain weight merely by watching food commercials, and the warranties are expiring on all your remaining teeth and internal organs, and your idea of a big night is to stay up late enough to see the previews for Letterman, whose actual show you have not watched since the Reagan administration.

I am not going to dwell on those things, nor am I going to mention the fact that when you get to this age, you discover random hairs sprouting from unexpected sectors of your body, so that, in addition to all the other little maintenance tasks you've always performed each day, you find yourself asking questions like: Did I remember to pluck my ears?

And I am not going to even mention the word "prostate."

Instead, I'm going to talk about the good things that happen to you when you turn 50, such as . . .

Okay, give me a minute here . . .

All right, here's one: You can't read anything. At least I can't. Actually, this started happening to me when I was 48; I started noticing that when I tried to read restaurant menus, they looked like this:

Entrees
Broasted free-range fennel shootlets with modules of prawns -- $19
Pecan-encrusted apricot-glazed garlic-enhanced shank of frog -- $27
Liver "en Fester" dans une bunche de creme de corne -- $21

At first I thought that this had nothing to do with me--that, for some reason, possibly to save ink, the restaurants had started printing their menus in letters the height of bacteria; all I could see was little blurs. But for some reason, everybody else seemed to be able to read the menus. Not wishing to draw attention to myself, I started ordering my food by simply pointing to a likely looking blur.

ME (pointing to a blur): I'll have this.
WAITER: You'll have "We Do Not Accept Personal Checks"?
ME: Make that medium rare.

Pretty soon I started noticing that everything I tried to read--newspapers, books, nasal-spray instructions, the United States Constitution--had been changed to the bacteria-letter format. I also discovered that, contrary to common sense, I could read these letters if I got farther away from them. So for a while I dealt with the situation by ordering off the menus of people sitting at other tables.

"I'd like to order some dessert," I'd tell the waiter. "Please bring a menu to the people at that table over there and ask them to hold it up so I can see it."

Eventually I had to break down and buy those reading glasses that are cut low so you can peer over the top. The first time you put on a pair of those is a major milestone in your life. Because there is no question about it: This is the start of your Senior Citizenship. The transformation is comparable to the one Clark Kent goes through: He takes off his glasses and becomes Superman; you put on your reading glasses and become . . . Old Person.

You find that with your reading glasses on you behave differently. You become crotchety and easily irritated by little things, such as when the supermarket runs out of your preferred brand of low-fat, low-sodium, vitamin-fortified, calcium-enriched, high-fiber, non-meat "breakfast links" made from tofu and compressed cardboard. You become angry at the radio because it keeps playing songs you hate, which is a LOT of songs, because you basically hate every song written since the Beatles broke up, and you're sick of the Beatles, too, because you've heard every one of their songs 900 million times on "oldies" radio, which is all you've listened to for over twenty years. You feel that everybody except you drives too fast. You think of people under the age of 30 as "whippersnappers," and you get the urge to peer over your glasses at them and tell them how tough things were during the Great Depression, even though you personally were born in 1947. Sometimes you are tempted to say, "Con-SARN it!"

So, to avoid transforming into Old Person, you tend to wear your reading glasses as little as possible. You lose them. You go out without them. The result is, much of the time, you can't read anything printed in letters smaller than Marlon Brando.

But what I've discovered-this is the positive aspect of aging that I've been driving at--is that very often not being able to read is a good thing. For example, without my reading glasses, the only part of the newspaper I can read is the headlines, so my front page looks like this:


FIGHTING ERUPTS YET AGAIN IN MIDDLE EAST
Historic Peace Accord No. 2,965,978 Goes Down the Crapper

But seriously, I really have absolutely nothing to tell you here, unless you want me to solve some mysteries that have totally baffled the         human race, such as what is the true meaning of life, and whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and which, really, is the best long-distance carrier for you.

SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM COLLAPSING
You, Personally, Will Never Get a Cent HAHAHAHAHAHA

But seriously, I really have absolutely nothing to tell you here, unless you want me to solve some mysteries that have totally baffled the         human race, such as what is the true meaning of life, and whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and which, really, is the best long-distance carrier for you.

STUDY: EGGPLANT CAUSES CANCER
Same Study Also Shows That Lack of Eggplant Causes Cancer

        
But seriously, I really have absolutely nothing to tell you here, unless you want me to solve some mysteries that have totally baffled the human race, such as what is the true meaning of life, and whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and which, really, is the best long-distance carrier for you.

GIANT ASTEROID WILL SMASH EARTH TODAY; HUMAN RACE DOOMED
Professional Baseball Players Strike for Higher Salaries

But seriously, I really have absolutely nothing to tell you here, unless you want me to solve some mysteries that have totally baffled the         human race, such as what is the true meaning of life, and whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and which, really, is the best long-distance carrier for you.

        
See what I mean? I don't want to read those stories. I'm glad they're written in bacteria letters. This is also how I feel about the long, scary Consumer Advisories that appear on virtually every product I buy, advising me how potentially deadly it is, like this:

WARNING: Use of this product may cause nausea, insomnia, euphoria, déjà vu, menopause, tax audits, demonic possession, lung flukes, eyeball worms, decapitation, and mudslides. We would not even dare to sell this product if we did not have a huge, carnivorous legal department that could squash you in court like a baby mouse under a sledgehammer. We frankly cannot believe that you were so stupid as to purchase this product. Your only hope is to set this product down very gently, back slowly away from it, then turn and sprint from your home, never to return.

Back when I could read without reading glasses, I would glance at this information, and it made me nervous. But now, thanks to old age, it looks like this:
WARNING: Here we go again: But seriously, I really have absolutely nothing to tell you here, unless you want me to solve some mysteries that have totally baffled the human race, such as what is the true meaning of life, and whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and which, really, is the best long-distance carrier for you. Would you like me to tell you those things? You would? OK! I will, then! But first I want to tell you exactly who was responsible for the Kennedy assassination. Ready? Here goes: The Kennedy assassination was committed by This doesn't say anything. This is just a bunch of words I wrote here to make it look like there's a story under the headline. If you have gone to the trouble of blowing this up so that you can read it, let me just say: Congratulations, you have even more spare time than I do, which is saying a LOT.

So I can just cheerfully discard the Consumer Advisory and swallow the product. Granted, this is sometimes a poor decision, such as when the product is liquid drain opener. But I feel the trade-off is worth it.

I am also much more comfortable these days with produ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0609603272
• ISBN 13: 9780609603277
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 219