@ Alison, thank you for not taking the once-fashionable gratuitous cheap shot at Dave Barry. People who dismiss Barry should try writing 800 funny, nationally syndicated words every week for 22 years, and see where they stack up.

http://www.slate.com/id/2112218/

That profile is great, thanks for linking it. "A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge." Awesome.

And commenter Atomic tracked down that Barry quote I couldn't find: "But that's the bad news about humor. It's a kind of writing that promises something very specific to readers. You know, if you pick up and read something about NAFTA, nobody's saying you're gonna ... have any specific reaction to it. You get something that's supposed to be funny, and the writer's basically saying, 'You will be amused, you will laugh at this.'"

Yeah, I remember that article precisely for that paragraph and quote.

Provenza's new book is ¡SATIRISTAS! and explores many of the same topics, hilariously.
http://www.amazon.com/Satiristas-Comedians…