Dogs and Frogs and Goats, Oh My!

During the Election Heard (and subsequently Laughed About) 'Round The World last winter, Dave Barry made a rare television appearance on Larry King Live as part of a humorist panel's view on the election. And for a few precious minutes, Larry King Live was transformed into some of the most gut-busting television I'd seen in quite a long time. The entire panel, during the half hour that they were featured, all inopportunely managed to disseminate their political slantings while trying to insert varying little jabs at the candidate they didn't support... all except for Dave. He poked crazy fun without being accusatory, a fault that most humorists today unfortunately possess. But Dave, rather than sling blame left and right, subtlely negated the other guest's dispositions (an apt word for the situation) by sending up every absurdity that was within his grasp. Going in, I wasn't sure if Dave's brand of humor would translate well to the Telly, but by the show's end he had me sold, that Dave Barry is the funniest man in America. By a WIDE margin.

In the storm that seems to swathe American society these days, Dave Barry seems to be the one guy that would gleefully run out into it, waving a 3 Iron at the sky, hoping to catch some lightning. He IS the only man, after all, to win the Pulitzer Prize for writing on such vital topics as toilet flow and airplane food, and I must say, we're all the better for it. His columns (now backlogged into a series of his own books) are true American treasures, never dull and never disappointing, but often overlooked because much of his target audience is too busy deciding whether to paint their kitchen Eggshell or Off-White. Barry's first (admitted) forée into fiction, Big Trouble, takes the same path as his blithely blunt columns, painting everything with the same gray brush, raising nothing and no one above the realm of the illogical. In the course of reading Big Trouble one comes to the realization that this stuff seems to be outrightly imprudent and laughable, but that this sort of thing happens every day in every possible place, virtually under our nose.

Big Trouble is the story of seemingly disparate Miami denizens, all of whom come together when a peculiar suitcase makes its way into the hands of an advantageous lowlife looking to make life better for himself. Little does this lowlife know about the importance of this particular suitcase...

Puggy was a drifter, one who had a tough time keeping a job due to his status as an alien, but things had recently started to take a turn for the better. He had held down a job for three whole weeks (a personal record) at a roadside bar, one that went mysteriously without customers, but Puggy didn't bother inquire why. He had also started living in an unattended tree in the backyard of Arthur Herk, local construction contractor for Penultimate Inc., unbeknownst to Arthur and his new wife Anna. To Puggy it was the nicest place he had to live in while he had been in America; that was, until a pair of hired hitmen jumped the Herk's fence, getting the attention of the Herk's hungry dog Roger, who hoped, apparently out of habit, that these two gentlemen might have some food...

Eliot Arnold was miserable. Having been just recently divorced, and also fired from his job as a journalist after sticking his foot through his boss's computer screen in utter frustration, his life seemed to be heading down a steady incline. His new job as an independent advertising contractor was barely keeping him above water, and the grief that he took didn't seem to justify the trouble he went through, let alone keep him sane.

Meanwhile, his son Matt, along with his friend Andrew, were cruising in his dad's Kia jamming along with the latest insufferable rock band, on their way to the Herk's house, to "kill" Anna Herk's daughter Jenny. When Matt and Andrew arrive and set off on their mission, the two hitmen are thrown for a loop, setting off a series of improbable, life-changing experiences for everyone, and even some not, involved.

Big Trouble is a absolute gem of novel. It was a good deal raunchier that Barry's previous non-fiction work, but it is used largely in the case of just one or two characters, and doesn't detract from the strength of the novel. To some the language may seem somewhat juvenile, but after all, Dave said "that I tried to get them to stop, but they just went ahead and did it anyway." Nothing escapes the wrath of Barry's pen, everything from our immigration service to bad marriages to terrible airport service gets the royal treatment in Big Trouble. It had me laughing from the first sentence to the last, not letting up at any point. Here's hoping that Dave continues to mess around in fiction, because his first time out was an absolute joy to read.

OVERALL GRADE: A-

NOTE: Big Trouble's rights were sold to Disney to be made into a movie, and shooting on the film completed near the end of last year. The film version, rated PG-13 (natch, it's Disney) is due to be released on September 12 of this year, starring an ensemble cast with Tim Allen, Rene Russo, and Stanley Tucci in the main roles. Directing chores were held by Barry Sonnenfeld, of Men In Black and Get Shorty fame. Also involved with the project were Jason Lee, Janeane Garofalo, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore, Omar Epps, Ben Foster, DJ Qualls, Zooey Deschanel, Heavy D, Patrick Warburton, and even Johnny Knoxville. Dave Barry is also rumored to make a cameo as a lawyer (that just brims with irony). Let's hope that the movie is anywhere near as good as the book.