The Barry Best of Barry Smith

By Barry Smith

     The tradition stems from many, many years ago in ancient Greece. The famous philosophers were tired, and who could blame them. Just thinking of other people's philosophy makes me tired; these guys had to think up their own philosophies. One night after a hard day of oratory and bloviation they decided to get together every week and relax with some rational discussion of important matters. After weeks of extremely rational discussion they decided to band together as a group to fight (verbally) for their rights. Soon they were weary of rational discussion and switched to level-headed discourse. After several more weeks of level-headed discourse, they had decided on a group name for themselves: The Philosophers Union or P.U. The P.U. successfully argued for the right of their members to have 4 weeks off each year in which they wouldn't have to write new material, but would repeat earlier favorite bits in a so-called "Best of Plato" format. This idea has been passed on through the years and reached it's peak during the Tonight Show reign of Johnny Carson when it was later discovered the last 3 years he appeared on the Tonight Show were all repeats of earlier shows.

      I figure if it's good enough for the ancient Greek philosopher types, Johnny Carson, and Ann Landers, then it's good enough for me. But, when the title says, "The Best of Barry Smith", I want to make sure the public gets the best. So before turning in this column, I commissioned several public opinion polls from respected public opinion polling organizations who sent me large stacks of paper filled with tiny print and numbers so large they end in -illions. Thousands of normal people were questioned, people just like you and me. (Okay, probably more like you.) They were grilled extensively, and also asked questions such as the following: Which of these columns do you prefer? Are you regular  reader of Barry Smith's columns? Are you an irregular reader of Barry Smith's columns? Who played Lumpy on "Leave it to Beaver"? Hey! Who stole my pen and clipboard?

      But this wasn't enough. I wanted to make sure so I talked to experts in the fields of writing and comedy, not to mention comedy writing,  and asked which columns were the funniest. After a depressing number of them answered Dave Barry or even Ann Landers, I specified that it had to be one of my columns.

       After months of study, I have determined that when I'm on vacation, what people want to see under the title, "The Best of Barry Smith" looks something like the following: