Quotes from Dave Barry

DMV OFFICER: OK, make a left turn here. TEST TAKER: Whoops. DMV OFFICER: (Writes something on clipboard.) TEST TAKER: Does that mean I fail the test? DMV OFFICER: Nah, she's getting back up. You just clipped her.

South Florida's dreams of a first-class sports facility come true at last with the opening of Joe Robbie Stadium, featuring comfortable seating, excellent visibility, plenty of bathrooms, and nearly five parking spaces.

Can we move this conversation along, old chap? I'm getting frightfully tired of

The U.S. space probe Meanderer J I, after a journey of six years and many millions of miles, passes within 400 miles of the surface of Neptune, sending back dramatic color photographs of a Delta Air Lines jet.

According to a poll by the Zogby organization, 67 percent of Americans agree either 'somewhat' or 'strongly' with the statement that 'Miami is plagued by crime.' This is very upsetting to those of us who live here and love our city. It makes us want to visit every single one of those 67 percent of Americans personally, so we can tell them what Miami is really like, and then kill them with machetes

The FAA, responding to consumer complaints, issues tough new rules under which airlines are required to notify passengers "within a reasonable period of time" if their plane has crashed.

Nerezza had no nose.

Hurricane Floyd, packing a wind estimated at 14 miles per hour, lashes South Florida, wreaking more than $67.50 worth of havoc. Governor "Bob" Martinez, after touring the devastated area via golf cart, pledges that he will request federal disaster relief, then campaign against it.

should explain that a "sommelier" is a wine steward, the dignified person who comes up to you at expensive restaurants, hands you the wine list, and says "Excellent choice, sir," when you point to French writing that, translated, says "Sales Tax Included.

On the one hand, the national consensus is that Florida is a stupid weird insane dysfunctional hellhole that is also—I forgot to mention this earlier—a hurricane zone that is soon going to be largely submerged when global climate change causes the seas to rise to the point where vast herds of lobsters roam what is now Interstate 95. On the other hand, people keep coming here. And most of them—even the non-stupid ones—decide to stay here.

Say you're watching a TV show. Say it's 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, the angst-ridden lone-wolf federal agent who protects America from terrorism by sooner or later causing the violent death of pretty much everybody he meets. If you study this show carefully, you will notice something curious: Jack Bauer never goes to the bathroom. That's why he's so ridden with angst.

If the groom-to-be's views were actually considered, the wedding would be a far more relaxed affair, possibly involving go-carts.

The Senate Transportation committee recommends the federal speed limit be raised on highways going through boring or ugly areas, so drivers can get through them quicker. "In Indiana, for instance," the committee says, "it should be 135 miles per hour.

Don Johnson announces he is leaving Miami, dealing a severe blow to the area's hopes to repeat as winner of the Biggest Cockroach Contest.

Soon the floor in front of us is littered with the corpses of unfinished songs.

This ability to feel remorse is one of the many ways in which dogs are better than cats. Cats have the morals of Hannibal Lecter. If you come home and find your cat inside your parakeet's cage, holding your dead parakeet in its jaws, your cat will be like, "Obviously this parakeet committed suicide." Meanwhile your dog, if you have one, will be moping around under the cage going, "I did it! I ate the bird!

As the poet Wordsworth once said, 'Fatherhood is truly the most...HEY! You kids put down those hatchets RIGHT NOW!' The poet Wordsworth's point was that, although fatherhood is a rewarding experience, it's an experience that you will sometimes wish was rewarding somebody else. Nevertheless, if you ask any dad if fatherhood is worth it, he will immediately answer yes. Why? Because his wife might be listening.

And then the savage spoke. Poking his spear tip against Alf's chest, he said: "Can we move this conversation along, old chap? I'm getting frightfully tired of 'How.

Nobody understands how hard it is, being captain.

Now, if Richard Nixon had claimed something like that you would at least have had the comfort of knowing he was lying. You could trust Nixon that way.

He had dark, deepset, piercingly black eyes, overshadowed by eyebrows so bushy that he had to brush them away to see through the glass. But his most prominent feature was the thick growth of hair on his upper lip, long and black, lovingly maintained, measuring nearly a foot between its waxed and pointed tips. It was this feature that gave him his name, the most feared name on the sea: Black Stache.

restaurants would have a "salad bar" offering lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, pretend-bacon bits, Cheez Whiz and a Special House Dressing made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, tended by an employee chosen on the basis of listlessness, whose job would be to make sure that all of these ingredients had been slopped over into each other's compartments.

Exactly," said Slank.

We know very little about the effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great While in the testicles with a cattle prod.