MacGougan at Large

Notes on Other Substacks - 4

Dave Barry - Dave Barry’s Substack

I’m a longtime fan of Dave Barry, but we have a complicated non-relationship. His writing style reminds me a lot of my late father’s. Denny MacGougan was a humor columnist for the Tacoma News Tribune in the 1970s and 80s. His column, by the way, was called “MacGougan at Large”. 

I always thought my Dad was as funny as Dave Barry, but he never had a national audience. Still, that’s not Dave Barry’s fault, and I’m not sure Dad even wanted the pressure and expectations that would have come with a national audience.

Also, when I see photos of Dave Barry, he looks to me like Ken Burns. Have Dave Barry and Ken Burns ever been photographed together? Not that I’ve seen. So that’s confusing as well. Why is someone with a successful humor franchise leading a double life, and how can someone so funny make all those earnest documentaries?

Dave Barry’s Substack (here’s a link: Dave Barry) has a free tier that gets you occasional public postings and a paid tier that gets you additional postings and Dave making you breakfast one morning each week. I’ve been thinking of going to a two-tier approach, but I’ve gotten mixed signals on whether readers would pay to get more of my columns or to get fewer of them.

Dave Barry was a widely syndicated and universally enjoyed columnist when he decided to stop writing his regular column twenty years ago. So it’s really cool that he’s writing a column again. Still, for someone like myself who’s looking to write a light, witty column, focused on ordinary topics of daily life and not political satire, Dave Barry represents a challenge. Why does the world need me if it already has Dave Barry? More specifically, why does Substack need me when it already has Dave Barry’s Substack?

So here’s what I tell myself: Yes, Dave Barry is very good at humor pieces - in prose. But where’s his light verse? Where are his lyrics and song parodies?

If you’ve ever wondered why I end each series of articles with song lyrics, now you know. The reason is Dave Barry.