Dave Barry. Best. State. Ever. New York: Putnam, 2016. Print.

Best. State. Ever. is Dave Barry’s latest contribution to make us laugh. He tells us about his survey of offbeat places to visit in Florida. Barry seems to dismiss the usual tourist attractions. Indeed there is almost a hostile overtone to Disney World—which is surprising because some of his books are actually published by Disney. The places in this book, though, are places that cannot be found anywhere else. Perhaps that is why Florida is the best. state. ever.

As a longtime columnist for the Miami Herald, Barry begins by quoting odd headlines and news stories from Florida such as those that tell of a well-known rapper arrested for stealing a swimming pool heater or a man pulling his son’s loose tooth by tying a string around the tooth and the other end of the string around the bumper of his car.

Barry devotes a chapter to the Skunk Ape—the Everglades’ version of Bigfoot, Yeti, Jersey Devil, etc. Other chapters include the famous Weeki Wachee Mermaids, a town devoted to spiritualists, the world’s largest retirement community, Gatorland, a shooting range for machine gunners, Club 54 (LIV) in Miami, and a Key West bar crawl.

These all have potential for humor, and Barry does not disappoint. He does, however, project some admiration about some of his subjects, especially the non-Indians trying to hang on to family lands in the Everglades and the skills of the above mermaids. His style with hyperbolic metaphors follows the tradition of Jean Shepherd with a wider range.

Some samples:

Miami Woman does not own a loose-fitting anything. If she ever went camping in the wilderness—which she would not, because the wilderness lacks nail salons—she would sleep in a form-fitting sleeping bag inside a form-fitting tent. (25)

In Florida, cockroaches are called Palmetto bugs because if they hear you call them cockroaches, they will become enraged and destroy your kitchen. (44-45)

There are recurring jokes about mold-a-matic machines which a few of these attractions have but are consistently out of order. The machine at Gatorland actually works, and it molds a phosphorescent plastic model of a man wrestling an alligator.

The retirement community called The Villages sounds like it might be fun for old people, but it also comes across as escapist or Disneyesque in its own way like the asylum in the cult movie classic King of Hearts. As a birder, I have always wanted to spend some time in the Florida Keys because there are some birds there that are rarely seen anywhere else in the United States, but Dave Barry seems to have spent all this time there indoors. He is not much of a nature lover, I guess, but he is definitely good for some laughs.