A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell

In his latest parody of a self-help book Dave Barry takes on two daunting tasks: trying to match his other achievements in this genre ("Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead," "Claw Your Way to the Top") and trying to be funnier than the real thing. Since the real thing is the facile and pedantic get-rich-quick guide, Mr. Barry faces a steep challenge.
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He delivers, however, a hoot-filled volume loaded with "sure-fire, can't-miss, no-nonsense, common-sense, easy-to-apply, on-the-money hyphenated phrases." And he is on-the-money about more than hyphens when he plays this game.
"Dave Barry's Money Secrets" also skewers the condescension, rhetorical questioning, simple-minded illustrations ("but the lazy grasshopper spent the summer frolicking and downloading Internet porn") and bogus utility in which real advice books specialize. In a chapter titled "How to Get a Job," he describes the applicant's ideal demeanor: "You must appear confident without being cocky, relaxed without being indifferent, and tall without being short." But he warns that there will be many others competing for each employment opportunity. And "there is simply no practical way you can kill them all."
Since he began to write less frequently for The Miami Herald, Mr. Barry seems to have accumulated a hilarity surplus. That's the kind of broad, quasi-economic concept that he himself might analyze here. Here is the Internal Revenue Service's tax code, as Mr. Barry understands it: "Every day at 3 p.m. a taxpayer is selected at random, audited, then thrown into this vault. There's usually a scream, followed by silence, followed by a massive burp. The next day the tax code is bigger." As for the gross national product, he notes that one-third of it goes directly to Bill Gates.

Rolling Stone Magazine released a list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in November 2004. It represents an eclectic mix of music spanning the past 50 years, and contains a wide variety of artists sharing the spotlight. The Rolling Stone 500 was compiled by 172 voters comprised of rock artists and well-known rock music experts, who submitted ranked lists of their favorite 50 Rock & Roll/Pop music songs. The songs were then tallied to create the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Three CD set. Follow-up to Grapefruit's hugely popular US 1967 anthology 'March Of The Flower Children'. Hit singles, cult classics and tracks from 1968's key albums as the American music scene moved on from the Summer of Love. While psychedelia had been the dominant musical force in 1967, the scene fragmented the following year. Although many acts remained immersed in garage-punk and psychedelic pop, a growing number of heavily-amplified, blues-based hard rock bands like Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly - all of whom enjoyed sizeable hit singles in 1968 - emerged to pave the way for what would develop into heavy metal. Manufactured pop in the form of bubblegum dominated the singles chart, The Byrds and other easy riders developed a country/rock hybrid, a phalanx of folk-based singer/songwriters came to the fore, while Bob Dylan and his occasional playmates The Band pioneered a more organic, rustic sound that would come to be known as Americana.

Three CD set. Follow-up to Grapefruit's hugely popular US 1967 anthology 'March Of The Flower Children'. Hit singles, cult classics and tracks from 1968's key albums as the American music scene moved on from the Summer of Love. While psychedelia had been the dominant musical force in 1967, the scene fragmented the following year. Although many acts remained immersed in garage-punk and psychedelic pop, a growing number of heavily-amplified, blues-based hard rock bands like Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly - all of whom enjoyed sizeable hit singles in 1968 - emerged to pave the way for what would develop into heavy metal. Manufactured pop in the form of bubblegum dominated the singles chart, The Byrds and other easy riders developed a country/rock hybrid, a phalanx of folk-based singer/songwriters came to the fore, while Bob Dylan and his occasional playmates The Band pioneered a more organic, rustic sound that would come to be known as Americana.