Jan. 24, 2005 - 5:24 a.m.

...my favorite humor columnist, Dave Barry, has decided to take a year off from writing. I didn't know this until last week or so. My mother and I have been big fans of his for years now, always reading his column in our Sunday paper. One Sunday, he wasn't in the paper at all. The next week he still wasn't there.

I looked him up online and found out why. He'd put his column on hold for a year - at least. This means he may not go back to writing after a year.

I suppose I can speculate on some of the reasons he might be taking some time off. He and his wife have a daughter who's about five or six now, or thereabouts. He probably wants to spend some time with his family, watch the kid grow up for a while, that kind of thing. Or it could be something completely different. Might be he just wanted some time off. I don't know why he stopped writing, but I hope it's only temporary.

In the column where I read all this, it also named his successor - Gene Weingarten, the editor of the Washington Post. He also writes humor, and is a friend of Dave Barry's. I'd seen his name in Dave's column many times. Usually it was in reference to a medical question or problem Dave was writing about, being that Gene knew everything about the various bad things that could happen to the human body. (Example: "Hey Gene, my eye twitches when I close it, and my wrist aches." "Might be cancer, Dave. Have a CAT scan.")

I was shocked and dismayed to find out Dave was going to be out of the business for a while, but if he had to take some time off I'm glad there's someone writing a humor column whose name I recognize from Dave's columns. However, this does not mean the Unibrow paper will run Gene's column. In fact, they have picked up someone else to fill the humor void.

Unfortunately, this new humor columnist in the Unibrow paper does more to encourage the humor void than to fill it. He's not funny. It's sad, really, but he's just not funny at all. I wanted him to be funny. I wanted to like him. But I just can't.

When I found the article about Dave taking time off and Gene writing a column, I e-mailed Gene. His e-mail address was at the bottom of the article, so I sent him a note saying I was looking forward to reading his writing. There was one of his humor columns printed in that particular paper already, and it was hilarious. So naturally, I had hoped our paper would go with him. He e-mailed me back the next night. When I e-mailed our local paper they told me who they had picked up, and it wasn't Gene Weingarten, unfortunately.

However, there is a light at the end of this hideously long and seemingly pointless tunnel. I think...

Gene Weingarten is at the Washington Post. Look it up online - they do have quite a web presence, I must say. Go to the site and search for his name, and you'll find his column. I highly recommend doing this, if you enjoyed Dave Barry's work. Even if you never read him before, any humor fan would probably like Gene's writing. Very funny.

I miss Dave already. I can only hope he'll still do books, if he stops doing the column for good. If not, the world will be even less funny than it is now. And with the death of Johnny Carson, that is significantly less funny than it should be.

Oh well. At least we can still laugh at the fact that our president resembles a chimpanzee.