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Philip Horkman is a happy man, the owner of a pet store called The Wine Shop, and on Sundays a referee for a local kids’ soccer league. Jeffrey Peckerman is the proud and loving father of a star athlete in the girls’ ten-and-under soccer league, and he’s not exactly happy with the ref.
The two of them are about to collide in a swiftly escalating series of events that will send them running for their lives, pursued by the police, soldiers, subversives, bears, revolutionaries, pirates, and a black ops team that does not exist. Where all that takes them you can’t even begin to guess, but the literary journey there is a masterpiece of inspiration, chaos, and unadulterated, well, lunacy. And they might even learn a lesson or two along the way.
Dave Barry is proud to have been elected Class Clown by the Pleasantville High School class of 1965. From 1983 to 2004, he wrote a weekly humor column for the Miami Herald, which in 1988 won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He is the author of some thirty books. His most recent bestsellers include his Peter Pan prequels, written with Ridley Pearson; his Christmas story The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog; Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far); and I’ll Mature When I’m Dead. Barry lives in Coral Gables, Florida, with his family and a domestic staff of forty-seven.
Alan Zweibel is an original Saturday Night Live writer who the New York Times said has “earned his place in the pantheon of American pop culture.” He is the winner of lots and lots of Emmy Awards for his work in television, which also includes It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Monk, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and PBS’s Great Performances. He won the Thurber Prize for his novel The Other Shulman and collaborated with Billy Crystal on the Tony Award–winning play 700 Sundays. Zweibel and his wife, Robin, live in Short Hills, New Jersey, because they enjoy paying exorbitantly high property taxes.
Yes, Barry is juvenile at times -- but he has achieved the kind of success that can only come from combining a juvenile mind with intelligence, timing, and a keen eye for the absurd. Favorite Barry targets include government inanity, dogs, guys, the Internet, and other oddities of life. He also specializes in weird news and urban myths involving UFO hunters, Pop-Tart science, and toilets. Many of these essays feature the line that has become his catchphrase, "I am not making this up." (Unless, of course, he is introducing something serious and daunting such as a book about the federal government, in which case he reassures that he has made everything up.)
Usually, though, he's not making it up. What he's doing is making it very funny. Whether the target is Congress or commercials, Barry refuses to take anything seriously, least of all himself – but he manages to convey some pretty indicting truths in the process. He's a master of irony and visual punchlines, sometimes interrupting himself with lists, snippets of dialogue, or other on-topic digressions. On the subject of turning 50 and dealing with waning eyesight (a "good thing" about aging, because "you can't read anything"), Barry describes finding restaurant menus suddenly printed "in letters the height of bacteria." He continues: "For some reason, everybody else seemed to be able to read the menus. Not wishing to draw attention to myself, I started ordering my food by simply pointing to a likely looking blur.
ME (pointing to a blur): I'll have this.
WAITER: You'll have "We Do Not Accept Personal Checks"?
ME: Make that medium rare."
Barry has had the most successful and prolific publishing career of any working newspaper columnist, and his humor never seems to go out of style. In 1999, he decided to try his hand at fiction. The result was Big Trouble, a comic thriller à la Carl Hiassen (though filled more with gags than guns) that Entertainment Weekly proclaimed "... not only very funny, [but] sure-footed, even-handed, levelheaded, and other leading book review adjectives." In 2004, he and Ridley Pearson collaborated on Peter and the Starcatchers, a clever prequel to Peter Pan that spawned two additional novels and a series of spin-off children's chapter books.
Along with several other published authors, Barry is a member of the musical group Rock Bottom Remainders. In assessing the band's talents, he has been quoted as saying: "They are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud."
Some things never change: Barry was elected class clown by his Pleasantville High School class in 1965.
Barry got his start in journalism at the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania, then worked as a business writing consultant before joining the Miami Herald in 1983.
Attempts to convert Barry's humor to the screen have been less than memorable. The early '90s CBS sitcom based on two of his books and starring Harry Anderson, Dave's World, was short-lived; the spring 2002 release Big Trouble, starring Tim Allen, didn't fare well at the box office. Barry did, however, get a cameo in the latter.
My mothere read the book I did the audio (which is read by authors- even better). I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I am talking giggle cackle haha funny stuff. It will be hard to find a book that compares to this humor.
I hope they make a movie!
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.ReadadaBeada
Posted February 28, 2012
I really enjoyed "Lunatics" and would gladly read another collaboration by these two. I love being able to read in the car in the dark on long trips thanks to my Nook Color and spent a long car trip reading this book out loud to my husband. I got tired of telling him- "you have to read this book, it is HILARIOUS!" Lots and lots of laugh out loud moments. --ReadadaBeada
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 20, 2012
This is a terrific book! I laughed out loud so hard i scared the dog & pissed off my partner. I have not enjoyed a book in SO long. Seriously - I did not want this book to end, I was having so much fun. If I don't die of cancer it is totally because of all thevgreat energy I generated from laughing my ass off for 2 days! If you want to live to 100 ... buy this book. Better than tofu & goes down a helluva lot easier!!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 21, 2012
I love Dave Barry so decided to give this one a try. The story is hilarious, and of course completely unbelievable, but so creative and funny that I couldn't stop laughing in the beginning. I thought the ending could have been better, they kind of lost me with the whole presidential campaign thing. All in all, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 12, 2012
While the story line was entertaining the language was atrocious and vulgar!!!!
2 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.mcduff1495
Posted January 31, 2012
What an apt title for a book like this. Phillip and Jeffery really are lunatics. I've had to stop read several time because I was laughing so hard. The whole premise is out there but it is so funny you can't stop reading. These two authors have written a great book that I would recommend to everyone you won't be sorry.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 27, 2012
I am not even done reading this book and I have laughed to the point of crying at least twice. The premise is ridiculous, but that's what makes it so funny. You should check it out! It works perfect on the NookColor, too, and it was the second book I bought for my Nook.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 10, 2012
I love Dave Barry's two solo novels for adults, "Big Trouble" and "Tricky Business," so my disappointment with this one is, frankly, easy to blame on his co-author, Alan Zweibel.
The two main characters were completely unlovable, the plot went from "wild and crazy" to "asinine and stupid," and the language seemed ridiculously heavy with profanity. (This last in contrast to Dave Barry's solo novels, which, yes, had profanity-- but didn't have anything *like* the amount of profanity in "Lunatics.")
Overall, I cannot recommend this one.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 6, 2012
Typical Dave Barry humor. I laughed out loud while reading. However, the language is sometimes offensive and over the top, so some people might not enjoy this novel.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 27, 2012
This book had me laughing out loud! I would definitely recommend it to others.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 13, 2012
This books starts off funny and entertaining. By the forth chapter, I was surprised I was still reading it. Lots of profanity and antics while the underlying story of friendship is ackward and quirky. It is also crude.
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 6, 2012
100% improbable, but amusing and appealing. I wanted to keep reading to the end to find out what crazy thing would happen next. Remember the movie Forrest Gump? Where there were all those photos of historic events and Forrest's face showed up in the photos? That's a parallel to the improbability of this book. Enjoyable read!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 29, 2013
This was positively the funniest book I have ever read. I'm a fan of the early Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich so was looking for another funny fiction book. I was laughing so hard, my eyes were watering. Truly great adult humor that made me sad the book had to end.
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Posted March 29, 2013
Crazy entertaining. A perfect read for a nasty, cloudy, overcast day.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 5, 2013
I bought this book after seeing Jimmy Fallon interview Alan Zweibel. Zweibel was very funny and intelligent in the interview, but this book offers no evidence of either attribute. If the characters have underlying issues that cause them to act completely irrationally, the authors keep them concealed from the reader. This left me asking, "Why did he/she do that?" far too often during the read. The book is meant to be outlandish, but the authors are not at all clever about making the reader believe one word of it is plausible. At one point two of the characters are carrying around $200 million dollars, totally comprised of $100 bills, contained in two duffle bags. This amount of $100 bills would weigh roughly two metric tons, or about 4400 lbs. There are many other errors involving impossible physics that I personally found insulting to the reader. The book is sloppy work framing blunt jokes that weren't funny enough to offset the overall shoddy writing. The next time these two get drunk and dictate a book they then publish word-for-word, they won't get my ten bucks for their half-assed effort. I could offer a dozen other specific examples of why I loathe this book, but if you decide to read it anyway I don't want to spoil it for you. I'll leave that task to the authors.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 11, 2013
I'm a fan of Dave Barry but was disappointed in this book. It is mildly funny, but full of bathroom humor with very little story content. If this was the first book I read by this author I would not be reading further!
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Posted December 21, 2012
Potty mouth language in ever increasing improbable situations. Only one of our four-member book group could make it all the way through.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 1, 2012
I love this book, I read it twice and find myself laughing out loud everytime. I basically recommended this to everyone and they all loved it!
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Posted September 17, 2012
Hilarious can only imgine how much fun they had writing it very funny laugh out loud clever writing thanks guys
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Posted June 23, 2012
A 30~page preview contains only 9 pages of the novel, with only 1 feeble joke. Jeesh.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Overview
Philip Horkman is a happy man, the owner of a pet store called The Wine Shop, and on Sundays a referee for a local kids’ soccer league. Jeffrey Peckerman is the proud and loving father of a star athlete in the girls’ ten-and-under soccer league, and he’s not exactly happy with the ref.
The two of them are about to collide in a swiftly escalating series of events that will send them running for their lives, pursued by the police, soldiers, subversives, bears, revolutionaries, ...