A comedian, born in 1957, Barry started comedy–shrewdly deducing that Tulsa, not New York City, was the place to launch his career. And he’s flourished. All right, maybe not flourished flourished, but once, performing at the old Maxim Hotel in Las Vegas, Buddy Hackett’s son, Sandy, bought him breakfast.        You’ve heard of “Six Degrees of Separation”? Barry was only Two away.

Barry performs in Las Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City, on cruise ships, and in     the Bahamas, where he once met a cabin girl named Inga who, disappointingly, didn’t know Swedish.   He has appeared in national commercials and the breathtakingly forgettable UHF with “Weird Al” Yankovic, which still provides him with $12 residual checks every time some Lithuanian cinema owner thinks he’s securing an American comedy classic.

Barry looks best in black, grays, olive greens and teal and was once told that he was “the best looking Jewish man I’ve ever seen” by a drunk girl in Jacksonville, who then clarified, “Oh, don’t get me wrong, you’re a good-looking guy, but for a Jewish guy, wow!”

In May of 2002, his first book, Road Comic (Hawk Publishing), was released. An autobiographical look at his life on the comedy circuit, it was a raw, funny, pathetic, relentless, and self-glorifying look at how a man shouldn’t spend his 30s and 40s.   In his second book, Funny You Should Mention It (Hawk), a collection of essays, Barry continues to explore the cultural zeitgeist of life, love, humor, gun shows, and Winnie Cooper, but with less emphasis on random sex with naked cocktail waitresses and understanding troubled Germans on which he obsessed inRoad Comic.

Barry does radio commentary and guest hosts Studio Tulsa, a daily news and affairs show, on NPR; has appeared in Esquire; writes a monthly column “Barry Friedman at Large” for TulsaPeople; contributes toMediaPost; and is a contributing writer forExplorer Magazine, an oil and gas journal, which, in itself, is humorous, because Barry knows nothing about the oil and exploration business and has actually hurt himself pumping his own gas.

P.S. Barry doesn’t trust anyone who refers to him or herself in third person