DAVE BARRY IS FROM MARS AND VENUS

Syndicated columnist and clowning Pulitzer-nik Barry (Dave Barry in Cyberspace, 1996, etc.) is back with another series of columns, regular as an equinox and admittedly starting to strain for a decent title (``A lot of the really good ones are taken. Thin Thighs in 30 Days, for example. Also The Bible''). As any certified funster must, Barry zeroes in on little events of daily life, such quotidian subjects as lawyers, doctors, aging, marriage, Thanksgiving, O.J. Simpson, and splashing around with US Synchronized Swimming National Team One. He may be getting a little weak in the memory department. ``To be honest,'' he admits, ``I had completely forgotten that in a former life I was Mozart,'' and he's concerned about the effects of his OMBS (``Older Male Brain Shrinkage''). There are, indeed, signs of maturity: ``Booger'' jokes are scarce; they're replaced by ``poop'' jokes. Exploding toilets are covered, too. Barry expends precious shrinking brain power in rearranging the letters of proper names: Winston Churchill can yield ``Hurls Cow Chin Lint,'' he tells us. (He may be pleased to learn that his own name can be rearranged to ``Verry Baad,'' which has kind of rap flavor.) Alert readers supply him with prime fodder from diverse new sources so that he gets to label riffs with his favorite tag line, ``I am not making this up,'' and advance them with the rim shot, ``No, seriously, folks.'' They aren't seamless and certainly not weighty, but Barry's concoctions still deliver. As he says about a completely different subject (bug brains, if you must know), his humor ``is not as simple as we thought it was before we started to think about it.'' Barry remains a formidable practitioner of journalistic silliness. ``Ha!'' some readers may say. Some, differing, may retort, ``Ha ha!'' Others may simply laugh. (photos, not seen) (Author tour)