"Laughter is the Best Medicine"

Laughter certainly is the best medicine and there is nothing to replace a good laugh in times when there are threats of terrorism, the falling stock market and your mother-in-law is coming to live with you.

THERE'S NO TOILET PAPER ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED edited by Doug Lansky perhaps is just the prescription we need. This little book is like a delicious salad, where the ingredients are a collection of humorous essays all pertaining to travel experiences written by an assortment of amusing writers.

We are reminded of English food by Dave Barry, who states that the English "have a lot of trouble with pronunciation because they can't move their jaw muscles, because of malnutrition caused by wise refusing to eat English food, much of which was designed and manufactured in medieval times during the reign of King Walter the Mildly Disturbed."

Can you remember the time you had to cross the border from Mexico to the USA or perhaps from Canada to the USA? Perhaps you reacted the same way as related by Carl Franz, your hands gripped the steering wheel, and your eyes froze on the inspection area that faced you.

How would you have liked to be a journalist assigned by your newspaper to write a story about a nudist club in Palm Springs? As Alan Zeibel discovered, being naked is not a spectator sport. When the author informed various members of his family what his assignment would be, the reactions varied from his 14 year old son begging to come along to his 11 year old embarrassed daughter telling her friends that her father was going to the hospital to have minor back surgery.

Toilet facilities in various countries always seem to present a challenge, as Doug Lansky points out to us in the introduction. You practically need an engineering degree to know how to use a bathroom in Holland!

These are only a few samples of the 28 essays written by 20 funny writers, who are probably the best in travel humour, that remind us to laugh and not to take ourselves seriously when traveling. Life is too short! In fact it is usually these experiences that we remember rather than the meal we ate at some high priced restaurant. Appropriately the book deserved to win the Best Humour Travel as chosen by the Small Press Book Award.

One criticism I do have, however, is that printed on the back cover is the following statement: "in these pages you'll find some very funny people, including Art Buchwald, David Letterman and Steve Martin..." When you try to find the essays of these writers all you are given are very brief jokes or sayings attributed to them. This is somewhat disappointing and misleading to someone who does not have an opportunity to flip through the book before purchasing it.

Reviewed by Norman Goldman
Posted July 6, 2002