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Ray Romano's Everybody Loves Raymond is the most important TV comedy since Seinfeld. Now he makes his debut as an author with a reported seven-figure book deal. Some of what makes his show great is captured between the covers of Everything and a Kite--it boasts the same affectionate, yet not cheaply sentimental, comedy that conveys actual insights about family life, an experience Martin Mull has likened to "having a bowling alley installed in your brain." The show is like Married... with Children with a heart or Home Improvement with a brain. In book form, Romano is kind of like Dave Barry. Barry is funnier on the page, but Romano writes a good spritz-of-consciousness monologue. And Barry dared not utter the word prostate in Dave Barry Turns 50, but Romano provides a state-of-the-art prostate-exam reminiscence. There is no shame he shuns--not his fear of spiders, exacerbated when he splooshed one off his windshield with the washer button through the moonroof into the car while driving, nor his sexual-conquest count ("one less than the number of times I've been stung by a bee... greater than the number of times I've put a pet to sleep... exactly equal to the number of times I've been crapped on by a bird"). But Romano stole his title: when he asked his 4-year-old son what he wanted for his birthday, the kid said, "Everything and a kite." --Tim Appelo
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