Word: comically
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...begins with two policemen falling into a comic argument over whether to let their prisoner, an army deserter, escape. The quarrel leads to one of them killing the other and then committing suicide. It climaxes with a priest -- a worldly and genial man -- hanging himself in his church. He has fallen into despair after too profound an exposure to the antireligious writings of the poet-philosopher Miguel de Unamuno...
...British writer G.K. Chesterton once offered this tongue-in-cheek theory of human origins: "If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head." In light of the comic outrages and tragic absurdities of almost any given week of news, it's hard not to agree. Which is why the best news editors know that when taking stock of events, a little wit is no less important than a proper fund of sober intelligence. That's certainly the working philosophy of Bruce Handy...
Since the middle ages, the Jester hat has been a rollicking reminder of life's lighter side. Also known as the fool, the Jester was an often deformed or dwarfed comic entertainer whose idiocy, whether real or cleverly affected, provided amusement for exalted members of the medieval court. According to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages," the fool's cap consisted of a single "horn" or several (usually three) floppy peaks, each capped with bells, pom poms, bangles or tippets. The hat provided the Jester with the means to successfully complete his mission of insult, flattery, and buffoonery...
Topics range just as broadly as in more elaborate drama, from the orphanage hardships of Boys Town to the comic angst of Jewish suburbia, from Edith Wharton's frustrated sex life to Lynn Redgrave's thwarted longing for her father's esteem, from the Los Angeles riots to personal calamities of illness and grief. Actors vary from the well-established (Redgrave, three-time Tony Award winner Irene Worth and Regina Taylor of TV's I'll Fly Away) to the + succes d'estime (Eric Bogosian, Anna Deavere Smith) to the yearning-for- discovery (Sherry Glaser, Claudia Shear, Barnaby Spring). Some...
...capable of acoustic solo outings so emotionally honest that your ears may burn, the Jefferies brothers were also able to fly off no noisy "experimental" larks. It's a measure of how intense the rest of the record seems that the noisy weird avant-classical sections come across as comic relief: Home," a procession of squeals and grinds that begins "I saw New Zealand" and ends, "HIT ME!" ("Flipper Go Home," by the way, was written by TKP's sometime third member, Chris Matthews, whose contribution shouldn't be slighted; he died only a few years after these records first...