Word: stand-up
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...minutes, without toupee or TelePrompTer, Schwarzkopf displayed all the seductiveness of the performer's art. He prowled like a stand-up comic, permitted himself the occasional thin smile, inflected his stats with Bob Hope-style throwaway lines ("But I gotta tell ya . . . "). When asked to appraise Saddam's soldiering skills, he snorted a "Ha!," then launched into a catalog of caustic irony. He tamped his rage into questions intimidating ("Have you ever been in a minefield?") and rhetorical ("Do I fear a cease-fire?"). But the most moving moment came when he caught himself describing the low allied casualty rate...
Speaking only for my own routine, I can emphatically state that certain leftwing tendencies--such as the unspoken racial roles into which modern liberal ideology has boxed its adherents--were the motivation for my stand-up act, and the underlying theme of its political content. Unfortunately, certain individuals misconstrued my act as an attempt to unleash hostility rather than the social commentary it truly was. They viewed my act as racist and sexist. I would point out, however, that my routine did not single out any one group in particular, but included comments aimed at whites, Asians and Blacks...
...from perhaps 2% a decade ago. Even that minuscule group used to give itself the short end of the shtick: "When I was born I was so ugly, the doctor slapped my mother." In comedy's Paleolithic era, notes Budd Friedman, impresario of Los Angeles' Improv comedy club, "stand-up was traditionally a white male enclave. But today there are no restrictions. Women are able to use their intelligence and their femininity and their strength to say what they want...
...sees it, is one thing that tends to separate the girls from the boys. "Women tell stories," she says. "Men do one, two, three, bop." The new funnywomen are anything but rote jokesters: like Robin Williams or Billy Crystal,they invent routines as they go along. Paula Poundstone, whose stand-up is a sprawl across a stool, ad-libs about 30% every night. When she was too broke to redeem her outfits from the dry cleaner's, she included the angst in her monologue: "It's like, the clothes are in jail. I go in every so often...
...think there's anything particularly surprising about the level of rudeness in New York. A lot of it is just show. New York has been portrayed in so many books and movies and stand-up acts that the stock characters know how to behave badly. They've all read their press clippings. The Jewish deli waiter knows what to say to an out-of-towner who asks if he could get a pastrami sandwich ("When I'm ready, I'll get" or "Listen, the pastrami here I wouldn't wish on Arafat"). The Irish cop knows how to act like...