Word: stand-up
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...Comedy. Stand-up comedy, once relegated to nightclubs and TV variety shows, is now big business. Its practitioners work comedy clubs, the concert circuit and cable TV, where their material is available to children. One way to get attention, to appear hip, to make a provocative point or just to give a joke some taboo oomph, is to talk dirty. Plenty of comics don't; the most popular TV comedian of the '80s is clean (and funny) Jay Leno. But plenty do. Just watch them on HBO or Showtime. Sam Kinison, a kind of defrocked evangelist of red-neck rage...
...Andrew Dice Clay's mouth. A few years ago, Clay was playing small clubs and working as a supporting actor. Now he is poised between stand-up and stardom. He is top-lining in two summer movies, one a comedy concert film, the other a detective spoof called The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. With his suave prole looks and his studded, studied cock-of-the-Brooklyn-walk demeanor, Clay wears the aura of danger that Hollywood wants in a movie star. So maybe he'll be one. That still leaves doubts about his popular appeal...
...call-in show, gets as much mileage out of the jokes as the information. Boston's Tappet brothers -- actually two M.I.T. grads named Ray and Tom Magliozzi, who own an auto-repair shop and drive U.S. models -- have turned America's love-hate relationship with the automobile into a stand-up routine. "Do you know why they call the Volvo the poor man's Mercedes?" Ray once asked a perplexed caller. "Because the repair bills will keep you too poor to buy a Mercedes...
Referring to the Republicans angling for the job he is giving up, the governor said, "compared to those guys, I'm charismatic. I'm the greatest stand-up comic in the world compared to those guys. Don't let it happen...
...Southern California's sad subculture of gang violence, such stand-up citizenry is rare. "This was a big break for law enforcement," explains Orange County Deputy District Attorney Tom Avdeef. "The gangs rule the neighborhoods like terrorists." Rodriguez would learn just how in the weeks that followed...