Word: vernacular
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...bite comes from an essential warmth and humanity. Indeed, Foxx, who has written his own material for years, supplied some of his own acerbic lines. At one point when he had to refer to a black family who put on airs, he suggested using the authentic vernacular phrase "jive niggers." A less obvious Foxx contribution: the show's title. His real name is John Sanford...
Rather than a contrived situation comedy that gets its laughs making fun of people losing at life, The Me Nobody Knows is an ingenuous comedy of the vernacular that succeeds because of its preciseness without ever having to sacrifice its dignity. The problem is the inherent pretentiousness of the play's "socially relevant" theme. In the second act cliche overwhelms originality. At arbitrary moments the lights suddenly dim to blue and an individual actor or perhaps the entire company whimpers some plaintive song that sounds like a speech Rod McKuen might have written for John Lindsay. A few times...
...past year, perhaps only Carol King's album Tapestry was good enough to join the vernacular despite such obstacles, and for a few months she had most of the country under her thumb. Unfortunately it seems that now only geniuses have a chance of becoming commonplace...
Short, in the vernacular of the G.I., is the happy state in which one has only a few more days or weeks to serve before shipping home. That was the status of the Air Cavalry soldier who explained last week his reasons for declaring that he would not go on patrol. In a sense, it is also the status of the entire 210,000-man force remaining in Viet Nam. Nobody wants to take risks, but particularly not a soldier who is short-as an incident at Fire Base Pace indicated...
...SPOOK: Vernacular...