Word: balloon
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This is show business? A mime so inept he must describe his gestures to the audience. A grinning, phosphorescent-suited fellow who plays with funny balloon animals. A comic with a bag over his head who does a ventriloquist routine featuring a hand puppet that has a paper bag over its head. A talk-show host who is all smarm and insult jokes. A Carnegie Hall entertainer who shows cartoons, leads sing-alongs and wrestles with women volunteers from the audience. A female comic in Wayne Newton drag who unbuttons her shirt to reveal a forest of chest hair...
What began as a defiant form of anti-shtik has become a dominant mode in the funny-peculiar '80s. It is saturating the big screen with the films of Albert Brooks (the mime), Steve Martin (funny balloon animals), Murray Langston (the paper-bagged Unknown Comic), Martin Mull (the Fernwood 2-Night talk-show host), Andy Kaufman (heterosexual wrestling), Lily Tomlin (Wayne Newton) and the now-ready-for-prime-time cutups of NBC's Saturday Night Live. It took over TV years ago-in 1975, when S.N.L. hit the air and became a focal point for the new comedy...
Home buyers who shop around will find a bewildering array of other financing gimmicks. These include: ¶ The Short-Term Balloon. Popular in California, these loans base monthly payments on a 30-year schedule in order to keep them low, but they usually also demand repayment of 90% of the mortgage within three to five years. The loans are often used by people who think that they are going to be transferred in a few years or by couples uneasy about the durability of their marriage...
...home in Los Angeles with $1 10,000 earned on their old house, a first mortgage of $94,000 at 9.5% interest, a second one for $50,000 at 12%, and a third one from the seller for $41,000 at 15%. Then via a complex system of "balloon" payments, they were able to bring the actual interest rate down...
...McGee starts investigating a pair of murders, he forgets his complaints long enough to provide high and exuberant entertainment. Initially, he inherits half of a sinister motorcycle shop. The other 50% is owned by an Indian girl called Mits. A renegade biker leads Travis to a drugged producer filming balloon races. On location, he narrowly escapes a mob attack on the crew-seems the technicians had been using local teenagers for a series of porno video tapes. Predictably, their leader, a villain named Dirty Bob, manages to slip through some elaborate defenses and tracks McGee to his opulent houseboat...