Word: borscht
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...explain it to you," says Jackie Mason in his television commercials for the new Honda Prelude with four-wheel steering. Jabbing his elbows this way and that, the Borscht Belt funnyman proceeds to confuse a subject that is already complicated: "The car is going like this, the wheel is going like that, you're going like this because you can't figure out where did the back...
Between notches in the Borscht Belt, he sold shoes at Gimbel's, pajamas at Saks and menswear at Macy's. The only item he had trouble merchandising was Jackie Mason. It was not until 1962 that he found his own reproachful voice. Steve Allen caught the act and booked him on his TV show. Later that year, Ed Sullivan granted Jackie spots on what was then the nation's most popular variety program...
...tone must be grandly facetious to accommodate believers as well as skeptics. William Goldman tried all this in his 1973 novel The Princess Bride. His narrative had all the proper ingredients and all the right new moves: he deconstructed his text and undercut it with the cadences of a Borscht Belt raconteur. But on the page, Goldman's wordplay seemed too much of a jape. It needed the expanse of cinema -- where on the late show Errol Flynn and Gunga Din are still storybook young -- to revive the poetry of fable. Now, 14 years later, he and Rob Reiner have...
Author Carrie Fisher, the actress daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, has been through drug problems of her own and gives her protagonist the kind of humor born from pain, anger and a strong will to live. The narrative voice is a bit like Holden Caulfield playing the Borscht Belt: "I'm a flash and the world is my pan." And: "I guess that's how guys are thoughtful in the '80s -- they accompany girls to their abortions." Postcards, which is really five connected vignettes, loses its bite when it strays from its emotional base in the clinic...
Stand-up comedy has been a staple of American entertainment since the heyday of the Borscht Belt. But the current boom is something new. TV has clearly played a major role, giving comedians national exposure and drawing on them for starring roles in sitcoms and Saturday Night Live. The intimacy between comic and audience, moreover, may be especially appealing in an age of high-tech movies and supersize rock concerts. Or it may simply be that the instant gratification of one-liners is perfectly suited to the short attention span of the TV-educated '80s audience...