Word: deadpan
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...copy, Off the Wall Street Journal is a worthwhile investment for anyone who thinks that the state of the American economy is something to laugh at. Among the funnier send-ups: a deadpan report on a failed takeover bid by the Mobil Corp., this time for Bill's Hoagie Stop; a slice-of-life jape about the current fascination with economic jargon, depicting a scatological barroom brawl over monopsony, diminishing rates of transformation, and the Laffer Curve...
...Simon mold since it is one great aggregation of one-liners, and Fonda gets the lion's share of them. The jokes are a bit softer and more countrified than Simon's bitchy repartee. but Fonda succeeds in putting enough spin on them to give the dialogue bite. His deadpan is convincing. He puckers up his chin a little and blows the quips out like a man nonchalantly shooting marbles from his mouth into a brass spittoon across the room where they make a loud clang and roll around for a second...
...with several Cabinet members, all participants agreed, following a wearying debate, on a paper that summarized positions Reagan would take with Third World leaders at the North-South conference in Cancun. But Secretary of State Alexander Haig then asserted: "I've got one last change to make." Meese replied, deadpan: "No, Al, we're not going to take out the words 'the President.' " Even Haig joined in the laughter...
...schools. The results of his energetic production are collected in the 200 pictures-100 in high-intensity color-in Tom Wesselmann (Abbeville; 321 pages; $75). The artist's huge women are usually blank idealizations adrift in mundane rooms, like the fantasies of adolescent boys. Others display explicit but deadpan eroticism among billboard-style oranges and ashtrays. Always provocative, usually amusing and sometimes shocking, Wesselmann's work reflects America's amorous obsessions. In his windy and erratic assessment, "Critic" Slim Stealingworth tends to overvalue the artist's impact on his age. That is to be expected. Stealingworth...
...Sergeant of Police, John Sneath has a chance to display his sensationally rich baritone. Sneath is another gifted deadpan comic--at times, a shade too deadpan, perhaps. One wishes he would give his role just the smallest extra measure of hamming-up; as it is, he narrowly misses blending in with his force of policeman choristers altogether...