Word: deadpan
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Though Smith was a quiet scholar, he was scarcely bloodless. He comes fully alive in his writings as a skeptical observer of human nature, a staunch advocate of political as well as economic liberty, and now and then something of a deadpan Scottish wit. Much of The Wealth of Nations is unreadable today, but the browser comes across unexpected bits of phrasemaking-for example, the first description of England as "a nation of shopkeepers." It was no compliment; Smith complained that only such a nation could follow so mean-spirited a policy as Britain's colonial exploitation...
...Piranha Brothers" and "Fairy Tale"--were very often the only losers on their records. And Now for Something Completely Different was extremely funny, leaping from skit to skit without worrying much about continuity. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, by contrast, has a single unified story line about a deadpan King Arthur searching for, well, the Holy Grail. Instead of being simply a background for a series of more or less independent routines, the Arthurian motif strangles the jokes...
Beckett's peculiar genius is to set up such Hobson's choices while squeezing them for all the farce they will yield. His is a Buster Keaton, deadpan humor that shrivels in the explaining. Mercier and Camier is as hilarious, in gasps, as anything he has written. The novel's coolly mannered prose disguises outrageous statements until the instant they land. There is also cruelty in Beckett's method (Mercier is comforted briefly by the sight of a dead and bleeding wom an) and surprising moments of compassion. When Mercier and Camier part, they lose...
...older boys) she appears to be a sex sym: bol, impure and simple as her long, sinuous body-high fashion, but with some meat on her smoothly articulated bones -slithers into closeup, her navel twinkling as invitingly as her sequins. Then, however, a shy smile splits her deadpan. As she speaks a few words of earnest greeting in her curiously flat voice, Pop and the other males see they can afford to relax. Underneath all that finery and a ceramic of makeup there is a rather awkward, imperfectly beautiful girl. She appears no more daunting than the nice...
...Safire, had an article accepted by the New York Times, he was advised by the President's counsel, John Dean, not to accept the $150 payment, as it might be construed as a conflict of interest. In his new book about the Nixon Administration, Before the Fall, a deadpan Safire-now a Times columnist-recalls his feeling at the time. "That was a good idea, I thought: it was good that we had men like Dean around to make sure nobody did anything criticizable...