Word: entertainment
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Clown Care got its start in 1986, when an official at Babies Hospital asked if Big Apple Circus clowns would entertain at a gathering for patients and their families. Christensen and fellow clown Jeff Gordon obliged, performing a 20-minute parody of hospital personnel, food and procedures. Patients and staff alike roared with laughter, especially when the clowns coaxed the otherwise formal chief surgeon into participating in a silly bell-ringing routine. The session, says Christensen, was "the most fulfilling 20 minutes of my professional career, and it was from that experience that the C.C.U. plan took root...
Often it's just as important to reach the parents as it is to entertain the youngsters. One morning Christensen peeked into a floor lounge and saw a woman sitting in a chair, reading a magazine; a man -- perhaps her husband -- was on the couch, intent on a novel. Stubs asked gently, "Mind if I come in? I need to catch up on some paperwork." He sat on the couch and starting ripping sheets of legal paper off a pad, crumpling them up and stuffing them into his doctor's bag. He soon piqued the adults' curiosity. "Office work...
...funny and touching. In the second act is "Honeypot," a hilarious satire of the ridiculous sexual innuendo prevalent in early blues. Harad beautifully belts out lines such as "Put your monkey wrench in my sugar bowl," while Salie, as the disapproving psychiatrist, glowers. Even if one scene fails to entertain, no skit last longer than four or five minutes. The show is nothing if not fast-moving...
...well, bankers were starting at the sight of their own shadows. So deposit insurance could be done painlessly for decades because bankers were too terrified to do anything resembling making a bad loan. It was not until a generational shift occurred in the '70s that bankers prepared to entertain really rank loans. The government had this free ride for a long time. There were hardly any failures because bankers were not lending in such a way as to fail. And now, paradoxically, when the talk is of cutting back on deposit insurance, the banking system is a mirror image...
...what Haroun and the Sea of Stories at first appears to be. But hold on. The tale seems eerily parallel to Rushdie's predicament. There is a storyteller named Rashid Khalifa, also known as the Shah of Blah, who loses the gift of the gab and can no longer entertain. What's worse, his condition is mysteriously linked to a fanatic cult that wants to wipe out not only made-up tales but also human speech. Children may take all this as make- believe, but adult readers are free to perceive some veiled autobiography, plus a wistful prophecy...