Word: familiarizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...when offbeat comics like Martin, Albert Brooks and Andy Kaufman were redefining the stand-up genre, the current crop is relatively traditional. Except for a few intriguing eccentrics, such as Bob Goldthwait and Emo Philips, most of today's comics present themselves as regular folks, directing barbs at familiar subjects, from TV commercials to dating. Their lineage can be traced directly to two influential comics of the 1960s and '70s, George Carlin and Robert Klein. Both rooted their material in the commonplace concerns and shared memories of the baby-boom generation (especially TV) and perfected a lithe, fast-paced style...
...Some familiar elements are missing from the stand-up scene. Despite a flurry of jabs at news events like the Iran-contra testimony, committed political satire is rare. So is X-rated material, with a few notable exceptions like screaming Sam Kinnison's. "The networks want comedians to work clean," says Richard Fields, owner of Catch a Rising Star, a Manhattan comedy club. Indeed, many young comics regard stand-up comedy less as a goal than as a stepping stone. "People today are not just shooting to be * headliners," says Dennis Perrin, a New York-based comic and writer. "They...
...performing difficult maneuvers on the flying rings and the parallel bars. Obviously, they are athletes. No first-time observer of this Olympics for the mentally handicapped would wonder why they are competing. At the gym's other end, however, the scene takes the first-timer farther from the familiar, with a floor exercise called "rhythmic ribbons." One by one, young women, most of them shaped by the rough hand of Down's syndrome and all of limited physical ability, walk or run slowly over a patterned course, swirling a long ribbon tied to the end of a stick. Is that...
...Watson will receive some 5,000 letters at 221B Baker Street, even though the place now houses the Abbey National Building Society. Groups on four continents regularly meet to study the canon (56 stories and four novels), as well as some 12,000 books about the sacred writings. The familiar lean figure with Inverness cape, deerstalker and underslung pipe regularly appears in the headlines. Speculating two weeks ago on who laid the mines plaguing U.S. convoys in the Persian Gulf, David Mellor, a British Foreign Office official mused, "Sherlock Holmes wouldn't take too long to resolve that...
Among the close disciples of the Prophet, his son-in-law Ali was the most familiar with the teachings of Islam's founder. Yet when Muhammad died in A.D. 632, his followers bypassed Ali for the succession. However, the Shi'at Ali, the partisans of Ali, argued that the Prophet had designated Ali and his family the hereditary rulers of Islam. Persevering with his claim, Ali became Islam's leader in A.D. 656, only to be assassinated five years later. Hussein, Ali's son, eventually pressed his own claim to the leadership. But he and most of his family were...