Word: joking
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...full performance. To that basic idea he has added touches of surrealistic humor. For example, the giants Fasolt and Fafner, who gain the magic ring in Das Rheingold in payment for building Valhalla, lumber around on the sagging shoulders of two local weight lifters hidden beneath their cloaks. This joke is painful fun, since Bass Bengt Rundgren, who plays Fafner, is 6 ft. 4 in. tall and weighs...
...problem restated by this book is more than a joke and less than a na tional crisis. To their credit, the authors usually hover somewhere between these extremes. They admit that social attitudes cannot be changed overnight simply by inventing words. But even such terms as "Ms" and "chairperson" they insist, really do help meet needs created by the growing independence and authority of women. Many people (not all of them men) would rather scrape their fingernails across a blackboard than hear such ugly and artificial neologisms especially when they are propounded on the unproved assumption that it will...
...bitter experience came with the recession. Sales of synthetic textile fibers, which account for more than a third of Du Pont's volume, soared well into the recession year of 1974, spurred by a shortage mentality created by the Arab oil embargo. A Du Pont joke at the time was that if this is what recessions are like, bring on more. But then the buying stopped, and Du Pont and other manufacturers realized that they had built heavy overcapacity and were vulnerable to sharp price cutting. Result: Du Pont's earnings fell 33% in 1975. This problem...
Without a doubt, the U.S. delegates were the top bananas of the conference. Professor Jennings Bryant of the University of Massachusetts tried to explain why the victim of a joke does not usually laugh unless he can think of a halfway witty comeback ("Degrees of Hostility in Squelches Featuring Retaliatory Equity as a Factor in Humor Appreciation"). Paul McGhee of Pels Research Institute, Yellow Springs, Ohio, read an almost incomprehensible dissertation, "Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Considerations for a Theory of the Origins of Humor," referring to "intrahumans," "arousal fluctuations" and "stimulus discrepancies." His conclusion: if you can't think...
...genuinely frightening and what is just cynical. It may be that this, after all, is a separation impossible to make, and that Polanski's distinctive vision is rooted as much in glibness as in genuine darkness. The Tenant, then, would stand as perfect, typical Polanski, a dank joke, a nightmare in jester's dress...