Word: line
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...idea for more than two of even these decimated pages, anyway. And, unlike his stage appearances, he can't just spreadeagle and say "Excuuuuse me!" when things go wrong. Even so, you had a right to expect more from Martin's book. Maybe one funny piece. Or one funny line...
...style precludes that. Even when he gets a potentially funny idea, he puts it in his title, warning you, and then decapitates any rising titter by tacking some flat line at a moment when a curious twist or jab might have released a legitimate laugh. Martin bypasses the sublime, hurtles through the ridiculous and lands with a splat in the pitiful...
...with an entire volume of such curiously written items? You might ask what Martin or anyone else finds funny about them. There's a flat-footed doggedness to the way Martin takes tired jokes and tries to recycle them. Unfortunately, he has lost the ability to write a punch-line, and in Cruel Shoes he frequently gets around that simply by reprinting the title of the piece at the end--but this time, in italics. Witness "The Children Called Him Big Nose...
...Mississippi, where Red Cross officials said 150,000 people had fled inland, tides six feet above normal hit Jackson County near the Alabama state line. Gov. Cliff Finch authorized the mobilization of the National Guard in Mississippi to assist local officials...
...MBTA is extending the Red Line three miles northwest to the Alewife Brook Parkway. Total costs for the project, scheduled to be completed in May 1984, are estimated at about half a billion...