Word: offbeaters
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...least the two beat out the wacky new comic strip, which tells the ongoing and offbeat saga of three rabbits, one of whom is missing an ear, and perennials Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield in last week's first annual Crimson comic strip poll...
Charting the possible scenarios for trouble has become a growth industry. The Great Depression of 1990, an offbeat work by the heretofore little-known economist Ravi Batra of Southern Methodist University, has perched on the New York Times best-seller list for twelve weeks and has sold more than 300,000 copies. Competing doomsday books bear such titles as Blood in the Streets (a how-to manual for crisis investing), The Panic of '89 (a fictional thriller about global financial follies) and The National Debt (an indictment of America's borrowing habits...
...contrast to a decade ago, 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...
...Steven Wright, 31, is one of the few young comics to depart from the Carlin-Klein-Leno style of observational humor. His offbeat, cerebral routines are a string of absurdist one-liners, delivered in a deadpan monotone. Examples: "I was once arrested for walking in someone else's sleep." "When I die, I'm going to leave my body to science fiction." "I was walking through a forest and a tree fell right in front of me, and I didn't hear it." Like many comedians with a shtick, Wright (who grew up near Leno in Massachusetts and also...
...financial. Although there are occasional commercial ventures, the off-Broadway scene, like the regionals, tends to be dominated by nonprofit companies sustained through donations. The bond is also aesthetic. The nonprofit troupes usually measure success artistically rather than at the box office and eagerly nurture esoteric work -- chamber musicals, offbeat new plays, quirky revivals...