Word: pattering
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...this fall, besides NBC's Johnny Carson and David Letterman, there will be entries from Dick Cavett and Jimmy Breslin on ABC, Joan Rivers on the new Fox network, David Brenner and Oprah Winfrey in syndication and Robert Klein on cable's USA Network. That spatter of patter may also be why a veteran of TV's talkfests is leaving the lists. This week, after 23 years, Merv Griffin, 61, broadcasts his / 5,520th and final show. "It's tough to say good-bye," said the genial, gee- whiz Griffin, as he taped a farewell evening of nostalgia about...
...course concentrates on about 1,000 colloquialisms drawn from both scholarly sources (Gary Goshgarian's Exploring Language) and popular ones (Rolling Stone). It covers such categories as media talk (show biz, glitz), government lingo (lame duck, on the stump), business idioms (the fine print, three-martini lunch) and cocktail patter (networking, finger food, breaking the ice). The final exam: a mock bash at which students will knock down real cocktails, press the flesh and chat up guests...
...Walt Disney World, the snappy patter is left to the guides on the trams that whisk visitors from the car lot to one of the two main parks: the Magic Kingdom--which is basically Disneyland East--and the sprawling Epcot Center. (One-day admission: $23 for adults, $19 for kids.) "No smoking--foreign, domestic or homegrown," one guide sasses near Epcot's 18-story Spaceship Earth geosphere. "You know what Epcot means?" another asks near closing time. "Every Person Comes Out Tired." In fact, the acronym stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. It was Disney's conceit to create...
Most movies about low-life Americana condescend to their subject with lots of sweat, foul patter, fat ladies and idiot giggling. This lurid and intermittently seductive melodrama (based on a true story) just observes Brad Sr. and his mob dispassionately, like slime mold under a microscope. They execute their robberies, and their victims, with soulless professionalism; their gangster grimaces register starkness without sexiness. Brad Jr. and his pals are hardly more exemplary. Talking tough, swigging beer, waiting for something bad to happen, they could be the Whitewood Gang in embryo...
...this swirls around the surly character of Joe, TV's most convincing misanthrope since Archie Bunker. In Boyle's sharp and unsentimental portrayal, crustiness never becomes cute, and there are echoes of authentic urban despair in the patter. "What are you gonna do over the weekend?" Willie asks Joe, whose wife left him 15 years ago. "Same as I always do. Sit it out till Monday," he replies. Willie nags him to get out of the apartment and make friends. "I had friends," Joe snaps. "I didn't like it." At the end of one episode, Joe is even found...