Word: puckishness
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Moments after the curtain has risen, a puckish young man called Eugene Morris Jerome bounds into his Brooklyn family home, shaking with cold, and tells his grandfather an impromptu joke about the weather: "I saw a man kissing his wife on the corner, and they got stuck to each other. Mr. Jacobs, the tailor, is blowing hot steam on them." His grandfather, as always, sees nothing funny in Eugene's whimsy. Weeks later, Eugene moves out to start a new life as a comedy writer for network radio in Manhattan. His grandfather, ever wary of affection, wonders whether he will...
...issue's last 16 pages were a few dozen of the 10,000 responses to the magazine's initial mailing. We were solemnly informed that all the responses had been donated to the Kinsey Institute (they're still there). Some of these scrawled missives have the puckish tone of work from the magazine's junior staff after a three-martini-lunch; but, true or fabricated, they're nonetheless instructive. A few examples...
While in legal limbo, Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, had remained a puckish but lower-profile warrior. But he marked his victory by telling Republicans in Manchester that Democrats favor "cutting and running" from Iraq--bold words to show that "the Architect," as Bush has called him, is back to battle unencumbered at a time when the White House needs his strategic instincts more than ever. Bush said he "took a sigh of relief" at Fitzgerald's decision and declared, "I trust Karl Rove." White House chief of staff Josh Bolten endorses Rove...
...stage curtain watched over by the Queen's portrait and a packet of sparklers are the simple sense-memory props that begin the journey: we are backstage at an end-of-year school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puckish Tom (Leon Cain), the son of poor English migrants, is making his first tentative teenage overtures to middle-class Meg (Francesca Savige); her shrewish mother Gwen (Barbara Lowing) in turn is being gently snubbed by the headmaster's aloof wife Coral (Georgina Symes). As the three families go their separate ways over Christmas?to camp, caravan park and Gold...
...doin's are right, / You can tell 'em I'll be there." Graae made an evening-long shtick of interrupting Osgood to sing yet more stanzas of "Spring, Spring, Spring," a Mercer-Gene DePaul number from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" that shows the lyricist at his most puckish. Consider these couplets that lead up to the title in five verses: "Ma Nature's lyrical / With her yearly miracle ? Each nest is twittering, / They're all baby-sittering ... Sun's getting' shinery / To spotlight the finery ... Even the catamount / Is nonplussed at that amount ... This home my momma...