Word: rooney
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...ANDY ROONEY has done a lot for this country's neck specialists. His humor often addresses mundane subjects, the sort that leave his audience nodding in agreement. "Yes, that's happened to me," or "I never thought anyone else felt that way, too." But unlike last year's a A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, his new And More By Andy Rooney leaves one with more than just a stiff neck...
Collected from Rooney's contributions to the television show 60 Minutes. A Few Minutes proves that spoken word doesn't always transfer well to the written page. And More, however, collects more than a hundred of the humorist's syndicated columns and thus avoids the inherent limitations imposed by A Few Minutes. Without Rooney's on-air perplexed persona and throaty voice, those essays too often seemed-pointless and dull--as might a written transcript of Jimmy Stewart's Tonight Show anecdotes...
Indeed, though And More ultimately succeeds, it remains an unbalanced collection, at once offering Rooney as both high-brow humorist and purveyor of driveling banalities. Like his television pieces, many of Rooney's columns can't be taken more than a few minutes at a time. There's a limit to how many little mysteries of daily life one can absorb in a sitting or two. Essays entitled "Glue," "Hangers," and "Pennies" lose some of their off beat charm when they follow the likes of "Bathtubs." "The Refrigerator," and "Donuts...
...collection reveals Rooney's reliance upon certain themes that soon lose their freshness. "I've got to throw out some clothes," one essay begins, and throughout the book. Rooney's sartorial habits receive much attention. "Seek and thou shall find," he writes adding later. "Not in the bottom drawer of my dresser you won't find." Other essays describe his "unmatched socks," "seventeen shirts," and "worn shoelaces," "Hangers" include this piece of advice...
...MORE also offers Rooney at his best. He presents prosaic subjects not only for their own sake--"where did [Manhattan's] Fourth Avenue go?"--but also because they serve as a foundation on which he constructs amusing and developed discussions. He hates weathermen, as he describes their typical broadcast. "There's ice on the roads today and many of the roads are slippery, listeners, so please drive carefully,'" Rooney wonders. "Does he think we're idiots? Does he think we don't know ice is slippery'" Horoscopes receive a similar treatment. "Cancer: This is a good time for those...