Word: sahl
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Crazing Crazes. Sahl works out every line himself, although he rarely writes anything down, and in collecting material buys newspapers and magazines by the long ton. Skimming, dipping, darting from headline to picture caption, he reacts like a pellet of pure sodium dropped in a glass of water, always has some fresh material for each new audience. There is usually some wild variation of the news, and a routine remark at a presidential press conference might come out as a caricature of the sort of bromide Sahl thinks the Administration is forever administering: ''The President says the Russians...
...family living in their garage and using the house as a speaker. When he read that people were daubing themselves with instant skin tan, he moaned: "If you can't believe in the sun, what can you believe in?" Psychoanalytic clichés are seldom spared. Once, says Sahl, a bank robber slipped the teller a note saying: "Give me your money and act normal." The teller replied: "First you must define your terms. After all, what is normal...
...Some of Sahl's jokes are rather rarefied. Once he began talking about a fellow in a statistical analysis course who would never use sigma but preferred his own initials instead. When someone laughed, Sahl looked up in surprise and said: "If you understand that joke, you don't belong here. You had better call the Government at once; you are desperately needed...
...Trampolin. Mort Sahl often points out that he more or less ignores the facts to get at the truth, and no set of facts could be more misleading than those surrounding his birth. It occurred on May 11, 1927 in Montreal, where his father kept a tobacco shop. Although that might suggest a solid burgher background, Canadian citizenship, and perhaps a hard fall on the ice, Mort had none of these. Harry Sahl, his father, had come out of an immigrant family on New York's Lower East Side with a strong will to be a playwright. Broadway...
...marksmanship trophy and the American Legion's Americanism Award, and he became so gung-ho that he tried to get into World War II at 16, lied about his age and spent two weeks in uniform before his mother took him home. Noting all this, Harry Sahl began pondering a military career for Mort-a secure field one or two light-years from show business-and initiated what might have been one of the cooler footnotes to military history when he got a Congressman to agree to give Mort an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. Mort Sahl...