Word: sours
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both the return of the Popes to Rome and the rise of a burgher class began to turn the courteous arrangement sour. By the mid-15th century, bourgeois resentment had determined that the Pope's Jews could not expand beyond their one-street ghetto. The only place to go was up so they built some of Western Europe's earliest residential skyscrapers, houses ten to eleven stories high. To enforce humility, the town limited the number of pearls a Jewish woman might wear for her wedding. The serving of sugar-coated almonds, a local delicacy cherished...
...Babel, a cultural carpetbagger who hawks the flotsam and jetsam of at least five civilizations and three continents, with odd lots of Latin, Shakespeare and the Bible thrown in. His peculiar comic note derives not only from this exotic mixture, but also from his sweet-tempered narrative of sour experiences. The punning jumble that results might be called a cracked hymn to the Joyce and sorrows of life...
...says that it is "an adult fairy tale'' about a man who lives in the Astrodome and learns to fly. "It's about insanity. It's about cruelty; but the main physical substance is bird s..t." And the droppings (made by prop men from sour cream, mustard and paint) are as plentiful as the blood...
Comic Relief. For all its basic corniness, Wayne's act is shrewdly staged. He oozes sweetness while his brother Jerry makes sour wisecracks. Wayne bounces onto the stage singing Hello, My Baby, or some such wormy number. He then launches into saccharine favorites like Swanee, For Once in My Life and Kids, a patented anti-divorce song that, according to fan mail, has mended many a rending home. Lest the unsentimental throw up, naughty Jerry introduces some comic relief. "You're such a marvelous audience," Wayne coos, "I want to try something that we've never tried...
Wayne, 28, and Jerry, 29, have been a sweet-and-sour team ever since they began playing benefits as youngsters in Norfolk, Va. The Newtons were forced to move to Phoenix because of Wayne's chronic asthma; there Wayne was president of his high-school student body. He and Jerry also had a daily variety show on station KOOL-TV, and in his senior year Wayne quit school to accept a five-year contract at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas. Thirty-six shows a week was rugged drill, but it enabled the brothers Newton to broaden and buff...