Word: wits
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...from his post as an adviser to the Minister of Culture, he spends most of his time in cafés, drinking coffee and exchanging gossip. HE IS ALSO KNOWN AS ONE OF THE BEST JOKE TELLERS IN CAIRO, no small compliment in a land noted for its wit ... He supported Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1952 coup d'état but gradually grew disillusioned with the colonel's policies. 'It is true that the revolution liberated the Egyptian people and pushed them into modern life,' says Mahfouz, 'but it led to many wars that tired us out.' Mahfouz found himself...
...Unlike the Beatles' music, it wasn't meant to sound like our stuff. Either the Pythons never thought to appeal abroad or they just didn't care; they were writing and performing for themselves. The show, with its sly mix of highbrow and no-brow humor, of university wit and pratfalling physicality, must have seemed strange enough to U.K. viewers. But for Americans there were extra layers of mystification: the BBC in-jokes, the references to Brit politicians and seaside resorts, the sight of grown men speaking in shrill voices and wearing women's clothing. (They'd dress...
...Cleese is the elder statesman of the group, Gilliam the member who carved the most distinctive post-Python career, and Chapman the figure of poignancy - the homosexual alcoholic who was dead at 48. His demise touched all the survivors, but it didn't stanch their biting wit. In fact, now that he's dead, they make fun of Graham a lot. On the BBC2 show 30 Years of Monty Python, Cleese intones: "And I'd just like to say for the whole gang, except for the dead one of course, how pleased we are..." And in a 1998 reunion...
...Newhart was a stand-up sensation. His 1960 LP, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, went to No. 1 and won a Grammy for Album of the Year. The old bits, in which he would play one side of an increasingly strained conversation, still had their gentle, exasperated wit when he did them, word for word, in a 1992 Showtime special. "I know some of you know these routines by heart," he told his audience, "but it throws me off to watch your lips move along with mine as I'm doing them...
With a CPA's gray suit and harried face, Black built a fan base as a commentator on The Daily Show. This HBO hour displays his grousing wit and splenetic temperament in full fulmination as he rails against the world and the heavens too. (He's no fan of the Old Testament God.) On his Washington stage, Black naturally has opinions about George W. Bush, who makes him very angry. He's also miffed at the Democrats for not finding a candidate who could defeat Bush in 2004: "It would be like finding a normal person who would lose...