Word: wordplay
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...dozen new pickup lines, each with presidential cachet. "You make my knees knock." "I like your curves"--or, alternatively, "I like the way the hair falls down your back." And when all else fails: "Kiss it." Lawyers of the future will know to reach at once for the trademark wordplay of Robert Bennett, growling at plaintiffs, "This is tabloid trash with a legal caption." Even our knowledge of medicine has deepened. Everyone now knows that Peyronie isn't an Italian luncheon meat...
...plodding it never comes close to evoking emotion in the listener--unless you consider boredom an emotion. As for the next cut, River of Tears, it has a central metaphorical construction so lazy that one half expects the next track to be titled Needle in a Haystack. Simple, direct wordplay can work if the lyrics hit upon something primal and urgent. River of Tears, however, merely drifts away, ineffectual and insubstantial...
...song's subtle wordplay starts to hint at a deeper complexity. Is she singing "all they symbolize" or "all these simple lies"? It's difficult to tell, and Hatfield keeps delivering the line differently to keep her audience on its toes. Eventually, she starts to slip in the occasional "I" to replace "you" almost guiltily. Hatfield is serving up her usual heaping serving of deeply intimate lyrics but with a creative twist that actually works...
...with in pop songs ever since pop songs began, and Foo Fighters fails to contribute any new insights. On one song, Up in Arms, Grohl actually sings, "I cannot forget you, girl." It's hard to believe he can offer up a toothless lyric like that after the passionate wordplay of Nirvana lyrics like, "Stay away/ God is gay." Sure, Kurt Cobain wrote Nirvana's lyrics, but Grohl should have paid attention...
...Brendan Greaves '00 and Sara Yellen '00 give two endearing performances. Of course, they benefit from Stoppard's dialogue: nearly all of the lines for these characters are gems. Greaves and Yellen have the opportunity to work with some very whimsical ideas, and they get through Stoppard's tricky wordplay well. They make their characters pathetically determined and sweetly likable, giving the play its heart...