"I'm not a sailor," says the
quipster, who hopes to one day host a sketch comedy show a la Carol Burnett.
Paul Buhle, author of a biography of him to be published next year by the University of California Press, calls him the "Left's leading oldtime
quipster."
The five wine service pros he referred to--Andrea Immer, director of beverages for Starwood Hotels and Cheers editorial advisory board member; Karen King, beverage director for NYC's Union Square Cafe, winner of the 1999 James Beard Award for best wine service; Madeline Triffon, beverage director for Unique Restaurant Group; Joseph Scalice, co-owner of NYC's March; and Josh Wesson, all around wine
quipster and owner of Best Cellars, a NY-based retail wine shop chain focusing on values priced around $10--spent part of two days scouring Aspen's wine tents on the hunt for new favorites, with good values an essential part of their search.
His Gower is a learned Christian humanist, who bears as much resemblance to Shakespeare's narrator of Pericles as Thomas More, the inveterate joker and
quipster of Tudor tradition, to the original.
When agent Danny Reed (Lorenzo Rush Jr.) offers the trio a headlining tour, Lila and Ted accept, leaving Jim to tend to his increasingly insolvent homestead with help from Louise (a droll, engaging Marya Grandy), a self-described "fix-it man" and first-class
quipster.
Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind's book, the sparkling melodies of George Gershwin and the witty
quipster lyrics of Ira Gershwin make this good-natured trivialization of the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court far more roadworthy today than most of the effervescent but ephemeral tuners of the 1930s.
The decidedly surreal novelist, slick
quipster, journalist - although he reckons he's given that up - and team captain of BBC's rather tacky Shooting Stars quiz show Will Self is ensconced in an empty flat on the 20th floor of a condemned high rise block in Sheil Park writing a short story about terror.
But peel away the public
quipster; and you see a man achingly deprived of love who has spent his life letting poison darts fly only to have them land at his feet.
Every bit of available verbal finesse--and Stoppard's hero has a
quipster's gift out of Oscar Wilde--can't bring George into any mutually satisfying orbit with his wife, whose appeal for help merely leaves her bewildering spouse searching for his hare.
But Dillane seems both smart enough to play a
quipster who's not above accusing Bach of stealing from Procol Harum and humane enough to still the house during his quiet, incantatory repetition of "I love you" to the febrile flirt who will go on to be his bride.
Instead of Fortinbras, who is dropped altogether, we get a brilliant shadow play for "The Murder of Gonzago" and a sauntering, jokey Hamlet, who sometimes sounds far closer to a Noel Coward
quipster than to the truly questing metaphysician whom Jennings played so memorably in the RSC's "Peer Gynt."
Almost all the networks had begun hiring young, hip, metropolitan
quipsters to explain the "America of Tomorrow" or the "Next America" that residents of the Democratic Archipelago had charted out for everyone else.
He's one of those great
quipsters who can win laughs by putting a schlubby suburban guy attending the show with his grandchildren through some off-the-wall comic paces, without inflicting cruelty.
Cube (real name O'Shea Jackson) and Chris Tucker were classic
quipsters in the 1995 pot-comedy "Friday'' that started it all, and when then-newcomer Mike Epps dropped in on the sequel, his chemistry with Cube led to a third film.
