Deadpan
Deadpan

Author: Tina Post

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2023-01-10

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1479811203

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Explores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural production Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness, Deadpan tracks instances and meanings of deadpan—a vaudeville term meaning “dead face”—across literature, theater, visual and performance art, and the performance of self in everyday life. Tina Post reveals that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing of African American aesthetics as colorful, loud, humorous, and excessive. Beginning with the expressionless faces of mid-twentieth-century documentary photography and proceeding to early twenty-first-century drama, this project examines performances of blackness’s deadpan aesthetic within and beyond black embodiments, including Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors, as well as Buster Keaton’s signature character and Steve McQueen’s restitution of the former’s legacy within the continuum of Black cultural production. Through this varied archive, Post reveals how deadpan aesthetics function in and between opacity and fugitivity, minimalism and saturation, excess and insensibility.

Norwood
Norwood

Author: Charles Portis

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 1999-08-01

Total Pages: 95

ISBN-13: 1590206665

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sent on a mission to New York he gets involved in a wild journey that takes him in and out of stolen cars, freight trains, and buses. By the time he returns home to Texas, Norwood has met his true love, Rita Lee, on a bus; befriended the second shortest midget in show business and “the world's smallest perfect fat man†?; and helped Joann “the chicken with a college education,†? realize her true potential in life. As with all Portis’ fiction, the tone is cool, sympathetic, and funny.

New Depths of Deadpan
New Depths of Deadpan

Author: Michael Gizzi

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Poetry. Should the two masks that represent Comedy and Tragedy pass through each other (imagine a total eclipse), might not their overlapping intersection be an expression of deadpan? And what about Janus, that janitor in January? Do his back-to-back facial characteristics suggest anything more than the infinite, noncommittal gaze of beginnings and endings? Or does the almost reckless declarativeness of these poems show a mind's weathering both the antic and the intimate, both merriment and distress? Michael Gizzi's previous books include MY TERZA RIMA, CURED IN THE GOING BEBOP, and CONTINENTAL HARMONY, all available from SPD.

Virginia O'Brien
Virginia O'Brien

Author: Robert Strom

Publisher:

Published: 2017-11-24

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781629332208

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book on Virginia O'Brien, the most unique talent under contract to Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Mooncop
Mooncop

Author: Tom Gauld

Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly

Published: 2021-03-03

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1770463550

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Guardian cartoonist relates the daily deadpan adventures of the last policeman living on the moon "Living on the moon...Whatever were we thinking? ...It seems so silly now.” The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon. Each day that the Mooncop goes to work, life gets a little quieter and a little lonelier. As in Goliath, Tom Gauld’s retelling of the Bible story, the focus in Gauld's science fiction is personal—no big explosions or grand reveals, just the incremental dissolution of an abandoned project and a person’s slow awakening to his own uselessness. Depicted in the distinctive, matter-of-fact style of his beloved Guardian strips, Mooncop is equal parts funny and melancholy. Gauld captures essential truths about humanity, making this a story of the past, present, and future, all in one.

How To Walk An Ant
How To Walk An Ant

Author: Cindy Derby

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 21

ISBN-13: 1250253349

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There are nine steps to becoming an ant walker, and Amariyah, the expert ant walker, is here to show you how it’s done. This irreverent and quirky picture book, How to Walk an Ant, follows a young girl as she goes through the process of walking ants, from polite introductions to tragic leash entanglements. In the end, this unique book from author-illustrator Cindy Derby shows that as long as you’re doing what you’re best at, you may find a like-minded friend to tag along. *Zero ants were harmed in the making of this book. **Oops, 7 ants were harmed in the making of this book.

Sam and Dave Dig a Hole
Sam and Dave Dig a Hole

Author: Mac Barnett

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Published: 2024-09-17

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 1536245704

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A 2015 Caldecott Honor Book With perfect pacing, the multi-award-winning, New York Times best-selling team of Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen dig down for a deadpan tale full of visual humor. Sam and Dave are on a mission. A mission to find something spectacular. So they dig a hole. And they keep digging. And they find . . . nothing. Yet the day turns out to be pretty spectacular after all. Attentive readers will be rewarded with a rare treasure in this witty story of looking for the extraordinary — and finding it in a manner you’d never expect.

I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!

Author: Bob Newhart

Publisher: Hachette Books

Published: 2006-09-19

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1401385990

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book ever from an icon of American comedy -- a hilarious combination of stories from his career and observations about life That stammer. Those basset-hound eyes. That bone-dry wit. There has never been another comedian like Bob Newhart. His comedy albums, movies, and two hit television series have made him a national treasure and placed him firmly in the pantheon of comedy legends. Who else has a drinking game named after him And now, at last, Newhart puts his brilliant and hysterical world view on paper. Never a punch-line comic, always more of a storyteller, he tells anecdotes from throughout his life and career, including his beginnings as an accountant and the groundbreaking success of his comedy albums and The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart, which gave him fifteen years on primetime television. And he also gives his wry, comedic twist to a multitude of topics, including golf, drinking, and family holidays. Today, Newhart appears on Desperate Housewives, in hit movies such as Elf, and in theaters around the country. Reruns of his shows air constantly on Nick at Nite -- have recently been released with great success for the first time ever on DVD. With this book, Bob Newhart gives his millions of fans a first ever opportunity to sample his unique brand of humor -- including excerpts from some of his classic routines -- on the printed page.