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Schlemiel
Schlemiel ( yi, שלומיאל; sometimes spelled shlemiel or shlumiel) is a Yiddish term meaning "inept/incompetent person" or "fool". It is a common archetype in Jewish humor, and so-called "''schlemiel'' jokes" depict the ''schlemiel'' falling into unfortunate situations. Meaning The inept ''schlemiel'' is often presented alongside the unlucky ''schlimazel''. A Yiddish saying explains that "a ''schlemiel'' is somebody who often spills his soup and a ''schlimazel'' is the person it lands on". The ''schlemiel'' is similar to the '' schmuck'' but, as stated in a 2010 essay in ''The Forward'', a ''schmuck'' can improve himself while a ''schlemiel'' is "irredeemably what they are". The etymology of the term is unsure. Ernest Klein in his ''Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language'' suggests that the word comes from the Hebrew term , meaning "useless". Another theory is that the word is derived from the name Shelumiel, an Israeli chieftain. Heyse and some other etymologists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curb Your Enthusiasm
''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' is an American television sitcom produced and broadcast by HBO since October 15, 2000, and created by Larry David, who stars as a semi-fictionalized version of himself. It follows David's life as a semi-retired television writer and producer in Los Angeles, and for one season, New York City. Also starring are Cheryl Hines as his wife Cheryl, Jeff Garlin as his manager and best friend Jeff Greene, Susie Essman as Jeff's wife Susie, and J.B. Smoove as his house mate Leon Black. It often features celebrity guest stars, many of them playing fictionalized versions of themselves, including Ted Danson, Richard Lewis, Wanda Sykes, Rosie O'Donnell, and Jon Hamm. As with ''Seinfeld'', which David co-created, the humor of ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' often revolves around the minutiae of everyday social life. Each episode's plot and subplot is established in an outline written by David, and the dialogue is largely improvised by the actors, a technique known as retro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schlimazel
This is a list of words that have entered the English language from the Yiddish language, many of them by way of American English. There are differing approaches to the romanization of Yiddish orthography (which uses the Hebrew alphabet); thus, the spelling of some of the following words may be variable (for example, is a variant of , and , ). Many of these words are more common in the American entertainment industry (initially via vaudeville), the Catskills/Borscht Belt, and New York City English. A number of Yiddish words also entered English via large Jewish communities in Britain, particularly London, where Yiddish has influenced Cockney English. Background Yiddish is a Germanic language, originally spoken by Jews in Central and later Eastern Europe, written in the Hebrew alphabet, and containing a substantial substratum of Hebrew words as well as numerous loans from Slavic languages. For that reason, some of the words listed originated in Hebrew or Slavic languages, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Wisse
Ruth Wisse (surname pronounced ) (Yiddish: רות װײַס; Roskies; born May 13, 1936) is a Canadian academic and is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University ''emerita''. She is a noted scholar of Yiddish literature and of Jewish history and culture. Background and family Wisse was born into a Jewish family in Czernowitz in what is today Ukraine, but was then part of Romania. She grew up in Montreal, Canada and earned her MA from Columbia University, and in 1969 her PhD from McGill University. She is the sister of David Roskies, professor of Yiddish and Jewish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Career Wisse, whose doctorate was in literature, is described by literary scholar Edward Alexander as one of a group of scholars who earned PhDs in English literature in the 1960s, but moved into Jewish Studies in the 1970s and 1980s, applying the modern critical methods of literary scholarship to Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Schlemihl
Peter Schlemihl is the title character of an 1814 novella, ' (''Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story''), written in German by exiled French aristocrat Adelbert von Chamisso. Plot In the story, Schlemihl sells his shadow to the Devil for a bottomless wallet (the gold sack of Fortunatus), only to find that a man without a shadow is shunned by human societies. The woman he loves rejects him, and he himself becomes consumed with guilt. Yet when the devil wants to return his shadow to him in exchange for his soul, Schlemihl, as the friend of God, rejects the proposal and throws away the bottomless wallet besides. He seeks refuge in nature and travels around the world in scientific exploration, with the aid of seven-league boots. When overtaken with sickness, he is reconciled with his fellow men, who take care of him, and in regard for his sickness do not look for his shadow. Finally, however, he returns to his studies of nature and finds his deepest satisfaction in communion with nature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Tramp
The Tramp (''Charlot'' in several languages), also known as the Little Tramp, was English actor Charlie Chaplin's most memorable on-screen character and an icon in world cinema during the era of silent film. ''The Tramp'' is also the title of a silent film starring Chaplin, which Chaplin wrote and directed in 1915. The Tramp, as portrayed by Chaplin, is a childlike, bumbling but generally good-hearted character who is most famously portrayed as a vagrant who endeavours to behave with the manners and dignity of a gentleman despite his actual social status. However, while he is ready to take what paying work is available, he also uses his cunning to get what he needs to survive and escape the authority figures who will not tolerate his antics. Chaplin's films did not always portray the Tramp as a vagrant, however. The character ("The little fellow", as Chaplin called him) was rarely referred to by any names on-screen, although he was sometimes identified as "Charlie" and rarely, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing material for television in the 1950s, mainly ''Your Show of Shows'' (1950–1954) working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. He also published several books featuring short stories and wrote humor pieces for ''The New Yorker''. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes) and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply '' Woody Allen''. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry David
Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the television sitcom ''Seinfeld'', on which David was head writer and executive producer for the first seven seasons. He gained further recognition for the HBO series ''Curb Your Enthusiasm,'' which he created and stars in as a fictionalized version of himself. He has written or co-written the story of every episode since its pilot episode in 1999. David's work on ''Seinfeld'' won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1993, for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series. Formerly a comedian, he went into television comedy, writing and starring in ABC's '' Fridays'', and writing briefly for ''Saturday Night Live''. He has been nominated for 27 Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He was voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders as the 23rd greatest comedy star ever in a 2004 Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Journal Of Popular Film & Television
''Journal of Popular Film and Television'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Routledge, which purchased it from Heldref Publications in 2009. Michael Marsden, who was the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Northern Michigan University in the late 1990s, co-founded the journal. The journal was established in 1971, with the first issue in 1972 and until 1978 was titled ''Journal of Popular Film''. The journal is devoted to publishing criticism that "examines commercial film and television from a sociocultural perspective." Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed by Current Contents/Arts & Humanities, EBSCOhost, MLA International Bibliography, Scopus, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. See also * List of film periodicals Film periodicals combine discussion of individual films, genres and directors with in-depth considerations of the medium and the conditions of its production and reception. Their articles contrast with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jewish Humour
The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient Middle East, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal and often anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States over the last hundred years, including in secular Jewish culture. European Jewish humor in its early form developed in the Jewish community of the Holy Roman Empire, with theological satire becoming a traditional way of clandestinely opposing Christianization. Modern Jewish humor emerged during the nineteenth century among German-speaking Jews of the ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment), matured in the shtetls of the Russian Empire, and then flourished in twentieth-century America, arriving with the millions of Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe between the 1880s and the early 1920s. Beginning with vaudeville and continuing through radio, stand-up, film, and television, a disproportionately high percentage of American, British, German, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially — he was sent to a workhouse twice before age nine. When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Costanza
George Louis Costanza is a fictional character in the American television sitcom ''Seinfeld'' (1989–1998), played by Jason Alexander. He is a short, stocky, balding man who struggles with numerous insecurities, often dooming his romantic relationships through his own fear of being dumped. He is also remarkably lazy; during periods of unemployment he actively avoids getting a job, and while employed he often finds ingenious ways to conceal idleness from his bosses. He is friends with Jerry Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer, and Elaine Benes. George and Jerry were junior high school friends (although in "The Betrayal", Season 9, Episode 8, George says the two have been friends since fourth grade) and remained friends afterward. George appears in every episode except "The Pen" (third season). The character was based on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David but is surnamed after Jerry Seinfeld's real-life New York friend, Michael Costanza. Alexander reprised his role in an episode of ''Comedians i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerry Seinfeld (character)
Jerry Seinfeld (; ) is the title character and the main protagonist of the American television program, television sitcom ''Seinfeld'' (1989 in television, 1989–1998 in television, 1998). The straight man among his group of friends, this semi-character (arts), fictionalized version of comedian Jerry Seinfeld was named after, co-created by, based on, and played by Seinfeld himself. The series revolves around Jerry's misadventures with his best friend George Costanza, neighbor Cosmo Kramer, and ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes. He is usually the voice of reason amid his friends' antics and the focal point of the relationship. In contrast to the series' supporting characters, he rarely runs into major personal problems. Jerry is the only main character on the show to maintain the same career (a stand-up comedy, stand-up comedian, like the real Seinfeld) throughout the series. He is the most observational comedy, observational character, sarcastically commenting on his friends' quirky hab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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