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unearths some literary gems.
From Much Ado about Me, by Fred Allen:
***With his dark beady eyes and the big cigar jutting out of his mouth, Sam looked like an animated but partly melted snowman.***The Professor's mouth was an adjective hutch.***For their finish the brothers donned one large harlequin costume and, dancing close together, executed intricate steps with such precision it appeared that only one person, with two heads, was dancing.***[Can you spot what's wrong with the name of this circuit? (:v> Allen does not seem to notice anything amiss.]The Interstate was a big-time circuit that operated theaters in Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.***Harold, with his various writing assignments, was busier than an octopus going through a revolving door.[Once again (cf. decopus w/ umbrella tucked under arm), I must protest that an octopus would, in fact, be *overqualified* to get through a revolving door without maxing out its resources.]***He looked like a toy that some child had wound up and forgotten to play with.***Leonard Sillman...was the loudest dancer I have ever heard. He trod the heavy fantastic.***[Bonus 1: I learned that "Christmas in July" was a real "thing" for entertainers, back in the day, because they typically had to work through the holidays, but often had summers off, and congregated in vacation communities where they would indulge in an off-season Yule on July 4th.][Bonus 2: a comedy trio called Darn, Good, and Funny][Bonus 3: A "female impersonator" called Raymonde who had two entire layers of gender-bending: he did his act as a woman, then took off a wig to reveal himself as a man, then took *that* wig off to reveal more "feminine" hair, then finally revealed himself as a man again. Doing the math, it seems that Raymonde (pre-)one-upped Victor/Victoria, who had only three quarters of this equation.][Bonus 4: an entertainer named George Hassell whose favorite oath was "God's trousers!"][Bonus 5: Allen uses the phrase "avocado tears" where one would normally say "crocodile tears." I was guessing he arrived there via "alligator pear"--and Google Books brings up no other instance of this phrase--but general results show that "avocado tears" has a presence in contemporary times, though what comes up on a quick search are things like user names and music-artist names, rather than contextualized usage of the term.][Bonus 6: an act called "Disappointments of 1927" in which every act Allen tries to introduce phones in to say they're not coming]
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