Though not exactly a household name, the comedy team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker — colloquially shortened to ZAZ — seems to have perfected the spoof movie genre with their uproarious Airplane! (1980) and three successful Naked Gun movies (1988-94). Wikipedia points out that spoofs had been around since the days of silent film, generated
As of this week, Webb’s Weird Words has wended its way to 100 articles. In celebration, your overworked columnist is taking a break from actual lists of oddball terms. Instead, this word-Smith figured faithful readers might enjoy an inside look at how the pieces get written — my process, as it were. And … as
The brilliant young jazz singer and pianist Jamie Cullum is perhaps best known for his haunting theme to Clint Eastwood’s movie Gran Torino; but I like Cullum’s “All at Sea” even better. (Billy Joel fans who unexpectedly saw Cullum open for Joel at State College in 2014 got to hear this gem performed live.) Anyway
This week’s headline nods to the fact that the movie Jaws is now 50 years old; but it also admits that a single Webb article can’t possibly cover all the fascinating facts about this film: the actors; the music; the box-office bonanza; Peter Benchley’s original book; and of course, the infamous rigors of actual production,
In this week’s movie-slot at Webb, I’m celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jaws. So here at Weird Words we’re doing that, too — with a look at vocab from the world of boats and sailing. Earlier, we covered more than a dozen regular words that have a special meaning on deck — terms like beam,
