Webb reacted with a blunt self-analysis moments after finishing.
Occasionally vain, occasionally score-settling, it's as unsparing as the aging Rembrandt's blunt self-portraits.
Compare the dreamy sorcery of Turrell's installations with the blunt self-evidence of the fluorescent fixtures deployed in Flavin's light pieces.
Such blunt self-awareness informs Hayhurst's new book, "The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran" (Citadel Press).
The neediness and blunt self-expression that often attends her characters, Ms. Griffiths said, are qualities that she remembered stifling for years after her father abandoned the family, leading to her parents' divorce.
Vietnam's president, Truong Tan Sang, issued a blunt self-criticism in a recent article in the state-run media, writing about the "failures and ineffectiveness of state-owned companies, the decay of political ideology and morality".
"If he thinks I'm off track," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "he'll say, 'That's something we're going to want to think about.' " Mr. Rumsfeld is well known as a blunt, self-confident, and often impatient boss.
Still, out of dedication to the music and to one another, the three women -- the sisters Amy and Elizabeth Ziff and Alyson Palmer -- have persevered long enough to tell their own story onstage, which they are now doing with driving energy, blunt self-deprecation and lovely three-part harmony.
The very elements that the rest of the movie tries to weave together are reconciled in the frequent songs by Ms. Simon, which describe in a blunt, self-assured tone the feelings of jealousy, insecurity and sexual competition that can plague even the best relationships.
She combines a novelist's eye for telling detail ("My appearance confirmed it: I was the proverbial outsider. Who else sported vinyl in the tropics?") with the blunt, self-aware voice ("On the really bad days, I felt like a monster in a cage with a sign warning: 'Danger, snarling Negro.
