HE often tells audiences that for him, the war did not start in 1975; it began when he was 5 years old, hearing vicious jokes about Muslims in the playground.
Mr. LaBute's best film is still his first, "In the Company of Men," in which two male business associates contrive an elaborate and vicious practical joke on a female colleague simply for sport.
It's no surprise, then, that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) audiences have embraced King's revenge tale about a telekinetic misfit teen who turns her senior prom into a fiery holocaust after she's made the butt of a vicious practical joke.
After weeks of penis jokes, vicious personal attacks, and general histrionics resembling a wild circus act, the candidates decided to play nice at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida.
Try this simple test: Every time you feel the need to mock or denigrate gay men or lesbians, replace that joke with an equally vicious dig about African-Americans or Jews.
Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929.
Evidently he does not, particularly when he (and Sancho) is surrendered by Cervantes to the sadomasochistic practical jokes - indeed, the vicious and humiliating cruelties - that afflict the knight and squire in part II.
The prime minister responded with a threat that was no less vicious for coming in the guise of a joke.
On the face of it, the conflict is reminiscent of the old joke about the politics of academia — so vicious because so little is at stake.
