1 always figured that comedians were the best kind of people to hang around with as a kid. They tell funny stories, make joke after joke, and happiness seems never to leave them. But time goes on, and we come to see these same people as clowns on the outside, but crying a river in the inside. Comedy from these people comes from a deep pain and sadness in their lives, or out of a deep-seated anger they have at the world around them. Look at Richard Pryor, need I say more? Richard seemed to have everything. For Superman  m , he ended up getting more money than Christopher Reeve did. Yet he said while he was in his forties that the last truly happy moment he remembered in his life was when he was jumping around in the dirt while pretending to be a cowboy at the age of 10. This guy set himself on fire, and he played that for laugh while performing live at the Sunset Strip ! Comedy was his constant weapon against pain,  and he never held anything back. The movie Funny People understand very well this gloomy field many comedians have to survive in.  It stars Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a famous comedian in the movie. Simmons has it all: a beautiful mansion overlooking the sea, a swimming pool,great cars, and so on. But in his eyes, we see that he is a sad man who has come to truly look down upon himself for what he has become. All the wealth he has collected only serves to separate him from the rest of the world and it makes him defensive when around total strangers who cannot see him as a normal person. But now, he hears from  his doctor that he has a terminal disease and has only months left to live. Simmons reacts to this news as if someone took away his blood in the heart, and it makes him clearly see just how much he hates his life. So now he has to make every minute count. Then come a series of funny stories. Comedy is just life as it is, isn't it? What can we infer about "comedians" according to the text? A) Comedians like to get along with kids. B) Comedians' life is full of jokes. C) Comedians often use their sad experience. D) Comedians often cry in their daily life.
C


As for older people, some of the applications are hard to use because they didn't grow up with them. They don't have simple models of how it should work. They don't know what to do when it doesn't work. I think there is huge potential, so I have designed some for them. The ability to connect to friends, who remember the same movies, news and music, is really important, especially as people get older. They end up in retirement homes and they aren't always close to their friends. Allowing the network to help them connect with friends  and family members is a really powerful thing. My wife likes using the Internet, although it took me years to get her to use e-mail. She was born with normal hearing, but lost it when she was three years old. She was totally deaf for many years until 53 when she got ear implants .They work really well. That is a big change for her. Before then, her friends couldn't call her on the phone, so they insisted that she use e-mails to communicate with them. The younger people don't even think of this as technology. It's just there, and they use it .There's been a very interesting change in communication styles between the old and the young .A woman named Sharryturkle wrote about this phenomenon .There are some kids who are now in their teens and are tending not to make phone calls. And they think of e-mail as old-fashioned and slow. The reason why teens don't make phone calls seems to be that they don't know what to say. When they call they often pause for a while. On the other hand, texting is considered proper, and it's OK if you don't answer. You might have been distracted .It's not considered rude, but it's considered unusual if you're in this kind of voice conversation and simply stop talling. What is the best way for the teens to communicate with others? A) Sending e-mail. B) Making phone call. C) Writing letters. D) Sending text messages.
D


Irina,now 46,never imagined she'd one day make a living as a balloon artist.The daughter of an engineer and a teacher,she won top academic awards in high school,went on to medical school and became an emergency room physician in a small city. "I loved the science of medicine," she says today,"but being a doctor was very hard.I saw things people don't normally see--women giving birth in the street,people getting drunk and killing someone." Medications were scarce,making it very difficult to treat those in need.When Irina was 33,a girlfriend showed her a magazine photo of an American named Wes Patterson.They began exchanging letters,and married that December.Irina took a public relations job.Then,a few years ago,she watched a man at a party twist a skinny balloon into the shape of a dog. _  Irina soon purchased a tiny pump and a supply of balloons and began practicing on the sidewalks.Observers challenged her to create all kinds of figures.Now,Irina says,"There's nothing I can't make." Many years ago,Irina's husband developed a serious disease which now keeps him homebound."But he is a very wonderful man," Irina says.Thanks to her new career,she is able to support them both,performing about five events weekly and earning as much as  $2,000 per appearance. "Irina's a wonder," says Marlene Berg,chief development officer for the Florida Heart Research Institute."She turned the evening into magic." "My whole life has become magic," Irina says,"and it's all come from a balloon." What's Irina's job now? A) An emergency room physician. B) A researcher. C) A public relations worker. D) An artist.

D