Word: alighting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...middle-aged men who keep the flame of jetpack obsession alight are a quirky, entertaining bunch, united by their "heart-wrenchingly beautiful dream" to fly "like a twisted bird, for a wingless, breathless twenty-two second orgasm in the air." Montandon paints funny, faintly sad portraits of this group. "These are the anonymous, doughy faces of obsession," he writes. Among them is Jeremy McGrane, a 32-year-old New Hampshire resident who built his own "beautifully sleek, blue-corseted rocket belt," and who speaks candidly about the all-consuming nature of his pursuit: "Most guys are dreaming of alcohol...
...such as Strummer's ham-fisted attempt at rioting during London's 1976 Notting Hill Carnival: "We were standing around this car with a box of Swan Vesta [matches] and it's one thing to say, 'Burn the cars and burn the ghetto,' but you try setting a car alight...
King, though a willing partner, is a bit more cautious about the experiment's potential for success. "I kind of soft-pedaled everybody's expectations for this," he says. "People who surf the Net are hop-toady about it. They'll find something and alight on it for a while, and then their interest wanes and they'll go somewhere else. It's so quirky as to what's going to work and what's not." And though, as one of the top-selling fiction authors of all time, King doesn't have to worry about selling books in large...
...tactical advantage, merely the only unsuccessful one. Russia, Germany and, again in spectacular fashion, Turkey, provided delicious upsets of Holland (1-3 after extra time), Portugal (2-3) and Croatia (1-1 after extra time, 3-1 on penalties) to disrupt a tournament that had already been set alight by Turkey's last gasp heroics against Switzerland and the Czech Republic...
...Germany was soon to be forgotten after Spain and Holland set the tournament alight. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that Spain would get off to a good start. Finishing tournaments has been the Spanish weakness. It may still be. Against a supposedly rising Russia the Spanish frontrunners David Villa and Fernando Torres ran rampant in a 4-1 win. Torres set up the first goal by undressing Russian centerback Denis Kolodin and serving Villa with a gilt-edged pass to make it 1-0 at 20 minutes. It would be the beginning of a long night for the Russian back...