Word: awkward
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Senator Bob Packwood complained that Reagan has a different shortcoming: when confronted with a serious budget proposal, the President tends to respond with a non sequitur."Didn't they know," chortled Congressman Barber Conable of New York, "that successful leaders often must fill awkward moments with digressions...
...Alex's little kingdom. Moored in the harbor's greenish-brown water in the moth-balled U.S.S. Constellation, cousin of Boson's Constitution, and a favorites among the hordes of tourists who swarm through the twin glass-enclosed pavilions every day in the slimmer. They gawk at the awkward old boat and munch on Alex's chicken...
...accident could not have come at a more awkward time for the nuclear-power industry, already under attack for its spotty safety record. What is worse, the Ginna mishap may be a portent of troubles ahead, since steam lines in many plants around the country are also plagued by corrosion. Indeed, by week's end, reactors in New Jersey and Vermont had been shut down because of leaks in their plumbing, and the NRC reported that plans to restart Three Mile Island's Unit No. 1, closed for refueling at the time of the 1979 accident...
...objective observer of these goings-on, he or she may find a certain charm in Personal Best. Since pentathletes compete in both track and field events, Towne has a good range of athletic activity to cover in near documentary fashion. He is still pretty much in the awkward stage as a director, and there is more of this material than is good for the dramatic structure of the movie. He does effectively parallel Chris' rise from klutzy incompetence to championship caliber with her development as a woman from unformed adolescence to self-aware maturity...
...fond of Montaigne and Cicero. After 40 years of his benign companionship, his widow Nell doubts her ability to go it alone: "He protected me from so much ... from my harshest judgments of myself as well as of others." Strickland's death also catches his two daughters at awkward points in their lives. Cate, headstrong and twice divorced, is approaching her 40th birthday and teaching English at a small college in Iowa; like her previous school in New Hampshire, this one too seems on the verge of closing for lack of funds. And Lydia, the prim younger daughter...