Word: awkwardness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...publicity comes at an awkward time as the state gears up for next winter's Olympics, to be held in Salt Lake City. Some fear the polygamy trial could tarnish Utah's name internationally. Green is not above poking fun at the state's dilemma. "We even thought we would set up a polygamy booth at the airport and sell T shirts with pictures of my wives inside the five Olympic rings...
...political development, or as quaint idealists tragically out of step with the progress of their nation. Ian Buruma's Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (Random House; 367 pages) deftly refutes this increasingly widespread belief, by subjecting the group he refers to as "China's awkward squad" to the same probing scrutiny he has applied so effectively to other Asian topics. Buruma makes a strong case that dissidents are indeed relevant, both for the ways they illuminate the murkier aspects of Chinese culture and for the role they might still play in China's political transformation...
...After his 29 points lifted Harvard to a historic victory over Penn the night before, Dan Clemente hit a crucial jumper to put Harvard ahead of Princeton 67-66 with seven seconds left to play. But on the next trip down the floor, Wente hit an awkward, off-balance three-pointer at the buzzer, sending the Crimson into a tailspin. Harvard dropped its next four games and fell out of the running for the Ivy League title...
Being Dead, British author Jim Crace’s most recent novel and winner of the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award, was a quiet and daring story about love that began with the couple’s murder. The paradoxical and grammatically awkward title was highly appropriate for its unassuming but innovative take on death. That novel’s precise, almost sensuous sensibility also comes across in Crace’s newest work, The Devil’s Larder, a collection of 64 short pieces about food that also turn out to be about death, sex, starvation...
Fortunately, moments of awkward staging are infrequent and, ultimately, almost completely obscured by the show’s many dazzling elements...