Word: backseaters
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...their hands. What do you talk about before a killing? (Fast food in Amsterdam.) How do you escape a fate worse than death? (With luck and honor.) How do you date your gang boss's wife? (Very carefully.) How do you remove those telltale blood stains from the backseat? (Very quickly.) Spinning delirious variations on familiar film noir conventions and pulling career-best performances from < Travolta, Willis, Thurman and especially Jackson as a Bible-spouting sociopath, Tarantino makes a smart, fatal movie. It's Die Hard with a brain...
Juan and Jose settle into the backseat. "At least they got good music," Jose says appreciatively as hip-hop plays on the radio. The van rapidly fills with captives. "We've got two more right here," says Krajeski, zeroing in on a pair of loitering targets. "Look, they're smiling already." Minutes later, a girl in the back catches sight of a passing youth and shouts, "Hey! That's Anthony!" The van slows obligingly, and Krajeski calls out, "Come over here, Anthony." The startled kid climbs aboard. Soon after, two high school sweethearts, draped over each other and oblivious...
When Wasps thought of their duties as members of a group, the group they thought of was society as a whole. Families, social classes and their subunits took a backseat. Being realists, Wasps recognized that narrower loyalties existed, and James Madison built a constitutional theory on the balancing of "factions." But Wasps always viewed particularism with a certain distaste. Vendettas and blood feuds were considered the marks of yokels, while "special interest" has long been a political term of abuse...
...phases that Western classical music did in three, progressing from folk expression to avant-garde experimentation. Fox feels that jazz, like current classical music, sacrifices originality for technical perfection. He emphasized that "Jazz is about exploring," and that this element must be preserved. Theory and form should take a backseat to creativity, explained Fox, and he offered his paraphrase of Stravinsky as evidence: "Stravinsky said, `I like this chord...I dig this.'" Fox added, "You don't have to have a label on it to make it legitimate...
...buried my sister today," the old man sighs from the backseat. "She was a veteran of the war." The driver, Artyom Dobrovolsky, glances at the rearview mirror and nods. He has a talker. As he dodges the ubiquitous potholes and noses ahead of less intrepid drivers, Artyom settles into conversation. Like most Moscow taksisty, he doubles as paid listener and anonymous confessor. He is a collector of stories from passengers of all kinds, a street chronicler of life in a fractured society...