Word: banalizing
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That is the egalitarian theme of Vance Packard's latest venture in pop sociology, which is centered on slapdash but often tantalizing interviews with 30 of the nation's richest citizens (average net worth in 1987: $425 million). As the author presents them, these ultrarich tend to be banal in thought and sometimes defiantly plain Jane in tastes. "What's better than meat-loaf?" asks Texas developer Walter W. Caruth Jr., whose wife (despite his $600 million) does all the cooking. Surprisingly few of Packard's subjects try to live up to their imposing annual incomes. Leonard Shoen, the founder...
Sports today is already suffering from an identity crisis and image problem. Because professional sports rely on gate receipts and television contracts, they often tread a thin line between athletics for athletics' sake and banal entertainment...
...caretaker's cottage, a bathhouse, a lifeguard's tower: those were the modest requirements for Newcastle Beach Park in Bellevue, Wash. The buildings designed by Jones & Jones architects of Seattle manage to be sensible without being banal. They are charmingly appropriate to the region (wooden board and batten exteriors, exaggerated overhanging eaves) without being simply Hansel- and-Gretelish. Ann Mullaney's new information kiosks on Paramount Pictures' Melrose Avenue studio lot in Los Angeles are also admirably no-nonsense and low-key. They are neoclassical wooden booths with fine detailing, standing- seam copper roofs and all the glitz...
...singing detective. As he did in Pennies from Heaven, Potter scatters period songs to make ironic points. A quartet of doctors turns Fred Waring's Dry Bones into a sardonic production number; The Teddy Bears' Picnic plays over memories of a forest seduction. "No matter how sugary and banal they might be," Potter says, "old popular songs are in a direct line of descent from the Psalms. They're saying that the world is other than the thing around you -- other than age, other than sickness, other than death. These songs are chariots; they take you somewhere. The little bounce...
...even 179 1/2 hours of coverage is enough to display more than about a tenth of all the action. But NBC's sense of proportion has been peculiarly maddening. It broke into live coverage of Janet Evans' gold-medal swim in the 400-meter individual medley to air a banal taped interview with her. Night after night, viewers saw just enough volleyball or water polo to frustrate them as they waited for something else, yet not enough context or start-to-finish action to convert them into enthusiasts of an unfamiliar sport...