Word: beans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...shopping or glance through their wardrobe with the intention of looking like someone else. It's not anyone in particular--it's just the look that they're after. Oh, you know it all too well. It's the khaki pants, the shoes from L.L. Bean (a demigod to this crowd), gray wool socks (if any), a wrinkled oxford shirt under a white-dotted blue sweater (the most popular garment on campus), topped off with a dungaree jacket (collar turned up). Combined with name-brand shades (Vuarnets or Ray Bans or imitations thereof) replete with neckstrap, this typical B.C. student...
What are our alternatives? To start with, I propose a giant bonfire at a central campus location where we can all bring our argyle socks. Bean jackets, green and pink corduroy pants, monogrammed sweaters, and other preppie paraphernalia and torch it once and for all. This includes all the straw baskets, all trendy sunglasses (and neckstraps), and those ugly Bean blucher shoes...
Resourceful as ever, PEtty and the redoubtlable Roger decide they will have to make do with what they have. We find Roger consucting military exercises and falling into the duck pond. Roger patrolling the yard falling into the duck pond, Roger ezperimenting with do-it-yourself bean can bombs and falling into the duck pond. One of their better ideas is to convert a microwave oven into a missile deflector. Unfortunately, this piece of genius is ultimately stymied by Roger's lack of techincal expertise...
Indeed, the Harvard Business School, M.B.A.s and "bean counters" are used almost interchangeably as synonyms for button-down corporate caution. Iacocca, born and raised in Allentown, Pa., regards the risk taking of his Italian-born father as the way to do business. In the 1920s and '30s, Nicola Iacocca made and lost and remade rather glamorous small fortunes: hot dogs, movie theaters, rental cars. Young Lido, a monkish boy denied military service in World War II (4-F because of a childhood case of rheumatic fever), took an engineering degree from Lehigh University (B+) and then spent a year...
Boston residents have their own theories on why Bean Town jumped from 18th to second place. Harvard Social Scientist David Riesman (The Lonely Crowd) thinks that media exposure helped. Doug Flutie, the former Boston College quarterback, he notes, "is quick, brainy and made it on countless telecasts." John Updike, who lives in the exclusive suburb of Beverly Farms, cites the economic factor. "When I came to Harvard in the '50s, Boston was fairly grubby," says the novelist. "Now if you have the money, it's a nice place to live...