Word: bland
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Roy Crane, 75, comic-strip cartoonist and creator of Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer; in Orlando, Fla. His swashbuckling grocery clerk, Washington Tubbs II, is credited with bringing adventure to the bland funny papers of the '20s when he fell in love with Tango the tiger tamer. Though other artists adopted Tubbs and Friend Captain Easy, Crane collaborated on Navy Pilot Buz until his death...
Charges that fast-food uniformity is turning the U.S. into the land of the bland should not be swallowed. A Big Mac may be a Big Mac wherever one roams, but in the interstices of the chains a Petronian diversity of foodstuffs is being sold with dispatch. On the Fourth, New Englanders will be flocking to Clam Shacks for rolls stuffed with batter-fried whole quahogs or steamers. Sightseers in Plains, Ga., will stop at the Americus outlet of McWaffles, which puts peanuts in the batter and serves "the Presidential Waffle" with a side order of peanut butter...
Another recent upsetting development is the rise of the super-stadia, of which Houston's Astrodome was the forerunner. In contrast to the old, idiosyncratic parks like Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Fenway Park in Boston, these new futuristic monstrosities are sickeningly bland in conception, and utterly miserable places to watch baseball. One of the worst is Anaheim Stadium in Southern California, which I had the misfortune of visiting last summer. The game was a beauty; Frank Tanana of the Angels and Catfish Hunter of the Yankees locked in an extra-inning duel. But as is the fashion...
...then came one of the grandest scams of all. In 1910, Backhouse and J.O.P. Bland, a London Times China watcher, published China under the Empress Dowager. The memoir was based on the diary of Ching-shan, a fin de siècle Manchu courtier. Backhouse claimed to have found this trove of gossip and intelligence in its author's house during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The diary became the jewel of the Oxford collection; scholars may have debated its authenticity, but hardly a soul dared suggest that Backhouse himself had written it. Now Trevor-Roper, revealing...
Cash Machines. Such economies are making newspapers so profitable -and thus so desirable as investment properties-that prices will probably continue to soar. Industry analysts concede that $125 million for the Star and Times may sound high, but add that the stodgy, bland and earnest dailies should become immensely profitable under firmer management from Capital Cities; besides, as in most U.S. cities, the papers have no real competition. "It is extremely difficult and expensive to start a new newspaper," says Otis Chandler. "Thus the ones that are in place and going are even more valuable." This is particularly true since...