Word: bugging
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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McMahon's book is a marvel of brains, brevity and sharp description. He flashes around like a lightning bug briefly casting a glow on some detail or other: what it's like to travel on the Erie Canal: how a character is inadvertently shot; the way in which daguerreotypes are made. He does a lot with bees too, but. as the book implies, they have enough metaphorical possibilities for a series of novels. A hive is a feminist state, with an automatic system for keeping warm that is activated when the temperature in the hive drops...
...invited back to give it intellectual tone again. At this point Hugh Hefner, a circulation promotion writer at Esquire decided to start a magazine of his own, freely borrowing Esquire's formula while gambling that the courts might now be more lenient about nudity. Instead of Esky the bug-eyed lecher as a trademark, Hefner created the Bunny. Facing Playboy's runaway success but unwilling to become a "skin book," Esquire made a wobbly retreat from barbershop sexism. Soon its advertising men protested that Esquire had become too stuffy and intellectual...
...want more meaningful vacations, careers and relationships." They also want to be "better consumers." (That oldtime Esquire merchandising again!) Moffitt is hardly nihilistic. He wants Esquire to provide helpful guidance to behavior that would leave a fellow "feeling right, feeling good about himself." Back somewhere in the genes, the bug-eyed Esky must be rolling his eyes about that...
Sellars comes into his own in the second act. Futuristic fantasy is more suited to his playland theatrical style. His actors, done up in round bug suits with mops on their heads, race around the stage with shopping carts. The supermarket motif is reinforced in an incessant procession of slides of dog food, toilet paper, peas, and Burry cookies, and in the soothing strains of Muzaked "Hey Jude," "Those Were The Days," and "Lara's Theme." It's tempting to settle back and watch the ads parade by--it may be monotonous but there is a certain sense...
...women at their first consciousness-raising session, the mayors are utterly delighted to find other people who share, and above all, understand their problems. As they chat they soon find themselves finishing each other's sentences like old friends. Paul Doutrich of Harrisburg, who looks a bit like bug-eyed Comedian Rodney ("I don't get no respect") Dangerfield, learned about the disastrous doings at nearby Three Mile Island from an enterprising Boston radio reporter who called long distance to check out the rumor of imminent nuclear disaster. It was two days before Doutrich was properly briefed...