Word: bum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...always pick out the little boys and girls who play in junior tennis tournaments, the rascals with the headbands scrunched down over furrowed little brows. Sullen looks, knee braces and mumbles about "bum draws." These kids accept intense jealousy, incessant selfdoubt and occasional deceit as the basis of achievement right along with hard work and lots of orange juice. I know, because I was one once...
...maybe he realized that his life could well have been spent behind a Seven & Seven, not a typewriter. But the paunchy columnist who wrote sad humor like no one else ever will could not bring himself to admit that even New York had its share of unredeemable scum, that bum was a nice word for derelict, that plenty of criminals were vicious, not loveable. And, in his whole menagerie, there was one character he never drew--the young punk who laughed at things that weren't funny, the punk who was tough because he liked it that way, needed...
...They strutted into the Polo Lounge or La Scala or Dominic's, bound in safari suits, blissfully playing the room, death just another sour-grapes rumor out of the East, bad word of mouth, something that used to figure in grainy European-made films, which everybody knew were bum grossers...
...seems the hottest day of the summer, I wait for the ugly melody of the construction worker's yell at dawn. The faces stare back at me--a tired traffic cop; the bag lady, waking from a night's sleep in front of a burnt-out marquee; the sleazy bum waiting for Caesar's massage parlor to open its doors to all his lust. By the end of the summer I told time by these people. Their habits were so fixed that I knew I was late to work if the doors to Adam and Eve's sex palace were...
...Falcon and the Snowman omits no telling detail - about falconry, the drug trade, spy satellites, the duo's stoned bum-bung, and their torturous legal battles after capture. But there are enough tantalizing loose ends in the book to make it clear that Lindsey is describing life, not art. Why, for instance, did TRW put a 21-year-old, $140-a-week college dropout in such a sensitive post? Did the leaks really damage U.S. security? Perhaps Boyce and Lee actually were being used by the CIA to spread false evidence. If not, concludes Lindsey, then "the affair...