Word: clerking
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Gilbert (Johnny Depp) might be the patron saint of all such caretakers. A grocery-store clerk in forlorn Endora, Iowa, he looks after his retarded brother (Leonardo DiCaprio), who likes to climb things, and his mountainous mom (Darlene Cates), who, at an immobile 500 lbs., is something of a local tourist attraction. Nor does the need stop at his front door. Gilbert must satisfy the sexual desires of a tartly cheerful matron (Mary Steenburgen), even as he is drawn to newcomer Becky (Juliette Lewis), a teenager whose ease and freedom seem like fresh oxygen in the coal mine of Gilbert...
...James Meredith barred at the door of Ole Miss; rape by a spouse as terrorizing as rape by a stranger with a knife in a dark alley; a Playboy calendar on the wall as detrimental on the job as a supervisor who takes away the duties of a clerk who has rebuffed his advances...
Their hero is Wilhelm, a hapless clerk whose trousers have a way of falling to his ankles just when they shouldn't. Their Devil is Pegleg, a swallow- tailed lowlife who learned his wiles behind the footlights of some sleazy Weimar cabaret, a la Joel Grey. They are surrounded by weirdos who make the Addams Family look like the Waltons. Among them: Wilhelm's inamorata, the robotically hysterical Kathchen; her fright-wigged father Bertram; an overbearing uncle who, in a hilarious non sequitur, tells the story of how Hemingway sold the movie rights to The Snows of Kilimanjaro...
...never sets on the line, but it is setting now over Ulica Piekna in Warsaw. Robert from Plock has been turned away, as have half of his companions. But Andrzej Zdanowski, 22, a Warsaw office clerk who has not reached the visa office, is still prepared to try his luck. "I have heard that Americans are friendly and tolerant, and one may meet an unselfish smile there," he says. Then he adds, "There are things there that don't exist here, unique things. And a man is always attracted to something...
...they did, as legislators filed forward to present small blocks of wood to the Diet clerk -- white for yes and green for no. When the tallies were added up, Hosokawa had won by a comfortable majority of 270 to 226, 10 more than the seven-party government's total strength. As Hosokawa watched with satisfaction, 13 Liberal Democratic legislators broke party ranks to vote with his program, and an additional seven braved the stern eye of party leader Yohei Kono to leave the floor and thus abstain from the balloting...