Word: colorlessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...comic actor Willie Best, LeRoi Jones listed the unlaughable characteristics: "Lazy/ Frightened/ Thieving/ Very potent sexually/ Scars/ Generally inferior/ But natural rhythms." White America has also created itself-a world that, when depicted in a novel like William Melvin Kelley's dem (1967), comes off as pallid, literally colorless, and trapped. In Drylongso, an oral history collected by John Langston Gwaltney and published last July, Jackson Jordan Jr., a nearly 90-year-old black North Carolinian, puts it to white people rather kindly: "Pretending to know everything or just pretending to be better than you know you are must...
...Unflappable" is the word acquaintances most often apply to Christopher. His manner is methodical, even colorless, and his temper is seemingly nonexistent. That may be his greatest qualification for dealing with the mercurial Iranians. Says former Governor Brown: "I regard him as one of the ablest men I have ever met. He's diplomatic. He's skillful. He's fair." Carter paid a similar compliment last week in awarding Christopher the Medal of Freedom: "He is indeed outstanding." Privately, Carter added that he regrets not having named Christopher to succeed Griffin Bell as Attorney General...
...substance stirring the most concern-and the apparent source of the California woman's illness-is formaldehyde, a gas given off by, among other things, poorly installed foam insulation. Although colorless, the gas has a pungent odor, can irritate the eyes and nose and can cause dizziness and vomiting. If animal tests are any indication, it can also create more serious problems. Subjected to prolonged high concentrations of formaldehyde, at levels comparable to those in some buildings, rats and mice developed cancerous tumors in their noses...
...mellow but righteous indignation on the sorry state of the society that will not buy his bland music. The concentration of the camera and the script on Simon would be fine if he portrayed an interesting or at least three-dimensional character, but Jonah Levin is neither, and his colorless professional and domestic problems complement the monotonous musical score to make One-Trick Pony a very boring way to spend two hours...
...manipulation of time). There are no dramatic peaks and valleys, no aesthetically pleasing beginning, middle and end. Gone, too, are the conventional techniques of characterization. Real people, with blood running through their veins, would detract from Pinter's concern with the purely intellectual. Jerry, Emma and Robert are as colorless as the gray business suits, black dresses and Burburry raincoats that fill their wardrobes. The stage is equally stark, lest a trinket or painting leak evidence of a character's personality--the stage is even more bare than it was on Broadway: a simple table and chairs replace Jerry...