Word: couched
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...spectacle of Breughellina excess. After two hours of this, the DJ decides the hell with R&B, and switches to Madonna. Downstairs, 'poonsters lecture some musicians about the castle's hidden walls and secret tunnels. Meanwhile, in the library, a drop-dead gorgeous Blues Sister reclines on a couch and smokes cigars with two Hollywood Producers. "I love a good cigar," she says with an insouciantly arched eyebrow. I must be trapped in the Clue boardgame. Someone is sure to turn up dead in the billiard room, soon, next to a candlestick. The DJ switches to Frank Sinatra...
...couch potatoes of the future, whose every entertainment wish will be granted at the touch of a button, may have trouble interacting with one another in the real world. One hypothesis: people will become more self- centered, less attuned to their neighbors and society. Bridging the gap between cultures and races could become more difficult. Civility will suffer too. "Because most public events and entertainment will be experienced privately, people will lose a sense of how to behave in public," says Postman. "Even on the screen in movie theaters, they already have to tell people not to talk...
Futurologists in recent decades predicted the rise of couch potatoes nesting at home (Popcorn), the arrival of the home office and the multiple-marriage lifetime (Toffler). But by and large they missed out on many developments of much greater consequence, like the rise of OPEC and the mass arrival of women in the workplace...
...result is a lack of pretension rare in Washington, and especially so at Foggy Bottom. Eagleburger avoids using his formal office, with its chandelier, red damask couch and heroic picture of George Washington, because he thinks it looks too much "like a Moroccan house of ill repute." Says his wife Marlene: "He presents the same face to people in Washington that he does to our sons' friends. He's just comfortable in his own skin, and people respond...
...Dread the couch...