Word: curmudgeon
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Every season, it seems, brings some new sentimental comedy about terminal illness, usually involving some old curmudgeon's coming to rosy terms with the imperfections of the world he is about to leave. These plays, whose "reality" is rooted not in life but in prior plays, movies and TV, shy away from the raw emotions of fear and grief and the harsh facts of the body's decline, trivializing the eternal mystery they pretend to revere. What makes Wrong Turn at Lungfish more than usually disappointing is that most such plays don't have George C. Scott (although last season...
...splinters and slows down. The ideas seem less fresh -- especially a much too long visual riff on links between demagogic politics and celebrity culture -- and emotional payoffs are few, though one is a lollapalooza. But the failings are fixable. The high spots are thrilling. And even for an antirock curmudgeon like this writer, for whom music ended with Mahler, the show is never less than fun to hear and, especially...
...wife Angela were having dinner with a group of friends at Trader Vic's, off Taylor Street, when they saw the tall figures of Feinstein and her husband saunter into the restaurant. Feinstein immediately came over, threw out her arms and said, grinning, "C'mon, John, you ole curmudgeon, give me a kiss!" Barbagelata complied. "What could I do?" he says ruefully. "She's a charmer...
...pride themselves on having the nation's thickest urban carapaces, are cracking under the tightening grasp of the homeless. When then Mayor Ed Koch urged Gothamites two years ago to stop giving to panhandlers because many "just don't want to work for a living," residents shrugged off the curmudgeonly remark as the latest from the city's self-appointed curmudgeon. But Koch's sour mood has caught on over the past twelve months, surfacing recently in cartoons, editorials, dinner conversations and official campaigns to move the city's vagrants out of its subway, bus and train stations...
...this seems a lot of hoopla, given the fact that the 71-year-old 60 Minutes curmudgeon usually zeros in on fail-safe targets like health clubs, cereal and encyclopedia salesmen. But starting last December, Rooney blundered beyond his usual puckish humor into a series of ill-advised and sometimes ignorant statements. On a prime-time special called A Year with Andy Rooney: 1989 he listed "homosexual unions," along with smoking and alcohol abuse, among the "self-induced" causes of death incurred by Americans. There were immediate protests at the implication that gays willingly contract AIDS...