Word: dourness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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QUESTION: IS LIFE A COMEDY OR A tragedy? Answer: It depends on your medication. That, at least, is what the old (young) Woody Allen might have said. But Allen, who turns 70 this year, and whose filmmaking career includes dour dramas as well as his signature comedies of yearning, is beyond making jokes. He saves his wit for his films' structures. In Melinda and Melinda, he imagines the sudden appearance of a neurotic beauty at a dinner party and plays out two variations, one ending with a death, the other with a kiss. Which version does Allen believe...
...right. The road from here to anything resembling a functioning country is daunting. But now, at least, we are brutally aware of all the plans and strategies that haven't worked. Our universe of potential idiocies has been diminished, and this painful wisdom may, in itself, be cause for dour optimism. Long past are the days when a U.S. proconsul, the extremely unfortunate L. Paul Bremer, would attempt to design a new Iraqi national flag (and produce something that looked like the Israeli one). Indeed, there are signs that the Bush Administration is preparing to chart a more realistic course...
...though, Hanoi?always more dour than gaudy Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south?just might be starting to loosen up. "Who cares about the government?" shouts a refrigerator salesman swilling iced gin at the bar and listening to the Filipino country-and-western band. "What matters is what the people like." And the people can't get enough of cowboys. Happy hour at the Seventeen Saloon, from 5 to 8 p.m., is a convivial crush of Vietnamese cutting loose. One tip: if you're planning to pay a visit, make sure to get there early, as the action...
...support his campaign in the hope of hurting Kerry. And Nader appears to have no regrets about the hard-to-dispute claim that he cost the Democrats the White House four years ago. Asked last week if the country would be better off if Gore had won, the usually dour Nader cracked a smile. "George W. Bush is an easy act to follow, or precede," he said. "Anyone would be a better President." Then he denounced John Kerry and promised to stay in the race until Election Day. --By James Carney
...thanks to daily calisthenics). Many of those qualities can be traced to Wodehouse's Woosterish upbringing. A descendant of Norfolk nobility, including a sister of Henry VIII's ill-fated wife Ann Boleyn, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse rarely saw his parents - a colonial administrator and his dour wife. The young "Plum," as Pelham was nicknamed, was raised by nannies and schoolmasters to become an athletic but bookishly solitary child, reading the Iliad at age 6 and penning his first story at 7. When his parents refused to fund him at Oxford, he joined a London bank, writing at night and resigning...