Word: dourness
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...MIKE DUKAKIS decides to run for president he could run on a platform promising to "make America laugh again." For starters, professional yuckmeisters of all races, creeds and colors would be able to add several minutes to their routines merely by poking fun at our dour Duke. It wouldn't be long after the good governor announced any intention to become master of ceremonies of the comedy club of life that stand-up comics would start dishing out lines like, "Hey--you hear about Dukakis' economical version of a Star Wars defense shield? Yeah, in case of nuclear attack...
...portable radios get enormous"), Peggy Sue is streaked with melancholy. She is an alien in 1960; she will be stranded too when she returns to the '80s, where the boulevard of possibilities has narrowed to a blind alley. Reconciling with Charlie or starting life over without him seem dour alternatives after her glimpse at the limitless prospects of her youth. Like the Jimmy Stewart character in Frank Capra's 1946 It's a Wonderful Life, she receives the gift of second sight. But Peggy Sue's flashback convinces her that she must treasure what she has lost, not what...
...city with dozens of new gathering places and 117,000 apartments by 1990. "When the construction is finished, there will be more cafes, restaurants and beer gardens," says Rolf Liebold, a spokesman for the Berlin City Council. "No one will be able to say anymore that East Berliners are dour and unsocial...
...regarded by some Western diplomats as conservative and cautious, an unsophisticated apparatchik who has a reputation for stonewalling at every turn. Some observers regard him as a throwback to the bad old days of Soviet diplomacy, close both personally and in style to Andrei Gromyko, the stolid and dour bureaucrat who presided over superpower relations for nearly three decades...
Realizing that Canadians are sometimes thought to lack a sense of humor, the Expo planners have tried to counter that dour image by deploying strolling performers, robot minstrels and pockets of whimsy. "We wanted to be sure that people were entertained," says Jim Patterson, spokesman for the Canada pavilion. On a nice day there are almost certain to be gobs of children cavorting in a playground sea of plastic orange balls or in UFO H20, a humorous collection of splashing fountains made to look like alien space objects. The Land Plaza, with everything from a Singapore trishaw and a Philippine...