Word: drabber
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...white-after-Labor Day rule may be symbolic. In the early 20th century, white was the uniform of choice for Americans well-to-do enough to decamp from their city digs to warmer climes for months at a time: light summer clothing provided a pleasing contrast to drabber urban life. "If you look at any photograph of any city in America in the 1930s, you'll see people in dark clothes," says Scheips, many scurrying to their jobs. By contrast, he adds, the white linen suits and Panama hats at snooty resorts were "a look of leisure...
...just fine in an anarcho-sentimentalist comedy. But much of the raillery in Step Brothers seems lazy or desperate. The Ferrell character lacks the goofy appeal of Ricky Bobby or the skater in Blades of Glory. And I'll take the comedy stylings of Jon Heder over Reilly's drabber improvisations any day. (Reilly was way funnier with Ferrell and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show Tuesday night than he is here.) Finally, Ferrell, the Hollywood star most notorious for going naked in his movies, shows off only his belly, and that for a teasing second. For most...
...travel, Beowulf and Hamlet. We are also treated to the edifying spectacle of a hostile takeover of Hamlet by the characters of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Fun, but Fforde's cheerfulness is relentless. Genuine pathos can be found in the interplay between the world of fiction and its drabber, realer counterpart, but Fforde doesn't go looking for it. He is always charming company, and if he sometimes strays too far into fantasy, well, what's so great about reality? "If the real world were a book," Hamlet remarks, "it would never find a publisher." --By Lev Grossman
MANCHESTER, N.H.—Rebecca E. Rubins ’05 spent last Wednesday like the ten preceding 15-hour days, frantically researching in dull light on even drabber furniture...