Word: ennui
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cultured, sophisticated Europeans to flock to it. It was absurd, a sure failure. Imperial America at its most foolish. Five years ago, Parisians smoking cigarettes at Les Deux Magots sniggered into their cafe au laits as Disneyland Paris opened. No way would the land that invented Existentialism, perfected ennui and made dourness hip go for the hyperactive cheeriness of Mickey Mouse. Ce n'est pas possible. For a while, it seemed like they were right. For its first few years of operation, Disneyland Paris was a laughing stock, losing money, attracting small crowds and providing ample ammunition for America bashers...
...touch of gray at the temples, a wistfulness for waylaid innocence--that made Mastroianni a worldwide star. As the Dolce Vita gossipist, the moviemaker in Fellini's great 8 1/2 (1963) and the writer in Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (1961), he moved like a man in perpetual postcoital ennui, elevating spiritual passivity to a metaphysic and a fashion statement. "Mastroianni" became a kind of emotional cologne for the modern male. And no one wore the style as elegantly as he: the dark suit, the narrow tie, the eyes of a man who's been up three nights straight doing...
...rough sketch for Happiness Is a Warm Gun. He does a Yokoized What's the New Mary Jane, a previously unreleased number with Lewis Carroll-like lyrics and avant-garde inventiveness. But there's also an urgent I'm So Tired, still one of Lennon's most potent songs--ennui, annoyance, panic and plea in two minutes flat. The mood of these sessions is serious fun. Songs tail into parody as the lads assume the IDs of sham bands: Ricky and the Red Streaks, or Los Paranoias ("Come on, enjoy...
This growing ennui is making the press more desperate than Bob Dole. About this time in a campaign we journalists are usually worrying about having sunk too low; instead, we fear we've risen so high we're being ignored during our quadrennial chance to show off. For a brief, shining moment we had Dick Morris: since then, nothing. After the second debate, where Jack Kemp, the designated slasher, came off more like Barney than Freddy Krueger, even Ted Koppel gave up. "Here we have one of the most civil debates in history, and we can barely stay awake...
...season of ennui and loathing. Pundits exhausted their thesauruses in the search for new synonyms for doleful, dreary and vacuous. Ordinary folks made the classic finger-in-throat gesture, or pitched forward face first into their azalea beds. On the cover of the Nation, presidential history was depicted as a Darwinian descent from the triumphantly upright Franklin Roosevelt on down to an invertebrate Clinton-Dole level just above the primordial scum...