Word: fathoming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...songs, "the last station home." It would be twilight, because she makes music that catches the sweet, scary feelings, all the uncertainty and release, that can come when the sun goes down. She is the tall, windblown woman standing solitary at the end of the platform, trying to fathom the signal lights and waiting for the next express. Now that could be the Midnight Special, or it could be the Mystery Train, but, whatever comes through, Toni Childs is going for a long ride...
...anyone with dreams not daubed in greasepaint, the Apollo's peculiar magic can be a little hard to fathom. That night's first-place winner -- an honor determined solely by the applause -- would pocket just $200. And, of course, there is that infamous Apollo audience, an orchestra and two balconies bursting with folks who give no quarter. Ella Fitzgerald's hazing is a legend. She managed no more than a few off-key notes before Master of Ceremonies Ralph Cooper came out to save her. Stilling the jeers, he won her a reprieve and she started again. On the second...
WHILE he was no doubt astute in avoiding cliche, the surrealism of these scenes detracts from the power of their subject. And a difficult-to-fathom subplot involving an unrequited romance with a Vietnamese woman adds neither heat nor light to the production. Levinson has, in fact, included more subplots than sense; too many characters are brought on screen for anything to be resolved, and when the film ends--in an utterly predictable way--the audience would be left with a lot of questions, if it cared enough...
...wider than this geographic separation is a gulf of distrust. White friends could not fathom why I wanted to go to Black areas. Neither could Blacks, once I got there. When I asked a Black street peddler to break a dollar for bus change, his boss warned him, "Don't give change to no white girl...
...egregious swipe at my teaching assistants is the hardest part of the diatribe to fathom. All three were well prepared, lively, advanced graduate or law school students who enjoyed teaching the course. Whatever their faults, boring they were not; one was even strikingly beautiful. In the light of the diatribist's chauvinistic mockery of Afro-Caribbean religion I cannot help wondering whether his real problem with the teaching staff was the fact that they were all Black...