Word: firsts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ballad throbs to a climax, the two singers look at each other in a confession of mutual need, and the title line of mock-bragging devotion, You're Nothing Without Me, reverberates from the rafters. All in all, a classic first-act finale -- except that in this musical the characters who vow undying fidelity are a nerdy novelist turned screenwriter and the hard-boiled detective he has created on page and celluloid...
Scooped up by the Chiefs as a second-round draft choice in 1987, Okoye averaged only 54 yds. in rushing in his first two pro seasons. But when coach Marty Schottenheimer decided to emphasize the Chiefs' ground offense this year, Okoye found his groove. The formula is simple: they give him the ball, he runs with it. "I have to work harder than anyone else," says Okoye in his Nigerian lilt, "because everybody knows more about football than me and I have to catch up." Marvels Schottenheimer: "I don't think I've ever seen anyone with the combination...
...tiff began with a minuet over which man would pay the first high- profile private visit to China since the massacre outside Tiananmen Square. Kissinger had planned to address a Beijing conference on foreign investment in October. But he called off the trip in September after the Wall Street Journal published an account of his business deals, which include a $75 million partnership called China Ventures. Three weeks later, Nixon began his excursion to Beijing. After he arrived, an aide released a background paper pointing out that Nixon had no Chinese business interests. Though the document named no names, some...
Signs are they haven't done so. Despite a $585 million high-tech makeover for the Postal Service over the past two years, the odds have not improved that a letter will get from Boston to Miami in less time than the sender could drive it there. Performance on first-class mail delivery was at a five-year low in 1988, and complaints about late mail rose 35% last summer. For the workers, automation, heavier mail loads (especially during the Christmas rush) and outside competition have turned a once cushy job into a form of boot camp in eight-hour...
...nightmare of the new automation is the optical character reader, which shoots out 30,000 pieces of mail an hour and shows no mercy. A postal clerk has about a second to read an address and punch in the first three digits of the ZIP code, which is then translated into a bar-code symbol for sorting mail by carrier route. With no way to slow down the machine, the clerk is like Lucille Ball in her comic routine at a candy factory. One moment, Lucy is standing at the conveyor belt blithely wrapping individual candies; the next...