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Penn and Teller are ultra-show-biz-savvy New York intellectuals whose act is an ironic deconstruction of magic shows in addition to being a very impressive magic show (see box). They first played Vegas a year ago. Penn Jillette's fondness for Vegas, like every hip baby boomer's, is sweet-and-sour, simultaneously bemused and fond. Of a traditional Vegas variety show at Bally's called Jubilee, he rants, "In the first five minutes they destroy temples and sink a giant model of the Titanic -- there are 80 topless dancing women while the Titanic sinks, blast furnaces spewing...
...Cardinal likes to spend 15 minutes each afternoon at the piano. He is particularly fond of Mozart and Beethoven. "Brahms," he says, "is too difficult for me." Other difficulties include modern technology -- computers, stereos, gizmos and cars. He has never earned a driver's license. His talents lie in another realm. He can, say his associates, refine doctrine from a chaos of arguments. Says an aide: "He has the ability to synthesize a lot of collected, sometimes contradictory, information and put it into words that are compelling, straightforward and above all true to what he believes." And what he believes...
...Drive for show; putt for dough" is an expression golfers understand. So should members of Congress, many of whom are fond of playing the game at someone else's expense. However, despite the legislative long balls hit over the past season, Capitol Hill's 535 members were unable to master one essential stroke: reforming the rules for their own behavior. True, both the House and Senate gave the appearance of movement on laws designed to tighten campaign financing and lobbying regulations. But both bodies moved so late and in such contradictory directions that any reconciliation they are able to fashion...
...divorce. While Sally Field is largely convincing as a somewhat frustrated, struggling career woman, the "real-life" interactions between Daniel and Miranda seem stiff and unrealistic. And no tangible rapport is established between Daniel and his beloved children--they may profess to love him, but all seem equally fond of thehandsome, stereotypical yuppie Stu, a purposelyone-dimensional character. The relationshipbetween Daniel/Mrs. Doubtfire and Stu seems overlystrained given that Daniel's main motivation forthe charade is to see his kids, not to reunitewith Miranda. This detracts from our sympathy forWilliams' character by making the witty attemptsof Mrs. Doubtfire to sabotage Miranda...
...anything which smelled of "the establishment" that he identified with outsiders more because they were outsiders than out of any sense of fairness. This fact made him a dubious political ally; he announced once that he wouldn't support the Palestinians if they ever received a homeland, and was fond of saying, "I would like the world not to change so that I can be against the world...