Word: forlorn
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Every night at a pre-scheduled time, forlorn swains and pining maidens fill the Science Center basement to e-mail their loved ones at other colleges or back at home. Bathed in the unearthly glow of the monitor screens, they are oblivious to the furious click-clack of the keyboard as Internet connects them to their faraway, spiritual halves. Yet somehow, this mode of communication seems to lack a true personal touch, a romantic passion. Perhaps it is the constant, invasive hum of the terminals and the harsh florescent lights. Or the horde of computer hacker sitting in the other...
...These forlorn scenes may be just a transitional phase. "I foresee that one day America will be smoke-free," says Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. She adds, "But not in my lifetime. We have 40 million people who are addicted to smoking. We've got to help them get over their addiction, and that's going to take a while...
Ives is a wondrous wordmaster and, as spiffily directed by Jason McConnell / Buzas, these elfin works could be called Stoppard Lite. But they are really Beckett Brisk, for they are about the creative process, frantic and forlorn, of getting through life. They suggest that all human existence is an improvisatory rehearsal for some grand opening night that may never arrive. Panic is the universal language. And yet, as Ives shows, rewriting life can produce a happy ending. Destiny may be, as his Trotsky says, "only a capitalist explanation for the status quo," but it can also be a sure thing...
Gilbert (Johnny Depp) might be the patron saint of all such caretakers. A grocery-store clerk in forlorn Endora, Iowa, he looks after his retarded brother (Leonardo DiCaprio), who likes to climb things, and his mountainous mom (Darlene Cates), who, at an immobile 500 lbs., is something of a local tourist attraction. Nor does the need stop at his front door. Gilbert must satisfy the sexual desires of a tartly cheerful matron (Mary Steenburgen), even as he is drawn to newcomer Becky (Juliette Lewis), a teenager whose ease and freedom seem like fresh oxygen in the coal mine of Gilbert...
...wish I had it over again," a forlorn Scott said...