Word: ft
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...floods and mud slides that have devastated Venezuela--and that may have killed as many as 30,000 people--were an all too foreseeable tragedy. Millions of people inhabit Caracas' ranchos, the squalid shantytowns that cling to both sides of the 6,000-ft. mountains ringing the capital. And for decades those people have fought a Sisyphean battle to keep their rickety tin, cardboard and clay-block houses from tumbling down the washed-out slopes during heavy rains. Hundreds have died in past downpours, but as los ranchos kept swelling in size and population, it was only a matter...
...retreat was temporary. The strapping redhead won his first battle at age 13. At 20 he defeated the usurpers. He fought successfully for and against the French King. He made a dynastic marriage, over papal objections, to the daughter of the powerful Count of Flanders. (William was 5 ft. 10 in. tall, his Matilda barely 4 ft. They had at least nine children.) By 1065 he was absolute lord of a consolidated Normandy. Then he looked northward...
...such a simple premise, and Abbott and Costello drive it about 20 ft. into the ground, but "Who's on First?" is not only the century's most famous comedy bit; it's also the best. It's absurdism mixed with the easy pleasure of confusion, and Bud Abbott plays the perfect cool logician to Lou Costello's frustrated inquisitor in this Beckettian farce. RUNNERS-UP "Dead Parrot," Monty Python; "Rope Tricks," Will Rogers...
...building is a concrete complex overgrown with weeds and drying laundry. Neighbors stare from above, their arms draped over balconies. Through the door and inside Juan Carlos' apartment suddenly there is Judith, easily 7 ft. tall. Eight? She's huge. She leans down to offer her cheek for kisses. The walls are crowded with images of Michael Jordan. We say we're from Chicago. They nod politely. Juan Carlos thinks the Suns will take it this year. The Suns? We nod politely...
...short. For some reason this is the first thing people want to know when they hear you have met Matt Damon. "He's short, right?" the inquiries come. "How tall is he?" "Is he a Pygmy or what?" He's actually 5 ft. 11 in., but still, the fact that the rest of us are not Matt Damon--have no Oscar, have never kissed Winona Ryder and are not making $7 million a movie--would be no more palatable even if we could put him in the "good-looking but short" box with, say, Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson...