Word: givens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sick and tired of long and tedious conversations in the backseat of my 1965 Mustang during which I tried (usually in vain) to convince some sweet Delta plantation princess that it was irrational for two healthy, mature adults to deny themselves the God-given pleasures of sexual play. I figured that anybody intelligent enough to get into Harvard would not let something as puerile as religious convictions prevent her from living a normal adult life. Sure, I wrote the perfunctory essay about how I was going to use my Harvard education for the benefit of mankind, or, at least...
Under Colin Graham's direction, the story-adapted from two plays by German Pre-Expressionist Frank Wedekind-unfolds in swift, biting scenes (given fine clarity by Arthur Jacobs' translation). The mysterious Lulu is a dancer, an amoral enchantress, perhaps a force of nature. She first rises through society, then falls disastrously, as lovers contend for her elusive soul and all too accessible body. Throughout the opera, a large portrait of her hangs onstage-one of Berg's many specifications that were sometimes ignored in the past...
Soon the three of them have given the adult world the skip, and are running away toward Venice, where the lovers intend to bind themselves together for eternity by kissing in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs. This agreeable silliness works because the script by Allan Burns is sharp and funny, the two young actors are fresh and effective, Olivier is a howl, and Director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy, The Sting) has a fine comic touch...
...Boston and Manhattan have been impaled. It has been indispensable, no less, to the functioning of sensitive advanced computers, whose high operating temperatures require that they be constantly cooled. Thus, in a very real way, air conditioning has made possible the ascendancy of computerized civilization. Its cooling protection has given rise not only to moon landings, space shuttles and Skylabs but to the depersonalized punch-cardification of society that regularly gets people hot under the collar even in swelter-proof environments. It has also reshaped the national economy and redistributed political power simply by encouraging the burgeoning of the sultry...
...unlikely scene, given America's appreciative thirst for bottled mineral water. After dusty decades on the back shelves of gourmet shops, the liquid is gurgling forth as the drink of the hour, dampening demands for the vodka-and-tonic and the glass of white wine. In 1976, $7.5 million worth of bottled mineral water was bought; this year's sales may rise as high as $250 million. Says Dwight Chattaway, a Chicago bottled-water distributor: "Mineral water is a Zeitgeist...