Word: hobgoblin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Mather House of subways--simultaneously large, impressive, cold and ugly. All the same, it has redeeming features--like the Sonny Rollins look- and sound-alike who plays atop Farragut North or the longest escalator outside of Russia at Wheaton. But these amenities do little to compensate for its reigning hobgoblin, a gray-grim consistency...
...that twists and lurches in the dark while 3-D images of destruction explode from 25 large movie screens to the accompaniment of cunning fire and water effects. Spider-Man jumps onto the hood of the scoop, Doctor Octopus shakes it like a gorilla with a new toy, Hobgoblin tosses flaming pumpkins, Electro makes malefic use of a giant socket plug, Hydro Man spritzes everyone, and the scoop plummets what feels like hundreds of feet from the sky into concrete canyons that suddenly seem grand--Grand Guignol, that is. By the happy-ending salvation in a giant spiderweb, this...
...another way, they are still spinning--for themselves this time. And, as Mickey Kaus pointed out in Slate in January, they're doing it without "a nanosecond of contrition," at least in public, for their former spin on Clinton's behalf. But then consistency is a hobgoblin of the pre-spin mentality. Although the truth about Monica, or something close to it, was forced out of President Clinton, we are still in the golden age of spin. Spin as a metaphor derived from "putting a spin on the ball," and meant putting your own twist on the truth...
...counterparts cooling their heels in Microsoft country: don't fret, we'll meet again someday. Maybe next time, we'll both remember that playoff complacency is the hobgoblin of 90-win seasons, and that October is still the best time of year for drama...
...Hollis roommate of the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson '21, knew the importance of change and the need to let go when he said that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." I did want so much to be true to my first opinion about tradition and the familiar, but the light and open spaces of the Barker Center have made me happily inconsistent. After all, there is a tradition of the new, even here at Harvard...