Word: hooverness
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...addition to his gig studying and advocating health policy at A.E.I., Gingrich is a visiting fellow at Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution, where he focuses on technology and society. And while neither place pays him, Gingrich is for the first time in his life earning big money for his thoughts, making speeches--35 or 40 so far this year--for which he charges $35,000 in Washington and Atlanta and $50,000 when he has to travel. "Every audience gets it," he bubbled in an interview last week. "In the country at large, there is an understanding that...
...bottom of the picture: COUNT YOUR FINGERS. Historical continuities: Brooke Astor, now 97, remembers the day when, as a little girl, she shook the hand of Henry Adams. I recall the day when I was a child working for the summer as a Senate page and the aged Herbert Hoover visited the Senate chamber, not a celebrity so much as a curiosity. He looked like a Rotarian Santa Claus. After the Senators and pages all shook his hand--a dry hand, soft and bony at the same time, like grasping a small, fragile bird--another page, overcome by his (rather...
...than the potential germs. To touch was to partake somehow--maybe even through the germs--of the king's magic. Surely voters will imagine that when they shake hands with Donald Trump, gold will rub off. (Of course, bad magic may also be communicated. Maybe the handshake with Herbert Hoover many years ago explains why, from time to time, I am visited by a great depression...
Breakfast of Champions is none of these books. The movie was doomed from the beginning. This ill-conceived, ill-fated and horrendously-executed adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s cult classic novel of the same name follows the fleeting sanity of Dwayne Hoover (Bruce Willis), the owner of a used-car dealership and the most popular guy in Midland City. The film also follows Kilgore Trout (Albert Finney), a slightly kooky science-fiction writer on his way to Midland City to attend the town's Fine Arts Festival as the guest of honor. When the divergent paths of these...
...film doesn't help the matter. Defined by the triteness of the setting (a generic middle-America suburb/commercial center) and the over-exaggerated antics of the actors, the tone is downright campy, a far cry from the insightful and sharply satirical mood of the novel. Bruce Willis as Dwayne Hoover takes an unfortunate step backwards from his performance in The Sixth Sense by making a complete ass of himself. (Perhaps this is a sign that he should go back to doing Die Hard-type fare.) The rampant television commercials advertising Dwayne's cars? Mind-numbingly annoying. And worst...