Word: humdrums
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...kind of war, it had an old sort of start. In the places where soldiers and sailors live--in Norfolk, Va.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; in a hundred other towns of the Republic and far beyond its shores--the rhetoric of impending battle was rendered into the humdrum details of military life. Bills were paid; kit bags packed; wives, husbands and children hugged. Patriotism hung in the air, as palpable as the first chills of fall; flags sprouted on a million lapels and fluttered from a thousand taxicabs in a wounded but defiant New York. On television, the reports came from...
...reality shows' life-and-death metaphors for our everyday worries. Survivor made personal and business relationships into a wilderness struggle. But now that our everyday concerns are life and death, it's the metaphors that look trivial. You don't need Fear Factor to put an edge on your humdrum existence when you've seen 110 stories of steel permanence collapse, twice. Says a network programmer who asked not to be named: "When we look back, we'll be able to say that people [lost] interest in reality shows because [you can] never match the reality of what happened...
...exception to the otherwise humdrum cast is Freeman, who has become something of an archetypal psychologist-detective-figure in the past five years, with roles in both Kiss the Girls and Seven. Seven, on the other hand, actually had what it takes to be a gutsy, successful movie; good acting and good direction, not to mention an interesting premise. Although Freeman is undeniably irreproachable as the brooding, shrewd criminologist, Hollywood can do with a little variety. Let us just hope he does not feel the need to reprise any of these I-am-an-intelligent-policeman roles in the near...
While the initiatives seem to appeal only to policy wonks, the effects are long ranging and represent clear partisan differences from tax rates to the health care system. The choice between opposing ideologies is perhaps starkest on these issues, and is creating more vigorous debate than the humdrum race for the top of the ticket...
...Fifteen years ago I killed my sister." Much of Adam Rapp's Nocturne, now playing at the American Repertory Theater, is as stark as this line. The work is essentially a symphony on the theme of these words. The nameless Son is a humdrum high school student when he accidentally runs over his nine year old sister with a car. He is plucked out of obscurity to occupy the foreground of a blood red stage, where he speaks for two hours on the topic of his sister, his family and his dissatisfaction with life in general, interrupted sporadically by dialogue...