Word: humdrums
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...right to dismiss it summarily, since everyone knows that among the jeunesse doree this sort of thing goes on all the time, so why bother describing it. But certainly you're not going to admit that jet set "secrets and morals" don't go beyond occasional, normal, heterosexual, humdrum, friendly encounters? Be bored with something more exciting, please...
...comes to high schools, says Eble, a major aim should be to help students "see the world feelingly," since at no other age are they so concerned with their emotions. But the schools manage even to take "the fantasy and romance from sex and make it part of a humdrum world of facts" in sex-education courses. More important, an adolescent's feelings often focus on his teacher and depend more on what the teacher "is and does than on what he knows." High schools thus "should worry less about the scarcity of well-trained graduates of certified teacher...
...embarrassing, in fact. Mailer's novel was an ardent-arrant attempt to reset Crime and Punishment in contemporary America, substituting for Raskolnikov a sort of Supernorman. Censoring both the author's ideas and his scatological eloquence, the film script turns the story into a cliche-stocked, ho-humdrum thriller about a TV star (Stuart Whitman) who murders his rich-bitch wife (Eleanor Parker) in Reel Two, and for the next 80 minutes is dogged doomward by the police (Barry Sullivan), his wife's father (Lloyd Nolan), a former mistress (Janet Leigh), and his own conscience...
Compared to Orbiter's lunar exploits, last week's suborbital flight of the Apollo moonship seemed humdrum indeed -an almost old-fashioned journey only three-quarters of the way around the world. But that brief, 94-minute flight was final proof that the craft and its systems are spaceworthy, and that a novel re-entry technique is feasible. Apollo's success set the stage for a three-man, 14-day orbital flight as early as next December...
...professional cricketers, the British still speak of The Gentlemen and The Players. Sometimes tradition is a means of reassurance in an uncertain world; "Do not introduce innovations," warns a Taoist maxim. Tradition ranges from philosophy to fashion, from faith to manners, from the highest regions of polity to the humdrum level of a city sidewalk. (Will the last woman who saw the last man tip the last hat please stand up?) At least on the surface of U.S. life today, it is difficult to find any institution or idea that people dare uphold primarily in the name of tradition...