Word: jerk
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...with violence and physical decrepitude, whirring with plotlets and straining to tackle big themes. It's the story of Xan Meo, a successful London actor-writer and doting father who suffers a head injury in a seemingly random (it isn't) act of violence and becomes a crude, inarticulate jerk. His journey back to goodness pits him against Joseph Andrews, a vicious East End gangster semiretired to the U.S. Meanwhile, the royal family (a new element in Amisland; he has learned what sells) is threatened with blackmail when King Henry IX receives an anonymous screen grab of his 15-year...
...somehow one of the most despicable characters in recent cinema became beloved. The secret was combining the classic protagonist and antagonist from teen movies: Stifler is both John Belushi's drunk moron Bluto and the Waspy frat president Greg Marmalard from Animal House. He's a jerk, but he sure...
...opera skillfully parodies the TV show's demented-circus atmosphere, and star Michael Brandon does a bang-on impression of Springer's smarmy solicitousness ("Chuckie, I sense you're not too happy about Shawntelle's pole-dancing dreams"). Even the backstage scenes ring true, with Springer trotting out knee-jerk defenses to his critics: "I don't do conflict resolution." At times the musical even makes you care for these sad, dysfunctional guests, who can justify their messed-up lives only by acting them out for the TV camera. "Dip me in chocolate/Throw me to the lesbians," they sing. "This...
That's not to say there is no longer prejudice against the paper's what-the-news-means-to-you populism, quickly read articles and heavy graphics, which may explain why the paper has never won a Pulitzer Prize. But the knee-jerk conception of USA Today as a vapid, happy-news paper has been an outdated cliche for more than a decade. True, early versions of the paper, founded in 1982, were known for columns like Offbeat USA ("The Human Side of the News")--glib news bits that sent the message "Hey, we know this is news...
...highway, gained local notoriety by loudly refusing to serve three black Georgia Tech students in his Pickrick Restaurant in the wake of the newly signed Civil Rights Act--and by distributing ax handles to patrons as symbols of defiance. A frequent target of newspaper caricatures, the former soda jerk never apologized for his positions, saying in 2001, "I want my race preserved. I think forced racial integration is illegal and wrong...