Word: joyful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...last column, I considered writing some great ideological manifesto that would be my parting salvo against injustices here and elsewhere. Instead, I went to see "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." I decided to use the Star Wars "phenomenon" as a lens through which to examine some of the joy and wonder I've tried to write about in this space this past semester. Warning: if you haven't seen "The Phantom Menace," spoilers ahead...
George Lucas has said on many occasions that he made "The Phantom Menace," along with the other "Star Wars" films, primarily for kids. What has left unsaid is that children do not have to be limited by age: the movie is for the childlike joy and wonder left in all of us, if only we look for it within ourselves. It is so easy to abandon these things as the detritus of a journey to "maturity"; however, being older and "wiser" does not mean that we're any closer to the truth. When we are children, we often...
...this film, drawing on our society's love for popular culture and, more importantly, often wordless search for truth, has brought people together like few other things can. Only once in my life have I sat in a theater of 700 people cheering throughout a movie, sharing the joy and wonder I felt with strangers...
...this music could be the sound of your future. Latin-tinged pop is blowing up because it fits the musical times: it has a bit of the street edge of hip-hop (Lopez worked with rapper Sean ["Puffy"] Combs on one track on her CD), some of the bouncy joy of dance-pop (Martin is hunkier than all the Backstreet Boys put together) and the fizzy fresh feel of that ever sought-for thing in modern pop, the Next Big Thing...
McCarthy's first play is to throw out the score book. He introduces young players to the basic skills, and simple joy, of playing baseball. He tells them stories from his days as a pro, about the qualities--concentration, persistence, generosity, humor--that produce great ballplayers and good people...