Word: kingdoms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rerun it ad nauseam, until the triumph turns into sitcom. Bitter for Gavin, for the luminous Babs, for their bookworm nephew Donnie (Timothy Hutton) and their lumbering pal Lawrence (John Goodman). The story meanders through 25 years of the changing South -- civil rights, women's rights, the capricious kingdom of celebrity -- and ends in 1981, but its moral should catch in many a yuppie throat. The price of pursuing eternal youth is catching it, like a cold you can never shake. Especially for the eternally adolescent male. Games, after all, are what men play with themselves...
Saudi Arabia was not far behind. Earlier this month it declared in a statement, "Saudi Arabia has done enough for OPEC. The kingdom cannot accept that some members have production privileges and others not." Fearing a loss of market share to other OPEC producers, the Saudis boosted their output at least 15%, to more than 5 million bbl. per day. Just as it did in 1986, OPEC's longtime leader is trying to force restraint upon oil producers by pushing prices uncomfortably low. The Saudis last week sounded conciliatory, however, possibly because they believe their point is getting across...
...less than two years. As fast as Thailand has come to Hollywood (there are scores of Thai restaurants on Melrose Avenue alone), Hollywood has come to Thailand (shooting across the political spectrum, from The Killing Fields to Rambo III). So giddy is the world's romance with the smiling kingdom, in fact, that some people fear the country could lose itself in the lights, or turn into a synthetic version of itself...
...still there is a sense of self-possession, and even stealth, about the kingdom that suggests it will not easily fall hostage to the people it attracts. For perhaps the most alluring attribute of Thailand is its simple ambiguity, the merest hint that its designs are always subtler than any visitor's perception of them. The Thais like to remind foreigners that theirs is the only Asian country never to have been colonized or occupied by a Western power, and even if this reflects nothing but the culture's gift for co-opting foreign influences, it also suggests its facility...
...Gospel glad-hander but an Orthodox Jew named Stephen Mernick. The reticent 34-year-old Toronto businessman reportedly underwent intensive religious training and holds rabbinical ordination but has never led a synagogue. Meticulously observant, Mernick attends daily synagogue prayers and declined to visit his South Carolina kingdom last week because it was Simhath Torah, celebrating God's gift...