Word: oddness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...vast stretch of black tarmac, 67 acres of it, set in the hills near Milford, a GM proving ground. Right in the middle, three circus-like tents and a maze of yellow rubber cones point skyward like the towers of some futuristic Camelot. A long line of odd-looking vehicles is strung out in front of them. Some appear to have wings. Some look like your average tired little foreign sedan. One, with a bright red body but made mostly of glass, could be a fire chiefs dream of glory...
Feeling fairly gloomy, the car owner ambles by the Minnesota entry again. He wonders aloud about a row of plastic tabs placed at odd angles just above the rear window of a Plymouth Volare. "Vortex generators," explains a student. The little tabs cause turbulence in the air as it passes over the car, reducing "drag" and saving fuel. "Wanna see another innovation?" pipes another student from under the hood. "How 'bout this clothespin holding on the accelerator cable...
...even greater pity is that American viewers will not be seeing the full BBC version of the play. In Britain, plays are allowed to run at odd lengths, as content dictates. On PBS, which has mimicked the rigid schedules of the commercial networks, content must conform to the clock. As a result, twelve minutes were chopped from the BBC's version of Kean. Most of the loss has been in those offhand moments that give the play texture, but a couple of key scenes have also been dropped, making the first hour unnecessarily difficult. Joan Sullivan, producer of "Masterpiece...
...psyche: blind trust in science and scientists (Cat's Cradle); faith in war as a rational activity (Slaughterhouse-Five). After a lengthy period of mellowed-out serenity (and two mediocre novels, Breakfast of Champions and Slapstick), Vonnegut is mad again. His target in Jailbird is money, specifically the odd systems that people have invented for distributing and withholding...
...Vanzetti and of their subsequent executions in the 1920s. Not all of the digressions are somber. Starbuck meets Nixon and finds the President's smile "like a rosebud that had just been smashed by a hammer." The hero's meditations on money are childlike enough to produce odd insights. On his first morning of freedom, Starbuck leaves his seedy hotel to buy a newspaper. He then has an urge to call up the Secretary of the Treasury and tell him, "I just tried out two of your dimes on Times Square, and they worked like a dream...