Word: oddness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Good Woman can only be described as kitsch chinoiserie. There are lots of "Ah so"s and "Honorable sirs" and wavings of fans here, which in almost any other context would look offensively cliched but here fit in perfectly with Brecht's consciously artificial evocation of China. The odd thing about Serban's kitchen sink approach is that he seems to borrow almost as many Japanese conventions as Chinese, suggesting that Serban has been dealing his Orientalism from a rather shallow supply. But who cares, when the production works so well...
There was something sadly anachronistic about McFarlane's performance. Unlike his fellow players in America's current immorality tales, he exuded a sense of remorse, repentance, shame. He knew he had done wrong, he said. He was sorry. He deserved to be punished. How odd! This kind of guilt, this assuming of moral responsibility for one's actions, has all but vanished from public discourse. It is almost as if the closest glimpse the nation got of honor last week came from seeing it in a mirror: a man had acted with dishonor, saw it for what...
Initially, it may seem odd that we should retreat from international cooperation at the very time that our commercial, cultural, and economic ties to the rest of the world are steadily growing stronger. After further thought, our behavior is not so difficult to understand...
Quite apart from the subject of sex, the procession of Presidents after Kennedy has included men of rather peculiar and divided psyche. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter were personalities utterly different from one another, but they all shared, to some degree, an odd, self-thwarting trait. Each became his own worst enemy...
Juan Guzman was luckier than most. He spent nearly a decade in Orange County, Calif., washing and repairing cars, cutting grass and performing the odd jobs that, he says, "Americans have forgotten how to do." Guzman, 26, believes he can qualify for permanent U.S. residence, though he has returned home for the time being. But he wants his two children, both born in California, to become acquainted with Mexico first. Guzman quickly landed a job repairing the town's official vehicles, though he cheerfully concedes he had a big advantage. His father is the chief of police...