Word: perfectible
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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According to a recent profile of Kaufman in the New Yorker by Julie Hecht, who hung out with him in those days, he spoke about killing himself on television, which would have been, for him, the perfect summarizing gesture. Probably he was kidding. But his self-destructive and endlessly confrontational relationship with networks, concert managers and audiences was the great theme of his career. He was always disconcertingly catching everyone between laughter and outrage. And the cookies-and-milk treat he sometimes offered later never quite healed that ambiguity. Man on the Moon doesn't either. It just gives...
...sure, Franklin Roosevelt was far from perfect. Critics lamented his deviousness, his lack of candor, his tendency to ingratitude. His character flaws were widely discussed: his stubbornness, his vanity, his occasional vindictiveness, his habit of yessing callers just to be amiable. At times, his confidence merged into arrogance, diminishing his political instincts, leading to an ill-defined court-packing scheme and an unsuccessful attempt to purge his opponents in the 1938 by-elections. One must also concede the failures of vision that led to the forcible relocation of Japanese Americans, which deprived tens of thousands of men, women and children...
...perfect pitch and perfect rhythm. His improvised melodies and singing could be as lofty as a moon flight or as low-down as the blood drops of a street thug dying in the gutter...
...skinny, bent figure, nut brown and naked except for a white loincloth, cheap spectacles perched on his nose, frail hand grasping a tall bamboo staff. This was one of the century's great revolutionaries? Yet this strange figure swayed millions with his hypnotic spell. His garb was the perfect uniform for the kind of revolutionary he was, wielding weapons of prayer and nonviolence more powerful than guns...
...simple premise, and Abbott and Costello drive it about 20 ft. into the ground, but "Who's on First?" is not only the century's most famous comedy bit; it's also the best. It's absurdism mixed with the easy pleasure of confusion, and Bud Abbott plays the perfect cool logician to Lou Costello's frustrated inquisitor in this Beckettian farce. RUNNERS-UP "Dead Parrot," Monty Python; "Rope Tricks," Will Rogers...