Word: pertness
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...pizzazz of numbers being called at a deli counter. But last night the stars were out in their fancy frocks, as if to declare that, in a recession that looks to be heading south toward Black Plague territory, America needs both the elevated glamour of movie celebrity and the pert, reassuring familiarity of TV actors...
...Edie Adams, 81, starred in two Broadway shows (Wonderful Town and Li'l Abner), played the Fairy Godmother to Julie Andrews' Cinderella in a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical for TV and hawked Muriel Cigars ("Why don't you pick one up and smoke it some time?"). She lent a pert glamour to the TV shows of immortal zany Ernie Kovacs, whom she married in 1956 and lost in a car crash in 1962. Lois Nettleton, 82, was married to another midcentury comedy genius, radio spieler Jean Shepherd; but her forte, when she got the chance to display it, was in elevated...
...pose for some pictures. Perform? Why not? Thanks to the cop, Jerry Tibbs, Bettie received her first lessons in modeling. Tibbs also offered Bettie some prescient advice: Wear bangs. The new hairdo hid her high forehead, provided a straight-line frame for her round face and her pert lips. Voila! She now looked like Bettie Page...
...Riviera, Meyer Lansky's citadel to Vegas chic in Havana. The Cuban-music venue inside is shuttered, but in the front bar, there's house music mmph-ing loudly, and there's a line of wealthy young Cubans waiting to get inside--girls in high heels and pert dresses, guys with Kanye West shades and perfectly pressed wide collars. These smart-set Habaneros are called Mickeys because, people like to say, they live in a cartoon world...
None of this means Spitzer was a blameless victim of chemistry. Sometimes hubris is just hubris. But humans habituate to thrills, which means needing more and more to get the same buzz. "You want to re-create the high, so you up the ante," says neuropharmacologist Candace Pert. And as Spitzer learned, when you risk everything, you can lose...