Word: plaint
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Pleasantville's sitcom dad, now neck high in self-pity. The next tune, Shame, is in the head of a rich coot ranting about the young woman (and the gun) he needs to be happy. The third song, I'm Dead (but I Don't Know It), is the plaint of a pop singer who, after 30 years, has "nothing left to say/ But I'm gonna say it anyway." Newman dares you to wonder if he thinks he is that played-out star--and if, in the album's closing song (which has the sing-along simplicity...
...whiffs and poofs, students arrive, still quiet. Seven minutes go by-more people still. The spotlights turn on; the P.A. system warms up, and the room buzzes with ambient sound. At 10 minutes, hundreds of rustling papers and chitchat fill the room with ugly, roaring noise, overwhelming the quiet plaint of the antique benches that groan under the load of bodies. Sanders swarms; handouts and slow-movers clog the main door causing backflow into Memorial Hall. The room's air, warm and moist, smells of Chickwich. The Harvard monster-size class begins...
...Pope's ban on female priests. He plans to state his fear of a schism "in the context of not wanting the Catholic Church to undergo what has happened to the Jewish community or the Lutherans, where groups seldom talk to each other." Framed that way, the plaint almost obligates John Paul to talk back...
While Wurtzel's plaint is heartfelt, it isn't more than that. The book is all shapeless feeling. Wurtzel complains that predatory Joey Buttafuoco, not Amy Fisher, should be in jail. She wishes Hillary Clinton were President. She thinks Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction was misunderstood: the woman was just true to her feelings (never mind that many women sleep with married men but don't start boiling pets...
...into a dominatrix growl; it's an invitation to a dangerous liaison, delivered deadpan. A Simple I Love You has the same let's-fall-in-love message, this time sung not as a come-on but as a last chance for human contact. Barnett brings to this lovely plaint a maturity as amazing as Rimes' vocal virtuosity; she's the woman with a past, hoping for a future. It all promises well for her own future--we can imagine, say, a half-century from now, a Nashville tribute show called Simply...Mandy Barnett...