Word: racketeer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...actor JOHN LITHGOW and illustrated by C.F. Payne, is written in...rhyme! Musical prodigy Farkle masters with ease a succession of instruments, including the violin, flute and trombone, only to tire quickly of each one. "I can't stand the trombone, with its blaat and its blare!/ That racket is more than my eardrums can bear!" Farkle's solution (or, rather, Lithgow's) is just clever enough to please kids and parents alike. The exaggerated illustrations give a farcical air to the tale, which has already put in an appearance on the Times best-seller list...
...general, is at its funniest when its satire has the bite of social commentary; this is the case at a few points in the college book. The book pokes fun at the advantages for the rich in the admissions process and what it calls "the standardized testing racket" the parody SAT is probably the funniest part of the book (former Lampoon editor and former Crimson editor Michael Colton '97, co-author of Up Your Score: The Underground Guide to the SAT, is listed as a 'special contributor...
...generous $17 an hour, I participate in what is essentially a numbers racket, an enterprise that boasts enough coded charts, spreadsheets and Scantron forms to lure Ace Rothenstein (DeNiro's Casino character) out of retirement/hiding. But the bottom line is this: For about $1,000, my employer guarantees high school students a 100-point improvement on the Scholastic Assessment Test. If they don't get it, they get to take the class again for free. And again. And again...
...South African inquiry has lifted the lid on a multimillion-dollar betting racket that has offered large amounts of cash to players who'll ensure that a favored team will lose a game, or simply that those players will perform below par. Cronje, who claims to have been led into the scheme by "Satan," is unlikely ever again to don his country's cap, and he may well have helped end the careers of some of his most promising players. The financial scandal may in fact be a reflection of changes in the game over the past three decades during...
...stay...or maybe it'll slip safely back into the underground with alternative rock. With horrifyingly generic teen-pop acts blaring out from MTV's Total Request Live day in and day out, it's a wonder more kids haven't turned to drugs to escape the awful racket. Sure, a fair amount of electronica is wordless wallpaper, but slip on Moby's soulful, cerebral Play, and you won't need any substances to get high. The music will take you there all by itself...