Word: rueful
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...jokes were rueful; they would fairly quickly run out of laughs. People longed for the real thing. A Bronx man named Mark Feldman took his son out to Yankee Stadium to watch the New York College All-Stars play the New Jersey College All-Stars. The 2,000 spectators rattled around in the stadium like peas in the bottom of a can. "I always go to a game on Sunday," Feldman said wistfully. "I go to see the Yankees, the Mets, whoever is in town. I just love this game. I can't imagine a summer without baseball...
...that as a writerdirector, Alda is too eager to please. He goes for big laughs where a small smile would perhaps be truer to the rueful mood he tries to establish. One feels he is sometimes easing away from the tougher implications of his tale. There is also an empty prettiness to his shooting, especially in the transitions from season to season. Still, American movies are rarely as alert as The Four Seasons is to the tensions implicit in friendship, to the social conventions by which people try to control the anxieties of ordinary life, and one cannot help responding...
Normally, such a situation would lead to rejoicing in Georgia. But for all their success in the S.E.C., the Bulldogs had been cuffed around by non-conference opponents. "This time last year," Georgia Coach Vince Dooley recalls with a rueful smile, "we had a shot at going to the Sugar Bowl with a record of six wins and five losses. It was embarrassing. Alabama won its last game, though, and spared us. This year, things are a little bit different...
...which must have stirred in Jimmy Carter memories of the transition he presided over only four years ago. The President startled White House correspondents by walking unannounced into a routine briefing, where for 45 minutes he was by turns rueful, wry, wistful - and subdued. Asked about a meeting with Reagan, Carter replied that he was available "whenever is convenient for him. I have not quite so heavy a schedule these days as I have had in the past...
...better days unfolding. Progress was the indispensable mechanism and metaphysic of the American idea: the pioneer progression westward over space corresponded with the steady upward incline of opportunity over time. "You can't stop progress," Americans would tell one another with an air of dazzled exuberance or a rueful sigh. The future was bearing down on the land like a grinning child at the wheel of something roaring, gaudily bright and faintly dangerous...