Word: spun
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...long," one black man says, "the thought of getting up never even entered my mind." Stuart links Wattstax together with some hilarious monologues by Comic Richard Pryor, who wrings laughs from such shared frustration and humiliation. His stories of everyday hassling, of being regularly rousted by the cops, are spun out in street jargon with a kind of furious cool. What makes the jokes sting is not punch lines but lethal accuracy...
Many of the racers were victims of the tricky snow conditions. Harvard's Ben Steele caught two bumps wrong and was launched abruptly into spectatordom on his first run. Middlebury's Tim Fisher spun out and finished his flight with a mid-air cartwheel or two. Somewhat confused after the mishap, Fisher thought his ankle was broken, but doctors declared it was a concussion instead...
...said Ali when the fight was over. Sporting a robe given him by Elvis Presley, he then hobnobbed with such fans as Diana Ross and Sammy Davis Jr. But it wasn't all fisticuffs and show biz. Ali was also promoting his new toy Oop-fli (a ring spun off two sticks and caught by an opponent's two sticks), which he hopes will earn him a tidy bundle. Another Frisbee or Hula-Hoop it isn't, but then Muhammad Ali is not the champion any longer, either...
...Journey to Ixtlan," the final and most crucial section, serves as a challenge. It is very short and consists mainly of a story by Don Genaro, Don Juan's fellow sorcerer, about winning his ally. After being spun like a top by the ally, but triumphing, Don Genaro tried to return to Ixtlan where he had a home, family and friends, but he could not reach his destination. He has still not reached it. Human beings, with the exception of Don Juan, are phantoms to Don Genaro now. Don Juan tells Castaneda that when he gains an ally, he will...
...awesome. The awe wore off as the television cameras covered each methodical moment of successive flights, but the best of the images grew into a frieze of transcendence, chiseled on the edges of the mind like Wordsworth's intimations of immortality: the readings from Genesis as Apollo 8 spun toward its rendezvous with the dark side of the moon; the "giant leap for mankind" as Neil Armstrong set his booted foot into the moon dust; the vision of the earth from space, a milky sapphire hanging alone and fragile in the blackness; and then Apollo 17 -a pillar...