Word: tamer
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Much has been made of the similarities between the movie Wag the Dog (one of the stars: Robert De Niro, above, left) and the brouhaha in Washington (one of the stars: Vernon Jordan, above, right). But a comparison reveals that Tinseltown fantasy is far tamer than inside-the-Beltway reality...
Dave Hoover wanted to be a lion tamer ever since he was a kid and saw Clyde Beatty's cheesy jungle movies. George Mendonca went to Rhode Island after the hurricane of '38 and stayed to become a topiary gardener. Ray Mendez, a photographer, had a high school fascination with insects; 20 years later, he learned that there were mammals--naked mole rats--living in colonies like insects, took photos of them, brought them home. Rodney Brooks is an M.I.T. scientist who loved to build things; now he makes robots whose movements are not programmed but follow the machine...
...briefly at the start. For the rest of the film they are identified by their eccentric clothing (Ray's plaid shirt and butterfly bow tie) or coiffure (Dave's gravity-defying orange comb-over). And they are defined by their jobs; we think of them simply as "the lion tamer" or "the mole-rat guy," and watch their eyes spark as they speak of the work that lights their lives...
...Fruit Loops vs. Wheaties dilemma. When a crush of games hits shelves this fall, kids will grab the gory action ones while their parents reach for something a bit tamer--an encyclopedia or a math primer, perhaps? Any chance of common ground? Our taste test: Quake, last Christmas' bloody hit, vs. Young Dilbert, an edu-title due this fall. You make the call...
...recent years, the other networks that constitute the "Big There" have stuck with much tamer image campaigns. CBS bundles its programming with the hearty slogan, "Welcome Home," though shows like this fall's "Brooklyn South," a cop show that's heavy on violence, don't seem all that welcoming. NBC has recklessly applied the label "Must-see TV" to everything in its lineup, even though half-witted shows like "Suddenly Susan" are easily skippable. These campaigns are too retroactive to be doing any good--they hearken back to the days when the networks were viewed as friendly providers of family...