Word: toadding
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Some who have come to be famous see in retrospect that the daydream may have been touchingly adolescent, self-inflating in the style of Mr. Toad. In some personalities, the need for attention is darker and more retrograde: neurotic, infantile, a sort of baby's unappeasable love craving, a raw, screaming hunger...
...Maine. As Nichols puts to sea in dodgy weather, the reader in his armchair considers omens (a necessary and enjoyable preliminary to the sport of reading about other people's mad adventures). Nichols is a highly experienced professional sailor, and Toad, his engineless 27-ft. sloop, is as strong and seaworthy as he and his ex-wife, whom he calls J., could make it. But now the marriage has broken up, and Nichols plans to put Toad up for sale. Before he does, he takes a farewell voyage...
Nichols is eloquent on the dangers any single-hander faces: sleeplessness, storms, illness, and the danger of being run down by a freighter highballing at 22 knots with the radar off. But it is Toad, despondent, that commits the kind of suicide possible only if your hull is made of fitted planks. Its 10-year-old caulking gives way, and slowly, reproachfully, despite days of hard pumping, it settles beneath the water, 400 miles off Bermuda, shortly after its master is rescued...
...quoted poorly. There is no adequate defense of the arts, only rebuttal of Gingrich's attack. This is hardly fair. In this fashion the art-lovers are put on the defensive, and they end up sounding weak. One almost gets the sense that, while Gingrich may be a toad, he's right about art. On the contrary, art should be defended vigorously on its own terms. Otherwise, all we hear is that art is not pornography and it is not elitist...
...family fought its way through the crowds from the new Indiana Jones attraction to Space Mountain to my personal favorite, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. In front of the signature Disney castle, there was a line of at least 50 people--some of them unaccompanied adults--waiting to meet Snow White, procure autographs and have her pose for photos. She left abruptly, touching off a wave of parent protests and shrieking tantrums by young girls. Luckily, the prospect of a very un-Disney riot was averted when a fresh Cinderella, greeted with wild applause, was whisked in to satiate...