Word: tomming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...likely to get through to a computer than to a human broker, electronic shops such as Schwab, E*Trade and Waterhouse bogged down when the calls swelled to double the normal traffic. Although Monday's traffic jams may have saved a few investors from selling too fast, Schwab spokesman Tom Taggart conceded that there were "no excuses" for the delays...
...with a biblical pedigree evokes patronizing chuckles today. But Jacobs, an undersung writer (Beautiful Soup, The Egg of the Glak and Other Stories), treats bunkum and hypocrisy as endearingly ambivalent national traits. Unsurprisingly, his all-time champion of this view is P.T. Barnum, who at one point tells General Tom Thumb that "our mission is to startle and amuse, to make our audience pay too much for too little and forget to hang us from the nearest lamppost...
...religious zealots, yellow journalists, gangsters and robber barons. The Wall Street rogue Jay Gould actually sells someone a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge. A Jewish peddler leaves the fold to become a dowser for parched anti-Semites. Hull changes the name of a new cigar from Pickaninny to Uncle Tom after hearing that black smokers might be offended...
...best show in town, Sam," might have amounted to little more than a melodramatic leer in the hands of a less talented actor; Hoffman delivers it quietly, almost swallowing the words, and the effect is chilling. To its own detriment, the script fails to learn from his example. Writers Tom Matthews and Eric Williams, journalists themselves, cannot resist hammering home their message. "I don't want to cross the line," Brackett tells his boss; Lou, at the beginning of the movie, "I just want to move the line." Cheesy, perhaps, but certainly forgivable in terms of moviespeak. But later...
...most of the discussed artists are interesting by virtue of either being genuine stars or genuine slock. Basically anyone remotely noteworthy in pop music in the 70s appeared on "The Midnight Special" at some point: from Sly and the Family Stone to Earth, Wind and Fire; from Tom Jones to Alice Cooper. And since The Midnight Special includes a table of contents and song index, it is possible to quickly locate information on a particular artist or song or performer...