Word: trivia
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...first hand the decades between the wars. But he has become an indefatigable researcher into the era, which he sees typified by "an innocence, a lack of maturity, and on the other hand, a marvelous sense of style and elegance." To recapture the past, he surrounds himself with trivia, including old copies of Esquire, FORTUNE and The New Yorker, a collection of Popeye lamps, Old Gold cigarette posters and bound volumes of Superman comics. Merkin adopts the look of the past as well as pasting it together; he owns seven white, plaid or pinstripe suits (all with vest and broad...
...report, compiled by State Department Inspector General J. K. Mansfield, told of an argosy of luxuries and trivia bestowed under AID financing: a $2,111 car for the Japanese embassy in Santo Domingo, a stereophonic hi-fi system for the El Salvador embassy, wine glasses and $10,000 worth of pastel-colored bidets for the Dominican Republic...
...distorted by distracting practices of the camera, which fastens itself on details and on nothing else. At one moment it takes a coldly distant perspective and at the next becomes the eyes of one of the characters. Too many points of view, too many exacting detail counts substitute trivia for what could be absorbing and coherent action. Perhaps these failings are the result of an attempt to film precise history (even though it may not even be good history). Scenes succeed each other for no apparent reason except to suggest a superficial contrast. For instance, one of Smith's fantasies...
Predictions from Trivia. Spaniards have turned Franco's long refusal to name his successor into a national guessing game. Its object is to predict-by attributing great significance to acts of meaningless trivia-when, if ever, Franco will restore the monarchy, and to whom, if anyone, he will give the crown. Franco plays the game, too, by scattering contradictory clues, and last week he was playing it with obvious relish. He allowed Spain's monarchists to organize a mass rally to greet Queen Victoria Eugenia at the airport, but restricted TV coverage to a 17-second film strip...
TCHAIKOVSKY: QUEEN OF SPADES (4 LPs; Melodiya/Angel). Because of the form's grandeur of aspiration and complexity of means, it is difficult to find a trivial opera. Yet Tchaikovsky managed to write a nearly flawless bit of trivia when he sat down to put silly music to a silly libretto about a fateful faro game and an old countess who is scared to death. That's right, scared to death by a mad gambler named Herman. In this recording, the role of the Countess is fairly well sung by Mezzo-Soprano Valentina Levko, and Herman is less well...