Word: tutting
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Last week Lord Carnarvon announced that the treasures will go on public view at Highclere. Who squirreled them away? No one knows, but it seems that the sixth Earl Carnarvon, son of the man who entered Tut's tomb, was furious after he lost a lawsuit in 1924 against the Egyptian government for a half share of the crypt's riches. Miffed, the aristocrat forbade any mention of Egypt...
...perfectionism. Only rarely does he flub a figure or miss one of his eight triple jumps. Such determination helped him win the world championship in 1986. A year later though, that same grim correctness contributed to the loss of his title to Orser. Not demonstrative enough, needs more panache, tut-tutted pundits...
...polka. I raise my fist and scream, "Yes, Baby! That is the Coolest! You are the Best!" It is now only a matter of moments before my body is compelled by an invisible force to pigeon its head forward and back while walking like King Tut around my desk...
...concerts were eliciting rock-idol squeals. "He was performing to audiences of up to 20,000," recalls David Letterman, the late-night commissar of '80s comedy. "I think that's a record for a stand-up comedian in peacetime." In 1978 Martin recorded a gag disco tune called King Tut; it sold more than a million copies. The next year he published a slim volume of short stories, Cruel Shoes; it topped the best-seller list. When he appeared as a Saturday Night Live guest host, the show's ratings would jump by a million homes. His first starring movie...
Museums have learned their part in this vicarious regilding. They supply a sense of history as spectacle. This seems to work particularly well with English history. Relatively few Americans can imagine themselves as King Tut, Rudolf II of Prague or Lorenzo de' Medici, but there is no shortage of people who feel that with the right decorator, their homes might become facsimiles of English landed estates, complete with an old red setter molting on a new reproduction William Kent sofa...