Word: twain
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cost overruns are so familiar by now that they hardly raise eyebrows any more. Indeed, Mark Twain once described a congressional appropriation as nothing more than a nest egg to attract further appropriations. But even the most hardened observers of military-accounting practices could not resist a smile when the General Accounting Of ice revealed last week that the Pentagon, while proudly remaining within its handsome public-relations budget of $28 million a year, has actually been spending millions more on such p.r. projects as formation-flying teams, marching bands, military museums and base tours. It estimated the excess spending...
...first novels I read as a child was Mark Twain's classic novel of juvenile adventure, Tom Sawyer. Its unique blend of noble deeds, perilous cave exploration, playing 'hooky,' and otherwise escaping the realities of life--all intermingled with the inescapable wit of Twain--kept this city boy from Detroit fascinated through many of his grade school years. Perhaps, then, it was deja vu--memories of happy hours spent with Tom, Huck Finn, Becky Thatcher, Aunt Polly, and company--that motivated me to see what the Reader's Digest, making its debut as a film producer, had done...
JOHNNY WHITTAKER, formerly Jody on CBA Television's Family Affair, performs the title role quite well, technically speaking. Yet he never completely convinces the viewer that he really is the mischievous character that Twain described. In fact, on the contrary, Whittaker's Sawyer is a rather cocky and not always likeable fellow. Jeff East, however, portraying Tom's sidekick Huckleberry Finn, does a much more admirable job of presenting an image of the slightly reckless, adventure-loving boy of whom Twain wrote...
...sight out of a Twain lover's imagined memory: a tiny, homemade Mississippi River raft, buoyant on blue oil-drums, flapping blue canvas greetings from its scanty half deck. On board is a troupe of traveling players who ply their ancient art along the river's muddy banks. But their message has a decidedly new twist. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Otrabanda Theatre Company-four actors, one actress, a crew-woman and, until recently, a dog named Sweenie-this summer is bringing frenetic, sometimes avant-garde drama to 30 Mississippi River...
...example, or that the poor are more victimized by crime than the middle class. Specialization, abstraction and rhetorical overkill - all have made native wit afraid to show its face. Political candidates no longer employ the folk idiom in their speeches. Humorists rarely use the short, acute idiom of Lincoln, Twain - or a Hoosier caricaturist named Kin Hubbard. A pity. In the voice of Abe Martin, a wise old rustic, Hubbard once cracked: "Ther's some folks standin' behind the President that ought t' git around where he kin watch'em." No matter how informed its consultants...