Word: vagrants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...buddies (Elizabeth Perkins and the splenetically funny Jim Belushi) to form a profoundly modern relationship. The movie is so intent on ingratiating itself with its audience that it betrays the meaning of its source. One of Mamet's themes--that friends are more possessive than lovers --remains as a vagrant motif. The rest is obscured in the mist of soft- focus cuteness, as yuppie lust conquers all. Welcome to St. Elmo's Fizzle...
Therein lies the daunting challenge that Amazing Stories faces. Prime-time series attract loyal viewers by their familiarity, not by offering a vagrant astonishment each week. The operative word-of-mouth phrase is "you ought to see," not "you should have seen." Amazing Stories has no continuing characters, tone or stars--not even a regular host, like Hitchcock or Rod Serling. Viewers may prefer to settle in with Angela Lansbury's rumpled caginess in Murder, She Wrote instead of taking a chance with the faceless brilliance of the Spielberg series...
Quincy, Mass., July 22, 1985. Three youths are accused of beating a vagrant to death behind a school building. At the same time, local police officers begin what some have called a discriminatory dragnet of the city's homeless. Seven transients are rounded...
Little more than a decade ago, neon was considered a visual vagrant, synonymous with tacky retailing and seamy night life. Now it is going through an efflorescence. Boutiques and malls throughout the U.S. are aglow with it. In the hands of architects, sculptors and even film directors, it is being put to complex and dazzling new uses. "Neon can be cool and elegant," says Paul Barrend, showroom manager of a Chicago neon workshop called Light & Space Design, "or it can be wild and vibrant. It calls attention...
...crime-ridden cities, many residents see no need to add to their woes by allowing vagrants to establish themselves in train and bus terminals and residential areas that are otherwise generally safe. In his 1975 book, Thinking About Crime, Harvard Professor James Q. Wilson says that the acceptance of vagrants, panhandlers and sleeping drunks on the sidewalk is the traditional sign that the cycle of urban decay is under way: informal controls break down, muggers and burglars move in, and stable families begin to move out. "Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person...