Word: world-class
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...competition. It is also an indirect response to a book by San Francisco journalist Joan Ryan, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, that dwells on the least savory aspects of elite gymnastics. Ryan decries the sport's preference in recent years forprepubescent bodies and the subsequent eating disorders among many world-class gymnasts. She describes ruthless coaches who virtually starve their charges, athletes who are forced to compete with injuries, and dangerous tricks that have caused fatalities...
...that sweet, dry July night in Manhattan, after his board approved creation of the biggest entertainment company in the world, Disney chairman Michael Eisner had dinner with his mom. Margaret Dammann Eisner has often been described as a world-class competitive woman, which suggests that her son's triumph last week owes something to genes. When young Michael was growing up in a Park Avenue apartment, his parents borrowed a Picasso from an art-dealer friend to hang in Michael's room. It was called Bullfight. The man who would come to influence, perhaps more than anyone else alive, what...
...world-class surgeon, two corporation chiefs, a French literature specialist and a former New York Times executive were named to the University's Board of Overseers on June...
...know all that; it's what historical movies have taught us over the years. What you need in this situation is world-class villainy, somebody full of wicked surprise to break up the banalities. This Braveheart lacks, though not for want of trying by Patrick McGoohan. As the English King, Edward Longshanks, he sneers realpolitik as well as George Sanders, Basil Rathbone or Henry Kissinger ever did. But he's not around as much as he should be-especially compared with Tim Roth's evil Energizer Bunny, who powers Rob Roy with his capering snottiness...
...probably. But wordplay soon swamps a vigorous plot. Much traditional writing is, you might say, in this book linguistically taboo, a vast anomaly calling for a radical, slightly wacky approach to put things right. To wit, this famous soliloquy that a world-class playwright wrought for a moody Scandinavian scion: "Living or not living: that is what I ask." Or an alcoholic bard's notoriously rhythmical night thoughts: "'Twas upon a midnight tristful I sat poring, wan and wistful/ Through many a quaint and curious list full of my consorts slain." A mournful coda follows: "Quoth that Black Bird...