Word: reasons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
NAME: Al ("the Roke") Roker OCCUPATION: Serving weather with a smile BEST PUNCH: On the Today show, Roker named theme restaurants as the worst fad of the '90s, saying, "They were basically a reason to foist really bad food and cheap merchandise on Americans and tourists...
...other reason it's hard to sell free trade is that any given example tends to benefit a lot of people in small ways that are hard to identify and tends to harm a few people a lot in ways that are vividly evident. When that factory shuts down, the unemployed workers know they've suffered a loss, and they know why. And it's a big enough loss to stir them politically. It will affect their vote at least, if not cause them to march in the streets...
...those titles aren't as familiar as Gershwin's or Porter's, there's reason for it. Historically, standards became standards by dint of three forces: cast albums and revivals of the musicals they arise from; jazz musicians mining the repertoire; and Frank Sinatra. But Coward's musicals are theatrically his weakest work; the harmonic simplicity of his tunes--one of the elements that give them their charm--provides scant inspiration for improvisers. And Sinatra recorded only two Coward songs...
Marcovicci points out that Coward's "language was so extraordinarily elaborate" that it seems all wrong coming from the lips of most pop singers. Impresario Donald Smith, who produced last week's gala, suggests another reason: "Coward himself was the greatest performer of his own works...
...loses his quiet wit. There is about him a sort of watchful wariness, a thoughtful, insinuating manliness that avoids macho strutting in favor of bemused calculation. He is, in short, an absolute monarch for our postfeminist time. Cutting through the epic gesturings of Andy Tennant's direction, he provides reason enough to return one last time to this otherwise weary romance...