Word: button
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Lena Horne, excellent in and by herself, does not act well enough to carry interest into the plot. She sings as well as ever, particularly in "Push The Button," a satirical comment on Manhattan (there's a little island on the Hudson. . .), "Ain't It The Truth," and "I Don't Think I'll End It All Today." She can ride one word onto several notes as perfectly as she can move her body provocatively. Unfortunately, she has trouble weaving in and out of a Jamaica accent, often waiting to lean into Caribbean pronunciation and rhythm until just before...
...nearly 3 p.m. when the hollow-eyed, unshaven missilemen finally had the Atlas, biggest bird in the U.S.'s missile aviary, ready for launching. Men inside the blockhouse listened in tight-lipped silence to the final countdown. At zero, a finger pressed a red button in a control panel, and the missile, rising slowly and majestically, started on history's second Atlas flight (see color pages opposite...
...paper, Atlas is "intercontinental," capable of soaring 5,000 miles. But Atlas I, launched at Cape Canaveral last June, flew erratically, lived only 22 seconds before a safety officer pressed a button to destroy it. Atlas II started off promisingly. In its straight-up flight, lasting 20 seconds or so, it seemed to be, in the missilemen's term, "programing" perfectly, i.e., doing what its makers and tenders expected. But as it arched into its southeastward course, the tail fire glowed too dark, and the bird faltered. The turbine pumps were failing to feed the right mixture of fuel...
Inside the blockhouse an Air Force officer peered through a scope (roughly resembling a surveyor's transit), saw the wobbly bird, now three miles up, skitter outside the safety zone. Dutifully, he pressed the fatal button. An enormous blob of flame suddenly enwrapped the bird. A moment later, all that remained of the ingeniously concocted, $6,000,000 Atlas were some shreds of metal and a smudge of smoke in the misty...
Referring to the light on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Holyoke Street, Councilor Al Vellucci, author of the resolution, claimed that much of the traffic congestion in Harvard Square is caused by students and professors who keep pushing the button "all day long" and halting cars...