Word: plastics
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Buddy Teevens, the starting Dartmouth quarterback, had convinced a freshman to place a beer cup on his head, the idea being that Buddy would try and knock the plastic cup off by throwing a beer keg at it. It turned out that Buddy was better at throwing footballs than kegs--much better. Buddy missed and the poor freshman spent the rest of the night in the clinic, a not-uncommon consequence of the sport popularly known as William Tell...
Told to get ready for bed, to clean up their rooms or to perform any other onerous task, small boys around the U.S. nowadays are likely to whip a plastic sword out of their He-Man brand pants and shout, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!" The incantation may not overwhelm parents. But when uttered daily on after-school TV by the hero of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, it has proved puissant enough to capture the attention of more little boys than any other television show in America. He-Man power has sold...
...astride a "heroic armored war horse" with two laser guns, or the skull-faced figure of Skeletor, the spirit of evil, driving a circular "assault vehicle" equipped with rotating blades to slash the enemy. Should more conventional arms be needed, a handy Weapons Pak is available containing two miniature plastic pistols, a sword, an ax and a whip...
...immediate cause of Birdy's sorry condition, in a prison-like veterans hospital, was his traumatizing experience in Viet Nam, which was not gentle on Al either. But Al's wounds are merely physical, and his plastic surgery seems to be healing nicely. Birdy's case is altogether more desperate, and the main business of the film is to explore its roots. A sociologist might point to the usual downers: poverty, loneliness and lovelessness. But that would reckon without Birdy's mysterious singularity, expressed in his obsession with the avian world...
There is talk of a new stadium in Chicago, somewhere suburban, maybe even Arlington Heights, domed of course, carpeted with plastic grass. There the wave would flourish...