Word: stillness
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...love of his fickle girlfriend, a rich, withered old man named Webster spends $1 million on plastic surgery; he trades faces with a young Adonis named Hans. But the girl still finds Webster repulsive, so he spends $2 million more for Hans' handsome torso. Webster is a big hit on Muscle Beach, but when he's in a swimsuit his spindly legs make his lady ill. So he squanders the last $3 million of his fortune on Hans' legs and one or two other appendages. Perhaps finally he can win his beloved's heart? No; she's eloped with Hans...
...time, though, it was as hard to imagine him fitting into mainstream films as it would be to fit his wonderfully preposterous name on a movie marquee. Even after he scored a worldwide hit in his first starring role, as a primeval pillager in Conan the Barbarian, he was still seen as a fluke or a freak. Could this slab of sirloin beefcake act? It hardly mattered. He could fill the film frame superbly. He was also lucky. With the box-office triumph of Star Wars, Hollywood was back in the action- fantasy business. And with producers spending millions...
When the oil money started accumulating seriously in the early 1950s, the Sabahs concocted a sophisticated scheme for distributing the windfall. Kuwait City, where 80% of the population still lives (or lived before August), was a town of mud huts. The Emir set about building a modern metropolis, a place not unlike Houston, with its skyscraper business center surrounded by villa-style suburbs. In Kuwait, too, each "suburb" became a self-contained microcosm of a city. The neighborhoods were established as cooperatives. Each had its own supermarkets, schools, medical centers and municipal services...
...Still, an interesting anomaly existed. Even before the invasion -- which has naturally caused Kuwaitis to unite behind their leaders -- most of those depressed by Kuwait's democratic failings supported the Emir and Kuwait's system of government. Part of the reason is simple. To a Western eye, the list of authoritarian transgressions is chilling, but to those who live in the Middle East, Kuwait was something of a model of political openness. "The fact is that we could criticize everything, even the Emir, without fear of reprisal," says Abdulatif al-Tourah, a KPC employee. "If you spoke out as freely...
...Most Kuwaitis were spoiled beyond imagination," says Saud Nasser al- Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. Except at KPC and the investment office, lean and mean because they were (and still are) the lifeblood of the country, merit counted for nothing. "There was no accountability," says Khalifa, "because government employees were promoted automatically. It was impossible to fire civil servants. Several years ago the parliament passed an amazing law. In effect, it said that if someone was performing poorly, he would have been fired. But, says this law, since he was not fired, then by definition he was performing...