Cross-cultural surveys have shown that almost any touch from a lover is agreeable, as are many expressions of physical contact from a friend.
When I was young those women embarrassed me, and I would be sweet and agreeable as long as I could stand it.
The restaurant, a one-story house with a grassy lawn, two birch trees and a four-tiered fountain, was so attractive in a sweetly old-fashioned way that we rooted for the food to be agreeable as well.
The notion of a butterfly from Texas alighting on 43 St.., perhaps making a stopover on a hop to the Adirondacks, is an agreeable one, as stimulating as the prospect of a visit from Stanley Marcus or Jesse Jones.
But he uses his agreeable manner as a weapon that lends force to the character's quick turns to sarcasm and cruelty and anger.
"He'll probably be doing industrial training films in a couple of years and nobody ever will hear of him again," predicted Fred Thompson, whose own agreeable career as a character actor, whether as a Republican pitchman in his Senate salad days or more recently on "Law and Order," has yet to earn him an Oscar, Emmy or presidential nomination.
This week's romcom roll, alas, grinds to a leaden halt with Ruth & Alex (Signature, 12), an anodyne puffball starring Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton – both on agreeable autopilot – as a long-married couple given no dilemma greater than whether or not to sell their nice apartment in Brooklyn for a nice flat in Manhattan.
Not only do European musicians treat music a little differently (they made my Concerto, which one American listener described as a "Hitchcock movie in music," sound as lovely and agreeable as Mozart), but they treat composers a little differently, too.
Try to be nice, agreeable, and as long as they are allowed it, give them what they want.
