Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...copious backtracking—picking out “good art” is always something of a dice toss. For proof, the Pope would simply have had to look up. Michelangelo’s altar fresco “The Last Judgment,” a fundamental background work in any study of western art history, loomed over Saturday’s proceedings as the literal backdrop for Benedict’s welcoming speech. Yet during the heady days of mid-17th century Italy, around the same time that Galileo had his feet held to the fire...
...jazz vocalist, but it’s hard not to wonder if Jones could do the song better in her own acoustic way. The same goes for “Light as a Feather,” which comes off as a compelling tune with a worrying background whine...
...which he wrote the music. Although some Sondheim fans were disappointed that Burton cut the recurring chorus, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” the composer said he approved of the choice; in his opinion, choruses in musicals, during which nonessential background characters suddenly join the leads in song, have a “peasant on the green mentality”; his technique is ineffective in films, where the focus lies more on dramatizing interior emotions than creating theatrical spectacle...
...agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building - a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking...
There was more to the choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton than their individual qualities. In the classic European tradition of horse-trading, the E.U. tried to balance out the top jobs according to political background, geography and gender. Indeed, the Lisbon Treaty states that the two jobs - and that of the European Commission President - have to take account of "the geographical and demographic diversity of the Union...