Word: formulaically
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...occasionally and hit it off in * person as well as on the page. But meetings are hard to arrange; Rowan belongs more and more to his relentlessly successful show. MacDonald, who should know about such things, is worried that his friend is succumbing to the tyranny of a popular formula. "One never rides with anything," he warns, "because that is the way to dull up the world. One tries to improve everything with the tools available: imagination, mischief, irony and the marvelous knowledge that the world is mad." Rowan seems to agree, agonizing about his struggles with producers and network...
Salle's is formula art of the most obvious kind. Its peculiar smugness comes from the belief that appropriation is the best, even the only way for art to keep its power in a media-soaked environment. "By embracing the intensity of empty value at the core of mass-media representation," claims Lisa Phillips in her catalog essay, "only then can the perennial challenge be met of finding and constructing significant meaning in the midst of declining values for images and words." This is modish nonsense. What becomes more obvious with each passing year of postmodernism is that...
Following the McDonald's formula, Ackerly eventually distilled her knowledge of "team cleaning" into a 300-page manual of dos and don'ts. The book serves as the basis for training new Mini Maid personnel. Among its teachings: pick up statuary in the middle, rather than at the top and bottom, and clean animal-skin rugs with a whisk broom rather than a vacuum cleaner. Sums up Ackerly: "The homeowner does not have to feed us, pick us up, give directions. We don't give a song and dance about our car breaking down as a reason for not showing...
...Erdman formula for economic disaster is not foolproof. Despite their Rent-a-Wreck plots and Who's Who characters, his books about high finance require more concentration than is usually applied to mass-market fiction. Mixing dollars and sensibility is the problem with fiscal novels in general, and Erdman's The Panic of '89 in particular...
...rite and techno-trend vocabulary meet in "programming," or getting the most out of your talisman. One West Coast formula for doing so goes this way: first, "clear" the stone by washing it in ocean water (in a pinch, salt water will do). Then leave it outside for at least 24 hours so that rays of the sun and moon may penetrate it. A quicker, high-tech method is to pass an audiocassette eraser over each side of the crystal for half a minute. To program, after the crystal has been cleared, hold it in both hands and blow...