Word: frissons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...also more laughs. Stiller is capable of turning out a dead-on TV or movie parody, like his takeoff on Cape Fear, with a grownup Eddie Munster as the De Niro-esque psycho. But he rarely settles for the frisson of a good impersonation; his sketches usually give the satiric knife an extra twist or two. In "Amish Studs," the leering host coaxes double entendres out of every innocent comment from chaperoned contestants ("I was impressed with his incredible plowing ability"). In "Legends of Springsteen," a New Jersey rock fan recalls the time when the Boss made a surprise appearance...
Whether pessimists or optimists, we are once again awed by the fin-de-siecle frisson. As Barbara Tuchman put it, people feel "as if the hand of God were turning a page in human fate." We have a sense of things ending and others beginning...
Armageddon is a serious game that any number can play. The electronic bulletin boards offered by such computer networks as CompuServe and Genie are stuffed with doomsday speculations. And one need not be born again to experience a frisson of apocalyptic concern. Also enjoying a new spasm of popularity is the 16th century astrologer Nostradamus, one of whose gnomic utterances predicts the arrival in 1999 of the "Great King of Terror" -- easily identifiable as Saddam, to those with vivid imaginations...
Haskell throws just enough tantrums to keep us from hating her perfection and offers observations at once trivial and absolutely true. She explains the bargain of married love: "We seek affection, closeness, intimacy, togetherness, a buffer against chaos, then wonder why we no longer experience the frisson of sexual longing." She fears she may become one of the women waiting in the halls who no longer have husbands "to consecrate the banalities of life, turn them into little miracles...