Word: gimmick
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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LAST SUMMER Pizzeria Uno had a special promotional gimmick. If you could eat your way through their largest pizza--with everything on it--by yourself in 45 minutes, you didn't have to pay for it. Late one night, at the end of July, after a six hour Organic Chemistry lab, I decided to try. The restaurant manager came over and read me a list of ingredients, he made sure I understood that if I couldn't finish it would cost $12.95. I didn't know what I was getting into...
...device of splitting the show into three parts is not a gimmick to get the audience to come back each time, but a practical necessity--the cast has to spend five nights a week and some weekends just rehearsing each third of the show...
...phone-in gimmick caught consumers by surprise, the price hikes did not. They were part of a series of painful economic measures announced in February 1982. Since then, Poland's foreign debt has remained at $26 billion, while the economy as a whole has stagnated. The Polish standard of living, many economists agree, has dropped by about 25%. Poles were particularly outraged by the government's announcement that butter would be rationed. The move came barely a month after officials had given public assurances that no such plan was being considered. Thousands of housewives quickly stormed shops...
...would-be assassin's bullet, had been quoted as saying he would shoot anyone who came to get him "right between the eyes." But this time, at least, he was not true to his word. "If any of you want to know if this is a publicity gimmick, yes, it is," he told reporters, "and thank God you all fell for it." Then, wearing a LARRY FLYNT FOR PRESIDENT shirt, the raunchy, paunchy publisher of Hustler magazine was taken before Judge Robert Takasugi. The judge had ordered Flynt to surrender an audio tape that Flynt said was a recording...
...plastic masks on the evil characters. The technique produces an eerie, sinister effect; the masks, sometimes grotesque, sometimes animal, sometimes human, look frighteningly real. Though without masks, Pericles, Thaisa and Marina are equally un rounded as characters; when Lysimachus removes his mask repenting of his past ways, the easy gimmick becomes a tour de force...