Word: manias
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Well," said sprightly temple worker Kayoko Murakami, "people realized that they couldn't continue sakoku," or national seclusion. If not for the U.S. and Harris, she told me, "Japan could be like North Korea" today. Now there's a sobering thought. It helped to explain the Perry and Harris-mania that grips the town. By that I mean the "black ship" manholes in the streets, the Perry Aqua Dome at the Shimoda Aquarium and the dramatization of the Harris and Okichi story in tourist literature. The place even celebrates a black ship festival every May. Town officials are busily planning...
...veneer of respectability—stacking a New Yorker on top of a New York, or nodding agreeably at what Cindy Adams has to say about poor Winona Ryder’s rehabilitation while standing next to the World News section at the Coop newsstand. And even there, celebrity-mania gives you a different way of looking at the world: Sure, Dick Cheney is running our country and President Bush is fighting his father’s war, but, more importantly, have you noticed how this administration is a cross between “The West Wing?...
...Harry Potter. Unlike Potter, however, it ended up on numerous critics' best-of-the-year lists and received 13 Oscar nominations. This time it's widely assumed in Hollywood that Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, set for release on Dec. 18, will outgross Chamber of Secrets. Potter-mania seems to have quieted, partially because there hasn't been a Potter novel in two years. While Philosopher's Stone pulled in $318 million in the U.S., the sequel is expected to make closer to $250 million - still an impressive number, and Potter will undoubtedly win the merchandising race. According...
...Mortgage mania has truly arrived, to the point where rate talk is all the buzz at dinner parties. Forget tech stocks - the barber now offers tips on how to get the best refinance deal. Homeowners check rate hot lines daily and are deluged by e-mail from mortgage firms. The quotes were disappointing last week, when procrastinators lamented a surge in the average 30-year fixed rate to 6.15% from 5.98%. But rates remain near 40-year lows. There is a real frenzy: a record $1.3 trillion of mortgages will be refinanced this year...
...hectic weekly schedule and live format have kept its cast and crew in a state of barely controlled mania since the first show in 1975. The pressure-cooker atmosphere helps explain why Dan Aykroyd ended up sleeping with producer Lorne Michaels' wife, not to mention with Gilda Radner, who developed an eating disorder, and Laraine Newman, who was snorting heroin. It led to Julia Sweeney and Dana Carvey weeping in their dressing rooms, and Chris Farley running around naked and defecating out of a 17th-story window. Not to mention Bill Murray and Chevy Chase throwing punches moments before...