Word: muzakal
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...LIGHTS COME UP on the opening scene of Strokes suburban housewife Lily wheels her husband onstage to a melodious Muzak version of "Send in the Clowns." The bronzed baby booties and plastic flowers on the coffee table have been freshly dusted, plastic slipcovers protect all the furniture, and a large banner proclaims "Welcome Home, Daddy." But Daddy cannot hear the chirping cardinals or see the sunlight on this bright spring day. A stroke has left him a vegetable, and created the conflict of a black and bizarre comedy about an American family gone wild. Don't worry," Eily coos comfortingly...
...foster this image. Reagan has learned to defuse media criticism. He is better at manipulating the press than any of his predecessors, including Kennedy. He learns his lines well for press conferences and folksily calls the reporters by their first names. His anecdote-filled speeches are lulling political Muzak But when forced to think on his feet and answer questions off the cuff, he fails miserably...
...shop strikes you at first by its altogether workaday decor; it looks like a tacky, run-down coffee shop, with signs advertising "water vibrations, spiritual hearing, tarot." When I was there, Christmas Muzak was being played. The several tea leaf readers go from table to table talking with people and dumping tea cups upside down to decipher the leaves...
...crisis ("I very badly want to be someone else without going to the trouble of changing myself). Her boyfriend Marty (Chip Zien) is a kidney specialist who looks like a Muppet rabbi and calls Janie "Monkey." Her father (Stephen Pearlman) is a nice guy with all the charisma of Muzak in a minor key; her mother (Betty Comden) is a danceaholic who can't let go of her baby. Janie knows how to make her mother happy: by phoning to say, "I just got married, lost 20 pounds and became a lawyer"-but she doesn't know...
Local TV news often proves as unintrusive as Muzak as well. After the broadcast's first block of eight minutes or so, viewers get three minutes of weather (no phone numbers, though), four to five minutes of sports, and three or so soft-news packages, as opposed to voice overs (an anchor narrating a videotape). Last summer, even in Chicago, which is recognized as one of the country's strongest local markets, viewers could have watched reports on "Flashdance chic" in the city; a camera and a reporter followed a few unsuspecting women who wore oversized sweatshirts...